Upcoming Federal by-elections

I'm waiting to see if Elizabeth May will jump into the NEW WESTMINSTER-COQUITLAM by-election, so she can ruin the NDP's chances at victory, just like she did in CENTRAL NOVA.

There's some speculation at the end of a Canadian Press story on CTV.ca online tonight that Dion would like to step down at some point after the Liberal convention, but is looking for an international environmental job.

Thanks for those 2 updates, OO - Ménard is being very vague and ambigious in that article- saying he has nothing to announce "yet" and that he is still reflecting on how best to serve his constituents.  It's the kind of thing you say when you know you are going to run but you want to keep your cushy MP job for a few more months without being criticized.  I like Ménard a lot, though, and he's toyed with running provinicially before and then declined, so it's still up in the air.  I know Rocheleau and the NDP organization in the riding are working to prepare for a possible by-election.

Dion will be gone by the end of the year, I predict.  Either there will be an election this fall and he won't run again, or he'll resign his seat to accept a university post or international position as per the speculation in the article. 

I predict May will not run in any of the by-elections.  She is nowhere in Quebec, her French is shaky, and New West-Coquitlam is not a good fit for the Green message. She'll run in the next general election and then resign unless she wins a seat, which is less likely than ever, IMHO.

2011 could be a big year for byelections given all the provincial elections that are taking place that year. Otherwise, BC and Nova Scotia have probably seen their window of federal candidate draws pass. Until 2011, the only provincial election is in New Brunswick.

New Brunswick opens up the possibility of Liberals jumping ship to try and be in government or the ressurection of the political careers of Charles Isaac Hubbard or Paul Zed

The Liberals held the Montmagny-l'Islet side in 1997 and 2000, but the redistributed seat put them back quite a bit in the 2000 Transposition, and they placed third there in the last two elections.  I know you folks are in the middle of a new Leader rosy glow right now, but even "outside shot" is a bit of a stretch here, unless you can recruit some kind of superstar candidate.

Moving up from the low teens among francophones was a real challenge there.

Well i guess that settles one thing for sure. If EMay decided to run in another byelection and her choices were New Westminster-Coquitlam, North Nova or one of these green 99 and 44/100ths dead zones in Quebec - the obvious place for her to run would be North Nova which is right next door to Central Nova.  Of course her chances of winning there would still be zilch - but I think that would be a better place for her to run than across the country in vancouver - not that May has been known for applying any rationality to her political decisions in the past.

Its going to put EMay in a real interesting pickle.

She can't possibly win here.

But I don't see how she can decline running. She has paid resources right next door, but I'm guessing that for all they've put into Central Nova, still pretty thin volunteer resources.

So what would it look like when she can't even beat a noboby?

And right close to home.

I thought the riding was called "Cumberland - Colchester - Musquodoboit Valley". I think they tried to call it North Nova for awhile, but that's not how Casey gets recognized by the Speaker in the House.

Rodney Macdonald has also suggested a provincial election in NS may be just days away.
I wonder if the appointment for Casey is contingent on the PCs being reelected? Presumably if the NDP would win they would want their own man or woman in Ottawa.

Rodney suggested the election is just days away- stating the obvious.

Anyway, referring to my reflections above when I first heard about this... that its so strange leads one to consider just about anything.

As to the possibility I posed of it being something more than the crassesst of politics... after listening to the Premeir at the press conference, I guess not. Not even a hint of discussions with the PMO.

So its no orchestrated kiss and make up love in or anything like that- just a gimmick of Rodney trying not to look pathetic.... get some of the heroe's glow, make him not look so cozy with Harper [which everyone's probably forgotten, but they wouldn't think of that].

And no- the NDP would leave him in place if they are govt. a]- they can work with him, and b] it would look awful to shunt him aside.

"You folks"?  Do you mind if we stop trying to label the political allegiances of posters here and just focus on discussion of the actual ridings?  It's interesting on this thread I am called a Liberal, and on another one I was called a Conservative.  One thing I am not is a Conservative.  I supported the NDP a lot when Ed Broadbent was in Parliament and worked on one of his campaigns, but I have also voted Liberal too.  Like millions of other Canadians, I am a Liberal-NDP swing voter.  Neither party should take us for granted since we can determine elections.  Now, with that issue hopefully put to rest, let's focus on the actual discussion:

The only party showing any momentum in Quebec right now is the Liberals - that doesn't mean they are going to start winning every riding, but they are certainly in contention in places they haven't been since the Chretien years.  In fact, even before Ignatieff took over, they were already going up in Quebec even under a weak leader like Dion.

