New Polling Thread

In my region, I hear that the LPC believe they are in a position to retake many seats they lost to the NDP and that they can regain thousands of lost votes, from the NDP in order to kick out the CPC.

Many people want the CPC gone and are willing to vote LPC to do it.

The English PDF link is working for me. Try it again.

These early numbers are disturbingly reminiscent of 1993, the last election to take place in the midst of a major economic downturn.  How soon left-leaning voters forget that after 1993, the new Liberal majority promptly broke all its promises, slashing unemployment insurance, keeping the GST and expanding free trade.

Of course, there are also big differences between now and then. While the Bloc remains, the Reformers and Conservatives are together now and national unity issues are on the backburner. On the left, I think Layton is still a stronger leader than McLaughlin and should hopefully be more effective at holding media attention and fickle NDP-Liberal swing voters. I don't think Ignatieff has quite the "left cred" of Chretien, either.

At the moment I think we're headed for a Liberal minority with either the Bloc, or a smaller but not annihilated NDP caucus  holding the balance of power.

A Liberal minority is the most likely result, I have to admit. Even the most spectacular gains in Quebec (along with a modest recovery in the East and West) will only get the Libs into the 130-140 range. They'd need to decimate the Tories in Ontario to make up the difference, or else find a way to break through in the prairies.

I don't know why you're even speculating about Liberal minority vs. majority etc... on the basis of one poll in March 2009 - when the next federal election won't be until Nov. '09 at the earliest and possibly not until Spring 2010. Right now the recession is still very much a dark cloud on the horizon for most people - but by Fall people will start to move from being scared to being angry and who knows that that will do to the political environment.

The Liberals were tied in the polls with the Conservatives at several points during Dion's reign - but for some strange reason the Liberals never seemed to believe and they kept on propping up Harper. I'm not sure why they'd believe it now.

If the Liberals get high enough in the polls to want an immediate election - the BQ will probably be the next ones to get cold feet since they would be afraid of losing a lot of seats in Quebec.

And, hopefully, the NDP would not vote with the Liberals to bring down the government -- not until the Liberal leader came crawling on his knees begging for NDP support.

There is a belief among CPC and NDP strategists that they must go after Ignatieff and attack him.  Ignatief is capable of making his own mistakes, much like Stephen Harper used to do. 

The CPC and NDP are going to make the same mistake in attacking Ignatieff and giving him credit.

This is a recession, and it is deep. The Public does not believe that the NDP has any ideas.

And I haven't heard any ideas coming from the NDP.

Slapping a sticker that says "Official Opposition" is lame. 

The NDP is viewed as a party that turns down everything, and votes against everything, even before looking at it.

The NDP believes that they can point out everytime the LPC votes with the CPC and run up the counter. But what is the NDPs answer, when the LPC finally vote against a Bill at the time of their choosing.  The LPC will vote against when they are highest in the polls or as we have seen, their public funding is pulled. The CPC won't be pulling the plug on the LPC while the polls are like this. The NDP has alot of work to do, to prove that it has a place in parliment.

Bread and butter populist outrage is a start. But the populists must want the NDP to be the vehicle of their outrage. 

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I don't think people see the NDP as unrelentingly negative or devoid of ideas. I think they see them as shiftless. If you listen to/read NDP rhetoric from the past 6 months it's pretty much identical to the rhetoric they've had for the past 6 years.

 Admittedly the financial collapse has made their message seem more plausible, but it's still the same message. In a time of crisis voters want a sense of dynamism and reassurance. By bleating about how the NDP has *always* been against greedy corporate interests they're basically running on the line 'I told you so'; that message does not endear a party to an undecided. 

 As for the logistics of bringing down the government, it's quite an ironic twist of fate that the Liberals actually are the ones who get to decide when the government falls (after Dion emptily bragged about it before Harper pulled the plug without him last year). The Tories won't bring themselves down because calling two elections in less than a year is just begging for a thrashing.

