Canadian by-elections, 2012

[DL]

But... nanos seems to be the outlier for Ontario:

Abacus (jan 16-19) - 25%
Angus-Reid (jan 20-21) - 24%
Harris-decima (jan 12-22) - 26%
all around the same timeframa as the Nanos poll, so the numbers were seeing are not much lower then the 29% from May11

Actually the NDP got 26% in Ontario on May 2/11

[DL]

If there ever was a Liberal "star candidate" waiting in the wings, I suspect that they did a poll of their own, saw that they would get slaughtered and and decided not to be a sacrificial lamb to Bob rae's latest vanity project.

[DL]

There is no good reason why the NDP cannot be competitive in Waterloo, particularly when the party is over 30% in the polls province-wide. It's a very middle class typical Ontario place that is not that different in its makeup from ridings the NDP wins like London-Fanshawe. It's hard to judge by recent election results since the NDP did not target the riding at all and left it as a conservative/Liberal face off. If the NDP spends the maximum allowed and sends in the troops and gets a good candidate (all of which I expect they will) don't be surprised to see the NDP very much in contention here.

[DL]

We don't have any controversial riding names. If someone started using 20th-century political VIPs then maybe, but that hasn't happened yet. Sole exception is Con-derre's riding of Bourassa and even that isn't a BFD here.

The riding of Bourassa is actually NOT named after Robert Bourassa. Its named after Henri Bourassa (no relation) who founded Le Devoir about 100 years ago. The riding has had that name since the early 70s when Robert Bourassa was a first term premier.

There are ridings named after many other former premiers (ie: Taschereau, Duplessis, Jean Lesage, Johnson, Rene Levesque). Its hard to imagine having ridings in Ontario named "George Drew" or "Davis" or "Bob Rae" etc... BTW: In Australia almost all ridings are named after famous people such as ex-PMs and more often then not the name of a riding tells you nothing about where it is located.

That being said, why not rename "Toronto-Danforth" as "Layton" and maybe also rename Mount Royal "Trudeau"...Mount Royal is already a bit of a misnomer since the riding is actually no where near the mountain. Westmount-Ville Marie actually has all of Mount Royal in it!

God forbid that they ever re-name Prince Albert "Diefenbaker"! I think the only case of a riding outside Quebec being named for a politician is Buranby-Douglas which is named after Tommy Douglas who used to represent it in the 60s.

[DL]

Yes, but TMR is actually quite a small part of the riding of Mount Royal. Looking at a map, the "mount" is about two-thirds in Westmount and about one third in Outremont...the names themselves tell the story "Westmount" refers to the western slope of the mountain and "outremont" means "other-side' or "over the mountain" in French.

[DL]

I think than Rogue knows than Bourassa is for Henri.

True than he forgot René-Lévesque, Duplessis, Taschereau, Johnson, Gouin and Jean-Lesage.

And Mount Royal isn't about the mount (which is in Outremont, not in Westmount--Ville-Marie!), but about the Town of Mount Royal (often called TMR in English).

There is also a Sauve riding that i assume is named after ex-Premier Paul Sauve. Nothing for Adelard Godbout or Antonio Barrette though...someday i guess we will have endure having Sherbrooke renamed "Charest" and Lac St. Jean will become "Bouchard"

[DL]

Speaking of Bourassa, there are still rumours swirling that Coderre will resign to run for mayor next year. Personally I'm doubtful because: a) the rules are written so that a non-established party with minimal financing will find it near-impossible to gain a foothold b) Tremblay has been fairly clear about his third-term intentions for a while. All that would do is split the federalist vote and elect Harel or the truther.

FYI, Tremblay was first elected in 2001. This is currently his third term and if he runs again it will be for a fourth term. Everyone says they are running for reelection until they are not. I assume that either Coderre will challenge Tremblay for the nomination as mayoral candidate for his party, OR, Tremblay has privately signalled that he won't run again and Coderre is his hand picked successor.

[DL]

I think Coderre should resign his federal seat and run in the provincial byelection in Bourassa-Sauve. That way he can try to succeed Charest at PLQ leader and then the NDP can easily scopp up the federal Bourassa seat in a byelection!

