By-elections this fall Part 3

The BC results suggest that the NDP needs to take dead aim at inexplicably popular DOCTOR PROFESSOR Keith Martin in Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca next time.

West Coast Lefty wrote:

Stockholm wrote:

I don't mind of the Liberals fold - if you look at NWC, the Liberals loss is the NDP's gain.

The Lib vote didn't move much in NWC but you are absolutely right in Hochelaga - the Libs went down 6% and the NDP went up 6%.  If we can start eating in to the soft Lib vote in Montreal then seats like Jeanne Le-Ber and even possibly Westmount V-M or NDG-Lachine could come into play for the NDP. 

To draw any conclusions from Hochelaga you have to consider a 22% turnout. The NDP got around 5% of eligible voters & the Liberals were even more pathetic. Also can you compare the motivations of a Liberal voter in a no hope riding with the others (2 of which the Liberals hold)?

JKR wrote:

The most amazing thing about Obama was how he gained the support of marginalized people who have never voted before. That's the path the NDP needs to take.

What a terrible idea.  If the NDP wants to Obama-ize Canadian politics further, they might as well merge with the Liberals.

Anderson wrote:

Problem is that Liberals won't vote NDP and vice-versa and there's no way to convince folks on either side to jump to the other ship. We're going to be locked splitting the centre left vote here under the oppressive reign of the evil Conservative robot that is Scott Armstrong for a long time.

I thought people in Nova Scotia changed their voting preference to NDP. Isn't that how the Provincial NDP came to power?

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Perhaps Green isn't the answer

Your kidding right? Anyone who wanted Armstrong gone wouldn't Mark their ballot for the Green Party.  That's not even 1,000 people on their best day.

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 - but some sort of coalition independent maybe? That might swing some of the more moderate Tories who won't vote Liberal or NDP because they are Liberal and NDP.

Two independants ran in the last two elections, that weren't named Bill Casey, not even 800 votes between them. People are more likely to support a political party then an Independant. Look around at the 308 ridings. Moderate Tories will vote NDP or Liberal. Its why they are called moderate tories. They are most likely to vote for a Conservative, Moderate Tory, followed by Moderate LPC or NDP candidate.

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Somebody's got to get the Liberal and NDP riding association executives together for a heart to heart because realistically the votes aren't out there for both parties as much as we want to delude ourselves that we can build our bases at the Tories' expense, we can't.

  Haven't heard something this foolish since.... oh yeah....Byers and prior to that Elizabeth May.

Work hard, run good candidates and stop assuming that people will vote your way if you take away choice.

 

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Interesting the Cons ahead iin the riding the BQ is alleging dirty tricks-- They may wish they did not win because the win might give this story more legs especially if there is proof of where the calls came from

http://www.cbc.ca/politics/insidepolitics/2009/11/byelection-twist-ident...

Look at the earliest reader post-- saying their voice mails were filled up on election day with auto dialled faxes.

If the cons are doing these sorts of things they will eventually get caught.

Let's hope the autodialler was not some incompetent BQ supporter but if it is found to be the Cons then this might be then begining of the end of this government- it will mean a lot if they did get caught and the tactic worked- the vote is close enough that it is hard to imagine it did not make the difference. This will be the story to watch over the next two weeks- forget the results in the other byelections.

Is nobody concerned about this?

It almost won't matter what people think if this turns out to be a purposeful attempt at winning by dirty tricks especially if it was successful. If the Cosnervatives did this and they feel they were rewarded by this then we are in a lot of trouble. While the US has become aware of this sort of thing and a has developped some kind of a system to check it-- we in Canada are unprepared for this level of electioneering games. What this could mean if indeed it is the Cons that did it (and we don't know for certain) is that it won't matter which direction the public opinion tilts the Cons will win.

It is important to remember that the difference between opposition and a majority government is a small number of votes in a small number of ridings. If you can select the right ridings and change the results through some underhanded means you can move the few thousand votes in exactly the right places to change the government.

For example if you target a riding-- fund competing parties (perhaps boost the Green campaign for example); overwhelam the political response with the fax machines hitting the telephones of the opposition candidate you want to beat on eday; pull some stunt to discredit the candidate you want to beat as was alleged was done to the BQ; overwhealm the riding with spending using a variety of loopholes and transfers of money; advertise with public money and use out of riding Commons mail; Arrange purposeful planted media spins in the dying days of the election and on eday; and a number of small and large nasty tricks---

You can win an election without having to win "fair and square."

You don't need to win the national popular vote-- just a little boost in all the right areas. Computer modeling and polling allows you to identify the close seats and change on the fly. And you only have to look at a few seats to start with: If you are the Cons: forget the seats you can win anyway-- anywhere between 85 and 135; forget the seats you have no chance in -- even if they are close between opposition parties-- there are likely about 125 of those. That leaves perhaps anywhere from 30-75 seats that can be won with a little underhanded push. You choose how many you think you need to get over the top and deploy the minimum of tricks to change the result to a majority-- there is a chance you won't get caught because it won't be that widespread-- just where it is needed.

If this becomes the norm rather than the rule we won't see anything but Con rule for decades.

Not much more cynical than playing one part of the country off against the other gambling that the seperatists won't win enough to take away the win.

Oh, sorry this is also being done already.

The Tory won 46% in CCMV - that is close enough to 50% that i think its clear that unless there was a 1993-style Tory meltdown - that riding would go Tory even in a straight two way race.

I am surprised very surprised after all the trash talk last winter Quebec elected a conservative. The one in NS does not surprise me.

The NDP winning out here is no surprise.

4 by elections and the libs were not even contenders in any of them. They came in third in all 4.

Is this bad news for the libs? or will they spin it into meaning by elections mean nothing? But third in all 4 is not good either.

