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

[adma]

It's more accurate to say that Notley's election has "raised the game" for prospective federal NDP candidates, i.e. we're seeing serious candidates and nomination races in places which in the past have been barely more than "token-name-on-the-ballot" situations.  Which renders the MLA-making-the-jump gambit redundant.

[adma]

Don't forget Richmond as an NDP dead zone, too.  And I'm still not counting on the Cons in the 905--though that'd require the Grits using their brains over the next couple of months...

[adma]

Yeah "most" is not correct.  About half of the suburban Lower Mainland is winnable for the NDP, the other half isn't.  Still a lot higher than the 905 where winning half a dozen seats would be an extraordinary victory for the NDP. 

But it depends on whether, or by how much, the NDP will or should be the only non-Con game in town in the 905--Justin may be waning, but he's not quite in the "Clegg zone" yet...

[adma]

But it depends on whether, or by how much, the NDP will or should be the only non-Con game in town in the 905--Justin may be waning, but he's not quite in the "Clegg zone" yet...

There are some seats the Liberals can pick up in 905 - maybe Richmond Hill, Ajax, some seats in Mississauga.  But I think they'll be winning scraps, not swaths.  NDP almost certainly aren't going to win any seats in York or Halton regions even in a majority government.  So it seems highly unlikely that the Conservatives aren't going to be the largest party in 905.  

Mathematically "largest", or dominatingly "largest"?  Or does it matter, really?  In the end, even with more seats, York + Halton aren't *that* dominating a factor in the broader Canadian picture.  It'd be like bellyaching over Bucks or Surrey in terms of the Blair-era UK.

The trouble I find with these predictions of Con-dominance in the 905 is that (a) they underestimate the degree of loathing t/w the Cons out there, particularly if the Cons wind up shooting themselves in the foot through campaign hubris and heavy-handedness, and (b) they're all too often filtered through the "only the New Democrats can defeat the Conservatives" prism as some kind of irreversable new electoral gospel.  Well, look, if the latter's truly the case and the Justin Liberals are truly headed to some kind of Joe Clark PC 2000 oblivion, I can understand: within the 905, the demographics and the infrastructure just ain't there for a whole lot of NDP victories, at least not this cycle.  However, that's not the same as acceptance of the elected status quo, either.

For such reasons, I'm feeling *very* ambivalent about the NDP tit-for-tat parroting the old Liberal "only x can defeat y" approach because, essentially, it sets up this kind of trap which leaves left-partisans wondering "oh, geeze, what's wrong with Ontario?"  Look: Ontario is a moderate province by nature, and a sharp Western Canada-style binary status quo doesn't befit it; and there's a reason why it saw near-total Liberal sweeps under Chretien, or why the provincial Grits have swept the 905 ever since 2003.  And the way I see it, at least in certain sorts of seats, that kind of continued Liberal viability can actually compliment, rather than detract from, the NDP's goals t/w power.

So, I'm still counting the Justin Grits as a sleeper factor rather than as Dead Party Walking--even if it's more by accident of Cons dropping gift seats into their lap...

[adma]

I agree that the Liberals prying off a lot of Conservative-held no hope seats would be beneficial from an NDP point of view.  But a 35/35/25 split, say, isn't likely to result in a lot of Liberal seats in Ontario. 

I'd press the ultra-panic button more at 40/40/20.  35/35/25 offers more of an opening for CAQ-style pickups.

[adma]

I'd press the ultra-panic button more at 40/40/20.  35/35/25 offers more of an opening for CAQ-style pickups.

I just don't see the Liberals being the third party and the map of 905 looking like Kathleen Wynne's Ontario. 

It's not. I just put in the Forum Ontario numbers in my model and the Liberals won the followiing outside the City of Toronto:

• Ajax
• Brampton West
• Markham-Thornhill
• Three Mississauga seats

The Liberal vote in Ontario is more concentrated relative to CAQ so the ability to make a bunch of pick ups a la CAQ @ 25% is limited and offset by NDP gains in places like Scarborough.

I'm not offering that a Wynne-style 905 sweep is in the offing.  I'm just not offering that a Con version of the same is an inevitability, either--and I'm using the fact (and the underlying message) of said provincial Lib sweep to convey my point.

And in so doing, I'm looking beyond the need to rely upon "projection models"--which IMO are to psephology what the the talking GPS Girl is to road tripping, i.e. a crutch for those with no innate, creative sense of direction of their own...

[adma]

If the poll isn't total junk, it squares with adma's "905 centrist reasonableness even in the face of a left-right polarization with the center squeezed out" hypothesis.

Well, look at it this way--I was a naysayer when pollsters were predicting the Libs would still hold on to 70/80/90 seats even if they slipped under 25%.  But I'm a counter-naysayer re the presumption that the Cons have the 905 in the bag--even if it'll have, in the end, less to do with active "strategic voting" than with the more passive matter of Cons practically handing over presumed "safe seats" to the Liberals.

A lot of 905ers would rather their Conservative be a bluer shade of Paul Martin, IOW.

[adma]

One thing that's been puzzling me is how surprisingly robust and enduring Liberal support seems to be in Winnipeg--granted, it may be a strong slate of candidates, three retired CPC incumbents, and continued Selinger backlash; but, still.  (How are the *provincial* Liberals doing, anyway?)

[adma]

Re provincial affecting federal, I think a certain David Peterson bump helped the federal Grits in much of Ontario in '88, too...

[adma]

Tories will win the most seats in Ontario if it is a 3-way race, due to vote splitting.

This is the clear view of pretty much all the pollsters.

