Looks like the Liberals are levelling off in today's CRA poll, but the NDP numbers aren't going up much. It actually looks like the PC's are picking up a couple of points.
Liberal - 54%
NDP - 27%
PC - 17%
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1156248-the-chronicle-heraldcra-...
I don't normally watch SUN News, but here's the interview with Abacus pollster David Coletto:
Can Nova Scotia's Liberals blow a big lead too?
David Akin - October 3rd, 2013
http://blogs.canoe.ca/davidakin/atlantic-canada-politics/can-novas-scoti...
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Isn't Justin Ling a Conservative commentator? What is his point?
Oh yeah, sure, Justin Ling is a Conservative Libertarian. Right.
[url=http://rabble.ca/taxonomy/term/17433]Justin Ling[/url]
Saints preserve us. Apologies, Justin!
Maybe I got that confused. Justin Ling had written a prediction of another win for Stephen Harper in 2015, so perhaps I assumed he was Conservative. Maybe that's just what he *fears* will happen.
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The discussion about more than "competency" has lately taken place at What lessons should the Federal NDP take from the Nova Scotia experience/coming nightmare?
If you think its all about "competency" then I suppose that a lot of that is true. I dont disagree with those parts- as far as they go.
"Competency" is what media commentators like to talk about. They never soured on Dexter.
But it misses the point about Dexter's self inflicted wounds. They werent about "not communicating" how great they were.
And MacNeil does not have a great PR machine.
FIRST, Dexter government destroyed their own credibility... with no help from the opposition, and with a mainly friendly local media. They had pretty much completed that over a year ago.
THEN, the Liberals marched in and took the opportunity served up. They've been utterly incompetent at doing politics since 1999, but that was bound to end.
The reason thin platform wins is that all that is required is not being Darell Dexter. Spice modestly with a couple no brainer promises- like ditching the HST tax cut, which was dead in the water anyway.
Piece of cake.
Latest polls suggest some erosion in Liberal support
UPDATED 12:03 p.m. Friday
New polls show the Nova Scotia Liberals coming back to earth, but it may be too little, too late to change the outcome of the election.
Liberal numbers have taken a hit while the NDP and Progressive Conservatives have surged in the last three days of Corporate Research Associates polls.
The Liberals had been polling in the high 50s and as recently as Sept. 30 had a three-day average of 56 per cent to the NDP’s 28 per cent and the Tories' 14 per cent.
But from Oct. 1 to Oct. 3, the Liberals fell to 47 per cent support, with the NDP rising to 31 per cent and the PCs rebounding to 20 per cent.
The margin of error on these results is large because of the smaller sample size. The margin of error for the last three days of polling is six percentage points 19 times out of 20.
If you add the numbers together, the Liberals sit at 52 per cent support for the whole week with the NDP at 29 per cent and the PCs at 17.
But the trend of the race narrowing was echoed by an Abacus poll conducted earlier this week that placed Liberal support in the high 40s.
CRA president Don Mills said he is not surprised by the results. He said the Liberal support was unsustainably high and he expected it to come down in the final days of the election campaign.
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Read more:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1158384-latest-polls-suggest-som...
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What's more, the NDP has not, in recent history, ever presented itself as socialist or anti-capitalist. A sense of betrayal is therefore unwarranted and knee-jerk support for opposing parties can have real damaging effects.
Two problems with this:
No one around here is calling for voting for other parties.
Zero.
[Not even our resident Liberal troll calls for voting for other parties.]
Note where they are coming from. Because the NDP is not anti-capitalist, it is by nature inherently deficient, barely worth voting for. It is because they see the NDP as always capitulationist, that they see a sense of betrayal as "unwarranted".
The idea that the NS NDP government may be a betrayal of even a minimal standard of social democratic principles does not compute for these folks.... because social democracy is itself a betrayal of [real] socialism.
i just got polled two nights in a row by the automated forum poll, which seems like a pretty slack programing glitch.
or maybe it's my "evangelical christian" (press 2) god 
that pulled a few strings, er, lines of code.
either way, i'd be voting green. if i could.
so it looks like "none of the above" will get my vote tommorrow.
sorry ken ...