Meanwhile, the NDP and Bloc have painted themselves into a corner. If they vote to bring down the government, they play into Liberal hands, if they don't they'll look astonishingly hypocritical, having bleated so loudly about how they don't support Harper and how Ignatieff was a closet conservative because he didn't bring down Harper when he had the chance. 

The Bloc is less trapped by their rhetoric than the NDP is, but I think they'd still have a hard time supporting the Tories.

For one thing, as robbie_dee pointed out, the Tories would be loathe to 'rely on the separatists' even if the alternative was an election. It would still be playing into the Liberals' hands, and I doubt Harper would expose himself so baldly. 

Also, an unspoken principle of the Bloc is that the more elections there are, the better it is for them. An election lets the Bloc take its message to the people directly and on a wide scale - something they can't do when they're not supported by federal subsidies or when people aren't obliged to listen.

On a practical level, secession is more likely to happen if the federal government seems incompetant. Frequent elections are a meta-argument for the dysfunction of Ottawa and the validity of the Bloc's autonomist proposals. 

Finally, I think you overestimate the loyalty of the Bloc's voters. A lot of them are separatists, but a lot of them aren't. They just vote for Quebec's interests. Right now, an overwhelming majority of Quebeckers, many of them Bloc voters, see the Tories as not being in Quebec's interests. If the Bloc fails to stand up to them, these voters will look elsewhere; in that scenario, the Liberals look rather attractive.

And you forgot another very big difference: in 1993: the NDP label in general was crippled by its association with provincial government incompetence, courtesy of the Rae regime in Ontario and, to a lesser extent, Mike Harcourt's team in BC.  (Note, too, that the one place with a reasonably popular provincial NDP government--Saskatchewan--saved the federal party's face by electing over half of its rump caucus that year.)

Today, there isn't that same immediate "incompetence" association.  Though whether, in certain cases, "impotence" is substituted for "incompetence" is a matter of argument...

yeah - and it's been a long time since they excited this base.

A sustainable financil system to support a sustainable economy to create a sustainable environment - sounds simple enough.

Their attacks on the rotten core of our economy have been about as meaningful as charging for plastic bags has been for the environment.  ATM fees - right, because THAT was the problem...

in 2006, the Tories "relied on the separatists" to FORCE an election.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

Sounds like the media in 1999 talking about the Ontario NDP.

Are you dead yet? When will you be dead? Shouldn't you be folding up?

Obviously Jack Layton and the NDP have failed to understand that the coalition deal has crushed them.  Jack can go around the country defending that action, but it is too late, and a very very uphill climb.

Look at how easily Ignatieff has walked away.  No pressure, no backlash, and it isn't coming, nor will it stick when the CPC try to paint a picture of him with the coalition.

The NDP has alot of key support and growth in Western Canada, and it is clear that Jack Layton didn't take their concerns into account, or the potential backlash of getting into bed with Dion and Duceppe.

The time for making their case was back in November and December. Especially during the downtime of Parliment. The NDP did nothing.

If you do nothing, you receive nothing in return.  It is far to late to defend their actions.

They had better find a way to connect with the public, and this will take time. 

The NDP better realize that they are perceived to have little credibility.  This is ironic as the Liberal Emperor has no clothes. 

One could believe that the Public is parking their vote with the LPC and this could be the case. Especially if the NDP can make a case on why the people should vote NDP over all other party choices.

Jack Layton will defend and debate his coalition decision anywhere anyplace.  He may even be dead right, but the NDP will finish Dead last, if they pursue that action.

It was a gamble, perhaps and all or nothing gamble. If that is the case, what is the NDPs next gambit?

