The Green Party says its first-ever commissioned polling in Guelph shows local Green candidate Mike Nagy and Liberal Frank Valeriote have wide leads over the Conservative and NDP candidates.

The random telephone poll of 300 local electors shows Valeriote in the lead with 38.4% support, Nagy second with 24.2%, Conservative Gloria Kovach third with 12.6% and the NDP's Tom King fourth with 8.0%. A further 16.7% were undecided, said a Green Party news release Wednesday.

The poll was done for the Green Party by Oraclepoll Research, a Canadian polling and market research company with offices in Toronto, Montreal and Sudbury. According to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, Oraclepoll is best known for conducting individual riding polls for local media in Canadian federal and provincial elections.

The margin of error of the poll is plus or minus 5.7%, 19 times of out 20, the news release said. It said the poll was conducted on Sept. 1 and 2.

Stan Kozak, Nagy's campaign manager, said it is the first time the Green Party has been in a position financially to do polling in Guelph. "We're running a fully financed campaign," he said in an interview Thursday.

He said the other parties are presumably also doing local polling. "I'm sure they are doing it, because it is standard procedure. It hasn't been for us, but we are glad to be there."

People who don't generally vote were weeded out of the poll, in which people were first asked if they vote. "It was restricted to 300 who said, yeah, I always vote," Kozak said Thursday.

Asked how he thought the poll results might translate to a general election as opposed to a byelection, he replied: "The Greens have developed tremendous momentum (during the byelection campaign), and if we go into a general election I'm looking for that momentum to carry on."

The return of University of Guelph students will help this happen, he said.

According to the poll, the environment is considered the most important issue by 29.3% of local electors, the economy by 20.7% and health care by 13.3%, the release said.

The environment was picked as the No. 1 or No. 2 issue by 49.6% of the respondents, compared with 36.8% for the economy and 28.0% for health care, it said.

It said the poll also shows that 82% of Guelph voters support Green Party leader Elizabeth May's inclusion in the national leaders' debate during a general election campaign.