2012 NDP leadership convention

[Hatman 🍁]

Hey, everybody, I'm back. Hope y'all were following me on twitter.

Btw, lol @ Hashemite. I'm sorry, but your comments were pretty hackish. Someone tried to hack into the system, it wasn't the NDP's fault or even the company. Maybe doing it online wasn't the best way of running it, but it did make things convenient. I was able to vote on a friend's smart phone instead of waiting in line on the 2nd ballot.

Well, I am quite pleased. I was supporting Mulcair, but reluctantly. So far, he has reassured me of my choice. Keeping Libby as Deputy leader was a great thing for unity.

Should be a fun 3 years!

[Hatman 🍁]

I don't think the Liberals can get much lower than the high teens. There are too many partisan Liberals out there who will always vote Liberal, plus many live in a Liberal riding with a popular MP.

[Hatman 🍁]

The Liberal vote is probably as low as it can go out west and in Quebec, though at some point a few Liberal MPs with strong personal votes like Goodale or Hedy Fry or some Quebec MPs will retire and then their seats will probably go NDP in a Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca type scenario.

I think that the Liberal vote in Ontario could get eaten away some more in a lot of those 905 ridings where the NDP will probably compete much more strongly in 2015 and will be trying to expand on the Bramalea-Gore-Malton beach head.

The Liberals took 19% last year. If Mulcair works out and the next election is seen as a tight CPC-NDP race, i could easily see the Liberal vote drop another notch to say 14-15% nationwide.

Yeah, the NDP still has room to grow at the expense of the Liberals in Ontario. The 905 will be tricky, though. Perhaps a couple of seats in Brampton, but not much outside of that. The NDP will do better in small town Ontario, in ridings like Guelph, Sarnia and Peterborough. But of course if polls are to believe, the NDP will have a hard time growing more in Ontario. They're doing better in BC and the prairies, where they're taking directly from Tory votes, not the Liberals.

[Hatman 🍁]

905 = the GTA, outside of Toronto. The NDP can still pick up a few Toronto seats, like a couple in Scarborough, Don Valley East (or the new equivalent) and maybe York West. Oh, and Toronto Centre might be possible depending on the new boundaries, and whether or not Bob Rae runs there or in a safer Rosedale based riding. 

[Hatman 🍁]

Oshawa has changed too much, but if the NDP does really well, they can win it (we're talking a majority NDP govt). It still has a residual base in the riding, but right now there is a tough ceiling of subarbanites to break through that didn't exist 20 years ago (or existed in smaller numbers)

Not sure if Etobicoke North is a good target, but the demographics are right. Plus, the NDP has won it provincially before (winning in 1995 in fact, if I do recall correctly).

[Hatman 🍁]

The suburban areas where the NDP wins in Vancouver are a lot different than the 905. Burnaby and Surrey are much more ethnically diverse and less well off. The areas of suburban Vancouver that are more wealthy, and less diverse tend to be more like the 905 (North Van, Langley, South Surrey, etc)

[Hatman 🍁]

Demographic shifts, I believe. They lost them again when the Liberals fell into obscurity.

[Hatman 🍁]

I think that proves why suburban Vancouver votes NDP and suburban Toronto doesn't.

[Hatman 🍁]

Brampton and Mississauga are possibilities due to ethnic communities, I agree.

...then there is suburban Montreal (aka: the "450" belt) which went totally NDP last May with the NDP even winning Pierrefonds-Dollard which is quite upper middle class and includes a lot of Jewish "nouveau riche" areas that are quite similar to Thornhill - so go figure!

Quebec is a totally different place, you know that It's a different culture completely. And the Jewish areas in Pierrefonds-Dollard did not go NDP.

[Hatman 🍁]

Hamilton Mountain is semi-suburban, but it has always been the least NDP friendly part of urban Hamilton. The Stoney Creek part of Hamilton East-Stoney Creek is actually pretty conservative, and I can't recall if it went NDP in 2011 or not, but it would be the first time if it did.

