Topp's Coalition Memoirs, part2

Thanks Ken. I think we have a best seller here.

The next chapter could be a hoot if it wasn't so pathetically sad.

What fools the Liberals are - they could have basically controlled the government for the past year. Now, they may never see power again for a long, long, time. And all the damage that  Harper is doing can be placed squarely at the Liberals feet. Smucks are what the Ignatieff Liberals are.

Visions of grandeur!

Where have we seen that before. Oh yes, Paul Martin.

Paul Martin's thugs wouldn't still be running things, would they.

In his intro to the first piece, he wrote

Where can we buy the book?

Now I remember that disaster of a tape.

Could that have been sabotage from either within or outside of the Liberal party? Or are the Liberals just that incompetent.

I agree, Topp's blog series is absolutely riveting reading! Takes me right back to that exhilirating time a year ago when we were speculating on which Cabinet posts would go to Layton, Mulcair, Judy W-L, etc...

It would be great to have a book-length version of Topp's story,  with similar oral history perspectives from the other coalition participants.

In essence, the coalition was a combination of Dion trying to do an end-run around his party to become PM and Layton's extremely strategic siezing of the opportunity to take the NDP into a governing coalition. I was dismayed at the time that we gave in on the corporate tax cuts, but it was a good-faith attempt to build a unity coalition at a time of crisis.  The coalition government with Dion and Layton would have been significantly more progressive on EI, green stimulus spending and climate change than the sorry excuse for a government we have now under Harper.

Sadly, this was a historically unique circumstance that is very unlikely to be repeated in the forseeable future.  The Harper spin machine won the day as Topp writes and I think the Libs in particular are totally against any form of coalition or even electoral cooperation as Michael Byers suggested a few weeks ago.  If Rae is the next Lib leader, I predict he will rule out the coalition the day he announces his next leadership campaign.

I think she's saying that it was ultimately the vacuum in the Liberal Party leadership that killed it.  And I can't really disagree with her.

just excellent writing, and  he certainly called the msm on their part in the anti-democratic lies of Harper...and just what are the implications of what he states, in this respect?

bolding my own...

And can there be any doubt Harper and Ignatieff are controlled by the same people? Cause this is way  to rich...

Ya, funny how the more "elite" a person gets, the less  they understand how the world really works, eh.... ;D

Part 6 - "Lessons Learned" - has just been published.

Hopefully they are preparing such a Bill for next seession...

Sometimes Wells is on the money, but sometimes he is just bizarre.

Well-lit Layton vs. the Force Amplifiers

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/12/04/well-lit-layton-vs-the-force-amplifiers/

I agree that our Governor General acted inappropriately. Since when does she only listen to a minority prime minister. What ever happened to majority rule. She should never have allowed Harper to prorogue Parliament. She does indeed need to step down.

Oh my..... the right is not liking Topp's account

LOL Scott

LOL Scott.

I found this particularly irksome:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/brian-topp/coalition-redux-lessons-...

Speaking of coalition government, it's just too freakin' bad these Liberals are so clueless as to not realize what a golden opportunity they have right now to take the Harper government down and put them out of their misery once and for all over the torture allegations. What a useless group of politicians. 

Screw the inquiry, take the governemnt down!  

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/in-about-face-top-general-a...

So yesterday Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff says there was no torture, but today he says there was torture. Why the change of heart, did anyone ask him that, or do they have the goods on all these bloody scumbag liars the likes of Hillier, MacKay, Harper, etc. These people are thugs and should be treated as such. The opposition has the numbers to boot their bloody asses out onto the street. The government should fall over this.

You know this is almost scarey, that they feel they can blatently lie in the HoC, after essentiually been proven to have committed war crimes, without any consequences.

If the opposition voted non-confidence in the government right now, the Governor-General would dissolve parliament and an election would have to be held.  The window for a coalition or alternative government to replace them passed after their first nine months or so in office.

Two of the last chances to vote non-confidence in the government came and went with the HST vote, which the Liberals and Bloc supported.  Tomorrow is the Liberals' last opposition day motion.  They've put a number of different possible motions on the Order Paper, but not one of them is a confidence motion, although I suppose it could always be amended to add that clause by the Bloc (the NDP doesn't get sub-amendments unless the Bloc demurs).

