OTTAWA - A new poll suggests one-in-five Canadians would vote for Green party Leader Elizabeth May if she ran in their riding.
And that's just about the support she has in Atlantic Canada, where she faces a big challenge to unseat Defence Minister Peter MacKay in the riding of Central Nova.
The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey suggested May was trailing Conservative MacKay by 25 percentage points among Atlantic Canadians. Forty-eight per cent of those surveyed favoured MacKay compared to 23 per cent for May.
MacKay's roots in the riding run deep. His father, Elmer MacKay, held the seat from 1971 to 1983 and again from 1984 to 1993.
The defence minister has held the seat since 1997 and won with 40.7 per cent of the vote in the last election.
But neither MacKay's long grip on the riding nor the poll's results will deter May from running in Central Nova.
"It isn't a poll of Central Nova, so it doesn't bother me at all,'' she said in an interview.
"It doesn't tell us anything we didn't know before. . . . We're stronger in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec than we are in Atlantic Canada overall.''
May added that her party's internal polling has her "doing quite well in this riding.''
The poll suggests a May win in the riding would be most popular in British Columbia, while Ontarians and Albertans are split.
Among Tory voters, two-thirds would vote for MacKay while 13 per cent would prefer May, the poll suggests.
Women respondents were split between the two candidates, while 40 per cent of male respondents said they would vote for MacKay compared to 31 per cent for May.
The survey suggests May would pull support from the other parties, attracting 19 per cent of NDP voters, 13 per cent of Liberal voters, seven per cent of Bloc Quebecois voters and six per cent of Conservative voters.
Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has said his party will not run a candidate in Central Nova. That could make the race between May and MacKay a lot closer, Harris-Decima president Bruce Anderson stated in the poll results.
The telephone poll of just over 1,000 Canadians was conducted July 24-27, and is considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points 19 times in 20.