For example, did you know that on election night in October the Liberals almost beat the BQ in a riding in the Gaspesie?

Why on earth would he want to run for a party that is on the verge of being wiped out in Quebec?

I'll second that!

No, not as leader. But Dumont would be a very credible Quebec lieutenant. He wasn't able to recruit enough decent candidates to make a go of the ADQ, but his personal popularity is still a not-insignificant asset.

OTOH, he'd likely be something of a loose cannon: I can't imagine him shutting up because Harper tells him to.

Casey has good standing with the voters despite having announced his support for the federal Liberal-NDP coalition back in December?

But . . . but . . . I thought all the voters considered the coalition toxic and would punish its supporters? At least, that's what I keep reading from the punditry and the commentariat.

No, I don't I'm afraid.  I don't have a phone line to the Liberal HQ.

I didn't know the BQ member wasn't running again.  Thanks for the info.  Was that announced recently?  I hadn't heard that.  Perhaps he is leaving because he knows he will be defeated next time?

If the Libs could come within 600 votes of taking it under Dion, it's likely they can take it under Igantieff.

? ? ?  That's what this whole topic is about - who can win in what ridings  And aren't you normally quite partisan?

Anyway, are you saying you believe the health reasons?  That may be part of it, but I don't think it's the full story - he saw the results in October and can see what's likely to happen in the next election.

That's like David Emerson saying he was leaving for family reasons - everyone knew it was because he couldn't win in that riding as a Conservative.  He knew it would go Liberal or NDP and it ended up going NDP.  I think Mr. Roy has seen similar writing on the wall, and thus I think that contributed to the "health reasons"

If an upset's possible, then we're looking at an NDP sweep or near-sweep of NS.  Look: we're talking about 69% vs 12.3% re second place last time around; it's just that fewer Dipper voters felt comfortable parking their vote on principle with Casey than Tory or Liberal voters.  (And the NDP was still third behind the Grits in 2006--though not by too much.)

I'm not sure if scared is the right word, but they are concerned right now.  There was an article out earlier this week pointing out that the BQ is now getting ready to go after Igantieff - they wouldn't be doing that if they weren't considered about his rising numbers in Quebec.

Remember, the only party to take seats away from the BQ in October was the Liberals, and that trend is likely to continue in the next election.

Well the BQ is pretty much guaranteed to lose seats to the Liberals in the next election - it's just a question of how many and whether or not what they lose to the Liberals can be offset by what they can take away from the Conservatives.

Let alone nothing is guaranteed, or even 'sort of guaranteed'... as to what is even likely, looked at right now, with all the caveats that entails...

In Quebec the Cons are looking to have nowhere to go but down.

All the Bloc has to do is stay close to where they are and they stand to pick up a chunk of seats on that.

As always, the Liberal vote is so concentrated in Quebec [and even the francphone vote being somewhat that way] that big province wide gains, or even gains in the Montreal breakdown- that the lions share of those gains are in seats they already have. And in seats where they are close enough to the Bloc, Cons going down can lead to more gains for the Bloc than the Liberals.

Another factor is that a number of those seats where the Liberals are in range of the Bloc is that they had those seats and lost them. The several I can think of, losing them closely in 2006 turned into losing them by a much larger margin in 2008. That is largely because the incumbency factor kicks in, and while rolling that boulder uphill is not impossible... probabilities again, the odds are that predictions do not pan out for things like 'we don't have Dion holding us back anymore, and we were only 1,000 votes behind last time'.

Right now at least, it looks like the contingencies of the Liberals getting ANY seats [or more than 1 or 2] from the Bloc are MUCH greater, than is the likelihood the Bloc is going to pick up seats [and more of them] from the Cons.

Finally something we can agree on !

Shows how much some people can spin stuff. Operative word is they could. If I tell Ian that $1,000 of his next paycheck rides on his prediction, do you think he'd say '50% probability for that 30 seat figure.

It isn't even guaranteed the sun will keep shining out of Iggy's orifices. And if it does, and a whole bunch of things also go right, yes, they might win 30 seats. Its a reasonable hope for them to entertain.

As to the BQ- the fact it is unlikely they are back to 49% of the vote and 54 seats means squat. Their vote is highly efficient in getting seats. As long as they stay even close to 38-40%, the Liberals can't make more than piddly gains. And unless the trend changes more than they usually do, the highest probability is that the Bloc is going to have at least enough seats to guarantee us AT LEAST another minority government.

