Latest Opinion Poll - June 10, 2009

To be fair - if the Liberals actual do manage to rise from the 23% they got in Quebec last October to the low 30s and are only a few points behind the BQ - there is SOME low hanging fruit they would pick up in ridings that have a lot of non-francophones in the Montreal area or a riding like Pontiac. But at best the Liberal seat count in Quebec would go from the current 13 to maybe 20.

BA, I think you are the one not paying attention to the Quebec numbers.  I know the seats in Quebec pretty well, as do many of the analysts, and at this point, there is evidence that quite a few seats will change.

bekayne wrote:

ocsi wrote:

But that should make you very nervous, Debater.  Usually when a party gets a new leader there is honeymoon and the party rises in the polls.  The fact that that is not happening with Iggy's ascension is very troubling for the Liberals. 

Since John Turner, how many new federal leaders have had a honeymoon in the polls? (Other than Kim Campbell)

 

All Liberal ones, and a few of the others.

That's an amazing feat of wizadry.  Did you learn that in Fortune Teller's class.  If you are so good, please give us all Saturday's 649 numbers.  You have about as much chance at being correct as you are with your Quebec punditry.

Maybe Debater might have a better chance of persuading us if s/he could produce the list of those 20 Quebec ridings.

Who's foaming at the mouth? I just think you and your Liberal cronies are full of crap and a parasite on the body politic of Canada.

To get a "bump" in the polls, all Iggy had to do was temporarily win back diehard Liberals who were nauseated by Dion. The question is can he keep them?

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

Who's foaming at the mouth? I just think you and your Liberal cronies are full of crap and a parasite on the body politic of Canada.

You are the one foaming.  You got all upset because I repeated what Quebec pollsters and analysts have been saying for months - that the Liberals are on the verge of a breakthrough in seats in Quebec.  You claimed I was full of it and was engaging in wizardry.  You got angry at the mere thought of Liberal success in Quebec.

And stop assuming I work for the Liberals - I don't, although I might end up doing so by the end of this Summer.  I used to work for the NDP, but I haven't since 2006.  One of the things that caused me to distance myself from the NDP was some of the rabid NDP partisans such as yourself that I sometimes see posting here who hate all things Liberal and who insult those of us who are swing voters that like certain things about both parties.

You risk alienating us and driving us into the hands of the Liberals which is who I am considering working for this Summer.

Oh give me a break.  First off I am not angry - I just think you engage in wishful thinking in your assumptions and use of those you report.  So I call you on your bs.  I guess in your arrogance you are unused to being challenged.

Nor am I a rabid partisan.  I do however recognize who has a real history of working in the interests of Canadians - and it isn't the Liberals.  Yes I grow impaitient with those who should know better than to think there is anything redeeming about the Liberals, beyond them not being Conservatives.  Partisan Liberals have done more to undo the gains of their predecessors in the last decade and a bit than the Conservatives have even considered.  So please don't pretend there is something interchangable between the NDP and the Liberals.  It very simply isn't true.

And give me a further break on the "I'm not a Liberal" crap.  The entirity of your posting history is to extoll the vitues of the Liberals.  It's like saying the Kool-Aid Pitcher guy is not really in favour of sugary drinks.

Debater wrote:

And stop assuming I work for the Liberals - I don't, although I might end up doing so by the end of this Summer.  I used to work for the NDP, but I haven't since 2006.  One of the things that caused me to distance myself from the NDP was some of the rabid NDP partisans such as yourself that I sometimes see posting here who hate all things Liberal and who insult those of us who are swing voters that like certain things about both parties.

You risk alienating us and driving us into the hands of the Liberals which is who I am considering working for this Summer.

No one said you work for the Liberals. But you ARE most definitely their most unflagging partisan around here.

You are a pretty strange bird if you don't vote for the Liberals. I caution people against heavy doses of cognitive dissonance.

And am I included among the rabid partisans?