[DL]

In that case Coderre can run in the riding in the provincial general election. its a win-win for him. If Charest wins, he gets into cabinet for sure and if Charest loses he would be a top contender for the PLQ leadership (who else is there). Let's face it the federal Lioberals are moribund and Coderre must be think of an exit strategy from the sinking ship.

[DL]

The Liberals should win Etobicoke Centre. Its one of maybe 20 ridings in all of Canada that would be classic Tory/Lib Dem marginals if they were in the UK - in other words they have high concentrations of people who are too smart to vote Conservative and also too rich to vote NDP. The probable future for Canada's Liberals is to be a boutique party wealthy professionals and they will have their niche of 20 or so seats (ie: ridings like St. Paul's, Don Valley West, Etobicoke Centre, Westmount, Ottawa South, Lac St. Louis, North vancouver, West Vancouver, Vancouver-Quadra etc...)

[DL]

I agree, but I don't think the Liberals will ever completely vanish - they will rattle along like the British Liberals as a distant third party punished heavily by the FPTP system and reduced to 20-30 seats that will be combination of idiosyncratic seats that happen to have a personally popular Liberal MP and about 10-15 seats across the country that will be the "Liberal base" in that they are larded with rich professionals - and that's it. The Canadian Liberals like their British counterpart will go to bed every night praying that there will be an election that is so close between the two big parties - NDP and CPC that they have the balance of power and can be tossed a few scraps from the adult table.

[DL]

I think the Tories will have a very hard time ever winning any anglo seats in Montreal. Anglo Montrealers are extremely socially liberal - even the wealthiest ones. For them toi vote Tory is like expecting someone in Beverly Hills to vote for George W. Bush. I think that when Cotler retires the NDP will make a major play for Mount Royal and the Liberals will drop out of the picture. Mulcair has major links to the Jewish community in Montreal and will probably recruit a star candidate who can make a respectable showing in Cote St. Luc and Hampstead and the rest of the riding is mostly francophone and allophone and abhors the Conservatives. The Tories had their big chance in mount Royal in 2011 and they blew it - it won't happen again.

Keep in mind that if there is one thing that unites Anglos in Montreal its a desire to keep Quebec in Canada. Now that the NDP is led by an anglo-Quebecer and is the voice of Quebec federally - the NDP has become almost reincarnation of the Liberals in the 70s in terms of being "the party of national unity". The Tories are hated in francophone Quebec and are the main reason why Quebec might want to separate - so the last thing anglos in Quebec want is for canada to have a government that hates Quebec.

[DL]

I think Itcush only ran once before in the 90s for the NDP and it may also have been in mount Royal. Keep in mind that redistribution may also change the boundaries etc...

There are probably all kinds of high profile people the NDP could run in Mount Royal - there may be municipal politicians from Snowdon or TMR or CSL etc...or people from the school boards remember this will be the government in waiting in 2015. Anyone who is ambitious with vaguely centre-left views on economic and social issues will be a possible candidate. Julius Grey says he wants to run next time for the NDP. Maybe he would try mount Royal?

[DL]

To disappear, you need to exist in the first place. In New Brunswick the NDP has never had more than one seat so it cannot be compared to a province like Manitoba where the Liberals were once government and then official opposition before being annihilated. Things are changing in NB, the federal NDP took 29% of the vote there last year and recent polls have the NB NDP in the low to mid 20s - which would be more than enough to start winning seats in Saint John and maybe Fredericton or Moncton and the Northeast

[DL]

Godin's popularity in his riding helps drive up the province-wide NDP vote, but let's not forget that the NDP candidate also took 32% in Sain John in federal election and therte was also a near win in Moncton in a tight three way race.

[DL]

Yes, although you'd think Madawaska-Restigouche would also go NDP, but it's rather Tory friendly (just look at the area provincially)

We shall see how "Tory-friendly" Madawaska-Restigouche becomes after the Tory cuts to Employment Insurance come into effect. In that riding a vast percentage of the population gets EI and people will render a harsh verdict on anyone who tampers with the system. 

[DL]

Its worth noting that historically the NDP has been in single digits in Calgary Centre, but in 2011 the candidate dropped out after the writ was dropped and the NDP had to parachute in a "name on the ballot" from Edmonton who did not campaign and did not respond to the media and did not go to any all-candidates meetings. The NDP still doubled its vote to 15% and was only 2% behind the second place Liberals who ran an active campaign. The Green party actually got 16% in C-Centre in 2008 and then that evaporated to single digits last year.