"Nanos research shows that many people vote BQ because of Duceppe and the BQ may lose voters when he leaves."

...and their second choice tends to be the NDP.

Where do I get this feeling Debater that is only an expression of what you hope is happening?

It may sound likely to you- but based soley on what you hope.

Its pretty basic knowledge of the dynamic of voter choices in Quebec that the Liberals are consistently the last choice of BQ voters- and that was true long before Dion. It was true even when Quebec friendly Paul Martin was leader.

That said, IF the Bloc is dropping in vote share, then that could tip a seat or two to the Liberals in close 2-way races... even if BQ voters do not switch to the Liberals. But when that kind of shift is happening, it is usually widely known [not just political junkies] and BQ voters are more likely to show up, and to tip against their second choice because they don't like the Liberals.

But that's a pretty modest dynamic, which IF it happens [and the Bloc is showing no signs now of headed towards that], might tip a seat or 2 to the Liberals.

Ken S, the analysis I am doing is not based on what I hope happens - it is based on the results of the last election, polling trends, and the wisdom of others more knowledgeable than us such as Chantal Hebert, L. Ian MacDonald, etc.

It seems to be that your analysis (and that of a couple of other posters on this subject) is based more on what you hope happens than on actual objective observation.  Is it your prediction that the Liberals are only in contention to pick up 2 seats in Quebec next time?  Isn't that prediction based on your dislike of the Liberals?

The same thing happened when I was talking about how the Gatineau seat is one of the ones the Liberals will probably win back next time and someone then (inaccurately) said that the Liberals weren't even in contention there last time and that it was only a BQ-NDP race.  I then had to post the actual results to show that was incorrect and that the NDP only finished 1 percentage point ahead of the Liberals in the riding.

There was also a lack of objectivity involved in the Westmount race last fall - people predicted that Anne Lagace Dowson would be able to win.  Marc Garneau ended up beating her by a 2-1 margin.  Jeanne Le Ber was also supposed to be a seat the NDP was in contention in.  The NDP finished a distant 3rd.

I'm just trying to engage in some objective discussion of the ridings, but if you would like to base your predictions more on what you hope happens than on the actual trends, there's nothing I can do.  I have tried to help by posting the views of experts on these subjects along with the actual results, but I think I'm going to move on to another topic soon.

"I have tried to help by posting the views of experts on these subject."

I have met a number of these self-styled "experts" over the years. They can be smart people, but they are not privy to any secret information and when it comes to pontificating about what the future holds in Canadian politics - they are essentially just political junkies like any of us that post on babble who are simply expressing their personal views on what they think will happen. The only difference between L. Ian MacDonald and Chantal Hebert and "debator" and Scott Piatkowski and Kens and myself are that the first tow get their personal opinions published in mass circulation media, while the rest of us don't. But quite frankly I don't think MacDonald or Hebert's personal opinions are necessarily worth anything more than the personal opinions of some of the more interesting people who post on babble. It just happens that the moment someone gets a soapbox like a column in a newspaper - the are suddenly anointed as an "expert" and suddenly we are supposed to hang on their every word - no matter how often they are wrong, wrong and wrong. For example in the US, Dick Morris is considered an "expert" because of his work for Clinton and for various Republicans etc... yet I keep reading his columns he has been 100% dead WRONG on every single solitary prognostication he made about American politics over the past year. (If you don't believe try reading all his columns from the past year and you'll see - wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong 100% of the time).

I am suspicious of anyone who wants to reduce the amount of political competition in a democracy.

It's silly to take your ball and go home.

I was reporting accurately what is being said by most Quebec analysts and pollsters and you raked me over the coals for it even though I was proven right.  I was not the one being biased.

All you needed to do was just acknowledge that based on the current trends, the Liberals are likely to pick up a number of seats in Quebec.  Yet you went to great contortions to say that they will only pick up 2 seats in QC.  Is that still your prediction?  I hope you will consider changing it so you do better in your election polls.

I hope she does run in CCMV. It would mean that she doesn't run in New Westminster-Coquitlam, which would be an irritating distraction for the NDP, and best of all if she runs in CCMV she almost certainly lose regardless so it would be a good way to further destroy her credibility - esp. if she comes in fourth.

Nope.

Because he'd be obliged to call one in NWC as well. The Cons want that seat, and have a crack at it in a generl, but not a by-election. So they want to stall till the general on that one [and can easily do so at least till the Fall... and if there is no general call it at the last minute for bloody April if they want].