I love your heart on this one, NR, but it's a totally bad idea.

Awww, WCL, that's ancient history - it's the Libs and BQ keeping Harper in power now. Isn't it? Whatever.

It's not clear to me why we should fear an election. Harper might get a majority? What do you call his current balance of power?

My post was the purest rhetoric. I didn't propose or state anything (other than jokingly), so what am I wrong about in a "practical" sense? That Harper is governing as if he has a majority? I think he has done that for four years and will continue, with or without an election, unless a coalition is formed to stop him. Now, if "practically" means that cowards and opportunists are not likely to do what's in the interest of the Canadian people, I agree with you - but not everyone in those parties is like that.

Maybe, Fidel, but he does wield power I think, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to join forces ("coalition of the willing"!!??) and stop him.

Finally some serious opposition to Harper. And he takes on Spector and kcks his ass too.

One of the great principles of English liberty, upon which our system of government is founded, is this: no parliament may bind a future parliament.

It therefore will not do for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet to assert that the House of Commons cannot have the documents it demanded this week, because producing them might violate some law a predecessor parliament past long ago.

Parliament is supreme in our system of government, subject to the Charter of Rights. Which is not in our constitution to protect war criminals from justice, or ministers from scrutiny. The Prime Minister and his cabinet are accountable to the House of Commons. The House demanded yesterday that its own ministers table, unexpurgated, the documentary record relating to the abuse of enemy combatants in Afghanistan who fell into our country's power.

The ministry must now do this.

Some important constitutional issues arise from the Prime Minister's conduct a year ago, as I argued in this space earlier. But there is no exceptional circumstance here. The nation is not at risk of being controlled by the separatists and the socialists today. What we have here is a straightforward test of whether or not we are governed in a system of responsible government.

And so, whether or not this issue will be "a ballot question," this is a fundamental test of the character, principles, and judgement of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his colleagues.

In 1996, Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan wrote an article in Next City entitled "Our Benign Dictatorship" (you can find a copy here). This important article rewards a careful read on many issues.

But the issue today is this: do any of Mr. Harper's principles survive?

Or has he been so corrupted by his brief time in the executive suites of Ottawa that he has become the agent for the final victory of all the faults of our national government, discussed in that article?

Is his historic role to help reform our increasingly secretive, irresponsible, and undemocratic national institutions - as he claimed? Or the exact opposite?

---

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/brian-topp/a-fundamental-test-for-s...

Layton and the rest of the NDP crew seem to be on a roll like never before.

With Moe Sihota back in the saddle with the BC NDP on the Left Coast, the NS NDP Government on the East Coast, and the increase in NPD polling results in Quebec, I'm starting to finally get hopeful for the NDP in the next federal election. 

The rumblings of discontent within the Liberal caucus may have been overblown in the press, but everyone in politics knows that only the winner gets to smoke the real cigar. When Grit MPs privately acknowledge missing the political professionalism of Stephane Dion, it is time for a serious change of course. Iggy continues to sail steadily for the rocks.

At every major policy juncture, Ignatieff has forfeited the chance to distinguish his party from the government. He has backed the Harper position on Afghanistan, on fighting the recession, and most recently on the unpopular harmonizing of provincial and federal taxes. In the process, he has handed the political dividend to be had from opposing these divisive and unpopular issues to the NDP.

Even on those major policy issues like pension reform, where he did take a position, he ended up looking suspiciously like Jack Layton in less of a hurry - and with considerably less sincerity. The NDP have been early and consistent on their stands, making the Liberals look like timorous imitators in search of an issue.

http://www.ottawasun.com/comment/columnists/michael_harris/2009/12/10/12...

Outrageous is right.

Bankers getting $8.3 billion in bonuses

NDP slams 18% increase despite bad economy

http://www.thespec.com/Business%20News/article/688219

Now that we have all had to a chance to read Topp's accounting of what it is really like trying to work with the Liberals it should be clear to all that the NDP needs to avoid any dealings whatsoever with the Liberals. Just like you would with the plague.  

