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By-election blues
Tue, 2018-12-04 14:52
#1
By-election blues
Tue, 2018-12-04 14:53
#2
What happened to the NDP? This result doesn' look good for the Liberals but incumbent governments usually lose byelections.
For the NDP, however, it does not reflect well on their new leader. Singh's only competition with Trudeau is which one is the bigger gadfly. Stodgy Scheer need only stay in the background to win the next general election.
Tue, 2018-12-04 16:52
#3
Don't be blue, Martin. The NDP got 3% of the vote, which put them 0.1% ahead of the Greens who received a paltry 2.9%. Next year's election will be a slam dunk - guaranteed. [Good grief, are we in trouble.]
Tue, 2018-12-04 17:08
#4
Given that the NDP under Mulcair lost nearly 10% of its 18% vote share I guess the voters in that riding think the NDP is no longer a party that can contend. The NDP has never had a change of winning this riding since forever.
Wed, 2018-12-05 01:11
#5
On November 29th, 2010 the NDP lost Winnipeg North, a riding they had held for 37 of the previous 48 years, including the last two elections, lost Dauphin-Swan Lake-Marquette, and won 1.7% in Vaughn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By-elections_to_the_40th_Canadian_Parliame...—Swan_River—Marquette)
However, less than six months later, on May 2nd, 2011, the NDP won 103 seats in the federal election, their greatest outcome ever. I'm not saying what's going to happen in the future, but things can change rapidly in modern politics.
Wed, 2018-12-05 04:01
#6
Sorry, which by-election are we talking about here?
Wed, 2018-12-05 09:27
#7
On November 29th, 2010 the NDP lost Winnipeg North, a riding they had held for 37 of the previous 48 years, including the last two elections, lost Dauphin-Swan Lake-Marquette, and won 1.7% in Vaughn. However, less than six months later, on May 2nd, 2011, the NDP won 103 seats in the federal election, their greatest outcome ever.
That had a lot to do with an NDP leader who was very popular in Quebec taking seats from a declining Bloc Quebecois. You might also note that the NDP did not take back Winnipeg North or come anywhere near winning the other two in 2011, despite that leader being pretty popular in anglophone Canada as well.
Wed, 2018-12-05 10:23
#8
Quote:
"With just three per cent of the vote — less than half of what the party managed in 2015 — the New Democrats scored their worst result in Leeds–Grenville since the 2000 election. Though the NDP has never held this riding, the party nevertheless took between 11 and 18 per cent of the vote under Jack Layton's leadership. Being in the low single digits puts the party in the same range as during the Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough years — the worst years for the NDP.
The party has lost support in 13 of 14 byelections now, managing half of the support under Jagmeet Singh as it did in 2015. The party finished just 24 votes ahead of the Greens in Leeds–Grenville."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-leeds-grenville-byelection-1.49...
Wed, 2018-12-05 13:01
#9
Its so frustrating to see some people refuse to see the iceburg in front of the Titanic.
3% is a pathetic result anywhere, that's fringe party results. I don't care that they had no chance of winning based on the previous results, the issue isn't that they lost, its that they performed pathetically.
Wed, 2018-12-05 16:30
#10
The NDP rushed to disown its socialist past and now the brain trust in Ottawa wonders why it can't hold onto its former left wing voters. Canada has a significant minority of people who will vote for a principled party on the left. The NDP filled that niche and garnered somewhere in the 20% range nationally. In BC that pool of voters is closer to 40%. After the 2011 surprise showing the party insiders decided that a move to the middle was the only way to get a 40% plurality of voters to support the party in 2015. The Quebec anomaly filled the House with seats but it blinded the party to the reality that in Ontario they still only polled 25%. The people fell for the Liberal classic "run from the left" and wiped the floor with Mulcair. Now you have a resurgent left talking Liberal party so the left liberals are not interested in the third party and people like me don't give a damn anymore because it is a party without the principles it had twenty years ago. Blaming the current leader is extremely myopic and short sighted.
Wed, 2018-12-05 18:52
#11
Agreed kropotkin1951.
