Canadian by-elections, 2015

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The first poll in Sudbury is by Forum in today's Toronto star and it has some surprises. Despite being totally unknown and only nominated on Sunday the NDP candidate Suzanne Shawbonquit narrowly leads with 42% followed by turncoat Liberal Glenn Thibeault at 40%. Well back is the Tory at 13% and the Green at 3%.

What about the former Liberal candidate Michael Olivier running as an independent? He trails at just 1%!!

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Two facts worth noting:

1. Thibeault backed Mulcair for the NDP leadership over other candidates who had personal styles more similar to Layton

2. Jack Layton's mother personal sent an open letter to Thibeault condemning him and essentially saying that her late son is rolling over in his grave

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I'm told that Olivier voters tend to have the NDP as their second choice over Thibeault by about a 5 to 1 margin - so the more his vote is suppressed the better Shawbonquit's chances.

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I don't think Sudbury was "about" Andrea Horwath...it was "do you want a government MPP to make sure your roads ever get paved?" followed by "do you think the Liberals are crooks because of what they did in trying to bribe Andrew Olivier?", followed by "Do you think Thibeault is a traitor for switching parties?". It was a byelection, no one was voting for the next Premier of the province.

The people who bitch about Andrea Horwath NEVER seem to be able to name anyone who they think would make a better leader - and until they do, this issue is moot.

For all the talk of her "sacrificing" three Toronto seats...I agree that her campaign wasn't very appealing to downtown Toronto - but even if she had pressed every single button to gladden the hearts of intellectual NDP-Liberal swing voters in downtown Toronto, I'm not sure how much of a difference it would have made. Maybe Beaches-East York would have stayed NDP - but I don't think Trinity-Spadina was salvageable no matter what Horwath said or did and Davenport is a question mark.

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Singh would be an awesome leader, I think. But his ethnicity would be toxic in northern Ontario.

I totally disagree that people in Northern Ontario are all racists who would never vote for a party led by a South Asian. A lot of people thought that people in places like Sudbury and Thunder Bay would also never vote for a party led by a lesbian! - and last time i checked being homosexual was still somewhat more taboo than being from India - and Wynne's sexual orientation seems to have been a complete non-issue to the voters.

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Obviously racism exists...but there is less of it among people in the NDP universe than in the rest of the population...and need i remind you that the US is VASTLY more racist than Canada and they elected a black man as president. Oh an btw - how is it that Calgary of all places has a mayor who is a Muslim South Asian?

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Obviously racism exists...but there is less of it among people in the NDP universe than in the rest of the population...and need i remind you that the US is VASTLY more racist than Canada and they elected a black man as president. Oh an btw - how is it that Calgary of all places has a mayor who is a Muslim South Asian?

Relationships between White people and Native people in northern Quebec and Ontario are close of Deep South ones.

Yes, I seem to recall that the BQ incumbent in Abitibi-Baie James told local media that Romeo Saganash could never be elected because he was aboriginal...then Saganash beat him by a huge margin.

Anyways this all started when i disagreed with the assertion that people in Northern Ontario were too racist to vote for the NDP if it was led by a South Asian. Let's look at BC - for most of the last 20 years the riding of Yale-Lillooet later called Fraser-Nicola (a primary resource based seat in the BC interior much like seats in northern Ontario) has elected an Indo-Canadian NDP MLA named Harry Lali. Why would miners and forestry workers in the BC interior be willing to vote for a Sikh but supposedly those living in northern Ontario would not?

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He has no connections to the communities in the north, so it would be hard for him to overcome the cultural/racial barriers people would have.

What "connections" does Kathleen Wynne have to "communities in the north"? She is a patrician from north Toronto! and ironically the Ontario NDP did better in northern Ontario when led by a patrician from Toronto (Bob Rae) and by a woman from Hamilton - than it ever did when led by Howard Hampton who actually did have connections to communities in the north!

PS: Take a look at Tim Uppal the Conservative MP for the very white riding of Edmonton-Sherwood Park - i guess those rightwing rednecks in Alberta don't mind voting for a turban wearing bearded Sikh either!

http://www.timuppal.ca/

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Shouldn't Bramalea-Gore-Malton and Oshawa also be considered Toronto seats?

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Bramalea-Gore-Malton and Oshawa are part of the Greater Toronto Area and are essentially suburban Toronto (especially the former). Back in 1963 - all of what is now Mississauga, Brampton and York Region was just farmers fields and the entire Toronto metropolitan area was contained in what is now the City of Toronto but was then Metro Toronto made up of six boroughs...with the explosive growth of Toronto, the city has overflowed well beyond its boundaries and so a place like Bramalea-Gore Malton is basically an overflow of northern Etobicoke - and while Oshawa was once considered a separate city from Toronto - its now basically been absorbed by Toronto and is most made up of suburban commuters.

In the long run the suburban belt around Toronto is where almost all the population growth will be concentrated and where new seats will be created in every future redistribution...if the NDP is ever to take power in Ontario - it really won't be about winning back a couple of seats in downtown Toronto. It will be about winning new burgeoning suburban seats like Bramalea-Gore-Malton which are low income and heavily ethnic. Now that the average single family home in the old City of Toronto sells for about a million dollars - the downtown ridings are fast becoming a very wealthy enclave that will likely swing to the right politically since only super rich people will be able to afford to live there.

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A by-election will be held in Jean-Talon, QC (it's in Quebec City) after Yves Bolduc, the Education minister resigned to return to medecine.

Interestingly Jean Talon is a 98% francophone riding where the wealthy elites of Quebec City (sort of the equivalent of Outremont)  live that has NEVER gone anything but Liberal. The PQ has come close a couple of time when they were sweeping the province but they have never ever won it.