NR, I'm not sure I would come to exactly the same conclusion as you; never say never.  But he sure does point to the inherent problems, alright.  My take: if the Liberals have as disastrous a campaign as I think they're going to in April, they'll jettison Michael Ignatieff, and be knocking on our door with a new leader looking to make a deal.

Why, Thorin?  Given a choice between a far right party that is honest about being a far right party and a far right party that lies about it, why would you prefer to work with the far right party that lies about it?

How's about we simply build an electorally viable NDP and form a bloody government ourselves?

Malcolm, there will be no NDP government until the Liberals self destruct.

Coalition, phase two.

I loved Topps' review of the behind the scene negotiations and feel that the coalition model still has potential - for the NDP, Canada and even (ironically) for the Liberals.

I think Jack's fundamental conclusion that the NDP needs to find some way to reorder the game is the correct one.

Federally we are doing much better than we did under the two Alexa's, sometimes skirting 20% in the polls. Nothing to sneeze at but, ultimately, it limits what we can do to pursue policies that we support. We can be a conscience in Parliament, an organizing ally for NGOs in their lobbying efforts; we can even win small victories by leveraging our power in minority Parliaments (with differing levels of success depending on who we are trying to work with). What we cannot do is govern.

So, how do you change the game? One option (hope) is that we somehow supplant the Liberals through a combination of Liberal self-destruction, Liberal scandal, a broad collective political re-alignment of the electorate towards the left, and an unprecedented combination of NDP electoral success coupled with Liberal electoral disaster. Perhaps this is still a realistic goal (surely the Liberals have never been more ineptly led than they have in the Dion-Iggy era) but like almost every horror film you have ever seen, this undead corpse is very hard to finally kill off.

I am inclined to believe that even were we to cobble together the ingredients to bring about such a switch of position between the NDP and the Liberals we would run the very real risk of losing our identity. Much like the Labour Party in Britain under Blair, the need to occupy the broad chunk of the political spectrum ostensibly represented by the Liberals, we would, IMHO, lose our distinctly left positioning.

If you can't re-order the game by changing the players, then perhaps you can re-order the game by changing how it's played - double down on the coalition plan. Much of the outside criticism of the coalition plan centered on the role of the Bloc and the poor PR efforts of a divided Liberal caucus and its embattled leader, Dion, specifically the handy-cam from hell. Presumably both could be better handled if given a chance to do it again. The one criticism that had a ring of "truthiness" to it if not actual validity was that it was a plan that had never been put to the voters.

I agree that we elect a Parliament of MPs who legitimizes the government of the day through votes of confidence - the coalition was constitutionally valid but there was something to the point that on Election Day the prospect of NDP ministers in a Liberal PMs cabinet hadn't been put to the electorate. If we are going to take out the Tories through a coalition next time, then we need to do so expressly.

Now we can simply leave open the option to enter into a coalition should the policies and numbers justify it post-election (presumably with a combined Liberal-NDP majority without the need for Bloc support). I believe, however that the election campaign would become bogged down in coalition talk (forcing the Liberals to categorically deny any plan to enter into a coalition all the while fielding off, with Jack, "secret deal" questions from the media). Indeed, I imagine that whenever the writ is dropped the Tory attack-dogs will fire off Iggy's signature on the coalition deal to every fax machine in the country. If we (and the Liberals) are going to have to deal with this anyway, why not make a virtue of necessity (though I think there is inherent value in the notion in any event) and run on a progressive coalition agenda with an aim to not only deny Harper a majority but to replace him as the government. In order to truly do that the coalition would need to do more than have a joint program but would need to prepare an electoral coalition as well.

Sitting MPs, Liberal and NDP, would run unopposed by their coalition colleague and in seats where one coalition’s candidate ran a close second last election (the exact amount to be negotiated but say within 10%) that party's candidate would also run unopposed. Kitchener-Waterloo would have not NDP candidate; Surry-North would have no Liberal candidate and, hopefully, neither riding would be burdened with a Conservative MP next election.

