Bob Rae surpasses Nycole Turmel on Leadership Index

It's a mystery to me why Nanos evn wastes people's  time asking a whole battery of leader attribute questions about two interim leaders four before the nest election. It's hard to overstate how totally irrelevant this is.

So one interim leader is ahead of another interim leader...and on an "index", rather than a rating of actual popularity.

Why should anyone care?

It's not as if this means the voters want the old Liberal/Tory alternation back.

She was probably told to lay low after the media lie campaign about her "support" of the BQ.

Debater wrote:

But obviously what will count down the road for both of these parties is the long-term trends, and not individual polls.

"Despite Ms. Turmel's low leadership score, Mr. Nanos said the good news for the NDP is that it is holding on to "their 30 per cent support" across the country. In addition, the NDP continues to be strong in Quebec. The party holds a majority of the province's 75 seats and is at 45.1 per cent support compared to the Conservatives, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois, who are in a three-way race for the bottom with 15.1 per cent support, 18.2 per cent and 15.2 per cent respectively."

From here.

No offence to Nycole Turmel but she has been problematic from day 1. Maybe Jack should have let the caucus decide on the interim leader instead of appointing her.

To carry those separatist memberships after being appointed leader is just incompetent

Also, she has talked about capping private sector CEO's bonuses without consulting with the rest of the party.

She badmouthed the shipbuilding contract when the Quebec firm can't even keep from going bankrupt and even NDP MP's like Joe Comartin praised the process.

It was just too soon for a rookie MP. 

Hurry up March 24th, 2012! 

@debater Even with an incompetent leader the NDP is still creaming the Libs. Just wait till we get our real leader!

What a shock.  The "indpendent progressive" Debater sees a tiny sliver of light in the otherwise flooded pig sty of the Liberal party and he comes to babble to try to gloat about.  Really Debater if that's the best you've got, you might as well stayed focused on your work at Liberal HQ.

Here's a little dose of reality you can share with your pals around the Liberal HQ water cooler.  Despite a media that covers every brain fart of Bob Rae, and still acts as if the Liberals are the natural governing party and does all it can to ignore the NDP, Rae is only at SIXTEEN per cent on that rating, a mere 5 % above a placeholder leader.   In the numbers that matter the Liberals still trail badly. 

knownothing wrote:

To carry those separatist memberships after being appointed leader is just incompetent

This is plain incorrect. Turmel resigned her membership in the Bloc riding of her friend before obtaining the NDP nomination in Hull-Aylmer.

Debater wrote:

As I said above, one poll on this issue is not significant.  It's the long-term patterns that matter.  What it indicates though is that if the Liberals can find a decent leader this time and don't mess up like the last 2 times, they may be able to attract a lot of voters back.

Similarly, do not assume that the NDP will improve once it picks a permanent leader - it depends on whether it is the right leader.  If the next NDP leader is problematic, the NDP numbers could decline.  A lot of people, whether in Quebec or across Canada, are parking their votes with the NDP right now and waiting to see who takes over the NDP.  They could go elsewhere over the next few years depending on what happens.

In conclusion, I would agree that the media should give some slack to Turmel.  She only got elected as an MP for the first time this May and so she has very little political experience, and on top of that she was unexpectedly asked by her leader to take over from him when his cancer got worse.  That is a lot to deal with in your first year as an MP.

 

The Liberals are caught in a long term trend.  You can polish the turd all you like, but in the end, it still comes from the south end of a bull heading north.

Still, why would you WANT the Liberals to succeed?  It's a little silly, at this point, to still be arguing that the Liberals could win the next election but the NDP couldn't. 

What do the Liberals really have to offer Canada these days?  They will never have another Pierre Trudeau(there most popular leader of recent history, whatever else can be said about him, which I add to save Malcolm the trouble of saying it yet again)and it's not even clear that PET would be popular now, given that Trudeau's version of centralized, know-your-place federalism has no support at all in Quebec anymore.

No kidding, Libs are toast because they didn't stand for anything and still don't.

The latest Nanos polls also show that the Tories are at 37%, the NDP at 30%, and the Liberals at 23%.

Changes in party preference can be affected by or can follow from changes in leadership preference.

Otherwise, party preferences are the important measure since they more closely align with how people would vote.

