Canadian by-elections, 2014

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Underestimating governing parties perhaps? I don't know, I'm just imagining since I don't recall much of FR's polls in August outside Ottawa South.

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Depressing, as everything in this country.

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Plus we all hate Gritdom, right?

When instead we should be concerned about Hudak's coming reign of terror, alas.

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Won't there be a General election in a year at any rate?

The last NL election was in Oct. 2011 and that might be postponed to Spring 2012 due to the scheduled federal election in Oct. 2011...the PCs have a huge majority in the NL legislature - I see no reason why they would be crazy enough to call an early election when they are  about to pick a new Premier and they would have every reason to let that person govern for as long as possible to erase the memory of Kathy Dunderdale.

I predict no NL election for another two years.

Newfoundland's election law requires an election within twelve months of the election of a new PM when the PM resigns before the end of the third year of the legislature. This was discussed in another thread.

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Keep it on topic kids.

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Very interesting posts from above. Obviously, everything will depend on how strong the the parties run next year. If the Conservatives stay in the low-to-mid 50s (or even below 50%), serious opportunities will open up for the Liberals and NDP.

From what I can tell, the downtown ridings in Calgary are Calgary Confederation and Calgary Centre (the former a more urban version of Calgary Centre-North that now contains the University of Calgary, while the latter has basically contracted). Now, I've seen the detailed map of results from 2011. What makes Calgary Skyview (which I think is a pretty cool name, as the successor of Calgary Northeast) such a top Liberal target? That did seem to be their best riding in Alberta and they appear to have a strong candidate, but generally anything outside of core urban areas have been toxic to the Liberals and NDP.

It looks like the Liberals (and NDP, to a somewhat lesser extent) have a lot to like from the way the new seats have been drawn in Edmonton and Calgary. The real challenge for the Liberals in Calgary seems to be consolidating a very divided vote on the left.

Calgary Skyview is a growing suburban (albeit not a particularly affluent one for Calgary suburbia - it's a fairly industrial zone in parts near the airport) majority-minority riding (59.6% non-white in 2011 according to the NHS, it was just below 50% in 2006), with an especially large South Asian (Punjabi) population (about a fifth of the total population) - which makes it, afaik, the most minority-heavy riding in Alberta. In 2011, the Liberals performed best in the new subdivisions, which also overlap with the parts of the riding with the largest Punjabi-speaking population. Of course, given the unusually strong Liberal result in 2011, I presume that there may have been a local factor at play.

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Unsurprisingly, but still quite amusingly, the PQ is getting clobbered right now. Down from 16.6% in 2014, which was already a crap-poor result.