So why would the NDP do it? For the same reason as we had last year. The prospect of bringing down Harper's government and getting a chance to actually govern - implement NDP policies at the national level -isn't something to be casually dismissed. Isn't gaining power the reason we run candidates in the first place? At a broader level, it becomes a game changer long-term. At some point the coalition will falter and we have to go back to fighting the Liberals but we will have established ourselves in ridings we had never held before and will have established a precedent that, presumably, NDP ministers are able to govern and govern effectively.

Why would the Liberals do it? They like to govern (at times they seem to think it is their god-given duty to do so) but the fact is they hold little prospect of doing so for the foreseeable future. A year ago at this time Iggy might have saw the chance to waltz into the PMO after a disastrous economic meltdown and create an election at a time and place of his own choosing, that plan stands shattered at this point on a couple of fronts (the economy is not as bad as it was presumed to be and Iggy's skills in orchestrating his political moments has been similarly exposed as less than originally advertised). Perhaps he can create the image of himself as a PM, but it is much easier to do so from 24 Sussex as opposed to Stornaway.

The grim fact that the Liberals need to face, recently remarked upon by Chantal Hebert, is that the Liberals have been unable to beat a unified Conservative Party since Trudeau bested Clark! The Chretien majorities were great times for the Liberals but those who have looked at the numbers must see that even with a weak NDP presence, it was not the Liberal strength that brought them their majorities but Conservative division.

The Liberals, maybe even more than the NDP (as we're doing close to as well as we have ever done) need to change the game too.

Thanks for the compliment Book, something not always available here :-)

I agree that my plan is only one of many possible options for dividing up "winnable" ridings. I think it unrealistic, and unnecessary, to divide up every riding. The truth is Red Deer is not going Liberal or NDP no matter who we put forward.

One issue that would need to be considered too is how this scheme would impact the financial bottom line of the parties if they are giving up votes in uncontested ridings would they presumably be able to recoup them in ridings where they are unopposed by a coalition candidate?

As for your point main, I'm in a hockey pool, and have been for years, so my first fall back alternative would be to have a draft of the available "winnable" ridings. Given both current seat count and vote % last election (and even current polls) there would be more Liberal picks than NDP. Not sure which system would be more favourable to which party - though in the end if the goal is to defeat Conservatives I suspect that there will be a great deal of similarity in the seats assigned to each party's candidates either way.

As for who the Liberals put up for candidates in the ridings we would not be challenging them in (remember in my plan existing MPs would be unopposed) there may be the temptation to pick a more right-leaning candidate if there is not left-flank to defend but if the Liberals picked someone patently unpalatable to most NDP supporters - would they come out and vote for that person? I would think not.

The reverse is true too. Just because we would not have a Liberal opponent in a riding does not automatically deliver us every former Liberal vote - in fact I suspect our voters would be more reliable coalition voters than Liberal voters - so it would be wise for us to nominate candidates that don't frighten away the very voters we hope to pick-up. That said, I suspect the prospect of recruiting "star candidates" increases if they know that they would be coming into a riding where it would just be them and the Conservative, non?

I too don't see the Liberals being outwardly interested either but things can change, and change quickly, in politics.

The Liberal dominance through the 20th century was based on many things but one key factor was their near monopoly in Quebec. (Yes, Diefenbaker and later Mulroney found ways to temporarily pull in the soft, and sometimes not so soft, nationalist vote as a counterweight but it didn't ). When the Mulroney coalition splintered the Bloc realignment in Quebec fundamentally changed the game for the Liberals - moreso than for us or the Conservatives.

They were, under Chretien, able to capitalize on the Reform-PC split to create their "false" majorities but with the reunification of the Conservatives, I don't see how the Liberals can hope for more than a minority win in the forseeable future. They may be prepared to live with that prospect for now but the Liberals don't fare well in the wilderness and I'm thinking that the attraction of regaining power, even if they have to share it with us, may prove overwhelming.

Not least of which is the huge number of voters that would be VERY angry that their vote choice was taken away from them, and that they would NEVER vote for the Liberal/NDP candidate instead.

Leaving aside all the number crunching that says those numbers would blow out of the water any net gains in seats that simplistic addition presumes to exist... all of us have a hard enough time motivating voters, and really don't need to give them another reason to be pissed off.

