Missing the target

Yes, it's significant that Canadians don't believe Michael Ignatieff when he says he wouldn't pursue a coalition. But there's an even more important flaw in the Libs' choice to rule out any sustained cooperative efforts:

(A) significant majority of Liberal, NDP and BQ voters support the idea of a coalition government in which MPs from those parties are participants.

Leger found that, among those who identify themselves as Liberal supporters, two-thirds "approved" of a Liberal-NDP-BQ coalition. It was the same with the NDP, with two-thirds of that party's supporters giving such a coalition the thumbs up.

In other words, by ruling out a coalition, Ignatieff is delivering a slap in the face both to his base and to the centre-left voters he's trying to attract from the NDP and Bloc. And all based on nothing more than the utterly unfounded hope that the Cons might switch messages from one which Stephen Harper has obviously chosen as his preferred line of attack.

Needless to say, Ignatieff's stance isn't about to produce the intended result. But that still leaves the question of whether his party's own voters will realize that Ignatieff isn't listening to their desire for cooperation to replace the Harper government - and turn their support to the party that shares the view.