There's been a lot of talk about what's happened to Conservative support since the fall and the impact of prorogation. The weekly Harris Decima tracking data gathered for The Canadian Press is a gold-mine of information to answer these questions.
Two things have caught my attention.
First, over the last few years that the Conservatives proximity to majority level support has ebbed and flowed mostly with the views of women, but that's not what's going on lately.
The drop in Conservative support from the mid to upper 30s to the lower 30s is mostly a male thing. Conservative support among women has scarcely budged, running in a narrow band from 29 to 31 per cent. In contrast, support among men has dropped from a peak of 40 to 42 per cent and is closer to 35 per cent of late.
In the late summer and early fall, the Conservatives were harvesting male votes away from the Liberals. In my estimation, this was caused by the nature of the Conservative advertising attack against Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, combined with some self inflicted wounds by Mr. Ignatieff's: first declaring his determination to force an election (unpopular) and then his skittishness as the moment of truth arrived (the decision voters wanted, but an ungainly process).
Since then, Conservative support among men has ebbed. I would credit stronger, more stable performance by the Liberals, Conservative stonewalling on the Afghan detainee issue (unpopular) followed by their decision to cut and run from the Parliamentary fight (ungainly too). But as the chart shows, the slide had started well before the prorogation announcement. The absence of Conservative attack initiatives (except for the rather feeble beer-flag incident) has also allowed the Liberal numbers to recover. Bottom line: when Mr. Harper was making Mr. Ignatieff the issue, he was gaining ground. When his prorogation decision made this impossible, Mr. Harper became the issue and he lost some ground.
For all of this, things are not all that far from where they were: the ground has softened, but not shifted a great deal. There's lots of hope to go around, but precious little reason for confidence.
For my money, the movement among men is maybe the most important mini-trend. Stéphane Dion struggled to win male votes against Mr. Harper, and Mr. Harper could rarely best the Liberals among women. Last summer, it looked as though the Conservatives were stretching that advantage among men, but some combination of Afghan detainees, record deficits and knocking off work early have compromised that progress, creating new opportunities for their opponents.