Steve,

Shortly after the last Alberta election, SEE Magazine published a poll of Alberta Liberal and NDP voters asking them what their second choice was.  Among Liberal voters, a slim majority picked the Conservatives.  Among NDP voters, a signifigant minority picked the Conservatives.

What this means (at least in the Alberta context) is that with one fewer opposition party, the Conservatives increase their majorities.  In Edmonton Calder, there was a Liberal candidate, but his campaign was very weak.  As a result, the Liberal vote dropped by about 10 percentage points. Most of that vote went to the Tories, who increased their share of the vote by 7%.  NDP MLA David Eggen saw his share of the vote increase by 3%, but it wasn't enough and he lost.  As a result, the opposition lost a seat to the Tories.

A similar result happened in Peace River, where the Liberals were unable to nominate a candidate.  The NDP more than made up for the Liberal votes (it helped that the NDP had a good candidate) but the Tory vote increased from 55% to 65%.

I don't know how these results would transfer today, given the rise of the Alliance.  But I suspect the Alliance could capture many votes that once were for the Liberals and NDP, making an arrangement between the two parties all the more dangerous. 

Obviously, these results might not translate to the federal scene.  But it's folly to assume that 1+1 will equal two when it comes to electoral coalitions.  It could easily lead to 1+1 equaling zero.

@ Ottawa Observer - Governing coalition deals are fine - AFTER and election.  That said, while the Liberals are more LIKELY to give us what we want in a coalition, it would be stupid of us to assume that the Liberals are the only potential coalition partners.  If, in coalition negotiations, the Conservatives offered more, we should not rule it out.  Even though we are more LIKELY to get a better deal, in the end, from the Liberals in that circumstance, ruling out other scenarios weakens our negotiating position.

@ JRoothman - The best possible outcome for Canadian politics is the utter destruction of the Liberal Party as a viable electoral force.

@ Steve Shutt - The problem with your proposal is that it is utterly unrealistic.  As Lou and others point out, Liberal voters, absent a Liberal candidate, are more likely to vote Conservative than NDP.  And while NDP voters, absent an NDP candidate, are more likely to vote Liberal, a significant minority (particularly in Saskatchewan, rural Manitoba and rural BC) are more likely to vote Conservative.  This does not account for the significant number of both Liberal and NDP voters who would simply stay home.

Using the last election as a basis, I have crunched the numbers.  There are only 64 constituencies where the combined Liberal - NDP - Green vote exceeds the votes of the winner - 55 Conservative seats and 10 Bloc.

* 45 Conservative seats where the Liberals were second

* 8 Conservative seats where the New Democrats were second

* 2 Conservative seats where the Greens were second

* 8 Bloc seats where the Liberals were second

* 2 Bloc seats where the NDP were second

I then calculated the net proportion of the other "coalition" parties vote the leading "coalition" would need to retain in order to take the seat.  That is NET retention.  If the leading "coalition" party lost by 500 votes, they need 501 NET votes to win.  If 100 votes shift to the Conservatives, the leading "coalition" party now needs 601 votes to win.

In the example of Simcoe North, for example, the Liberals trailed the Conservatives by 22%.  The combined Liberal, NDP and Green vote was 22.7%  The Liberals would need to gain a NET 96.92% of the NDP and Green vote in order to win.  If even 3.09% of NDP and Green voters stay home, and every single other NDP - Green voter votes Liberal, the Conservatives still win.  If 1.55% of NDP and Green voters vote Conservative, the Liberals cannot win.

Repeated Canadian Election studies suggest that the proportion of voters likely to stay home if their candidate is not on the ballot FAR exceeds 3.09%, and that the proportion of NDP or Green voters likely to choose the Conservatives over the Liberals is significantly more than 1.55%.  (As discussed, Liberals are actually MORE likely to choose the Conservatives over the NDP or Greens.)

I then calculated the electoral result using a 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100% NET retention.  It isn't until we reach 70% NET retention that the "coalition" forms a majority government.

