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Wouldn't the Cons have to drop a lot to lose a seat in rural Ontario?
DemocraticSpace also has New Westminster-Coquitlam and Nanaimo-Cowichan as toss-ops. I question the value of that site. :)
All sites are going to have various seats in a state of flux at this early point in the campaign. Things will firm up as the weeks go by.
Not really, especially if anti-Harper voters move towards the campaign with the best chance of defeating the Conservatives - and in Huron-Bruce that is the NDP. The NDP candidate is a well know farmer and agricultural policy voice, including being a weekly fixture on local radio and newspapers through his NFU commentary series, is a great communicator, is well liked and respected, even by opponents, uses humour to great effect and is a fixture in local hockey rinks. Robertson is not a granola crunching sterotype and can't be portrayed that way. Rural Ontario seats - at least in SW Ontario are not so much Conservative as populist. With a populist candidate to contend with Conservatives willl have trouble using the sterotypes to beat down progressive candidates.
Weak incumbents are still hard to beat, but basing this election on the last election is just plain stupid, but exactly what gets done over and over. In the case of my riding a 5 point drop on the local candidate could be more than enough, because the last election was not really a true test of where things normally sit in the riding.
308 also hasn't yet factored in two mega-polls out today (Leger and ARS) that each have the NDP at 29% in BC and the Tories around 40% - those alone will have a drastic impact on his projections - not that it really matters.
Angus Reid?
yes ARS is Angus Reid Strategies whihc is part of Vision Critical now
The two previous elections prior to 2008 when Nancy Clegg was running here in Newton North Delta it was pretty close to being a 3 way race. But 2008 the NDP only managed 22- 25% approx of the vote with a different candidate yet the 4 provincial ridings that go in and out of the federal riding are all NDP. I dunno if that means anything or not...
It means that with a strong candidate and party resources invested - Newton-North Delta is totally winnable
Newton-North Delta has three completely disparate communities within:
1. The heavily Indo-Canadian vote in Newton, Surrey, which the Lib's Suhk Dhaliwal seems to have sewn up;
2. The older working class areas of North Delta, which the NDP seems to have sewn up;
3. The higher-end Panorama Ridge, Surrey, south of Hwy 10, and the higher-end Sunshine Hills area of North Delta, which the Cons seem to have sewn up.
Here's a colour-coded map describing the above;
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/map-newtonnorthdelta.html
I wonder what's up with Vancouver Centre? It historically has always been BC's most high profile race. Yet the NDP has not yet nominated and the only candidate that has declared is a no-name. I certainly hope somebody high profile comes forward.
http://www.straight.com/article-383562/vancouver/former-green-candidate-...
For that matter, why did the Cons dump their female candidate in V-C? She seems to have been the best that the Cons have put forward yet in that riding. Hmmmm.... does Vancouver hockey icon Trevor Linden's appearance at a Canucks game with Harper a few weeks back have anything to do with it? Enquiring minds want to know.
You may be right but it is probably a moot point as the Cons took the seat with over 56% of the vote last time out. This seat is not really in play.
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One struggle, many fronts.
Quite right. Strong efforts must be made to hold seats, such as Edmonton-Strathcona, that were narrowly won last time.
The Catch 22 site, which is dedicated to defeating conservatives in 22 vulnerable ridings, has begun to identify opposition-held ridings that are vulnerable to vote splitting. They have recently added Edmonton-Strathcona as the first of such critical ridings.
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One struggle, many fronts.
Not only is this Karen Shillington who wants to run for the NDP in Vancouver Centre a former Green - she also is the spitting image of Elizabeth May - they look like identical twins!
And that website clearly shows that you cannot have a political strategy simply by extrapolating past numbers. It shows the Manitoba seat of St. Boniface as being vulnerable. The current Conservatvie MP, Shelly Glover, defeated the Liberal incumbent, Raymond Simard, last go around. One, Shelly now has the advantage of incumbency and two, I just cannot see that Simard (who is running again) has done anything to be able to take back the riding. I'd predect Glover to win more comfortably than last time around, and it's quite reasonable to suspect that Simard could slip into third.