I ran into a brother the other day and he was trying to convince me to come out to the next union PAC meeting and ONDP/NDP conventions. But I had to tell I'm I'm a Maoist now and the NDP are too far to the right for me. He said that the NDP needs people like us to bring the party back to the left. I told him he's wasting his time.
What do you think brother?
Thu, 2018-12-06 04:08
#12
On November 29th, 2010 the NDP lost Winnipeg North, a riding they had held for 37 of the previous 48 years, including the last two elections, lost Dauphin-Swan Lake-Marquette, and won 1.7% in Vaughn. However, less than six months later, on May 2nd, 2011, the NDP won 103 seats in the federal election, their greatest outcome ever.
That had a lot to do with an NDP leader who was very popular in Quebec taking seats from a declining Bloc Quebecois. You might also note that the NDP did not take back Winnipeg North or come anywhere near winning the other two in 2011, despite that leader being pretty popular in anglophone Canada as well.
I'll also add to that that the federal party's lacklustre performance in Manitoba continued. The NDP fell well out of contention in Winnipeg North in 2015 (I can't remember off-hand if they placed behind the Conservatives) and they lost Winnipeg Centre quite comfortably. Blaikie winning was a bright spot, but that honestly came as a surprise. Blaikie also had fewer votes in 2015 than Jim Malloway did in 2011, and his only saving grace was that the then-Conservative MP lost more votes.
Thu, 2018-12-06 19:56
#13
I ran into a brother the other day and he was trying to convince me to come out to the next union PAC meeting and ONDP/NDP conventions. But I had to tell I'm I'm a Maoist now and the NDP are too far to the right for me. He said that the NDP needs people like us to bring the party back to the left. I told him he's wasting his time.
I was just reading this op-ed from Macleans about the rise of populism in Canada - the writer of the op-ed (Frank Graves and Michael Valpy) writes
"Federal Conservatives also hold an advantage over Liberals and New Democrats with voters who self-identify as working class, and the party has overwhelming support from non-university-educated Canadians, the group most likely to feel left behind by the disappearance of blue-collar industries."
https://www.macleans.ca/politics/canada-is-a-tinderbox-for-populism-the-...
So if they have lost that vote to the Conservatives, and they are alienating the socialist wing where does that leave them?
Thu, 2018-12-06 20:06
#14
It's what happens when you put "respectability" before anything and everything else, before making it clear to the world what you stand for and who you will fight for(and alongside).
The polls and this byelection result prove that the type of voter this strategy is meant to appeal to-the socially liberal, fiscally conservative , dismissively anti-activist and anti-activism voter that supposedly haunts every Tim Horton's from St. John's to Victoria-will either never consider voting for the NDP no matter what, or simply doesn't EXIST.
Thu, 2018-12-06 20:30
#15
How many times do you go around and around before you give it up as a bad business and a lost cause. Why would anyone at this point in history, with a heart or a brain vote for any one of these awful ding-dongs? Just look at the shit they've supported. Or even more revealing, what they've not supported. The Canadian political scene is a grotesque embarraassment and completely inadequate to the critical tasks at hand. And that's an understatement. Get serious. Fix it or fuck it.
Thu, 2018-12-06 21:13
#16
Indeed. Canada needs a Corbyn...or a movement of hundreds of thousands of Corbynites...and it needs it now. So does the States.
Thu, 2018-12-06 21:32
#17
Indeed.
Fri, 2018-12-07 00:57
#18
Indeed. Canada needs a Corbyn...or a movement of hundreds of thousands of Corbynites...and it needs it now.
The problem here is, who? The closest we have rhetorically to a Corbyn or Sanders type figure is Niki Ashton. The reason, however, that Corbyn and Sanders have the level of credibility that they have is because they both have long histories of consistently standing up for their principles even if it wasn't popular, and have been doing so since before Niki could see over an MP's desk. There's also the general problem that rhetorical differences aside, when push comes to shove you go along to get along in the NDP. Even when her dad ran for leadership of the Manitoba NDP (whom I supported the first 2 times) on a platform of returning to the party's roots and living up to the "Democratic" word that is in the party's name, stood in line after the ballots were counted.