1. Polls: The last few polls have shown a surprising degree of consistency.

SES: Lib 34% Con 28% Ndp 20%
Pollara: Lib 36% Con 28% Ndp 20% Bq 11%
Decima: Lib 33% Con 26% Ndp 22% Bq 13%
Ipsos: Lib 36%, Con 27%, NDP 16%, BQ 13%

In all cases, the Liberals have a 6 to 9% lead. However, this is a similar situation to where the Grits found themselves during the lead-up to the 2004 election. End result? It’s still too close to call.

2. Polls II: The National Post has the results from a poll that shows that the whole notion of Canadians not wanting a Christmas campaign is a little overblown. Obviously if you ask people if they’d prefer a spring campaign versus a winter election, they’ll say they’d prefer a spring campaign. If you ask me if I’d rather go to the dentist in January, or in April, I’d prefer the later date, even though I know I should get a cleaning. I can’t for the life of me imagine anyone, in all of Canada, changing their vote because somebody forced a campaign over Christmas.

3. Polls III: While the Ipsos poll shows the Liberals well in front, they have some rather worrisome “bonus question” results:

39% say they would be comfortable voting for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives because there will be a minority government to keep them in check
35% say they would be comfortable voting for Paul Martin and the Liberals because they will have learned their lesson from Gomery
26% feel the tax plan was a good idea and makes them more likely to vote Liberal
43% of British Columbia residents say they would never consider voting for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives in the next federal election
70% feel the Liberal tax cut plan is just an attempt to buy votes and it won’t influence them
78% say an election over the holidays won’t affect their party vote

4. Pennies: Finally, a smart move from the Board. It baffled me why the Liberals didn’t make the economy their issue during the last campaign. Things are going very well in Canada, and Paul Martin has had a very big hand in making things go very well over the past twelve years. This should definitely be the theme for the Liberal election campaign.

5. Predictions: There is absolutely no way this will happen. Notta. Nope. Nein. Non. Nu-uh. One week from now, the Tories can bring down the government on a harshly worded motion on corruption. If they vote down Liberal tax cuts, they’d be forced to campaign against popular tax cuts, instead of against corruption. This one seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me, but maybe someone out there can explain the logic.