Canadian federal election - October 19, 2015 (Official Campaign Thread)

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For all their making hay about brown people, the Bloc has gained.precisely zero support. They're still at high teens and will be lucky to have more seats than the Greens.

The Conservatives won't move to restrict immigration. They worked so hard to appeal to immigrant communities which gave them their majority in 2011, but their niqab circus is already risking all of them.

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Daily Ekos:

Lib 34.1 Con 32.5 NDP 21.1

Ontario: Lib 40 Con 33 NDP 19

Quebec: Lib 28 NDP 25 Con 25

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http://www.news1130.com/2015/10/02/conservative-issues-immigrants-backfiring/

Reasonable to assume the same thing is occurring in the 905 area. The implications for both this election and the future are serious.

I second Foucaulf's complaint about there not being any link to the poll itself. Not that it's your fault, but it's annoying that I can't check and see if there are any issues with the poll itself. It would also be nice if we had any riding polls of Brampton or Richmond to confirm. There were some Brampton ones done in Jan/14 that had us neck and neck with the Liberals, but who knows what could have happened since then.

Here's the detailed data: http://www.insightswest.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Election_MC_Tables.pdf

Congratulations Steve, you've made your party unelectable among the country's fastest growing demographic for a generation to come.

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Mulcair enters third stage of grief: http://globalnews.ca/news/2268610/mulcair-says-hed-join-coalition-to-defeat-conservatives/

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Riding projections put him at risk in his own seat. If the NDP falls to, say, 60 seats and he loses his own seat to the Liberals, he's out.

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Why does EKOS seem to have a higher conservative vote than most.

They seriously underestimated Conservative support in 2011 and reevaluated their model to assume lower turnout among celll phone only voters. This time, Graves claims this demographic is three times larger and much more engaged. But he isn't adjusting his model.

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Harper at risk of losing 12 seats in ON.

It'll be an excellent night for them only to lose 12 Ontario seats. But the fact they expect Julian Fantino to lose means they privately expect a sea of red from Burlington to Ajax (with blue Thornhill and a few orange islands).

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No Nanos today, but Ekos hints that Robert Fife is being truthful.

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Ekos says Liberals are approaching Chretien levels in Ontario. NDP recovering with clear lead in Quebec.

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Dan Gagnier resigns from the Grit campaign after his lobbying advice to EnergyEast was revealed.

Not that it will make a huge difference, but its nice to see the Liberals finally get a negative story.

The next few years of Liberal rule will be a slow drip of negative stories and scandals, as is usual of Liberal governments.

That's the same with every non-totalitarian government...

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The Dan Gagnier revelation may have just saved Mulcair's job. It reminds Quebecers of everything they hate about the Liberals, allowing the NDP to bounce to 35% provincewide and save most of its seats. The Liberal lead in Ontario is too big to change, though.

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If he goes ahead with the officially-not-a-rally with the Fords, sure.

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What a joke. They would have been better off asking voters to consider the importance of individual issues when making their choice. Even for a newspaper endorsement in the 21st century that seems quaint.

Anyway, Nanos implies a significant narrowing of the gap in Ontario to only 10 points, but the Liberals exceeding the NDP in Quebec. This is consistent with what Ekos showed yesterday. I expected the Gagnier controversy to lead to an NDP spike in Quebec (as it reminds them of sponsorship) and no change in Ontario (since Ontarians put up with cartoonishly corrupt provincial Liberals anyway).

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Does anyone else remember how, in the weekend before the Alberta election in May, the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal made a half-hearted endorsement of the PCs, and then immediately apologized?

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Angus Reid says Lib 35, Con 31, NDP 22

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Angus Reid says Lib 35, Con 31, NDP 22

Shy Tory syndrome with those numbers could still potentially eke out a very slim CPC minority, right?

Shy Tory is a myth. There's a shy incumbent effect if the incumbent successfully plants fear in the minds of undecided voters, regardless whether it is left or right. But the window to plant fear is closing fast.

In any case, a slim CPC minority won't last very long.

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I have one question. Why isn't the unite the left movement as strong as the unite the right movement was. If the left United it would 've been a total blowout for the left

If Harper were to win another majority *and* the Liberals didn't improve on their 2011 performance, then the pressure for a Liberal/NDP merger would be immense.

That was actually Harper's ambition: to destroy the Liberals as a big-tent centreish-left party and force a merger with the NDP, calculating that voters would most of the time choose the Conservatives, thus establishing his baby as the new Natural Governing Party.

TBH he would much rather lose to even a far-left NDP than a Liberal Party led by Trudeau.

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Conservative volunteers in Brampton Centre thrown under the bus after being caught red handed vandalizing Liberal and NDP signs: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/brampton-signs-vandalism-conservative-1.3275649

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"Just not ready" didn't have the punch of "Just visiting" or "do you think it's easy to set priorities." They should have gone with something along the lines of "pompous douchebag."

With all the Obama campaign staffers in the Liberal Party, they will learn to define the new Conservative leader almost immediately after he/she is elected. The new leader will be associated with an unpopular Harper policy (or at least one that will galvanize their own base or alienate a crucial swing demographic), and/or portrayed as out of touch with ordinary families. Just as the 2012 US presidential election became a referendum on Romney, the next federal election would become a referendum about the new leader.

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The Conservatives have been remarkably tight-knit, held together either by the promise of a majority or the reality of government. But occasionally there are rebellions by its Reform wing: sometimes backbench MPs vow to study the definition of life, which Harper always moves quickly to quash. Or, when Reformists propose to change the rules that elect a new leader.

The Conservative Party simply has never existed without Harper. We'll wait and see. But if Jason Kenney tries to rig the game to favour himself, there'll be a pushback.

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From Ekos:

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Same is true in the Prairies. Outside Ontario and the Maritimes the Liberals have very few chances outside the major cities. If they're sneaky enough to introduce AV, then they really have a good chance at becoming once again the Natural Governing Party. Which is why I think that will happen.

Edit: and even if many four way races in Quebec are narrowly won by the Liberals *and* they reach Chretien-level support in Ontario, they're still short of a majority.

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Sure, but as long as they're the second choice of a sufficient number of voters to their left and right, they will at least always hold the balance of power even when not in government. Of course if their campaign is as awful as 2011...

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Conrad Black endorses Justin. Given last week's column, not surprising.

I LOL'd at the Black-like phrase he used to describe Harper.

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You know you're addicted when you're nervously refreshing the Nanos homepage on a Sunday night.