So CCMV will just have to go with that flow.

It should keep being brought up. But at best it will be a long haul because neither the Libs or Cons want to see it happen.

The fact it should be called for has nothing to do with figuring out the dynamic we can expect to see unfold around the by-elections [if there are any].

Keep in mind that there is a law that says that a byelection must be called within six months of there being a vacancy. Dawn Black resigned on April 12 (I believe) so Harper must call these byelections by some time in October.

1. There is absolutely ZERO chance of Casey endorsing May in any byelection. He now has a job as the NS governments representative in Ottawa. He cannot do anything partisan. In any case, Casey was always a mainstream Tory, he didn't revolt from his party over any environmental issues - it was all about the Atlantic accord. CCMV is easily the most big "C" Conservative riding in Nova Scotia. I suspect that any reasonable Tory candidate will win it easily and the bad blood between Casey and the Harper gang will be ancient history in that riding.

2. The Tories did not "easily take" Surrey North after Penny Priddy retired. It was actually a very close race and the Tories had the advantage of running Chuck Cadman's widow. Also, in the last federal election, the Tories did very well in BC and took 44% of the vote in the province. Their support has plumeted since then and byelections tend to favour the opposition. I'm sure that once the provincial election is out of the way, the NDP will shift to focussing on finding some really stellar people to run in NWC. The wild card will be the fact that the Liberals will almost certainly try to compete strongly and its hard to say what impact a stronger Liberal campaign would have on the race.

You're right, adma, but I think his stint in the leadership hurt rather than helped people's perception of him as a potentially competent minister, and I think Liberals now kind of wish he'd slip away to a sinecure rather than run again.  I would mark him as a bit of a weak incumbent right now, and I certainly would be thinking about trying to recruit a strong candidate to run against him on the assumption that he might be weakened enough to at least step down the next time.

Right, but that's a LONG time for a PM to be able to wait to call a by-election.

As Ed Broadbent has said, the law should be that a by-election must be held within one month of there being a vacancy.

Thanks Stockholm, I had a brain freeze re Casey having to be non-partisan with his new appointment - I will bow to the consensus that CCMV is an easy Conservative gain.  I also stand corrected re the Surrey North results, it was indeed close so my memory of Election Night 2008 failed me in this case. 

I question your statement that the CPC support in BC has plummeted since Oct 2008, the polling I've seen indicates the Cons are still fairly strong in the West and the Prairies, the slippage to the Libs is in Ontario for the most part and the CPC is now back to marginal support levels in Quebec.  In any event, Dawn Black was a very popular and well-known incumbent and she only won by about 1,500 votes in 2008, so it would not be a huge leap for the CPC to take the riding. I have contacts on the ground in this area and there is no evidence of "stellar" people lining up to run for the NDP in this by-election.  There is a New West city councillor and a Coquitlam city councillor, both OK but neither one as compelling as Dawn Black was on the local scene here.

St-Laurent-Cartierville is one of the safest Liberal seats in Canada - that one's not going anything but Liberal.

Harper has also called byelections very quickly when  it suited him. When London North Centre became vacant, Harper called the byelection almost instantly.

"In any event, Dawn Black was a very popular and well-known incumbent and she only won by about 1,500 votes in 2008, so it would not be a huge leap for the CPC to take the riding. I have contacts on the ground in this area and there is no evidence of "stellar" people lining up to run for the NDP in this by-election.  There is a New West city councillor and a Coquitlam city councillor, both OK but neither one as compelling as Dawn Black was on the local scene here."

I don't expect NWC to be a cakewalk, but I think the factors tend to favour the NDP. A number of polls have shown Tory support falling in BC (while they remain popular on the Prairies). Keep in mind that in 2004, the NDP came within 60 votes in NWC and that was with a generic candidate who was nothing special and was NOT Dawn Black. I suspect that after the coming provincial election is out of the way, the NDP braintrust will start aggressively trying to get someone high profile to run. Its not as if the Tories have such grat choices either - Paul Forseth who Black defeated in '06 apparently wants to run again - but he is just the kind of dated old Reform Party type that won't go down well in this day and age and the woman who came close in '08 for the Tories is now a senator!