I can't remember anyone calling me a rabid anything. If you give me the accolade too, I might want to put it on my resume.

Debater, if you were a bit more forthright about your allegiance to your party, at least people would respect that.  But no-one is buying this other spin from you.

Since you can't explain the roadmap you believe will lead the Liberals to win the seats you claim, short of claims that "polls say" or "experts say" then you're not much of a strategist, and it's hard to take that kind of punditry seriously.

ottawaobserver wrote:

Debater, if you were a bit more forthright about your allegiance to your party, at least people would respect that.  But no-one is buying this other spin from you.

I have literally missed having at least one staraight up Liberal around. Understandable why they don't stick around long. Even when the style of their expression means they get little or no derision, it's got to be tough swimming against the stram here.

Then when we seem to have a straight up Liberal, he says he's not.

Oh well.

The thing that is deceptive about the popular vote numbers in Quebec is that unlike the Tories, the Liberals get this bumb from having about 90% of the non-francophone vote - so when you see the BQ leading the Liberals in Quebec 37-32 - it means that among francophones the BQ is ahead by a lot more. That's why I could see the Liberals getting from their current 14 seats in Quebec to 22 or so - but then they hit a bit of a wall.

Debater wrote:

I repeated what Quebec pollsters and analysts have been saying for months - that the Liberals are on the verge of a breakthrough in seats in Quebec.  You claimed I was full of it and was engaging in wizardry.  You got angry at the mere thought of Liberal success in Quebec.

And, Debater, that's not what gets people frustrated with what you write.  It's that you assert these things without explaining what you think lies behind the poll numbers, and how they will be translated into that breakthrough.  You just keep repeating the mantra that this is what the pollsters and analysts are saying.

Why will this breakthrough come?  Is it Ignatieff, or that voters in a certain area will be more likely to vote against the Conservatives now, or just what?  What strategy of the Liberals is going to create this breakthrough?  Because we haven't seen it yet.

Indeed Hébert was in fine form, and her critique of Ignatieff was bang on.  He is a rookie, he doesn't have an end game in mind and Harper had his best week of his 2nd term apart from the Obama visit in February.  Coyne was actually suprisingly charitable to Iggy on the panel, in large part because Coyne absolutely despises the coalition and Iggy was a key factor in killing it in January.

As for the polls in Quebec, it's largely a transfer of the federalist vote from the Cons to the Libs with the BQ holding steady. If sustained, that will likely mean Lib pickups of marginal BQ seats in Montreal and possibly in the Townships and Outaouais, but a higher Lib vote also means the BQ can feast on the Cons incumbent seats in the Qc City and Lac-St-Jean areas, so the BQ seat total probably won't change very much.  I think Mulcair will hang on for the NDP but we won't have much hope of adding more seats if the current political trends continue. 

Max Bialystock wrote:

Well the Libs are certainly going to be gaining seats next time in Quebec.  The only vulnerable seat for them is Mount Royal if Cotler calls it quits.

To the Conservatives?

http://www.punditsguide.ca/riding_e.php?riding=1022&cmdGoRiding=Go

Now *that's* a hypothesis I'd find interesting to test ...

West Coast Lefty wrote:

Indeed Hébert was in fine form, and her critique of Ignatieff was bang on.  He is a rookie, he doesn't have an end game in mind and Harper had his best week of his 2nd term apart from the Obama visit in February.  Coyne was actually suprisingly charitable to Iggy on the panel, in large part because Coyne absolutely despises the coalition and Iggy was a key factor in killing it in January

Coyne was only charatible to Iggy because he is propping up Harper. :D

However, his little tirade about how our system is not meant for minority governments and only a 2 party system, was beyond belief. He was basically telling Canadians they should only vote CPC or Liberal, the arrogant ass hat. Moreover, it is up to the parties to make voters choices work in the HoC, it is not up to voters to vote for 2 choices, they govern at our liesure. And if you want to get extremely technical with his opinion that there should only be 2 parties, then the CPC should be gone, as they are the newest party in the House. Wish someone would have pointed those things out to him!!!