I like Chantal Hebert most of the time and i highly recommend her book "French Kiss" which i read over the holidays. But one thing I don't like about her writing is that she has a tendency to have a mean streak where she almost takes some sadistic pleasure on going on and on about so-and-so's weaknesses. She is pretty equal opportunity about it - but when she decides that its your turn to be the whipping boy - you get it. She has written merciless columns gloating about Dion being destroyed Martin, being destroyed, Harper being destroyed, Duceppe and the BQ being destroyed and this is not the first time she has taken a shot at the NDP.

There is no point going on and on about the events of December. That was then and this is now. It was only a few months ago that the conventional wisdom was that running a deficit was political suicide for any government - now its a fiesta of deficit spending. Let's look ahead to what political conditions are likely to when we have an election about a year from now. 

A broken clock can be right twice a day.

I thought it was about the people not begging for support, surely thats the reward doing the job not turning your back on the people because you didn't get what you expected.  Mr. Layton has been in politics a long time and I would hope to think as a servant of the people he would offer up what ever he could to make this country that much greater.  Petty politics I would think better of him.

I think that the key factor to look at in the polls is where Tory support is. There could be a lot of volatility among the opposition parties and Iggy has yet to be defined - but just the Tory number at 30% and in fourth place at 10% in Quebec is really DAMNING for them.

I think Layton's "best before" date has expired, especially after that hilarious shot of him in the last election with Parliament Hill in the background and Layton declaring he's running to be Prime Minister. I like the guy, really, I do, but it's time for a change.

The important point is that the Bloc will still have a faux-sweep of Quebec, because the Liberal vote will, as always, be piled up in huge majorities in their strong seats (that is, the centre and west of Montreal, and Gatineau); so the Bloc's 39.5% in Quebec will once again give them a big majority (like 64%) of the seats.

Why isn't the new UBC seat forecaster up yet? Is there another one to be found on the net anywhere?

Out of frustration, I have plugged this EKOS poll result for Quebec into the 2008 forecaster, and got:

Bloc 48

Liberal 26

and Andre Arthur

Of course that missed Outremont and gave it to the Liberals, so say Liberal 25.

But the point is the fifteen safe Liberal seats full of wasted votes: five seats where the Liberals have over 60%, four more where they have over 50%, and six more safe seats. Meanwhile the typical Bloc seat is won with 47% of the vote, six of them with less than 40% of the vote.

Any decent proportional voting system like BC-STV or MMP would stop this distortion.

This kind of discussion can be even more annoying than the couch-potatoes at work nattering on about sports that would cause their congested hearts to explode if they ever tried actually playing them.

Polls are interesting heuristic devices at the best of times; in times of great uncertainty and volatility they give only a very superficial sense of what would happen if an election were called.  A scant four months ago, the country was throwing a massive snit over the thought that a coalition might unseat the government and take power without an election.  Popular opinion on deficit spending, government intervention in the economy and regulation of industry have been shaken, stirred, blended and whipped into a froth.  There is a new Liberal leader whose media sense, telegenic qualities and command of English have created expectations, but who took the job in a way that has left a bad taste and who is still seen as a question mark by many.  Trying to make sense of shifts of three or four percent up and down in this kind of environment is a bootless enterprise.

As for the NDP prospects, here is what the pollster responsible for the most recent numbers has to say in an article over on the CBC site:

How can this be squared with the comments from Nik Nanos? Well, people need to keep in mind that pollsters opinions are still just opinions, and they do get quoted out of context by news hounds who have little understanding of statistical methods. They can also get it wrong for all the same reasons that regular folks get it wrong- like rooting for the home team rather than dishing the straight goods. I found the comments from Nik Nanos odd, because his polling seems to indicated that a large part of the swing in NDP vote was in areas where they hold one or two seats, and where the statistical power is low. Frank Graves is looking at the regional splits.

 Regardless, it will be months before these numbers are anything more than an interesting but fleeting glimpse of the public mood in a volatile political environment.

In Canada, due to spill-over from the USA's system, that's what we have to do.

