Conservative Party of Canada Leadership Race Megathread-May 27th 2017

[RogueBeaver]

Ivison: O'Leary is the prohibitive favourite, with Bernier, Leitch and Alexander (!) polling strongly.

[The Other Castro]

Lol if Mr. Wonderful becomes Prime Minister...

[Pandaguineapig]

Lol if Mr. Wonderful becomes Prime Minister...

The summit's with him and Trump would be awesome

[Mike88]

Wow!! Arlene Dickinson just hammered O'Leary!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtWX7ZYl-pQ

To be fair, he was kind of a dick sometimes on the dragon's den but i didn't knew he was this cocky outside. Seems like Trump 2.0.

[Hatman 🍁]

Ivison: O'Leary is the prohibitive favourite, with Bernier, Leitch and Alexander (!) polling strongly.

Seems like terrible #analysis tbh

[136or142]

Ivison: O'Leary is the prohibitive favourite, with Bernier, Leitch and Alexander (!) polling strongly.

If I'm not mistaken, these polls are based on self identified Conservative Party supporters.  The people who will actually vote though are just the actual Conservative Party members.

I could be wrong, but I think that fundraising is a better indicator of the campaigns that are successfully selling new memberships (and appealing to long time members) than polls of all Conservative Party supporters.

On that score, I believe Andrew Scheer is either in first or second after Maxime Bernier.

[BuckeyeNut]

Just keep O'Leary far away from the position because Trudeau is weak and he wouldn't put up a fight against TRUMP.

Implying O"Leary would?

[136or142]

I have to change my convention balloting result predictions for three candidates based on the French Language debate.

Tristin Hopper reported prior to what I'd previously read, that Erin O'Toole does, in fact, speak decent French (he learned it while serving in the Canadian Forces) but has a heavy English accent.  However, his main rival in the 'establishment lane' (for those who watched CNN during the U.S Primaries, the pundits there tried to put the candidates into different lanes for their "path to the nomination") Andrew Scheer does not speak French anywhere near as well as we'd previously been led to believe.  According to Hopper, Scheer is only able to speak using simple French sentences. 

I had previously mentioned that I thought Chris Alexander would have been a serious contender if he didn't have a major setback, like Chris Christie and Bridgegate. With Chris Alexander I was referring to him losing his seat in the 2015 election.  However, with the overall weakness of this slate of candidates, and despite Alexander's several high profile missteps, I think he could yet emerge as a frontrunner.

[136or142]

The major problem I see with Chris Alexander is that, unlike a politician who wants to be all things for all people, he see to want to be all things for nobody.

On the one hand, he has likely turned off a lot of immigrant voters with his 'barbaric cultural practices' hotline, on the other hand, he is running his campaign as an establishment economic conservative who wants to boost the number of immigrants to Canada to 400,000 a year.

I suspect this won't even appeal to most immigrants.  Whenever we get the cliched interview with a 'visible minority' voter about 'their' issues in the election on television, the reply I always see is "Well, yeah, I'm concerned about family reunification, but, other than that, I have the same concerns as every other Canadian."

So, I think the vast majority of immigrants who are citizens of Canada who live in Greater Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Greater Toronto will have the exact same reaction I and most people in Greater Vancouver have to this idea, "400,000 immigrants a year?  Are you crazy?  Housing prices are already insane and traffic is already beyond gridlocked at rush hour times, and infrastructure is already heavily lagging."

Maybe in the areas with a fair number of immigrants already but where the increase in the number of immigrants doesn't seem to be so large this will be more popular.  So, Winnipeg and maybe Montreal (maybe Ottawa?).  Halifax and the rest of Nova Scotia wants more immigrants, which makes sense to me.

[toaster]

If Immigration came with the stipulation, in Ontario anyway, that you had to reside North of the French river, it would be fine.  Whether or not that could logistically and legally occur, then maybe that could be possible.

[DC Al Fine]

The main issue with immigration to the outlying areas isnt raw numbers, it's retention. Nova Scotia gets a decent portion of immigrants, but they disproportionately leave after the minimum period required, or once they get their citizenship.

