Now THAT'S Confidence!

The very first paragraph from Chantel Hebert's column in the The Star today:

Word on Parliament Hill these days is that a handful of senior Liberal MPs have been hitting their French books with a vengeance. Stéphane Dion may have been on the job for only a few months, but the prospect that his successor will almost certainly not be from Quebec has convinced some of his ambitious colleagues to put energy in language training now, to avoid being left behind later.

No time like the present, I guess. But whatever could have unilingual MPs racing off to French class (or English class, as the case may be)? Maybe this survey from the blogosphere's favourite Canadian pollster can offer up a clue. Apparently, mean ol' Stephen is doing a lot better as a leader than his opponents give him credit for.

Now. If you go digging through the archives here, you'll see that I have cautioned that opinion polls - even from SES - should be taken with several bushels of salt. That is all the more so when we're not in the middle of an actual election campaign. If anyone - from my fellow Blogging Tories to the folks in charge at Conservative Party h.q. - were to assume that Team Harper's in like Flynn after the next election based on these sorts of surveys, they really do need to think twice. If the last few years have taught us anything, it should be that poll numbers ebb and flow, and that campaigns matter.

But still: the Liberals seemed to be banking on, amongst other things, an assumption that Harper's style would turn off the electorate. For now at least, that assumption should go back to the drawing boards, if not the rubbish bin.

More later.