There will be no federal election in 2010

This is all very encouraging and interesting - but I don't see any of it as ruling out an election in 2010. All parties learned last Fall that it is very, very, very bad politics to speculate about an early election and that the best politics is to always sound like you don't want one.

That being said, let's wait and see what's in the Tory budget on March 3. If its bad enough (which it probably will be) and if polls continue to show the Tories as low as 30% - don't be surprised if we suddenly find ourselves in a Spring election camapign.

Given that the Tories are in a statistical dead heat with the Liberals, don't you think that they (Cons) are not going to want an election? Don't you think that they are going to 'sweeten' up the budget just enough to be acceptable to the Liberals so that there isn't an election?

Both Harper and Ignatieff will also want to avoid an election prior to the G20 summit in Toronto. So unless there is an election triggered immediately over the budget there certainly won't be one later in the spring.  Harper for obvious reasons but I think it would be just as damaging for Ignatieff to lose and election prior to the summit. 

Yup.

The only thing that has happened so far with the chances of Harper calling the election, is that we are now only 4 weeks from the window for that.

So the chances that Harper can turn opinion among swing voters enough is not very high any more. And every day that goes by without beginning to make that turn, makes it less likely. But right now, the chance still exists. And not as just a long shot.

I expected to more of the charm offensive by now. But still being too much in the doghouse, they are waiting to start. Its still coming.

As noted above, I think the odds for the Conservatives calling an election in a month are getting less. [The Liberals will not vote no confidence vote on the Throne Speech or Budget no matter how good they look in the horse race polls.]

And if it isn't now, the odds seem very low it will be in the Fall. Time is on the side of the Liberals, waiting until 2011, and I can't see the Conservatives choosing the Fall if they don't want it now. But I wouldn't call that a long shot possibility.

If I'm right that the Harper Crew set things up for a March election call, because conditions in 2011 will make it too unlikely that they will be able to get a majority [and therefore most likely will lose government even if they still have the same commanding plurality of seats]... if the understanding of the basic motivation is correct, then the Conservatives will do whatever they can to work for another set-up in the Fall: channel set firmly in their favour, pull the plug. I don't see how, but who 6 months before could have predicted long prorogue followed immediately by Budget Speech?

You see I still think that those municipal elections are a good reason we WILL have an election in the fall.  This would force Liberal contenders in a lot of seats to choose between a sure bet municpal run, and a long shot federal one and also tie up a lot of opposition money.  My own riding is a case in point actually.  The Cons have deep pockets, they can afford to to do without, to support their candidates in non-Conservative seats to sit out if they are municipal people and so on, the opposition not so much.

My election night prediction of a fall of 2010 election still stands,

until it doesn't

David Young wrote:

If there is to be an election in 2010, it won't be until the fall.

The vote buying...oops, I mean stimulus spending, will be coming to an end soon, and Harper wants to get the maximum benefit from that in case the economy slows down again.  Plus the fact that if the Afghanistan troops do come home in mid-2011, once those soldiers do arrive back in Canada, I don't think they're going to be in a very pro-Harper state of mind.

Con[servative] spin doctors could do another 180 (like they've done before on Torturegate) and have Harpo run on a peace ticket like Nixon did in 1968: Even though Harpo wanted/wants(?) at least some (unspecified number) of Canadian troops to remain in Afghanistan beyond 2011, he could say, "Look, I'm withdrawing all Canadian troops from Afghanistan."

Don't put it past this bugger. Mind you, that wouldn't fool most returning Canadian GIs.

I see a lot of discussion about when the government would want an election or how it would take all the opposition parties to want an election.

In fact I don't think the next election has to be caused either by Harper wanting it or the opposition all wanting it.

The more likely is an irreconcilable difference between the supporters of each party-- a conflict where each party's supporters will require the party to take a certain position even if they would rather not have an election. My guess is budget 2011 about a year from now. The majority of the parties may not want one but Harper may have to satisfy people in his party that he can address the deficit and make some cuts to spending. There are no areas where substantial money can be found through cuts that the opposition could agree to (other than defence which the Conservatives won't do). I think Harper might be able to buy a year through flim-flam, accounting tricks and asset sales but the next budget is another story. I can't see a budget in 2011 that both the cons and another party could support and for that reason I think there will be an election then that most parties do not want.

That said there is also the possibility that polls could go one way or another and that the opposition may be not inclined to even try to avoid an election. If the Liberals are up in the polls and can make gains I see no reason why they would want to avoid a vote given that they likely feel they cannot do worse than 2008. The NDP rarely chooses elections, most of the time it votes non confidence based on some unavoidable principle -- the party simply is too different from the Conservatives to be able to vote with the government on much. Only the Pension and EI legislation allowed the party to hold its nose and avoid an election but that is short term. The BQ in many respects cannot be seen to support the government with the other opposition parties offside-- that can lead to more trouble in an election where their supporters could move to Liberals or New Democrats if the BQ does not oppose.