Contrast the world's largest parliamentary democracy, India, where Congress figured out after the last election who would be PM, and the Third Front blithely say that their parties will decide after the election who will be PM if they are the largest group.

Jeez, Louise, talk about defining the argument in terms that preclude useful discussion. Fourth is the second best result ever for the federal NDP.  Does that mean anything?  Not a lot, but no less than the actual placement itself.

He is not the second coming, but he's taken a party whose caucus could meet comfortably in a motel room and increased its size and regional representation significantly.  We were nowhere when he took over the leadership.  In the absence of a compelling alternative with clearly superior leadership skills, I can't imagine any argument for him quitting for reasons other than ill health or being sick to death of sniping from the peanut gallery.

No. And I thought it was a great way of grabbing some media focus for the NDP campaign while making the point that the NDP should be seen as a serious option.  That press conference was brilliantly constructed, from the perspective of both message and visuals.  The snide and angry backlash from Liberals, Conservatives and their news media shills was impeccable evidence that the strategy worked. Who cares that they characterized the message as implausible?

I don't ask that the leadeship win every election, but I do expect that they try.  The message that Jack was running to win was positive, optimistic, and well crafted, the sneers notwithstanding.  There are those who believe that the way forward is ideological purity expressed through turgid policy pronouncements.  They are wrong. Nobody is going to give government to a party that sees itself as too pure to get down and dirty in an election fight, or above presenting itself as a credible potential government.

I've spent enough time in the trenches to know that the biggest challenge confronting the NDP as a viable electoral option is a sizeable chunk of the membership base that sees its role as yakking endlessly about policy and is nowhere to be seen when it comes to working long hours on election ground wars or raising funds.  This is especially problematic east of Manitoba. The problem is not the leader, but a party culture that sees losing as noble, and acknowledging the nature of parliamentary democracy and its implications for those who would stand for office as selling out.

Sorry, but you are wrong about that. I have sat through too many long-winded, pointless speeches from self-righteous members who heap scorn on those who offend their sense of purity and blather endlessly about what they see as priniciple and how they would rather be proud of their position than winning government to see it any other way. You can call it holding government to account or anything else you want, but it is what it is - putting a happy face on losing and revelling in the status of outsider.

I have to add that if you are going to claim that finishing fourth is somehow reason for the leader to quit, it seems a tad inconsistent to then say that aiming high is pitiable.

 and:

I guess you missed the 1990 Ontario election. The biggest problem confronting the NDP after its win was the fact that it had given no thought to what its policies would mean if it actually had to make good on them, and had done no preparation for holding government - preumably because they thought the prospects "delusional". It didn't help that we had a caucus full of third stringers who would have been hard pressed to win contested nominations if anybody had taken seriously before the election the thought that we might win.

Regardless, nobody much believed that Jack would win in 2008, and many commentators noted that his real goal was to get close to or into Ofiicial Opposition range.  Since the Official Opposition is supposed to be a government in waiting, running to win government is really a minimum prerequisite for the job.

Of course we can do much good as a strong caucus in a minority parliament.  As I said in another post, I don't demand that we win, I just expect us to try.

It's a dumb ass stupid premise.  The BEST thing Layton did in the last election was announce he was running for Prime Minister.  It is frankly delusional to believe that the previous line of 'pretty please just give us a voice in Parliament' was seen as anything else besides we can't win.

Your analysis is over-the-top drivel.

We're talking politics. If the fact that the example is from a province means its lessons are inadmissable to discussions of federal politics, then we really are in sad shape.

I think it was effective initially, yes, for the first half of the campaign because he was taken seriously for a while.  However, it turned out to be a failure in the end because the NDP needed to win 50 seats and come close to displacing the Liberals from the Official Opposition the way it did in 1984.  By not doing that, the primary objective was not achieved.

And I loved that Layton and the NDP ran to win. It made this NDPer working in the trenches and banging on doors, absolutely proud and energized.