This does NOT take into consideration how the electoral deal plays out in other constituencies.  Given (as oft noted) that Liberals would be MORE likely to vote Conservative than NDP, we can presume as practically a given that the NDP would lose at least nine seats (London - Fanshawe, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay - Superior North, Welland, Edmonton - Strathcona, Western Arctic, Burnaby - Douglas, New Westminster - Coquitlam*, Vancouver Kingsway).  [Data used general election results - in the recent byelection, the NDP broke 50% in NW-C.]

More can be found at:  http://accidentaldeliberations.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-retention.html

Frankly, the data would work out similarly in any election campaign.  Thus I conclude that there are three types of people who argue in favour of these daft and unrealistic electoral deals:

* People who don't understand politics

* People who don't understand arithmetic

* People who support the Liberal Party and would like to see the NDP and Greens commit electoral suicide.

I think the NDP & libs should gang up on the Tories (and the Bloc where necessary if possible), change the electoral system, hold a new election and then never have to think about "strategic" voting again. Yes, I know, the voters are supposed to be "election-weary" and "the liberals will never agree" to PR. Those are obstacles to surmount, not  necessarily deal-breakers in an of themselves.

Until the last few years I would have agreed that the Conservatives were the second preference of most Liberal voters. That view seems prevalent in this discussion but I don't think it is valid anymore.

Certainly it was the case in the CCF years. Witness the Lib/Con provincial coalition in British Columbia and how it took seats from the CCF.

But in the last few years there has been a greater difference betweens the Cons and the Libs and a lesser (arguably perceived) difference between the Libs and the NDP. After the cooption of the Conservatives by Reform and certainly during the Harper government, the Cons have lurched to the hard right. No one but the Cons call the NDP socialist anymore. And the Liberals have appealed in the dying days of the last several elections, often successfully, to NDP voters to defect to them as the best progressive alternative to the Cons.

In other words the perceived differences between the Cons and the Libs have grown and those between the Libs and the NDP have shrunk.

Indeed, in the last election, I remember polls showing the NDP as the most common  second choice of all other parties. Other polls have shown that up to 30% of Candians feel the NDP best represents their values, athough only 2/3rds of them end up voting NDP. Perhaps someone on Babble has access to those polls.

I don't doubt that a significant number of Liberals would vote for the Cons over the NDP in a straight fight but I strongly suspect, subject to some regional variations, that the NDP would get the lion's share. A bigger portion of the NDP vote would be trransferred to the Liberals where they are the alternative to the Cons.

As for the Australian model mentioned by Stockhom, it would certainly cost the Cons quite a few seats. One drawback might be that in Lib/NDP contests the Con vote would largely drift to the Liberals.

. Ken S seems to relying on his own perceptions as well.

Maybe we can resolve this by actually looking at the polls  from the last election which i remember as showing consistently that the Conservatives were the last second choice for voters for all other parties. I don't think i am misremembering this. Can someone actually produce the figures?

Like I said above, looking at polls is not definitive. And there are definitive studies that are aimed at establishing these questions.

That said:

I doubt that you or anyone else can find more than maybe a single outlier poll showing the Conservatives NOT to be the most numerous second choice of Liberal identifiers. Which wouldn't stop it from being a sustaining myth.

Nothing is perfectly definitive of course. And of course what people say about how they voted is going to be coloured by the actual results. But thats part of what the question process of the Canadian Election Studies surveys are about. They have the focus and resources to both ask a higher quality and more 'inquisitive' panel of survey questions, and to ask it of a large sample of voters.

There is no other kind of surveying, let alone polls, that can touch that.

Isn't that what I just said (and you quoted me as saying):

Now, what are these studies you're referring to, and what exactly do they say? Got a link? A summary?

No link or summary to Candian Election Studies. When its not within the range of my short term memory- now where did I put hammer / pen / coffee cup- I'm never much good for that.

In this case, Ottawa Observor or someone else will read this and respond eventually.

Data from the Canadian Election Study (CES) are used by political scientists and cited in academic articles.  If you have SPSS (or use an open-source replacement for it, like PSPP), you can download their data files from their website.  There's a long history to the validity of some of the questions, from what I understand.  So, while you can poke around the data, I believe it takes some expertise to understand properly.  Long afternoons in the university library ...