Sarcasm.  Yes, I know that.

The numbers now are completely insignificant. Particularly true for monthly movements in tiny regional sub-samples of already small national sample polls.

Newfoundlander_Labradorian wrote:

I also don't believe the Liberals should be counted out, and I think that is something many in the NDP are doing. While the party has serious issues they have deep roots in the politics of this country and still many potential voters. If you actually look at the nanos poll numbers, where the NDP actually gew in support and the Liberals fell despite the leadership issue, the NDP are really only ahead of the Liberals in Quebec and the Prairies. Quebec is the reason the NDP have a large lead nationally over the Liberals and with the province being so volatile politically, and so leader dependent, the numbers could drastically change over the next few years. In Ontario the Liberals have nearly a 9% lead over the NDP, though they trail the Conservatives by 12%. It is not good news for the NDP to not even have 23% support in Canada's biggest province.

One of the reasons people traditionally voted Liberal is that the Liberals traditionally contended for government. How they can contend for government in the next election as the third place party is quite a challenge. Not that it can't be done, but when that was your primary raison d'etre, people are not going to be impressed by that. They are also clearly behind the NDP in all provinces except Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island. Incumbency counts huge, and the current NDP MPs who represent former Liberal areas will probably work hard to keep the seats in their hands. Even in Toronto, the Liberals are the last place of all elected parties. Most of the Liberal vote was concentrated in regions with residual Liberal support, particularly Atlantic Canada. Nova Scotia is looking as if it's becoming polarized along PC-NDP lines provincially and probably would have a PC Official Opposition had the previous PC government not been so unpopular. I'm betting that 2013 will restore that NDP-PC dynamic, and that puts every Liberal MP in Nova Scotia at risk. The Liberal brand is also dead in Quebec and the Prairies, and those 2 regions comprise half the federal seats right there. The Liberals only won 2 provinces, and in each one, they are one swing seat away from that dominance going to another party.

Provincially, every election since 2010 has been bad for the Liberals, with the exceptions of Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island. Even in Newfoundland and Labrador, the Liberals finished behind the NDP in popular vote, but got lucky with a dead cat bounce in areas of traditional Liberal strength. The NDP, on the other hand, became an official party by more than doubling its previous high seat count, which gives them room to grow, and less questions about leadership, unlike the Liberals whose leader could not win his own seat. And the Liberal governments in the 3 major provinces that still have them are all quite unpopular. I think being the government in Ontario boosted the Liberals federally, but with a minority, I do not expect the Ontario Liberals to be in government during the federal election in 2015, and that will have a huge impact.

Newfoundlander_Labradorian wrote:

I also don't believe the Liberals should be counted out, and I think that is something many in the NDP are doing. While the party has serious issues they have deep roots in the politics of this country and still many potential voters. If you actually look at the nanos poll numbers, where the NDP actually gew in support and the Liberals fell despite the leadership issue, the NDP are really only ahead of the Liberals in Quebec and the Prairies. Quebec is the reason the NDP have a large lead nationally over the Liberals and with the province being so volatile politically, and so leader dependent, the numbers could drastically change over the next few years. In Ontario the Liberals have nearly a 9% lead over the NDP, though they trail the Conservatives by 12%. It is not good news for the NDP to not even have 23% support in Canada's biggest province.

As for the idea that the media should go easy on Nycole Turmel I think it's quite dumb. If she didn't feel she was up for the job of interim leader she shouldn't have accepted it. While Turmel may have never originally expected to be leader beyond September there's no reason why she couldn't pass off the leadership to someone else following Jack's death.

No one is counting the Liberals out.  However, you need to understand babble culture and history to understand the reaction.  You see Debater pretends he is some serious progressive that really, really wants to vote NDP, but can't because....used to be because they couldn't win.  That was his sole focus, now with the Liberals in decline he periodically comes up with something else.  It is all bunk of course because he only shows up when he feels there is something to gloat about in a decline of NDP fortunes (even gloating in a way over Layton's death within hours of it happening) or there is something he feels is postive for the Liberals.  What causes the strongest reaction though is his assumption that we babblers are so stupid as to not see through it.  His pretence is very dishonest and people get a little tired of it because he is not really here to discuss or engage anyone.  Why he thinks spinning this stuff on babble is a workable strategy is beyond me.

