Canadian by-elections, 2014

[DL]

I think the federal Tories made inroads among Jewish voters largely by pandering to them over Israel. Its a different story at the provincial level where foreign policy is irrelevant - and so the small "l" liberal tendencies of Jewish voters tend to manifest themselves.

[DL]

There is also about a 99.9% chance of a federal Byelection in Trinity-Spadina when Olivia Chow resigns to run for mayor of Toronto. It's worth noting that in just about every election since the NDP was founded in 1961 the NDP vote% in Trinity-Spadina is always 15 to 25 percent above the NDP vote share in Toronto Centre Formerly Rosedale). Since the NDP took 36% in the Toronto Centre Byelection if the pattern holds the NDP will get 50-60% when the Byelection in T-S happens

[DL]

Depends on what you classify as eastern Ontario. The NDP was quite competitive in Peterborough in the 2011 ON election and it's one of the most marginal Liberal seats. Kingston is another wild card since the NDP has a strong candidate and the longtime Liberal incumbent is retiring.

[DL]

Not in a GE context though, looking at Ipsos. What Wynne and Hudak will say is that at least they're standing for things which may be unpopular.

Which means that they stand for things that are unpopular! Who knows what would happen in a general election campaign. In 1990 the polls when the election called had the Liberals cruising to another majority at 45% and the NDP and PCs were mired in the low 20s...four weeks later the ONDP won a majority government with 38% of the vote

[DL]

Thornhill could turn out to be closer based on their track record with over estimating the Tories, but I don't see the Jews going Liberal.

At the provincial level, Jews have been wayyyy more loyal to the Liberals than was the case federally in 2011. Just six months after the federal Tories won heavily Jewish ridings like Eglinton-Lawrence and York Centre - the Ontario Liberals easily held those ridings by wide margins and gave Shurman a bit of a run for his money in Thornhill.

[DL]

Assuming Forum holds tomorrow, who'll get more media crap: Wynne or Hudak?

Wynne. Despite his hometown being in the riding, Hudak has nothing to lose in the race.

I don't know; At the get go Hudak/PCs were leading the polls in both ridings... As long as the PCs win Thornhill the media will be more harsh to Wynne, raving for Horwath and neutral on Hudak. Basically he will survive as leader, if he losses both... i could see a leadership revolt happeneing (already there is a ground swell of anger at Hudak's policies)

The thing is for Hudak - he needs to WIN the next election. Of all of the ridings that the PCs did not win in the last election - Niagara Falls is the one they lost by the narrowest margin. In other words it is the lowest hanging fruit in the entire province for the PCs - plus it includes Hudak's hometown, plus the same riding went to the federal Tories by a 30 point landslide in 2011. If Hudak cannot take Niagara Falls from the Liberals and it goes NDP instead - it begs the question - are there ANY ridings in the whole province that the PCs can gain.

[DL]

Interestingly, the swing to the NDP in Niagara Falls wasn't as impressive as in Kitchener-Waterloo or London West. I wonder if there's less wind in the NDP's sails, or Niagara Falls is just less NDP-friendly than those other seats? Or perhaps running a very "union looking" man scared voters more than the friendly looking female school trustees that ran in the other two seats. (reverse sexism?) After all, there was a ridiculous campaign by the right wing parties calling Wayne Gates a "radical".

There is a simple reason for that. In 2011 the ONDP heavily targeted Niagara Falls and ran the former mayor of Fort Erie - he succeeded in raising the NDP vote in the riding from 4th place (yes 4th) in 2007 with 9% of the vote to 26% in 2011 - so the NDP vote in NF in '11 was already boosted. In contrast, London West and Kitchener-Waterloo were not NDP targets at all in 2011 and the campaigns in those ridings were very weak - so in other words the NDP had much bigger swings in KW and London West mostly because they were coming from a much lower level and had more growth potential. In NF a large part of the growth already happened 2007 to 2011. 

[DL]

This has nothng to do with byelections, there are just people saying they won't run in the next election.

[DL]

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.

[DL]

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.

Sounds like a toothless fixed election date law. There is nothing any provincial legislature can do to interfere with the "reserve powers of the crown" (ie: that is a fancy way of saying that the Lieut. Gov. has to obey the advice of the Premier). If the new PC leader wants to wait until Oct. 2016 before calling an election - there is nothing to legally stop that - unless his or her own party revolted and voted non-confidence.

[DL]

I believe Quebec also has a fixed election date law that Marois seems ready to break tomorrow. Does anyone care?

[DL]

Keep that politics in Newfoundland is very very very personality based in way that is unique in Canada. I have no idea who will win the byelection in Virginia Waters but if Shelagh O'Leary is still personally very popular in an area where she had a lot of support municipally it could make all the difference. Parties in NL tend to often engage in fratricidal war, they eventually brush themselves off and move on...it wasn't that long ago that the NL Liberals were divided and in disarray - yet evn in those circumstances they managed to win some seats in 2011 for no other reason than running some locally popular candidates who won in some west coast ridings. who knows?

[DL]

Nevermind: an aide clarified that Flaherty will be staying on as an MP. I guess till the election, but rather strange for a former FM to sit on the backbench for 14-18 months.

Paul Martin was a former PM and he kept his seat in Parliament right through the 2008 election.

[DL]

Trinity-Spadina poll by RB's favourite pollster:

NDP: 46
Liberal: 32
Cons: 15
Grn: 6

Surprisingly, NDP voters from 2011 are the most likely to stay with the same party.