There's a second question to consider, which is how likely people are to exercise that second choice rather than stay home. Another research question to consider: are the stated second choices of a party's firm supporters different than the second choices of their soft supporters?

I don't know the answers to those questions, but find the questions very interesting. Does anyone know of any studies that have looked at them in Canada recently?

Nicky, the ONLY available source which specifically discusses the likely behaviour of Liberal voters absent a Liberal candidate is the Canadian Election Study.

What the CES has CONSISTENTLY shown in election after election after election is that, absent a Liberal candidate, Liberal supporters are significantly more likely to vote CONSERVATIVE than New Democrat (if, in fact, they vote at all.)  HOW much more likely has varied from election to election.  The FACT of it has varied not a whit.

But even if we go along with your wishful thinking, that still accomplishes nothing.  In any riding won by the Conservatives, overcoming the Conservative margin means that the second party's NET gain must be in excess of the margin.  Thus, if the margin was 1,000 and the Liberal vote 2,000, the NDP would need to take 75% of the Liberal vote to have a net gain of 1,000 (1,500 to 500) - and that's assuming that every single Liberal would cast a second choice ballot.  If, say, 500 Liberals chose to stay home (or to spoil their ballots or to vote for a minor party candidate), then the NDP would need to carry at least 1,250 votes to 250 to have a net gain of 1,000 - an actual retention of 83.3% of Liberal voters who actually voted.

As I indicated earlier, there are three possible reasons you are advocating this "strategy:

* You don't understand politics.

* You don't understand arithmetic.

* You are Liberal who wants to see the NDP commit political suicide.

Since the thread is almost at 100 posts, maybe it's time to bring it back on topic.

Topp's book, How We Almost Gave the Tories the Boot: The inside story behind the coalition, is available beginning February 1.

 
To return to the debate about second choice voter support:
 
I have argued in other posts that:
 

1. Should the Greens fade away their support would go largely to the other opposition parties

2. Should the opposition parties combine, either by running joint candidates or through a run-off voting system, the anti-Conservative vote would be be consolidated.

Others have argued that there it is just as likely that the Conservatives would benefit or that cooperation among the opposition parties would have little effect on the outcome.

I have found a notebook in which I jotted down a few poll findings during the last Federal election campaign. I believe they support my position.

1. 
   

   The final EKOS poll of the campaign: second choices: Con 8.3%; Lib 17, NDP 19.5, Green 4.6, Bloq 17.6 (presumably just in Quebec)

   
   

 2.  An EKOS poll for British Columbia . Sept 23. Second choices. Con 9, Lib 22, NDP 20; G 18

  3. A Harris Decima poll. Sept 30. Second choices: C 14; L 26; NDP 30; G 24, B 3. 

This was further broken down by parties:

Among Con voters the second choices were: L 38, N 29, G 25

NDP voters: C 20; L 44; G 30, B 5

Green voters: C 18, L 37, N 38, B 3

Bloq voters: C 5; L 21; N 43; G 28

I did not write down the Liberal second preference numbers but a reasonable extrapolation , given the other numbers, might seem to be: Cons mid-teens, NDP mid-20s; Greens about 20

  4.  An unattributed poll of second choices among Greens: L 24, C 14, N 26, B 6.

  5.  A Strategic Council poll Oct 7-9 on second preferences in Ontario;

 Overall: C 13, L 21; N 25; G 18

Con voters: L 27; N 24; G 13

Lib voters: C 23; N 39; G 21

NDP voters: C 15; L 40; G 31.

Green voters: C 19; L 27; N 35

I notice people have not gone cranky in this thread.

Whats wrong, think you are better than people in the other threads!

Nicky,

Thanks for the notes.  They seem to confirm my thought that while Liberal-Conservative switching may be a historical expectation, the Harper Conservatives are far more polarizing and, thus, far less palatable.

Turns out Malcolms statistical foray is only 2 weeks ago in this very thread.

This one will soon close anyway, so I've cut and paste relevant bits of the discussion to Enduring Idea of Anti-Conservative Vote Swapping