So if one opposition party wants an election it might not take much to force the others even if they don't want to play. The Liberals have lost a lot of credibility supporting the government as long as they did so it is hard to imagine them doing it for long now. And as I say, an election could happen even if none of the parties really want one-- just based on the issues at stake.

Imagine if it were your job to come up with a budget that both the government and any one of the opposition parties could support-- would you be able to do it?

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I really cannot for the life of me understand why anyone is describing this latest volley from the Tories as a "trap" for the opposition. All the opposition has to do is say YES we would LOVE to have two more weeks of parliament sittig so we have more time to rake the government over the coals!

Chances are that "even one more time" is bound to happen.

We're probably a year or more from an election, and politics is not a die on this [each] hill game. There will always be reasons to consider voting with the government.

You are hopelessly definitive. I've always predicted against an election in the Fall- a month ago as less likely than right now.

But things can always change. If Fall looks better to Harper than waiting for next year, especially when the opposition pulling the plug at their choice of time next year is so likely, then Harper may well pull the plug in the Fall, despite all the downsides.

And while time passing makes it increasingly unlikely, its only less likely that the Cons can turn things sufficiently in their favour and pull the plug in April or early May.... because when and if they pull that off, they have to expect things to get only worse for them as time wears on.

Predicting election calls is a bit of a mug's game, and usually people who make unequivocal pronouncements about whether there will or will not be an election end up looking pretty sheepish.

That said, I don't see the impetus for an election in the foreseeable future. Harper is hopelessly mired in minority territory despite an inept Liberal party and an invisible Bloc. The Liberals can't seem to crack 30% in the polls. Ignatieff still seems like a dud. The NDP is not likely to make any gains on its current polling numbers. Can't see how any of the parties would benefit from an election right now, which is a pretty good guarantee that it won't happen (at least not this spring).

"The NDP is not likely to make any gains on its current polling numbers." -- ghoris

I'm just wondering what is behind this assertion, ghoris? Why do you believe this.

Layton's personal numbers have gone up since last time, the party is working to be able to spend the local limit in a lot more places, and the Liberals are still institutionally weak. Not to mention the fact that Ignatieff has shown himself to stumble through situations requiring careful and nuanced strategic communications (something that Jack excels at), and an election is five straight weeks of those situations back-to-back.

Also, the Conservatives are on the defensive a bit more in the areas where we compete with them, like BC. And the Greens are in a bit of a mess right now.

Just curious why you think there are no growth opportunities for the NDP in that situation.

I could easily see a acenario where Tory numbers across Canada drop - delivering half a dozen new seats to the NDP in BC, Sask and Nova Scotia - but the Liberals are UNcompelling enough that all or almost all NDP incumbents in Ontario get re-elected even though the Liberals enjoy a boit of a dead cat bounce.

I think that you're assuming that because the NDP is averaging 16 or 17 percent now - that means that we are condemned to get that in the next election. Keep in mind that in the six months leading up to the 2008 election the NDP was often in the low teens and then no sooner was the writ dropped than we started polling 18-19-20% and wound up at 18.2%. Also many polls showing the NDP at 16% (down from 18%) also vastly overestimate the Green party and so the 16% is coming out of a smaller pie. Once a campaign starts and the NDP starts getting almost equal time in news coverage and starts running ads and Layton's being an asset compared to Iggy being a liability kick in - things often change. Also we are getting much better at targetting seats and concentrating resources and we have more formidable incumbents. Did you know that in the 2004 election the NDP took 18% of the vote in Ontario and got 7 seats and in 2008 the same 18% yielded 17 seats! A lot of NDP incumbents have now built up really big margins and will be hard to beat. My guess is that if things go according to plan the NDP popular vote might be the same or ever so slightly higher in the next election - but for every incumbent who might lose to a Grit in Ontario there are two or three seats we can snag out west and elsewhere from the Tory decline. I'm not expecting a massive breakthrough next time - but i could easily see going from 37 to 43 or 44 - and since the next election will be Jack fourth and possibly last campaign - it would be nice to beat the Broadbent record of 43 seats in 1988.

Iggy has already said he doesn't wnat an election, and he's said this several times. I just don't see an election being called unless the budget is deliberately designed with a 'poison pill'  by the government to cause it to fall. And if there's an election this year, the results will probably be much the same as last time. I don't see any reason for optimism by any of the Opposition parties.