It is a dilemma, because if Jack doesn't say he is running to win, it kills morale among NDP supporters and volunteers and invites strategic Liberal (or BQ in Quebec) voting to stop the Conservatives.  On the other hand, I do agree that the "I'm running for PM" line is hard to sustain when we are stuck at 15% in the polls.  I think the better message is; "We are running for government and here is a credible program we will implement if elected.  The voters will decide what role we will play in the next Parliament, and we'll use our influence in the new House to advance the policies and values in our program." That way, we are still running for 1st place but we position ourselves as relevant even if we don't win.  The media are not going to buy the "running for PM" line next time as long as we are running below 20% in the polls.

I question the last line of the quote above: "a little more bilingual" - Jack's French has improved tremendously in recent years and was very strong in the 2008 campaign.  Short of electing a francophone like Savoie, Hughes or Godin, or Mulcair of course, Jack's French is superior to any of the other potential leadership candidates in my view. 

Word.

Yeah but Stockholm we can't let reality get in the way of attacks on the NDP.

Layton is the first NDP leader ever to win a seat in Quebec in a general election. There are all kinds of reasons why the NDP didn't do even better in Quebec - not least of which is the fact that the BQ such and elephant in the middle of the room sucking up just about every progressive vote. The idea that somehow the NDP would suddenly sweep Quebec if they had a leader who was better able to conjugate the verb "tenir" in the subjontif passe - is totally beside the point.

Layton's spoken French is excellent - that is not the issue. If you want to shit on his leadership you are really barking up the wrong tree here. 

What they really mean is that they thought Layton running as PM was a joke, and presumably got enough affirmation from people they know to confirm this must be true.

Might have some correlation to do with a prior overall disposition to the NDP.

Don't you see the fundamental contradiction there BB?

If the sneers and laughs were meaningful, then Layton could not have been polling ahead of both the other Leaders and his own party.

Some people will snear and laugh. Its what they add up to that matters. and apparently, not much.

And that's why BB, the NDP received the much needed 2nd place finishes, beyond the other parties in comparison. You are losing this argument, based on factual polling. You might have been one of the sneerers and jeerers, and that's your choice, but one needs to support your blanket statement - everybody thought Jack was a "joke" for running for MP. The leadership numbers don't support your argument.

NDPers are sick of the NDP running to be the conscious of the govt - how quaint - I want to win. Because only being in power does one get a progressive agenda in Canada - Iggy is the most regressive faux liberal progressive going - and now is recycling liberal redbook 1993 again - LOL.

How feeble - and the libs will continue to prop up the Cons because than, if elected, they will say - sorry - we all got to tighten our belts and to do so we must unit and slay the deficit dragon, on the backs of - you guessed it - ordinary Canadians. I've been down that sorry road. Libs are fakes. We need more NDP.

The party with the most success balancing budgets, both prov and fed (although NDP has not been in power fed) is the NDP. But one will never ever hear that from the MSM. Vote NDP, and often. Amen

Of course one can blame them, as those who do, are the ones to be sneered at, and mocked.

We can go back and forth on this all day, but I have chores to do. See ya later.

This would of course presume that Layton would say "I'm not running for PM", which he wouldn't necessarily need to do.  Regardless, the "I want to be PM remark" played well with the converted, notsomuch with the non-converted, and it is this latter group that the NDP needs to convert.  In a prime ministerial, FPTP, system, what the public thinks of someone's leadership really only matters if that can be translated into votes and seats.  In the most recent election, Layton got the seats part, but not really the votes part.

The sneering and jeering, at least from my perspective, is not about derision for the NDP, but rather a belief that more than mere rhetoric will be required if the NDP is to be successful in the long-term.  Catchy sound bites like "working families" and "I'm running to be PM" do not amount to much.  I want to see strategic direction from the NDP on how they can broaden their base.  Right now that is lacking.  The reality of the current situation is that despite an economic meltdown, and the complete discrediting of many CPC and LPC economic policies, the public has not (at least yet) turned its support to the NDP.

dp

If the NDP's strategy is to wait for corporate controlled media to start covering/presenting/advocating for a message of large-scale systemic change in this country, then the NDP is going to be waiting a very, very long time.  While you are right to address the issues relating to MSM, the NDP strategy must go beyond this analysis.