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Well Dartmouth South was a reasonably solid NDP seat prior to the 2013 Liberal landslide in Nova Scotia - interesting to see if the NDP can win it back...it could be an opportunity for a leadership candidate who is not currently in caucus.

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Yes but a byelection is still chance for people to register a protest vote and the NS government has declared war on public service employees recently...a lot would depend on the candidate and timing of thje byelection - word is that the NS government is about to bring in a brutal budget that will be very unpopular

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Funny things happen in byelections - especially when the byelection in question is in a seat that is historically won by another party. In April 2004 the Ontario Liberals were six months into their first mandate and were riding high in the polls - the Ontario NDP had lost official party status and was in disarray. In October 2003 the Liberals had won the historically NDP seat of Hamilton East for the third time in a row by a wide margin. Six months later the Liberal MPP died suddenly. Given that Ontario liberal support was way up even from their landslide election and the NDP was way down - Hamilton East ought to have been an easy Liberal hold - instead the NDP candidate Andrea Horwath not only won the byelection, but won it by a 2 to 1 margin! 

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Keep in mind that Jenny Kwan won't actually resign her provincial seat until the federal writ drop in September meaning that a by election in Vancouver-mount pleasant won't happen until November at the earliest

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I agree tyhat at this stage Deltell should have an edge but the NDP is not giving up in Louis St. Laurent and is running a high powered candidate Daniel Caron who was until recently the Canadian ambassador to Ukraine

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That's funny, I've just been reading several opinion pieces about how well the BC NDP has been doing of late drawing blood from Christy Clark on various scandals and policies flubs and how John Horgan has been really hitting his stride and how the BC NDP is now leading the BC Liberals in polls and would win an election if it were held today...meanwhile if Andrew Weaver is supposed to be an opposition leader he sure has a strange way of showing it what with voting in favour of Christy Clark's latest rightwing budget.

Vancouver-Mount Pleasant is a very very very bad fit for the Green Party - they tend to do well among very wealthy people who have solar panels on their roofs and who shop at Whole Foods - that's how they won Oak Bay - working class folk tend to have no time for them whatsoever...and now that the BC NDP has a leader in Horgan who resonates really well with working class people, its hard to imagine why anyone would be attracted to an upper class twit with a posh British accent like QWeaver in an inner city poor seat like Mount Pleasant

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Its not surprising that the BC NDP would have had bad fundraising numbers last year - who was going to give money to a leaderless party that was still under the interim leadership of Adrian Dix. But now that the popular John Horgan who has a great common touch has taken over and is filling NDPers with optimism again, i think you will see those numbers strat to shift dramatically.

I don't know too many struggling working class people who want to "move away from an economy based on growth"...you have to be very well off and comfortable to want to "end economic growth" - and banning GMOs is not exactly a top of mind issue for more than .01% of the population. I have yet to see an explanation for why the lone Green MLA voted in favour of Christy Clark's rabidly rightwing budget?

I hope the Greens don't overplay expectations in Mt. Pleasant since it could be embarrassing when they get about 10% of the vote

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Looks like an NDP landslide in The Pas -

51/59 polls

Lathlin NDP 1,498
Nasekapow PC 793
Vestrcil-Spence Lib 364

In these northern seats the first polls to report are often from the main town which has a large non-native population and more evenly split...the reserves tend to report later and often go NDP by lopsided margins (ie: 203 to 7)

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Considering that these byelections were held soon after PKP became leader at a time when the PQ new leader bounce ought to be at its height PLUS the byelections were right splat in the middle of an orgy of nostalgia and positive press about the the Quebec nationalist movement due to the death of Jacques Parizeau...the PQ results in these two ridings is very very anemic.

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No one will ever believe me and its  my fault for not posting anything - but i had a feeling that the NDP might lose the two Cape Breton seats and pick up Dartmouth South

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This does bode well for Chisholm's chances to retain his seat. I've all but written him off at this point.

I'm actually very confident that Chisholm will win. He won narrowly in 2011 because he was up against a popular Liberal incumbent who had won three terms...now the Liberals have nominated some nobody against him and now Chisholm is the incumbent. With NDP support in Nova Scotia restored to 2011 levels (if not higher) and with evidence that the McNeil gov't is losing popularity in Halifax HRM...I think Chisholm will do fine...and he will do even better once people across Atlantic Canada wake up to the fact that the federal Liberals under boy Justin are NOT going to win and that electing a Liberal MP will NOT cause roads to miraculously get paved!

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Matthews says the by-election will be held after the federal election.

IMHO, the Liberals know full well that they will be CRUSHED in any byelection in Simcoe North and that they would likely come in 3rd behind the NDP as well. They don't want that to hit the fan the day the federal writ is dropped and have it reflect badly on boy Justin.

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And the ONDP (w/the same candidate as in 2011) fell a titch in share, too.

For whatever reason, Kathleen Wynne actually overachieved in a lot of Central Ontario Heartland seats; maybe she came across as a bit of a Sensible Red Tory in Liberal clothing...

I'm still trying to figure out what happened in Central Ontario. I know the Liberals targeted the outer GTA heavily (to much success), but I'm not sure why they saw such large gains in some Central Ontario seats.

That was then and this is now...Wynne's government is now EXTREMELY unpopular and something like 90% of Ontarians are deadset against her scheme to sell of hydro etc... In any byelection conducted in the current environment, an Ontario Liberal candidate will get squashed like a bug!

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The Ontario Liberals won last year with 39% of the vote. Polls now show them as low as 24%... That's a huge drop