Yes, Dexter forgot the "little guy" when he fought for the shipbuilding contract that will mean 10,000 jobs here. Forgot about the "little guy" when he restored the children's dental care program so low income kids without coverage can get dental care. Forgot about the "little guy" when he took 24,000 low income seniors off the income tax rolls. Forgot about the "little guy" when he created the Affordable Living Credit and the Poverty Reduction Tax Credit. I guess he was fighting for the "rich" when he introduced a new top tax backet on those making over $150,000 a year.
Wow, the misinformation and assumptions made out there especially by people who don't even live in NS. Are you getting your information from the Nova Scotia Liberal Party?
Yes, Dexter forgot the "little guy" when he fought for the shipbuilding contract that will mean 10,000 jobs here. Forgot about the "little guy" when he restored the children's dental care program so low income kids without coverage can get dental care. Forgot about the "little guy" when he took 24,000 low income seniors off the income tax rolls. Forgot about the "little guy" when he created the Affordable Living Credit and the Poverty Reduction Tax Credit. I guess he was fighting for the "rich" when he introduced a new top tax backet on those making over $150,000 a year.
Wow, the misinformation and assumptions made out there especially by people who don't even live in NS. Are you getting your information from the Nova Scotia Liberal Party?
Thank you for providing the other side of it. Most of what I hear about NS politics I get off of rabble's forums so that has coloured my perception of Darrel Dexter.
janfromthebruce, the young man with Stephen Lewis and Steve Estey in the photo you published above is my son William. Steve Estey has a number of disabilities -- he was chair of the UN commission for the rights of people with disabilities -- among others, he's profoundly deaf. William worked with him on many days during the campaign doing door-to-door canvassing. William would text what the people at the doors were saying and Steve would read off William's phone. You can see that William is holding his phone to be read in this photo!
To add to Hunky_Monkey's list of things the Dexter geovernment did to make life easier for people:
And by way of a slight correction, the improvements to the dental plan are not just for low-income childre but for all children. The NDP increased the age for children’s basic dental care, from 10 to 13. Coverage will be extended to age 17. This will make Nova Scotia’s Oral Health Program one of the most accessible dental coverage programs in Canada.
So what i really can't figure out is why the Dexter government is apparently so unpopular. There have been no major scandals, no major economic catastrophes, the economy is somewhat stagnant - but that has been the case for the past 60 years in Nova Scotia. i just don't see what they have done that merits being so low in the polls.
What time do the polls close?
Good question, Stockholm, and no one seems to have an answer. The most common speculation is that being NDP, this government was held to a much higher standard than other recent governments in Nova Scotia and it seems not to have lived up to some people's expectations. The government has admitted it wasn't perfect -- a good example of those expectations I just mentioned; who ever heard tell of a government having to admit it wasn't perfect? -- but it actually has a list of accomplishments that puts other recent governments to shame.
As with other NDP governments around the country, it had to fight criticism from both the right and the left. Certainly some of its own supporters took exception to its direction on some issues. And there are always single-issue people who are unhappy with the way their issue has been handled -- or not handled.
Here are the government's 50 accomplishments. It actually makes good reading:
http://nsndp.ca/accomplishments
Polls close at 8:00 p.m. -- in one hour.
So what i really can't figure out is why the Dexter government is apparently so unpopular.
I'll get there, but it will be in the other thread: lessons from NS.
And it probably wont be until after the results.
But I wont be saying anything original. Stephen Kimber is naming a very essential part of it in his Rabble piece, and he isnt the first either.
Good question, Stockholm, and no one seems to have an answer.
"No one seems to have the answer." ???? Like I said, Stephen Kimber isnt the first to say it [hes just scratching the surface- but the nub is there].
Wow, the misinformation and assumptions made out there especially by people who don't even live in NS. Are you getting your information from the Nova Scotia Liberal Party?
Right. People you disagree with are 'misinformed,' and lead by the nose by other parties.
Same crap critics get constantly from the oil industry.
Well, KenS, I read Kimber and many of the other pundits, commentators and columnists differently from you. Kimber actually opens saying why? This wasn't a disastrous government: why? Other observers said similar things. I have had conversations with people covering the government who shake their heads and say, of course it's not a perfect government. But why the overwhelming negativity and outright hostility?
Selective reading.
Many expectations -- the NDP would govern differently -- were self-created [by the NDP], the wounds that followed self-inflicted.
The government botched the MLA expenses scandal, which involved members of all parties and incidents before the NDP took office. But Dexter came across as prickly, defensive, hardly a practitioner of new politics. By the time the NDP brought in tighter, more transparent rules, they'd already squandered their hard-earned "we'll govern differently" currency.