[136or142]

The main issue with immigration to the outlying areas isnt raw numbers, it's retention. Nova Scotia gets a decent portion of immigrants, but they disproportionately leave after the minimum period required, or once they get their citizenship.

Yes, I read about that recently.  The Nova Scotia government says the problem is with the federal government rules.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The main issue with immigration to the outlying areas isnt raw numbers, it's retention. Nova Scotia gets a decent portion of immigrants, but they disproportionately leave after the minimum period required, or once they get their citizenship.

What are you going to do? Build a wall to stop people coming out?

[DC Al Fine]

The main issue with immigration to the outlying areas isnt raw numbers, it's retention. Nova Scotia gets a decent portion of immigrants, but they disproportionately leave after the minimum period required, or once they get their citizenship.

What are you going to do? Build a wall to stop people coming out?

Fix the economy and change our attitude towards 'come from aways' are the usual proposed solutions... which is about as feasible as building a wall.

[Poirot]

I challenge you to all predict the balloting.

Just to play because I have not much confidence and before we have some public polls with O'Leary included.

1st ballot

O'Leary 23
Bernier 17
Leitch 12
Raitt 10
Scheer 8.5
O'toole 7
Chong 7
Blaney 4.5
Trost 4
Alexander 3
Lemieux 1
Obhrai 1
Saxton 0.5

When votes of lower candidates are redistributes, the top five:

O'Leary 29.5
Bernier 23
Raitt 17
Scheer 16.5
Leitch 14

Leitch is eliminated, scheer moves ahead of Raitt, so
O'Leary 41
Bernier 32.5
Scheer 26.5

O'Leary 51
Bernier 49

[Hatman 🍁]

Canada is very under populated. We could easily fit 100,000,000 people. If traffic is a problem, build better public transit. If housing costs too much, build more housing & make it illegal (or introduce an obscene tax) to own property in certain areas without living in it.

[Vosem]

I get the sense that I would really love Maxime Bernier if I were Canadian, but I don't know that he's the best candidate to stop O'Leary or face off against Trudeau in a general election. O'Leary sounds friggin' terrible.

[Krago]

To remember the names of the 14 Conservative leadership candidates, just use this mnemonic:

STOP ROBBOCALLS

(Damn you, Steven Blaney!)

[Poirot]

In a Forum poll O'Leary has a wide lead among people who voted Conservative (Bernier second). In the small sample of members, the lead is smaller but still double support of second place candidate Raitt.
http://poll.forumresearch.com/post/2653/oleary-holds-commanding-lead-in-conservative-leadership-contest/

Bernard Généreux, president of the Québec caucus,  has decided he will remain neutral in the leadership race. That leaves only Gérard Deltell and Joël Godin for Québec MPs who might endorse a candidate.

Following the Québec City debate in which rhe quality of French was the main topic, a professor was asked to rank the candidates French on 10.
 
Bernier and Blaney 10
Alexander 9
Peterson 8
Chong, Scheer and Lemieux 7
Saxton and O'Toole 6
Trost 5
Raitt 4
Leitch 3
Obhrai 1
 
http://www.journaldequebec.com/2017/01/18/la-langue-francaise-ecorchee

[Jeppe]

I think people underestimate Lisa Raitt, she's likely to end up in the top 3 on the first ballot (alongside O'Leary and Bernier), and I see her as being the least divisive amongst those 3, if not amongst everybody in the race.

Also, I'm a little unsure of Bernier's dominance in Quebec, after he went against supply management in the French debate. Dairy farmers in rural Quebec depend on supply management. I see him dominating in Quebec City, doing well in the smaller cities like Sherbrooke, but he might be vulnerable in Montreal and rural Quebec.

[King of Kensington]

O'Leary: I'm not a capitalist

[Hatman 🍁]

Well, his Trump transition is going swimmingly so far.

[Poirot]

Numbers for fourth quarter fundraising are out.

Bernier is clearly above the others in money and number of donors. Leitch is second then it's Scheer.

Raitt doesn't have good numbers but I think the reason could be she was not a candidate for all the quarter.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-q42016-fundraising-1.3959783

[RogueBeaver]

Scheer wants to amend the Charter to include property rights.

[RogueBeaver]

Kouvalis quits Leitch's campaign.