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Thanks for the info.
It looks like the examples of it happening are pretty few and far between over the years.
You should read what you write.
And if you dont see the irony, keep reading.
From the previous thread:
Actually, when I suggested the possibility of the Liberals picking up new seats in Manitoba next time I wasn't referring to Dauphin or the other rural ridings - I was only thinking of the Winnipeg and urban ridings that the Liberals have held in recent years such as Saint Boniface and Winnipeg South.
I agree that for the immediate future the NDP will be the main opposition to the Conservatives in the rural ridings, and hopefully the NDP will be able to defeat the Conservatives there down the road. Before the Liberals can even begin to be competitive in places outside the Winnipeg region they would have to be much higher in the polls and beat the Conservatives by becoming the next government.
I have to agree. While Lamoureux is a unique situation in many ways - since he wins by running as a virtual independent - I think that the Tory vote crashing to 10% in Winnipeg North ought to be a sign that other marginal seats in Winnipeg like the ones you mention could be at risk.
In order for the Liberals to carry through with picking up other seats they will have to learn the lessons from this campaign though. That means having strong local campaigns and well-known names who are able to get out the vote and take advantage over their opponents.
Former MP Raymond Simard is running again in Saint Boniface. Not sure who the Liberal in Winnipeg South is yet. Kildonan-St. Paul is also something the Liberals should think about for the future, and they should also do some rebuilding in Winnipeg Centre.
I don't see many opportunities next door in Saskatchewan for the Liberals for awhile, but there are 1 or 2 for the NDP if the Conservative vote drops in the next election.
Terry Duguid
Thanks for the info. I think he ran in Kildonan-St.Paul a couple of times and almost won. I guess now he's moved over to Winnipeg South.
As I've said in the past, all parties are guilty of having candidates who play musical chairs.
"Former MP Raymond Simard is running again in Saint Boniface."
If that's the case, I'm not optimistic about their chances. I heard that Simard was widely regarded as lazy and low profile and he lost last time because he refused to do any campaigning.
He's not my favorite person either. Too socially conservative as well.
The 1978 byelection was the last time Eglinton was contested. Eglinton-Lawrence is the closest approximation, given redistribution.
A quick question to rabblers...
Does anyone recall the parliamentary careers of Liberal M.P.s Christian Jobin (LEVIS-et-CHUTE-de la CHAUDIERE) or Gilbert Barrette (TEMISCAMINGUE), who were elected to Parliament in by-elections on June 26, 2003?
I didn't think so.
Why?
Because they were both defeated in the election of June 28, 2004, and haven't been seen around Ottawa again.
Kevin Lamoureux will be another parliamentary foot-note (trivia question?) after the next federal election.
I live in Winnipeg, and I would not count on that. Here's why:
Lameroux now has the advantage of incumbency. It is easier to hold a seat than to challenge for one.
Lameroux is a formidable campaigner and has a solid backing behind him.
The NDP in Manitoba is a mess. People are starting to feel it's "time for a change," and this is the second election in as many months (the other being the recent civic election) that the NDP machinery lost when it should have won.
If we're going to talk NDP in Manitoba, I would not be surprised if after the next federal election no NDP MPs are elected from Winnipeg. I've already discussed Lameroux. Pat Martin has alienated some people, and a strong challenge from the Liberals could knock him off, especially if this challenge combines with another candidate challenging Martin from the left. Over in Elmwood, Jim Maloway has not really distinguished himself in any great way, and the Conservatives came close to taking the seat last go around. He clearly relies on the NDP machinery to win, and that machinery may not be enough to hold off a Conservative challenge, especially when traditional voting patterns can no longer be relied upon.
I'm sure someone, somewhere has invoked "Sorry about that, Chief"
duplicate
In 1996, Sheila Copps promised to resign her seat if the Liberals didn't scrap the GST. She kept her promise, and won the by-election.
I'm not sure about all that.
*First of all three months (i.e. the likely amount of time between now and the next federal election) is very little time to establish much of an incumbency factor.
*Second of all, in a byelection its easy to totally localize the race and have the 29% of people who vote see it as being all about "who will be my best ward-heeler" and to even think that its all about provincial politics. But in the context of a federal election - suddenly 95% of people are voting based on national leaders and national politics and a vote for Lamoureux will be a vote for Ignatieff and a vote for Chief will be a vote for Layton and a vote for the next Tory sacrificial lamb will be a vote for Harper.
*Third of all, after a 35 day (or more) federal election campaign - I think that provincial politics will totally recede from peoples' minds and it will be all federal all the time. In any case, if the Manitoba NDP were to lose the provincial ridings that make up Winnipeg North - it would mean that they were going to be reduced to ZERO seats in the Manitoba legislature. I have not seen any evidence that they are even remotely that unpopular - at worst they might be one or two points behind the Tories across the province).
*Fourth of all, since when was the Winnipeg municipal election one that the NDP "should have won"?? Did they have a shot - yes. But from what I can tell, Katz was not all especially unpopular, polls taken over the course of the year gave him relatively healthy approval ratings. I don't live in Winnipeg, but from what i had read and heard - it seemed to me that defeating Katz was always going to be a bit of a longshot and if anything Judy W-L came closer to winning than I would have expected.