According to the articles posted here at the time, Rachel Greenfeld was told to quit by the Cons because they wanted a candidate who would be willing to run in the next 2 elections and she said she was only able to commit to one election, so they fired her.
I suspect that the riding will remain with Hedy Fry until she retires. That's probably why the NDP isn't making as big of a run at it this time and why the Cons are looking for a new candidate to build for the future.
There's also the Adrienne Carr factor. She took away votes last time, and she's running again for the Greens. I don't think she will do as well this time, but she could still eat into the vote.
According to this article on the leader's locations, Layton is going to Surrey North, so it looks like it's being given attention right away. I hope the new candidate is good, because the NDP needs this seat back from the Conservatives:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/03/26/cv-campaign-sunday.html
I hate to say it (especially because she's my MP), but Hedy Fry is not going anywhere. Every election, people predict her defeat, and every election, she beats back everything the other parties can throw at her. She's got such a lock on the LGBT vote that she will be MP as long as she wants (I mean, c'mon, even Svend Robinson couldn't come close to dislodging her).
I met Rachel Greenfeld a couple of times and was thoroughly unimpressed, so I don't think it's a big loss for the Cons to lose her as a candidate (despite the Globe's efforts to paint her as some sort of martyr). I've not heard any suggestion that Trevor Linden would be running here or anywhere else for that matter so I suspect that rumour can be put to rest.
It sure does seem like the NDP is already throwing in the towel in Vancouver Centre. Obviously the NDP nomination is not seen as the prize it once was or there would be more serious candidates in the mix. Given the results from last time, the NDP finishing behind the Greens here is not entirely out of the question.
No one here thinks that Essex is also a potential NDP pick-up?
Taras
Whoops, hit the wrong button!
Taras Natyshak is running for the third time there, and gained support each time.
Not a certainty, but another potential NDP riding I'd say.
I looked at that site and it is pretty dumb. They started off over a year ago by saying they wanted to defeat Conservatives for some vey limited reasons (perogies) in at least 22 ridings because that was how long parliament was peroged. They start by supposedly setting clear criteria for picking the 22 rdings, a margin of victory for the Conservatives of less than ten percent in the 2008 election and a clear second place finisher. Then they throw open to discussion of strategic voting any riding held by any party to cover ridings held by other than Conservatives that might be lost to Conservatives and the possiblity of endorsing Elizabeth May in SGI. Dumb dumb dumb.
The site does have some neat riding maps, albeit somewhat small
How much bedrock support does Tonks have? He's been phoning it in for years, and I think that the decline in percentage (from knocking-on 60% of the vote on 2006, down to 46.6% in 2008) wasn't entirely due to soft Liberals staying home to play whist, or a dislike of Dion. Personal vote is personal vote, but when you take your vote for granted as Tonks does, sometimes things have a way of blowing up in your face.
I guess the sad fact is barring a major personal scandal, or meltdown in the Liberal vote, this a possibility only. Sigh.
You do know you can go back and edit your post? I say this as a mistaken-enter-key person myself.
"The site does have some neat riding maps, albeit somewhat small"
Yes I liked the maps, does anyone know if they exist on the net anywhere? A poll by poll geographic breakdown of the vote in 08, I assume.
Also: It seems like the Liberals feel like they can win Trinity-Spadina, does anyone think this borders on a real contest?
I think in Tonks' case, the decline in 2008 was accelerated by the NDP option being "validated" by Paul Ferreira's stint as an MPP--it was the one 416 seat where the NDP share took a significant bump that year rather than treading water...
The Liberals think that they can win any seat, anywhere.
That's their mind-set.
Reality doesn't come into play when it comes to the Liberals, just wishful thinking.
Well, both provincially in 2007 and federally in 2008, the NDP fell short of expectations, sharewise...