The hilarity is in the self delusion of the reality of the situation.  That reality is that a party, which consistently places below 20% of the popular vote, in our system, has not a scintilla of possibility to form the government.  It follows that its leader, in a prime ministerial system, has not a scintilla of a chance to become PM.  This is to be contrasted with a situation like Obama, where he has an opportunity to capture the democratic leadership, and if so, a reasonable prospect of winning the election.

Yes, the number of seats that are captured does shift around depending on the political whims of the day, and the campaign strategy.  You suggest a bit of a false dichotomy.  The NDP does not have to say we are not running to win.  They can focus on "we are running to create change" as opposed to "as PM I would ...". 

One of my main complaints about NDP strategy is that it is incredebly insular.  There is very little perspective on how the NDP is viewed outside the converted.  Complaints about strategy are met with false dichotomies such as the one you have presented.  And at the end of the day, I see nothing coming from Layton that would suggest a strategy that can break out of the utter stagnation in popular vote capture.

I believe in incrementalism. You come up with the best strategy in each election and you steadily move up. For about 50 years the NDP in Nova Scotia never had more than 4 seats and never had more than 16% of the vote. Then they had a big breakthrough and almost came out of no where to win in 1998 and now all the polls show them poised to win the election this year. The Manitoba Liberals went from 1 seats to 22 seats in one fell swoop in 1987 and almost took power. The BC Liberals in 1991 had zero seats and came out of no where to get 33% of the vote and to become the official opposition and are now in power. The ADQ went from 4 seats and 18% of the vote to coming with a handful of seats of forming a government in Quebec.

If you never put any money of the table - your chances of winning the roulette game are ZERO.

@ Stockholm

It is good to believe in incrementalism.  Your analysis is also useful in that it reminds that major changes can, and do happen, and that they can happen rather quickly.  Insofar as these situations can be analyzed for strategic insight they are useful.  [/aside: apparently one of the CPC strategists became an expert on how the cons came to power in Australia, and used this knowledge for the CPC, quite effectively, in Canada] The trouble of course is that these are provincial experiences, and may not be applicable to the federal NDP.

@ ottawaobserver

"running to take an active role in government" is distinctly different from "as prime minister I will...".  I would prefer, "as NDP MPs, we make parliament more effective by ...".  E.g. pushing for increased transparency in being able to see how your individual MP voted (thank you Libby Davies), or other examples of NDP MPs making tangible differences.  A policy discussion alone may not be sufficient.  The NDP also needs to focus on strategy.

@ KenS

If the self-analysis within the NDP is as rigorous and introspective as you suggest, then it would seem to resemble a gerble on a wheel, working really, really hard, but never going anywhere, and never cracking that 20% glass ceiling despite such hard efforts.

I don't claim the truth, or a monopoly on outside-NDP opinion, but I can say that from the people that I speak with, the NDP strategy, not necessarily its policies, has little influence or appeal.  We'll soon have another election with which to analyze this situation, and if all is well at the helm of the NDP, then we need not worry.  I myself, and not convinced.

Well, I'm looking forward to seeing what Layton has to say at his news conference tomorrow.  We may see that with the BC and NS elections out of the way, the two task forces on the road, and the second half of the spring session seeing featuring more Liberals caves and abstentions, that by the time we get to the August convention, things have picked up on that score.

The CPC got where they are today by out strategizing the other parties.  It was not based on empty rhetoric, and they were able to show results.  And...I think a lot of people did indeed jeer Reform when it was getting going.

Oh and the unprecedented and anti-democratic action of a national police force actively intervening in an election.

