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

[VPH]

I'm a registered Liberal, but I love Michael Chong.

[VPH]

Met Deepak Obhrai today! There were about 10-15 people at the event, and he said unironically "Wow this is a big crowd for me!" I got the impression that he definitely knows his campaign is more than a longshot, but I was especially impressed at how personable, down to earth, and well versed he was. Brought up some interesting issues too, like standardizing professional licensing across provinces, only signing trade deals if they benefit Canada, and ending wedge issue politics in CPC that he claims only benefit the Liberals.

[VPH]

Is the Conservative party going to keep its leader if the result of the next election is again a Liberal majority government ? I'm wondering if the next leader is there at least for the medium term or needs a good result in two years.

Probably depends on what kind of majority government we see. If the new leader makes some progress and shrinks the Liberal majority, I imagine they'll stick around.

Where would we shrink the Liberal majority? We might get some Atlantic seats back but Grits could gain a chunk here in QC, maybe lose a couple in BC. I'd put O/U at 190 right now.

Well there's a decent number of suburban seats (mostly in Toronto, but also dribs and drabs in the rest of the country), but you're right, I forgot about the Liberals likely landslide in Quebec. I think the point still stands though. The NDP and Bloc's electoral situation seems worse than ours given our lack of promiscuous progressive, and their sizeable number of seats won by <10%. If the results are something like:

Lib (+5)
Tory: (+15)
NDP/Bloc: (-20)

That would be enough of a success for the leader to stick around and build upon no?

NDP might suffer losses like that if Ashton wins.

[VPH]

It really will come down to Bernier and Scheer.

[VPH]

Seems like Trost relied more on immigrants than rural voters, similar to Patrick Brown in Ontario. It explains Waterloo better than my earlier Mennonite hypothesis.

He cleaned up in ridings with a lot of Chinese people, specifically. Hilariously could not win his own riding.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/karen-lin/conservative-leadership-chinese-communities_b_16335086.html
Looks like Trost had targeted those communities during his campaign.

[VPH]

Does anybody see much of a class divide in the first round results? Like Raitt did well in the economically depressed areas near her hometown, Chong did well in well-off urban ridings?