The extent to which Outremont was ever a "safe" Liberal seat was a bit exagerrated. It went Tory in 1988 and in both 2004 and 2006 the Liberal vote was less than 40% - it was pretty clear that if the NDP and BQ votes could be unified the Liberals would be vulnerable. In contrast St. laurent has always gone Liberals sweeping margins. It is heavily non-francophone and has none of the intelligentsia that Outremont has.

Your smugness is really disgusting.

If pissing people off is your goal, you are doing a good job. And don't flatter yourself that its the content of what you have to say. It's just your charming way of going about what I guess you would call "debating".

Depends; after all, Dion did skew the picture in '08.  If he weren't running, though, I could imagine murmurs of the seat being "targetable", not unlike how some regarded LaSalle-Emard following PMPM's retirement--though there, too, the NDP finished a poor fourth.

So it's all a matter of how ambitious the NDP is--think of it as akin to spending resources in Scarborough-Rouge River.  (And don't laugh; with the right candidacy and campaign, a seat like that could make a good test case--after all, if it were in Greater Vancouver rather than Greater Toronto, it *would* be within NDP radar, definitely.)

Neither I nor OO ever said or implied you were less intelligent. That's your passive-aggressive read.

OO explicitly challenged how much you know about election cycles. And its fair enough to say that the construction of my qestions implied what amounts to the same thing. And it takes a reasonably intelligent person to conveniently divert questions of how much one knows into people supposedly questioning your intelligence.

Nor would you have been questioned about how much you know if you weren't so prone to grand sweeping statements that are not backed up. And someone who thinks they have "proved" a statement because they sprinkled it with some numbers, and then tells people they should therefore admit they are wrong... thats a pretty good definition of one kind of smug.

For a sense of what Ms. Hebert had to say about the NDP, including its prospects in Quebec, a little over a year ago:

 http://www.thespec.com/article/330451

My recollection is that she made comments on one of the various talking head panels on which she is a regular that minimized Thomas Mulcair's chances in 2008, but I'd be hard pressed to point to a source.

If nothing else, this look back reinforces that reading the future from opinion polls is a mug's game at the best of times. In the current volatile political climate polling punditry cannot be taken seriously.

I don't know how accurate CTV's Power Play is with babblers, but there was some speculation tonight that Liberal Irwin Cotler was being offered a Senate seat in Montreal.

Not that there would be much doubt as to who'd win a by-election in Mount Royal, eh?

Actually, Debater, given the Conservative party's entrés with the Jewish community, and the relatively strong candidate they ran there last time, I believe they would make a strong push for that seat.  I heard it said last time that, but for Cotler, the Jewish community in Montreal was ready to vote Conservative in that seat.  What the interim period has done for that relationship I have no idea, but it would be an interesting test of their current strength, depending on who the Liberals could recruit to run in Cotler's place.

Also, Tory support in Quebec has totally collapsed since the election - so I think that losing Mount Royal by a 2-1 margin in October is about as well as they will ever do. Even if the Tories MASSIVELY improved their showing among the 33% or so of voters in Mount Royal who are Jewish (and that is a BIG "if") - they will be lucky to get even 5% of the vote among the other 67% of the riding. Considering how the Tories were obliterated in Outremont where the Jewish community is far more religious and small "c" conservative than it is in Mount Royal tells me that all of Harper's pathetic attempts to do what he thinks will attract Jewish voters will be a total failure.

What goes on in Thornhill, stays in Thornhill?

But didn't the second "work" at least to some extent, last time? 

And Ignatieff is tripping over himself to be more pro-Israel than the Israelis too!

"I engage in objective analysis of the numbers, and if I was a strategist for Jack Layton I would not suggest wasting a lot of money on this riding.  If you would counsel him to do so, I don't think Jack would be that impressed with your strategic planning! "

Let me, in a collegial way, offer some strategic thoughts. Firstm there is a lot to win and little to lose in spending money in this by-election,, A first  place finish would be worth big bucks. second place finish, major victory, third place, up from foruth  may not be too bad, Jack will keep me on staff.   What you dont;l want is to lose  and lose bad- too have yoru fote share drop to miniscule numbers, finish fifth or a very bad fourth,  written off in Quebe cby the pundits  and the public. Then, election finance rules, the relatively good financial postion of the NDP and  the ability to concentrate serious resources in a by-election means a decent campaing is doable for not that much-say a $50,000 budget,  good people from Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, across Canada,  city a few visits from Layton and Mulclai- should be able to ratchet up the vote a bit and who knows, maybe win.

Bottom line, we are in this game to win. GO JACK GO!!!

Long thread - feel free to start a new one!