Despite the quick replacement of Stéphane Dion with Michael Ignatieff as party leader, Liberal support remains in the doldrums with 30% of national vote intentions. Conservative support is at 43%--more than enough to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons if an election were held today.

One key reason for the Liberals’ unexpected weakness is that Canadians are troubled by the process that led to Stéphane Dion being replaced by Michael Ignatieff:

• A huge majority of Canadians opposes the 19th century practice of politicians choosing their own leaders—the public wants party leaders chosen either by leadership conventions (42%) or in U.S. style primaries (39%) and not by politicians themselves (19%);
• A majority (57%) believes that the insider-type process used to replace Dion with Ignatieff was unfair to rank-and-file party members who wanted Bob Rae or preferred an outsider who had not been involved in the three-party coalition deal that got voters upset (e.g. former Deputy Prime Minister John Manley).
  

Another key reason for the Liberals’ unexpected weakness following the departure of Dion is their new policy of “a coalition if necessary but not necessarily a coalition”;

• A clear majority of the Canadian public (58%) opposes the new policy;
• A large minority of Canadians (46%) sees essentially no difference between the new Liberal coalition policy and Stéphane Dion’s coalition policy, whose unpopularity led to his immediate resignation.
  
  

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