Thanks stock corrected it!

remind wrote:

However, his little tirade about how our system is not meant for minority governments and only a 2 party system, was beyond belief. He was basically telling Canadians they should only vote CPC or Liberal, the arrogant ass hat. Moreover, it is up to the parties to make voters choices work in the HoC, it is not up to voters to vote for 2 choices, they govern at our liesure. And if you want to get extremely technical with his opinion that there should only be 2 parties, then the CPC should be gone, as they are the newest party in the House. Wish someone would have pointed those things out to him!!!

Remind, I interpreted that part of his comments completely differently than you did, in light of what I've read of his views in favour of proportional representation.  Coyne argues that the first-past-the-post system was designed at a time when there were only two parties, and the incentives it creates (all or nothing) make the parties go for broke in tearing each other down.  He argues that countries with multi-party systems are much better suited to some form of PR.  To quote him directly from a blogpost entitled "PR: The fearmongers debunked":

Quote:

It's true that these systems do not typically produce one-party majority governments. Rather, they tend to be led by multi-party majorities: stable coalitions, that together command the support of a majority of the legislature -- and, unlike the current system, a majority of the voters. We associate this sort of government with instability only because of the incentives under FPTP, which encourage parties to trigger an election at the first spike in the polls, betting that a 2% rise in support can translate into a bushel of extra seats. Under PR, there's no such payoff.

I've gone back on forth on supporting PR over the years, but I think this argument of Coyne's is one of the best I've heard in favour of mixed-member proportional representation, and is almost certainly what he was alluding to in the panel discussion.  It's an argument I know is winning over more and more previous FPTP supporters amongst the chattering classes.

So, I don't think he really was advocating for a two-party system at all (whether he might like it is another story, I suppose).

Its interesting that Coyne could write this: "It's true that these systems do not typically produce one-party majority governments. Rather, they tend to be led by multi-party majorities: stable coalitions, that together command the support of a majority of the legislature -- and, unlike the current system, a majority of the voters."

...and yet be so passionately oppose to the coalition from last December which was a perfect example of a "multi-party majority".

Then it does not fit to me at all.  He was absolutely in a fit over the Bloc's existence, so why would he want a multi-party system with PR? seems like two sides of the mouth then to me.

Moreover, we can have coalition governments with FPTP, in fact in essence we have one with the Cons and Libs. And would have had another with Libs Bloc and NDP.

I disregard her view period.  Just like I do Coyne's  So I guess that makes me pure still eh?  As weird as it is, the only person on the At Issues panel that seems to provide fairly balanced views is Gregg.

Max Bialystock wrote:

Well the Libs are certainly going to be gaining seats next time in Quebec.  The only vulnerable seat for them is Mount Royal if Cotler calls it quits.

I agree with the first part of your post, and it's refreshing to see another poster admitting that the Liberals are going to win more seats in Quebec, but I'm puzzled by the second part of your post about Mount Royal.  It's one of the safest Liberal seats in Quebec.  This was Pierre Trudeau's seat and has been Liberal in every election since about 1940.  The Liberals won the seat with 57% of the vote in October even under Dion - they are now 10 points higher in the polls in Quebec than they were then, and the Conservatives are 10 points lower so I don't see why it would be in contention for anyone else.

She was actually very balanced last evening, which is why I noted what I did. It had nothing, on my part to do with her calling Iggy out. She has not been a good  unbiased analysist for a while.

I just watched the At Issues panel again.  Coyne's venom towards the Bloq and the NDP was palpable.  He took childish delight in talking about the look on Layton's face when Iggy joined the Conservative coalition by propping them up and demonstrated a complete lack of trust in democracy by going on about the right to seperatists to have seats in the House.

Not you will note the disproportionate number of seats they have, but their mere existence in the House.

My conclusion- Coyne's a bigger dink on second glance than I even thought.