Angry in the Great White North

The real disaster for Stephane Dion is not the raw support numbers. If it showed a mass of NDP or undecided supporters moving to the Conservatives, that would be bad news, but perhaps not fatal.

The reality, though, is that Liberals are abandoning Stephane Dion in droves:

The poll shows that Dion has been unsuccessful in retaining the support of Canadians who voted for the Liberals in the January 2006 federal election. While 85% of voters who supported the Tories last year intend to do so again, only 66% of Liberal voters are willing to cast a ballot for the Dion-led Grits.

The numbers clearly show that an early election would be disadvantageous for the opposition parties at this stage. Dion has effectively lost the support of a third of the Canadians who voted Liberal in 2006.

Stephane Dion appears on television as the new Liberal Party leader, and one in three Liberals watching change the channel.

You know the powers-that-be that rule over the Liberal Party are looking at this (or at the two-thirds of the powers-that-be that haven't jumped ship) and asking themselves a series of questions:

• How can Stephane Dion reverse this trend? How is he going to be different tomorrow?
• Can we afford to have a leader that has not only not failed to take the party out of the pit it found itself at the end of the Paul Martin run as leader, but indeed continues to dig the pit deeper?
• Can we afford to choose a new leader if it comes to that? The sheer cost of a convention depleting our war chest on the eve of a possible election could destroy our electoral chances.
• Can we afford not to choose a new leader?
• How soon do we pull the trigger?
• Or do we write off the next dozen years, let Dion crash and burn in an election, and then truly rebuild?