Stockholm wrote:

1. Even if Iggy was all set to bring down the government and wanted on badly - he would be dumb to make the same mistake he made in September and announce that in advance. The right thing to do would be to be unassuming, look like you don't want an election and then feign outrage when the budget comes in and bring down the government totally unexpectedly and without warning. In other words - who cares if Iggy says he doesn't want an election - its good strategy for him to say that whether he wants one or not!

2. All the polls show Tory support about 5 or 6 points below what they got in the last election - that would mean about 20 seats lost by the Tories. In any case, if we had another election and we got EXACTLY the same results as last time - we now know that the only way to kill off Harper is for the opposition to go for the kill immediately and NOT let him survive a post-election confidence vote at all. It would be worth it to have an election now just to be able to press that "reset" button and then vote down the first post-election throne speech and then have the opposition take power.

Unless the NDP's improvements came at the expense of the Conservatives.

Also, I really doubt the boogey-man button can be pushed a second time with as much force as the first.  And a lot of the reason it happened the first time is that the coalition negotiators (not being sure they'd get a deal) did not pay enough attention to spoon-feeding the thoroughly ignorant, incompetent and braying forces of the parliamentary press gallery and national media, who proceeded to report all kinds of factual inaccuracies as authoritative, and repeat them ad nauseum.

Agreed with Stock's summary of the strategic balance.

And there are other factors favouring the sufficient stability of a governing coalition or other arrangement, as well as factors that werent in play last time contributing to its capability to get off the ground.

So much so, that I dont think the Lib/NDP need more seats than the Conservatives. Even with the Cons having lots more seats- if they don't have the majority, the bill comes due for the consequences of Harpers divisive governance.

I don't disagree with Stockholm's argument in many respects-- but I think that is not how many people see it-- unfortunately.

We look at the Liberal plus NDP to compare against the Conservatives. They look at each party alone: in other words they argue the party with the most seats should govern and other parties should cooperate with this.

This is logical if you assume a couple things: one that the leading party is prepared to compromise to gain the support of other parties-- which this one has at times (to bring in the Liberals) and at times not.

Secondly we need to assume that the Liberals are more compatible with the NDP than the Cons-- I am not sure that this is true although it has been at tiems in the past, right now it looks like they are closer to the Cons on most things or smack in the middle-- which means voters need to be asking them what their intentions and inclinations are.

We have a problem logically with our message: on the one hand we want to defeat the Conservatives by adding our seats to the Liberals to get enough to defeat them. On the other hand we keep pointing out that the Liberals have more in common with the Conservatives than they do with us.

For this reason we should not be focusing on this-- an alternate strategy could be to demand that the Liberals make it clear what they will do if they do not have a majority-- either side with the Cons like they have in the past or if possible work with the NDP to get a governing consensus. If they refuse to answer or say they will work with the Cons then we should make the case in the campaign that to vote for a Liberal is a vote for Harper. Essentially there are two distinct visions of the country -- that of the Cons and that of the NDP. The Liberals can choose to work with either one -- moderating it somewhat as they wish but they have to choose one of those. Canadian have the right to know which way the Liberals are tilting before voting-- otherwise they should choose between the NDP vision and the Conservative one and leave the Liberals out of it.

This is a hard and complicated case to make but perhaps an essential strategy. This is better than pretending the Liberals and the Cons are the same. Essentially there are two distinct visions and the Liberals are somewhere in the middle and can choose to go one way or the other-- they ought to tell voters which way they are headed before asking for a vote. They can also say that if they win a majority they can strike their own compromise without tilting one way or the other but at this point that is unlikely. When the mushy middle does not have a majority it needs to choose which side it will work with.

This is a political reality as the NDP and the Cons are too far apart in vision yet the Liberals can lean out one way or another. Voters need to understand that their recent habit has been to lean out towards the Cons and previously they ran on a campaign leaning out to the Greens effectively. What choices are they going to make after the next election? Voters want to know.

I think voters have a right to know if the Liberals cannot get a majority (which is incredibly unlikely) which party they would work with -- they can either try to work with the NDP or work with the Cons. They really have no other choice and people should know their inclination before having to vote.

Of course if they support the Cons as they did previously, then a vote for a Liberal is a vote for Harper.

I realize this would be a problem for Liberals but I am not a Liberal. Pushing the Liberals this way is a good strategy for the NDP.

And yes given that the Liberals have a habit of supporting the Conservatives it is not unfair.

If the Liberals refuse to answer then there is a gain there pressing them and if they do answer as you say that is also a problem -- that is why it is good for the NDP to press this.