Painting by numbers

A couple of observations from the first poll on the Lib leadership race.

First, it's surprising that while Brison does relatively well among current Con voters, Stronach fares the worst of the lot when it comes to current Con votes. Considering that she'll presumably need to be able to speak to the right wing of the party to get anywhere, that'll have to change for her to get anywhere near the top of the pile.

Second, note that for all four potential leaders polled, the number of voters who won't consider voting Lib is between 48 and 53 per cent, while the number committed to voting Lib is between 6 and 9 per cent for each. Then remember that during the campaign, the "committed Lib" number was in the range of 20%. Obviously a lot of current Lib voters are at best reserving judgment on the new crop of leaders - and if the NDP can win enough positive coverage while the leadership race reflects poorly on the Libs, there may be an awful lot of soft support to be won.