That said, one of the great mysteries of political life for me is the Ontario Bob Rae factor.  It shows how shallow Ontario politics really is in comparison to the rest of the country in many ways.  The NDP in Ontario is forever tagged as the great evil at our doorsteps and as proof they point to the Rae government- so if you are progressive you have to vote Liberal - in one of the more twisted forces of illogic of all time, because - well we don't want Rae days again do we.  But when it comes to the Liberals led by Rae (and before that Rae holding a very prominent postion), the NDP is still tagged as fiscally irresponsible, without ever mentioning Rae by name, and the so-called progressive crowd (think Alice Klien at Now Magazine) just ignore the reality of Liberal policies and tell us we have to vote Liberal to stop the Conservatives- when it usually makes no sense.  So Rae is vilified on the provincial level, including by many Liberals, but is the mesiah on the federal level- it is as if he were two different people who happen to have the same name.  And a great many people, particularly in the GTA just buy into it.  As I said, Ontario politics has become very shallow and people just default to the old options in a way they don't anywhere else in Canada any more.  At some point this will break and the Liberals in Ontario will succumb to the ineviatable worldwide trend of such brokerage parties and slowly move off the stage, but for now this has to be the place where the NDP focuses some efforts (not that they aren't) for the pay off in over all polling numbers would be very large for every few percentage points gained in Ontario.

But in the end this poll and gloating over it, is ridiculous given the current realities in the history of the NDP and the fact it really only has a placeholder leader, who was chosen to just keep things organized while new leadership was determined, as opposed to the Liberals who chose someone who was supposed to right the ship, but isn't and yet is clearly trying to make his leadership permanent, aided by a media that refuses to look out at the land, and despite all evidence, figure out that the weather has changed, thus giving the Liberals a far bigger share of media face time than the NDP ever had as the third place party.

Newfoundlander_Labradorian wrote:

ottawaobserver wrote:

The numbers now are completely insignificant. Particularly true for monthly movements in tiny regional sub-samples of already small national sample polls.

How exactly is polling data insignificant?

Insignificant insofar as predicting anything about outcomes in four years' time.

KenS wrote:

3.] Leadership. Bob Rae's familiarity means he rates higher than a doorpost. And no one else seems to want the job. Looking good.

Their leadership convention is a about a year and a half away and the rules on how they will select their next leader hasn't even been decided yet, it would be very odd for anyone to announce that they are running. However Dominic LeBlanc did allude to running in May and Borys Wrzesneqskyj has also commented on rebuilding the party and possibly running for the leadership.

ottawaobserver wrote:

Newfoundlander_Labradorian wrote:

ottawaobserver wrote:

The numbers now are completely insignificant. Particularly true for monthly movements in tiny regional sub-samples of already small national sample polls.

How exactly is polling data insignificant?

Insignificant insofar as predicting anything about outcomes in four years' time.

Looking at trends is still very important. If the NDP started gaining on the CPC over the course of the next year it could give the party momentum and lead to more people considering the party and stating that they will vote for them. It can lead to people going from unstable supporters to stable supporters because they feel the party is actually able to maintain support and form government. It's possible that the Liberals could gain back support that went to the NDP in May and with people seeing this is could lead others to start considering the party again. Long term trends matter, what happened with the NDP in May, whereby over the course of a few weeks their support doubled, is so rare that we will likely not see anything like it again.

Compare that to the number and quality of candidates seeking the NDP leadership after the wipeout of 1993.

And they started manouvering and being talked up long before the rules were set. That isn't 'odd'- it is the norm in all parties. In practice, the leadership race has begun as soon as the leader resigns, or that is perceived to be inevitable. In fact, that is usually pressure on the caretaker leadership to not dither in setting the rules.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

How [the Liberals] can contend for government in the next election as the third place party is quite a challenge.

Weren't people saying that before the last election about the NDP?

Jack Harris would have made a better interim leader.

M. Spector wrote:

NDP was 15% behind the Liberals in February and 17% ahead of them on election day.

The NDP finished 11.7% (not 17%)  ahead of the Libs in the 2011 federal election. This was a huge swing but significant changes in support are not at all uncommon during Canadian election campagins.