I think that there is almost no way that the Tories can lose in Calgary Centre, BUT the NDP could still run a very credible candidate, spend the maximum and try to come in a solid second. It would be a good way of making a statement that the NDP under Mulcair is NOT writing off Alberta and is willing to take the fight right into the heart of Harper country!

[DL]

BTW, NB NDP leader Dominic Cardy will be running in Rothesay. Not something I would've recommended.

What's he got to lose. The NDP has no seats. Rothesay is a suburban Saint John seat where the federal NDP took 30% of the vote last May. Provincially its a super-safe seat so no one expects Cardy to win, least of all the NDP, but in the meantime, he can easily double or triple the vote share the NDP had in the 2010 election, get some media profile and quite possibly come in second. I don't think Cardy is in it to win - he just wants to raise his profile and get some publicity. He only really loses if he fails to increase the NDP vote at all from 2010 - which is extremely unlikely. 

[DL]

I think the NDP will shock everyone and win the Rothesay byelection. You heard it here.

[DL]

I think the NDP will shock everyone and win the Rothesay byelection. You heard it here.

I don't think they'll win, but getting 40% is not out of the realm of possibility.

Rothesay is a pretty competitive three-way race, if anyone gets 40% of the vote - they win for sure. In fact, I would bet money that whoever wins will win with LESS than 40% of the vote.

[DL]

The day the byelection was called if you had said the NDP would win almost 28% of the vote and triple its % of the vote in Rothesay - people would have said you were crazy. Of the 55 ridings in New Brunswick this one is just about #55 in winnability for the NDP - so I think that while some people might have gotten a bit carried away about Cardy's chances - in the end he achieved his inititial objective which was to greatly increase the popular vote and raise his profile with the media across the province - which he did.

[DL]

Federally the NDP took 29% of the vote in NB last year...if they managed to repeat that performance and get 29% or 30% in the 2014 provincial election it would probably means about 9 or 10 seats in the NB legislature...nothing to sneer at. In Sept. 2010 the NB NDP took 10% of the vote. In May 2011 the federal NDP took 29% in NB - if the provincial NDP can get anywhere near the level of support the federal party had - it would be a success beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

[DL]

Cardy is a competent leader, but according to the polls he is still relatively unknown and does not run ahead of the party in popularity. This was actually the first time in his life that he had run for public office. He is not (at least not yet) the Jack Layton of New Brunswick...he is more comparable to Alexa MacDonough in the early 1980s - competent, still unknown to 95% of the population etc...Let's also keep in mind that this byelection was called very very fast - literally within a week of the seat becoming vacant. The number of NDP members in Rothesay could literally be counted on one hand and a campaign had to be built from scratch - the PC and Libs on the other hand have long, long histories of being competitive there and have organizational machines that totally dwarf anything the NDP can put in place on such short notice.

[DL]

David McDonald - who went from being a PC cabinet minister to being Alexa MacDonough's boyfriend?

[DL]

I don't think we should even talk about Oshawa in the same breath as Durham. While the NDP has not won Oshawa since 1990 - it has had a popular vote there way above the Ontario average in every election. Durham is more of a dead zone - though in addition to winning there in 1990, the ONDP also won Durham East in 1975!

I don't think its as simple as saying that for the NDP to win Oshawa the Liberals need to be stronger. It depends on HOW they are stronger. I don't think it would help the NDP at all in Oshawa if the Liberals ran some really progressive left-liberal who gained ground by cutting into the NDP vote!!

Quite frankly, i think the reason the NDP keeps hitting the ceiling in Oshawa is that they keep running a succession of "old NDP" candidates who appeal to the CAW crowd but are not all all attractive to all the middle class suburbanistes in Oshawa who do NOT work for GM and who might be open to the NDP if the candidate wasn't always such a throwback to another era. As long as the NDP keeps running people like Sid Ryan and a succession of CAW local presidents they will keep hitting that ceiling. Maybe in 2015 they will find a candidate who the auto workers like but who also has some appeal to the suburban commuters who live in Oshawa who might want a progressive alternative to harper and Co.