 

I giess a Harper majority is inevitable...

Anderson wrote:

madmax wrote:

Work hard, run good candidates and stop assuming that people will vote your way if you take away choice.

This riding will never elect a non-Conservative barring a complete meltdown by the CPC although there are enough votes between the Liberals and the NDP to do it. The two parties here share enough core values to field one candidate together that would end the vote splitting and reflect the values of the majority of people here.

What's more important - the party banner and pride - or defending health care, workers and equality.

Anderson, you have to recognize that -- even if we accepted that this would work, which as I believe you've seen in the reaction to Professor Byers' proposal, is not the case -- the NDP will have trouble to ever trust the Liberals again after your leader walked away from a signed agreement, one he affixed his signature to in a petition to the Governor-General.

We barely trusted the Liberals to start with.  Now, not at all.

Although, I will give you points for sticking around on this board after the by-election, so a good first step ...

I touched on what we need to do to counter this in the thread what the NDP will do to stop theCons-- I started saying it was Kool-aid sipping to try but actually worked up some specific things. Won't repeat them here-- that post is long but I hope some people bother because we really can't just wait out a majority-- People above spoke of Mulroney and Harris defeating themselves-- neither did. The both got two back to back majorites and then retired. Two Harper majorites if each lasted 4 years and they started in 2010 would bring us to 2018 and would have Harper govern for 12 years. Majorities seldom come in ones. People 18 years old when Harper was first elected would turn 30 before he leaves. In eight years he can build a machine that could compromise every political institution and be almost impossible to remove. I am not saying this out of fear-- this is waht he plans to do-- he sees the Liebrals as having done that and that the only way to purge Canada from Liberals is to have the Cons do it. That's why every governemnt ad the people are wearing blue-- it is subtle in some places and in your face in others-- it is planned-- nothing is by chance.

 

If the NDP is out of ideas (to fight the Cons or otherwise) then the leadership or the top party staff should quit. As it is, I think the NDP can still win a couple of more seats in the next election, but no golden breakthrough like so many people are straining for.

The Conservative win in Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup needs to be seen in geographic context.

It's just east of Lévis--Bellechasse which the Conservative Steven Blaney won with 46% of the vote, against 25.5% for the Bloc.

The next question is, will this spread down-river? In 2008 the Conservative got 30.6% in Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup. And got only 18.3% next door in Rimouski-Neigette--Témiscouata--Les Basques, where the Bloc got 44.7%. A bigger hurdle. 

As I mentioned earlier, in 2008 the Conservative got only 18.3% next door in Rimouski-Neigette--Témiscouata--Les Basques, where the Bloc got 44.7%. A bigger hurdle.

It's worth noting that Témiscouata is just down the road from the New Brunswick riding of Madawaska--Restigouche, where the NDP's Rodolphe Martin got 8,737 votes (27.6%) in 2004, and 8,322 votes (23.0%) in 2006, although this dropped in 2008 when Thérèse Tremblay-Philippe got 5,361 votes (15.6%).

In Rimouski-Neigette--Témiscouata--Les Basques Guy Caron, a rare star candidate for the NPD-Quebec, got 4,084 votes (10.3%) in 2008, compared with only 2,428 votes (5.5%) in Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup. President of the Canadian Federation of Students in 1994-1995, he was born in Rimouski, left it at age 19 to study at the University of Ottawa (after writing for the local Rimouskois/Progrès-Écho newspapers and at community radio stations CKLE and CKMN-FM,) then worked for the Council of Canadians, and now works for CEP, but sees the region regularly during trips to visit his family.

If the BQ is fading in the Bas-St. Laurent region, it may help the NDP once you get past Mario Dumont's home of Rivière-du-Loup.

Stockholm wrote:

The trend is clear in Quebec, election after election after election, the Liberal vote continues to melt while the NDP vote keeps rising - maybe not as quickly as we'd like - but the direction is good.

Actually the trend is a bit weird.

2006; 2008

Bloc 1,553,201 (42.1%); 1,379,991(38.1%)

Liberal 766,228 (20.8%); 860,449 (23.8%)

Conservative 907,972 (24.6%); 784,996 (21.7%)

NDP 276,401 (7.5%); 441,098 (12.2%)

Green 146,576 (4.0%); 125,805 (3.5%)

Did the NDP gains come more from the Bloc?

Did the Liberal gains come more from the Conservatives?

Or were the shifts in several directions? 

I was referring specifically to the pattern in Hochalaga

For the regional breakdown of NPD trends in support, there is some information on the punditsguide.ca site. See below:

Stockholm wrote:

I was referring specifically to the pattern in Hochalaga

Might be something worth considering, esp. in trying to discern *where* the NDP made its greater gains--it may not be so simple a matter as "stealing from the Liberals", esp. if the rump Liberal polls didn't go as NDP as the Bloc ones did.  (Then again, I/we don't know what the final poll-by-polling figures were.)

Stockholm wrote:

The more the psychology seeps out that the Liberals are "off the map" in Quebec - the better. The story in Hochelaga is that the Liberals are DEAD there and it is seen as a symbol of how dead they are in francophone Quebec. The trend is clear in Quebec, election after election after election, the Liberal vote continues to melt while the NDP vote keeps rising - maybe not as quickly as we'd like - but the direction is good.

Stockholm wrote:

I was referring specifically to the pattern in Hochalaga

It's funny, I interpreted your first message to be about Quebec as a whole, yet after the numbers were posted you changed your mind. From what I saw of the numbers the Liberal vote actually went up over the past 2 general elections. Maybe I'm wrong.

that's what you call a dead cat bounce - but its clear that Liberals support is falling again in Quebec. in both Hochelaga and MIKR - Liberal support took another dive from the already dismal results in the 2008 election.

YOu mean 2008