Canada's Prime Minister and Liberal leader Paul Martin (top left), Conservative leader Stephen Harper (top right), Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe (bottom left), and New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton are seen in this combination photo. Canadians went to the polls yesterday to elect a new government. - REUTERS
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters):
A CANADIAN electorate that appears to have tired of more than a decade of Liberal rule headed to the polls yesterday, seemingly ready to hand a limited mandate to the Conservatives.
It was a rematch of the 2004 neck-and-neck race that gave Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin a minority government.
But this time Conservative leader Stephen Harper, whose party is rooted in Western Canada, has built up a much more substantial lead of six to 12 percentage points in opinion polls, and the Conservatives seem headed for their first government in 12 years.
Martin's government was toppled in November over voter anger about kickbacks from government contracts.
But rather than spending most of his time on that issue, Harper methodically laid out a policy a day during a campaign that ended up dispelling some of the doubts voters had about him in 2004.
"I felt almost from day one that we were doing what we wanted to do, getting our message out, and the surprise for me from early on was that the Liberals didn't seem to be doing that," Harper told reporters on his plane on Sunday, the final day of the campaign.