I'll expand later, in the other thread, on what Kimber is saying.... and how it poisoned the well.
I have had conversations with people covering the government who shake their heads and say, of course it's not a perfect government. But why the overwhelming negativity and outright hostility?
I've said more than once before that the media has never soured on Dexter or the government.
And I personally do not dispute that the government has done a lot to deserve being re-elected... let alone compared to the alternatives.
But you all refuse to face two crucial things that also happened.
1.] The base was betrayed by the depth of the education cuts, when they find out later that it is not only about balancing the budget, but also all along has been about the undisclosed "need" to cut the HST.
2.] I doubt that particular betrayal matters much to voters in general. But for the cuts to play OK to the general public, there had to be trust. And the Dexter Bubble torched that early on.
Looking like a rout shaping up, and PCs doing pretty well.
Howard Epstein waited until after the polls closed, but said to the CBC that the NDP is going to get thumped. His words.
Very few results from Metro Halifax so far. Many of the seats reporting have only a few hundred votes counted. That said, I agree with KenS that the PCs are showing surprising early strength. Could be a tight race for Official Opposition, and I would not rule out a Liberal minority at this point.
Liberal currently lead in every METRO seat.
CBC announces Lib govt- not majority called yet.
Looks like the NDP vote is bleeding to both parties - to the PCs outside Metro Halifax and to the Liberals inside it. So far the NDP is doing very poorly in Metro Halifax - Dexter is now trailing and only one NDP candidate (Mat Whynott) is leading.
10 elected or leading for PCs
7 for NDP
Even Maureen MacDonald trailing. Not by much.
But hard to imagine a safer seat for the NDP.
Of all people, Stirling Beliveau is leading by more than a small margin.
NDP wont be shut out of Metro. But reduced to a couple seats is beyond belief.
A real joke if Darell keeps his seat, and hes very close. I'm pretty sure his hope is to lose it.
CBC at 9:07: majority govt.
It would be strange indeed to see the NDP shut out of Metro and reduced to a handful of rural seats.
I suspect there is a bit of an "Ontario 1990" factor at work here - people wanted to "send a message" to the NDP but ended up going overboard. I just cannot believe that voters are that enamoured of McNeil and the Liberals or that angry at Dexter and the NDP.
28% PC 25% NDP. About half votes in. Turnout appears to be high.
Well... going out in style.
No NDP declared elected yet.
Gordie Gosse way ahead in CB Centre
Denise in Chester - St Margarets quite a bit ahead
Maureen MacDonald now back in the lead (barely) in Needham. As the commentators on CBC put it, if someone like Maureen MacDonald is in trouble in a seat like Needham, that demonstrates the extent of the NDP collapse.
The NDP is highly unlikely to get more than 6 seats.
The PCs have 5 declared already [zero for NDP] and is leading in 6 more.
So its third party status.
That is beyond unfortunate.
All the media outlets are reporting results from 51 seats. Does anyone know which one is not reporting?
ETA: I see there are now only 51 seats in the Assembly. My bad.
The CBC also said about Maureen MacDonald's riding that when you are in a tough riding race in a tradional NDP riding where the shipbuilding program is going to occur after the massive subsidy to Irving, you might at least expect at least a positive response in the riding, even ir the reaction against the subsidy in the rest of the province was quite strong.
This electoral response sends a powerful message about such large subsidies to NDP parties not only in Nova Scotia, but elsewhere.
I agree. Excessively robust industrial policy / corporate welfare was a big negative for the electorate with the NDP government.
If its any consolation, Sharon and the lot of you, I'm no longer interested in fighting over the rubble.
Have a nice day.
Voters chose the real Liberal over the Liberal pretender; no big surprise. This has been the year of the Dix and Dexter show, which clearly has received poor ratings from the electorate. The NDP has no future anywhere in the country as a 'Liberal-lite' party. Lesson learned, we hope.
Dexter has lost his seat. NDP facing total wipeout in Metro. Who are the Magnificent Seven who have survived the bloodbath so far?
Dexter has lost his seat. NDP facing total wipeout in Metro. Who are the Magnificent Seven who have survived the bloodbath so far?
Paterson-Rafuse, Corbett, Gosse, MacDonald leading
Wilson, Belliveau, Zahn elected
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