Also note the huge gender gap in the poll. NDP leads with women (55-25), but Liberals with men (40-37)!

Its worth noting that the Forum poll was conducted over a week ago on March 13 - why they sat on it for so long is a bit of a mystery - I point this out because that means that this poll didn't even take into account a weeks worth of bad publicity about Justin Trudeau liquidating Christine Innes who was all set to run for the Liberals here. In the end its still early days - but seeing poll numbers like this will make any prospective Liberal candidate think long and hard about running and likely losing.

[DL]

Actually from what I've heard "the party" wanted a contested nomination but Cressy (to his credit) did a good job of making himself look unbeatable and no one wanted to run against him and lose. So it goes.

[DL]

That's rather unfortunate. Doesn't Barry Weisleder live in Trinity-Spadina? He should've run. It would've been very amusing.

He actually does not live in Trinity-Spadina and in any case he would probably never get past the vetting process to be allowed to run. He was already rejected by the ONDP as a candidate in Thornhill in 2011

[DL]

I wonder if Flaherty's wife will run?

It must be shock to suddenly lose a spouse like this - I wonder more whether she might not run federally OR provincially (given that if there is an Ontario election this spring she'd have to run for re-election)

[DL]

All these Cassandras are suddenly whining about the NDP nominating a so-called insider in Joe Cressy. Well it has been the worst kept secret in Toronto for the last year that there would be vacancy and ANYONE could have been out there laying groundwork to get the NDP nomination. All these back-seat drivers complain but none of them were willing to step up to the plate themselves. Joe Cressy worked hard to build support among party members in the riding - and anyone else was free to do the same. If everyone else was too lazy to do that - that is their problem.

I will wait and see what happens in the campaign - there are a lot of "moving parts" and for the talk Vaughan's "machine" - he essentially had no opposition in 2010 - so I'm not sure that he has much of an actual machine - also people are now running with parties and that has a big impact on how people vote as well - for example vaughan will now have to defend Trudeau's refusal to cooperate with the NDP in order to remove Harper after the 2015 election

[DL]

Also, Crombie is in his 80s and retired (to say the least) so he has nothing to lose. Miller has no reason to intervene one way or the other and probably knows Cressy and Vaughan very well...

In answer to the question of why the NDP didn't approach Vaughan - well first of all how do we know they didn't. They likely approached lots of people about running. If they didn't approach him it would probably be some combination of knowing that he was always a closet Liberal, plus the fact that on a personal level Vaughan is detested by almost all the other progressive councillors and is considered to be a dick and very difficult to work with - so I assume the NDP didn't want to have him in their caucus!

[DL]

52-31. Good job, NDP. Let's pick some white guy no one has ever heard of to fill the shoes of Olivia Chow. Why weren't we courting Vaughan?

So what would have been the alternative - a woman of colour no one had ever heard of who would be just as much of an underdog if not more? If Vaughan wins in the end it will be because no one the NDP could have nominated would have had any chance - apart from Mike Layton who apparently wanted to stay at city hall. If Vaughan loses (still entirely possible) it will be because Cressy works like dog over the next few months, uncovers some Liberal/Vaughan vulnerabilities and makes himself well-known.

Most REALLY famous people have better things to do with their time than to want to have a dreadful job like being a member of parliament

[DL]

So you've heard second or third hand that most progressive councillors think that Vaughan is a dick? 

Good to know!

Not second or third hand - first hand. He is a loner on council and very unpopular among his colleagues. Kind of a Rob Ford of the municipal left. That's neither here nor there - lots of people with horrible personalities who treat people like sh**t - get lots of votes!

[DL]

What level of government are you referring to? I've heard that Adrian Dix turned out to be a bit of dick in BC

[DL]

In Toronto.  They exist, right?  Just asking.

I've heard disparaging comments about Anthony Peruzza and supposedly Maria Augimeri has a few screws loose.

[DL]

Good thing they'll probably never run for MPP or MP then.

But seriously...a lot of this "personality" stuff doesn't matter much unless we're dealing with personality cults like Rob Ford where being a thug is his "politics."

You asked why the NDP might not have gone out of its way to beg Vaughan to run for them - I'm saying part of the reason is that there is a lot of friction between him and NDP councillors at city and he was always very personally hostile towards Jack Layton and Olivia Chow...so he was viewed as a vote and nothing more.

This "personality stuff" may not matter much to voters who are seldom exposed personally to politicians' temper tantrums etc...but it does matter to parties themselves (e.g. caucuses and activists) who also consider whether - all things being equal - they want someone in their midst who is not a team player and is very personally unpleasant.

[DL]

Well, it's too bad then if Vaughan wins. It's really bad optics for the NDP to lose the riding, which has historically been one of their better ridings. If the NDP can't win in their traditional areas, then the media will have a field day.

The NDP has been down that road before when they lost the even more supersafe traditional stronghold of Winnipeg North to the Liberal in 2010 under similar circumstances...the media had a field day for a few days and then 5 months later the NDP won 103 seats and the Liberals were reduced to 34.

In the meantime we are all ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room! I predict that Harper will call the two Alberta byelections very soon, but that he will delay calling the byelections in Trinity-Spadina, Scarborough-Agincourt and Whitby-Oshawa until well after the almost certain Ontario provincial election to take place in June...the outcome of that election is a total wild card and could have a profound impact on what happens in the byelections and I don't have time to list all the permutations.