Well what you don't understand about Canadian politics could probably fill a thread all by itself, but lets start with what I said.  The phrase empty and false rhetoric covers much of what you just posted.  Come to think of it, much of what you have posted in general.

Dude, step it down a noch with thead hominems.  Certainly what much of the CPC is idealogical, but they have transformed that ideology, and the rhetoric that goes with it, into a unified conservative party, that has seized power, has come close to gaining a majority, and continues to pummel all the other parties in fundraising ability.  If you want to think that this was all based on luck, or assistance by the RCMP, then go ahead.  My opinion is that the CPC has some very shrewd strategic thinkers, and the party's success has been facilitated by the work of these people (external factors such as the sponsorship scandal and RCMP tinkering aside).

I think that the CPC strategy may yield insights for other parties, particularly in the area of revenue generation.

Positioning is much different than strategy.  Positioning is making sure you are in the right spot when things come your way.  Layton and the NDP can also be seen to have been about as well positioned as they could be.  When positioned you are then in place if things bounce your way.

As for the Conservatives gaining government

The massively strong in the polls Martin couldn't decide what he wanted to do once he gained the PMship -that's not strategy that's luck

Martin, like a fool, let the sponsorship scandal define him, rather than anything that might be seen as new.  Chretien would never have made that mistake - ineffective Liberal leader continually pushing the story of the scandal - the luckiest, luck ever

Let's review the actual trend the election that brought Harper to power.  Pre-Christmas Martin and the Liberals are leading and seem to be on the verge of gaining government, perhaps even strength- then along comes the intervention by the RCMP in the election turning things on a dime - that's either luck or collusion.

Matin steps down and the Liberals elect the weakest of all the candidates, well ignoring Volpe - no strategy in that - just luck

Instead of growing in the position Dion actually gets worse and worse - culminating in a disasterously run election campaign- even a mid-wieght Liberal leader could have made a difference with a Canadian electrate that clearly does not want Harper with a majority- no strategy involved - just continued good luck thanks to poor Liberal decision making.

Then we get a completly scared and ineffectual GG - no strategy there either.

Now if your argument Benjamin had been about high skill in positioning that would be different.  The Conservatives have shown themselves to be very good at that - but strategic masters- no way

Stephane Dion spent far too much time attacking Jack's proclamation that he was running to be PM for claims that it was not taken seriously to be even remotely credible. Nobody (Jack included, I'm sure) believed the NDP would form government, but there were plenty of people who believed that there was a chance Dion could be taken down far enough that the NDP could take over as Official Opposition. Insofar as the Official Opposition is supposed to be the gorvernment in waiting, Jack's message made perfect sense. It would have required a great deal of good fortune and a weak enough Conservative campaign to shake loose almost the entire Liberal strategic vote.  It didn't line up.  Nothing ventured nothing gained.

One of the first things you learn in politics (at least if you're paying attention) is that there is nothing worse than being ignored. If they really think your message is stupid and self-defeating, the other parties just ignore you. Everybody in the game knows that once you get people responding to your message, they're not talking about their own. Jack's strategy worked just fine in that regard.

Lots of people sneered.  Who gives a shit?  I've had a dog set on me at the door. Sneering is easy to take, and it makes no difference to anything.

I agree that we don't measure success or failure just on whether Layton became PM - we measure success or failure based on how close the NDP came to forming the Official Opposition, and in that respect the last election was a failure.

In 1984, the Liberals only won 40 seats and the NDP came close to displacing the Liberals and there was a real possibility that the NDP could have eclipsed the Liberals during the 1980's and that Ed Broadbent could have become the alternative to Brian Mulroney instead of John Turner and the Liberals.

That's what needed to happen in October's election - the NDP needed to win more seats than the Liberals or come close to it in order to displace them as the Official Opposition.  That didn't happen and therefore Latyon's campaign was a failure in that regard.