Barbershop poll puts Tories way out in front
Last Updated: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 | 10:41 AM ET
CBC News
While recent polls have suggested the Conservatives have taken the national lead in the federal election campaign, those results are less reliable when regional results are broken out.
- VOTER TOOLKIT: Polling FAQs
So Doné Katsorov is polling on a hyper-local level.
"I started the poll on Nov. 30," he said. "NDP has three. Liberals has 54. Conservatives have 129."
Katsorov has been a fixture in downtown Cambridge for more than 25 years, where he's known as Danny the Barber.
These days, along with the buzz of the hair clippers, there's a political buzz in his shop, where he's been tracking the voting intentions of people who come in for a trim, marking down the results on a clipboard kept near the scissors and combs.
Cambridge is in the heart of southern Ontario, where the Conservatives need to make a breakthrough if they hope to form the government.
- RIDING PROFILE: Cambridge
In 2004, Conservative Gary Goodyear eked out a win with a 224-vote margin. If Danny the Barber's decidedly unscientific poll is any indication, he'll easily keep the seat.
Katsorov says one issue accounts for the changing dynamic in this election: the sponsorship scandal.
"The main issue is corruption and we're watching," he said. "After all, we elect them to govern in an honest way and not the corruption way."
Katsorov came to Canada from Macedonia 49 years ago. He's seen all three major parties win the Cambridge riding, but he's always voted Liberal.
Not this time. After all those years, he's switching to the Tories.
It's something Goodyear is happy to see. He thinks the riding is something of a bellwether, a good predictor of voter intentions across the country.
And he hopes Danny the Barber's poll is a predictor of voter intentions in the riding.