All of which is to say that while I don't think its a "slam dunk" by any means that the NDP wins back WN in the next federal election - Its also not unlikely they will win it back. Byelections that have a massive swing almost always correct themselves at least to some extent in the following election - Mulcair won Outremont by 17% in the byelection and that was cut to a 6% margin the the '08 federal election - even though the Liberal running in '08 was literally just a "NOB" (Name on the Ballot). But there (or was) is a lot of "Liberal DNA" in Outremont and it asserted itself. There is a lot of "NDP DNA" in Winnipeg North and since the margin there was 5% not 17% - it wouldn't take much of a "return to normalcy" to have the seat swing right back.
You're righ, you don't live in Winnipeg. Katz has been a terrible mayor. Look 2 hours down the road to Brandon, and while people weren't exactly happy with Burgess, he wasn't nearly as bad as Katz. And the right-wing Burgess lost the mayor's race to a left-wing woman, and Brandon is a dyed-in-the-wool Tory town. So a Tory town elects a left mayor and social democratic Winnipeg re-elects a right-winger.
Not only that, but the NDP's council strategy was terrible, and there wasn't a change in the balance.
You do realize that the Sponsorship Scandal happened in between those 2 dates, right?
Its all a matter of opinion. If you are right of centre person who votes Conservative or (often times Liberal) you probably think he's been a fantastic mayor! I'm sure you think he has been a terrible mayor and I'm sure people in the leftwing/NDP/union sub-culture think he's terrible and i'm sure if i lived in Wpg, I'd think he was terrible. But obviously the majority like him - or they wouldn't have re-elected him. If he was so indisputably terrible why would over half of people in Winnipeg have said that they approved of him in polls taken all year?
Since when is Brandon such a "dyed in the wool" Tory town? There are two provincial seats that make up Brandon. Brandon East has been NDP since 1969 - it even stayed NDP in the wipeout of 1987 and Brandon West has gone NDP off and on and only went Tory by something like 50 votes last election.
It's not just a left-right thing, he has even made horrible business decisions. How can you do business with someone who says he is going to build Rapid Transit to the University of Manitoba and then doesn't build it? Or some of the questions around a council decision regarding the Winnipeg Goldeyes, which he owns? Even PC Bill Norrie came out for Judy, what does that tell you?
As for those polls, what do you expect? People generally don't pay attention anyways, so of course they're going to say, "Sam Katz? Yeah, he's doing a great job." The other thing is that the Judy campaign did not adequately rise up to the challenge of explaining what she would do. People were looking for change, but being unsure what kind of change Judy would bring, reluctantly went with the devil they knew.
For one, look at federal voting habits. It's consistently returned a Tory MP since WWII (often with a large majority), with the exception of 1993 when it went to the Liberals on a right-wing vote split.
Brandon-West has swung NDP in the past, but has a reliable Tory base that will come out loyally.
Municipally, it has elected right-wing mayors for a long time, certainly at least since 1979.
That's not quite true. The federal riding is Brandon-Souris and over half the votes cast in that seat are in rural southwestern manitoba where Tories typically get about 80% of the vote. I suspect that the NDP and Liberals don't bother putting up much of a fight there because with the rural areas going unanimously Tory - its almost impossible to ever win that seat - no matter how many votes you get in the city of Brandon.
You're absolutely right Stockholm, you know more than me. What would I know about Brandon, having lived there for 25 years of my life?
And I'm prepared to stand by my assessment of the other Winnipeg ridings. As the opening post suggests, nobody thought Winnipeg North would fall away from the NDP until it actually did. Every seat is up for grabs now, there is no such thing as a "safe seat."
A columnist in today's Winnipeg Sun voices his analysis:
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/columnists/tom_brodbeck/2010/12/01/16397...
Tom Brodbeck, as the Winnipeg Sun in general, has an irrational hatred of the left. There's very little in the Sun's pages that has even a small shred of credibility.
Here's another article discussing the NDP voting machine:
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/manitoba/2010/12/01/16397011.html
The time for grieving is over. Hopefully the NDP is now organizing here for the next election.
Anyone who has ever believed in safe seats is an idiot. Parties lose "safe" seats all the time. The Liberals in Outremont. The NDP in Winnipeg North. Ask Roy Romanow about safe seats some time.
"But he has the charm and humour of a stone, the inter-personal skills of a hermit and the political moxie of an undertaker."
Ow!
I remember a Probe Research poll of federal voting intentions in Manitoba a few months back. It had the NDP vote ominously low.The national polls give wildly conflicting assessments of Manitoba and Saskatchewan lumped together based on tiny samples. But generally they too have shown significant NDP declines in this region. At the same time the NDP vote in other provinces is holding up relatively well.
I fear that these polls may reflect a long term NDP decline in Maitoba which may be following the trend in Saskatchewan.
Soon after the byelections were called I wrote to Babble suggesting that Lamoroux would not be giving up his provincial seat unless he had some indication he was in contention. I wonder how much of a surprise Winnipeg North really was to those who saw the private polling.
Yup.
Aristotleded, that many of us agree that Katz has been a terrible mayor is not the point. As Stockholm points out, many people were perfectly satisfied with him. Far too many people. Moreover, they didn't want a socialist in power.
And how is it that you're calling Winnipeg a "social democratic" town? It has voted Katz in three times now. Seven out of 11 MPs are Conservative. Eight if you include Neville. I've always seen Winnipeg as very divided, almost half and half, between rednecks and progressives.