Pollsters, but not necessarily psephologists.  I'm a bit of a contrarian here--even if they still have a plurality of Ontario seats in the end, I think the apparent Con advantage is artificially juiced up by incumbency and projection-model illusionism.  And at these numbers, the Libs won't necessarily be the monkey-in-the-middle they're presumed to be--it'll depend on how places like the 905 or the National Capital Region go.  And yes, I'm counting on Duffygate fallout--in which case, keep a careful eye on that Leger national 3rd place for the Tories.  It may be a false alarm; but, if it isn't...

[adma]

905 seats are out of the question, however.

Other than Brampton East and Oshawa, of course.  Nor are the rest out of the question for the Liberals--remember, we're dealing with three competitive parties here, not two.

[adma]

Outside of Malton, there is no real natural NDP constituency in Mississsauga-Malton, so I don't think the NDP can win it. However, Bampton East, North and Centre do have a lot of Indo-Canadians, which means all three seats could be won.

Though Centre's less monolithic and more of a salad-bowl--and it's also the part which gave the Cons' Bal Gosal his 2011 BGM victory...

[adma]

Wouldn't be surprised if May skews the VI Green tally upward a la the NDP's Harris/Stoffer/Godin in NL/NS/NB...

[adma]

Re Megantic-l'Erable: I think the NDP also had one of their more conspicuously paper-ish 2011 candidates there, too--presumably the present contender is a touch more solid.  And really, given the resource-based economic history of Thetford Mines, why *shouldn't* the NDP be competitive here?

[adma]

Worth noting for those who advance the myth that Mulcair conquered a "no-hope" riding in his byelection that Outremont was the NDP's best QC seat for 5 consecutive federal elections before that...

[adma]

It was still 17% of the vote pre-Mulcair and pre-Orange Crush. Would it have been anywhere near an NDP target list had Mulcair not been on the ballot?

My point being: "if not there, then *where*?".  That is, Outremont had already established itself as the NDP's Quebec "gateway seat"-in-waiting--otherwise, they might as well have forgotten about QC altogether.

So, maybe your question should be augmented to include "would it have been anywhere near an NDP target list were it not in Quebec".

[adma]

More importantly, it overlooks that when Dion got 26% of the vote in 2008, it wasn't a 3 way race.  If the Liberals got 26% of the vote this time, they'd probably win 100 seats.

And on *28%* of the vote in 1984, John Turner got 40 seats.

[adma]

28% did the Liberals no good in 1984, because the PCs finished 22% ahead.  Many Liberal votes were wasted votes. In a 3-way race, 26% is only about 5-7% behind first place.  Favourable vote splits can deliver 100 seats on 26% of the vote.

But I think it wasn't just vote splits working to the Libs' favour by 2008, but a degree of "the Big Sort" as well, i.e. voting patterns becoming much more explicitly "urban vs rural".  Same reason why on a record low vote in 2007, the Saskatchewan NDP managed 20 seats vs 9 seats in 1982--and even the 2011 disaster only reduced them to matching their 1982 seat total...

[adma]

The closest three-way race in Canadian provincial elections (by popular vote) was Nova Scotia 2003, though the PCs won a clear majority of seats.

PC 36.3% Lib 31.5% NDP 31.0%
PC 30 Lib 11 NDP 11

Yeah, interesting it was a marginally narrower popular-vote gap btw/ the *three* parties than 1998.

But what about Quebec in 2007 (Lib 33.08, ADQ 30.84, PQ 28.35) and 2012 (PQ 31.95, Lib 31.20, CAQ 27.05)?

[adma]

Of course, even in the rural ridings of Eastern Ontario, federally Don Boudria made his riding of Glengary-Prescott-Russel  a personal fiefdom for many years, but more recently his Liberal successors have been unable to resist the more general regional trends.

That area was a Liberal stronghold long before that bizarre moustachioed rat creature walked on stage.

And it's still Liberal provincially under Grant Crack (who went from a squeaker in 2011 to a solid win in 2014)

[adma]

That could just happen, actually. NDP wins West Labrador, Penashue wins the north, and the Liberals win the south.

Depends what you mean by "the north", i.e. if it's strictly Penashue's FN base, it's not enough.  And under the circumstance, Happy Valley/Goose Bay's more akin to West Labrador, albeit less heavily NDPish...

[adma]

I would have thought Wynne putting all her eggs in the Trudeau basket would have hurt the Grits in Ontario...

Not in her North Toronto home turf, at least.  In fact, strolling through the North Toronto part of Eglinton-Lawrence late afternoon yesterday, I saw *tons* of Marco Mendicino Liberal signs and only 3 or 4 Joe Olivers--which doesn't bode well for Oliver, given it's the kind of upper-middle-class zone where I'd expect something closer to parity in front-yard presence.  (Though it might have been different further west where it's more Jewish, or further N/S where it's more upper than upper-middle.)

Oh, and only one Thomson NDP sign, way down on Avenue Rd near Eglinton.

[adma]

Well, as I've said all along: that's what you get when you let your campaign get run by the brainiacs behind Sun News--and who still feel that Sun News' failure was an "outside fix"...

[adma]

Yeah, there's something *very* suspiciously push-poll-esque about Nanos these days.  I mean, at this point I'm not exactly getting a heavy-duty vibe a la the 2014 provincial election (i.e. Andrea Horwath's platform pushing a whole lot of urban-progressive voters into the Wynne camp)

[adma]

Given that for now it seems to be a 3 way tie and it seems the CPC has an advantage in terms of votes-to-seats conversion, it would be funny if the election ends up with CPC coming in a close third in terms of votes but ends up being the largest party in terms of seats.

Maybe the stronger likelihood at this rate is for Libs being #1 in votes but #3 in seats (shades of Cleggmania prognostications in the UK in 2010)