BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN
Based on a poll of voters conducted by Oracle Research on Jan. 14 and 15, Nickel Belt incumbent Ray Bonin can probably forget about retiring from politics any time soon.
The poll shows Bonin is favoured by a clear majority of citizens, with about 43 percent of respondents in his riding saying they would vote for him.
New Democrat candidate Claude Gravelle came in second with 36 percent, followed by Conservative candidate Margaret Schwartzentruber at 18 percent and Green candidate Mark McAllister at three percent.
?Bonin?s got a fair amount of personal popularity. If he?s not there next time, I think you may see the NDP with the better chance, although I?m not writing them off here at all,? said Oracle president Paul Seccaspina.
Oracle had not released their Sudbury poll as of Northern Life?s press time Friday afternoon, but Seccaspina said the riding, along with Nickel Belt, generally has a ?strong core of federal Liberal support.?
?I think you can read as much as you want into that,? he said. ?I think (Conservative candidate) Kevin Serviss has run a pretty good campaign in Sudbury, but we?ll see what happens on election day.?
The polls were commissioned by Sudbury media outlets, including MCTV.
Meanwhile, the Sudbury & District Labour council announced Friday they were encouraging their members to vote for Gravelle and Sudbury NDP candidate Gerry McIntaggart in the waning days of the election.
The council made its decision based on the Canadian Labour Congress? ?Make a Better Choice? campaign, which encourages its three million members to vote based on candidates? opinions on six main issues.
These issues are health, anti-scab legislation, jobs, pay equity, training and pensions.
Gravelle and McIntaggart were chosen because they have been outspoken about issues like job creation and health care, said Bert Purcell, an
executive member of the council.
Claude Gravelle said he was thrilled to get the labour council?s last minute boost.
?It means that the labour council has seen through the Paul Martin ads and the Stephen Harper ads, and they?re supporting the best party and
candidates,? said Gravelle.
But Seccaspina isn?t sure the labour council?s endorsement of the local NDPers will make any difference on election day.
?The thing is with young unionized workers, especially those at Inco and Falconbridge, they?re not going to vote the way their union tells them to,? he said.
?They?re most concerned with their families, making money, taxes and health care. Are they going to vote in this 1950s ideological model? I don?t think so.?
On a national scale, the pollster thinks the Conservatives will win either a slim or overwhelming majority on Monday.
He made his prognosis by looking beyond the early poll numbers and assessing other political factors.
?Was is going to be a repeat of 18 months earlier? I didn?t think so. The Conservative Party was so new at that time, and there was so many gaffes that they had made,? he said.
?This time around, even through the summer and fall session, Martin just looked tired. You knew what kind of campaign they were going to be
running again - branding Stephen Harper as the evil guy. It just didn?t work. Voters and the media just didn?t buy it.?