As for Peter Stoffer's riding, it's not that affluent, but remember it's not so much an NDP riding as a Peter Stoffer riding. That man has to be one of the best constituency MPs there are.

And as for Winnipeg, yes the provincial NDP wins suburban parts of Winnipeg, but that has been fairly recent due to the moderate polices of Doer/Selinger and the federal NDP has yet to win in these areas, although I would certainly be targeting them for 2015.

But you know, if Harper is very unpopular in 2015, it won't be too hard to see some strange things happening in Ontario. Just look at the 1990 by-election in York North. The NDP had no business coming in a strong 2nd there. However, the party was immensely popular around that time.

[Hatman 🍁]

Oh, it's on pudit's guide. Too bad there's no provincial numbers.

[Hatman 🍁]

Oh, it's on pudit's guide. Too bad there's no provincial numbers.

In a delegated convention, do you think Cullen could have edged Mulcair on the final ballot with those numbers?

Depends on how the delegates were chosen.

[Hatman 🍁]

Vancouver Centre is definitely a huge NDP target. Sure, it has its right wing parts, but you will note how much vote splitting there is in that riding.

[Hatman 🍁]

I should add in terms of suburbs, although it varies from city to city, they usually aren't exactly NDP friendly.  Victoria is generally favourable to the NDP and they did win most of the St. John's suburbs although they went heavily Tory prior to Williams' ABC campaign thus whichever party wins the Newfie Nationalist vote usually wins here as if I am not mistaken those were the areas that are most heavily Irish and Catholic and also voted most heavily against joining Canada in 1949.  Quebec City suburbs varies as it went Bloc Quebecois in 1993, 1997, and 2004, Liberals in 2000, Tories in 2006 and 2008 and NDP in 2011 although the Tories did do better in the suburbs in all the past elections than the old city.  Stoney Creek went Tory despite the fact the NDP won Hamilton East-Stoney Creek while Liberal in 2006 and 2004 and a three way race in 2008 but narrowly going Tory, otherwise more akin to the 905 belt than Hamilton.  Winnipeg South, Saint Boniface, and Charleswood-St. James-Assinboia, the NDP got in the teens or low 20s so if the Tories were to lose here, it would be to the Liberals not NDP.  Provincially they only won here as pretty much almost all federal Liberals went NDP and that seems highly unlikely to happen next time around if ever.  As for Saskatchewan and Edmonton, they likely will win ridings in Saskatchewan if they get rid of the mixed urban/rural ones and have the Saskatoon and Regina ridings stay entirely within the city limits.  As for Edmonton, again 5 of the 8 ridings extend beyond the city limits thus the problem here.  The centre-left vote in Edmonton is pretty fluid and tends to swing solidly behind whichever party is most likely to beat the Tories.  It went NDP provincially in 1986 and the Tories main opponent in 1988 and 2011 federally was the NDP, whereas provincially in 1993, 1997, and 2004 it went Liberal and that was their main opponent federally from 1993-2004.  I doubt they will win many here, but certainly 2 seats is not out of the realm and maybe three if really lucky.  In the case of the BC Interior, Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo seems the only possibility, but I suspect if it becomes a Tory vs. NDP race, it will become a bellwether like it is provincially thus usually favouring the pro free enterprise party (Tories) over the social Democrats (NDP) by a narrow margin.  BC Southern Interior and Skeena-Bulkley Valley do have Conservative pockets in the West of BC Southern Interior (in around Osoyoos) and east of Skeena-Bulkley Valley (areas east of Terrace) so these could become vulnerable depending on how they are split up or perhaps even more secure.  

Sorry for all the cross postings.  Been a while that I have been on here.

I think the NDP will have a good shot at suburban Winnipeg, because voters there are used to voting NDP provincially. If the Liberals are dead in the water, progressive voters in Winnipeg will have no other choice. Besides, St Boniface? That's Selinger's riding!

As much as a I hate those rurban ridings in Saskatchewan, if the NDP does really well in the province, then it's possible that they will go back to benefiting the NDP more so than fairly drawn districts. If I had the choice though, I wouldn't take a chance on them.

[Hatman 🍁]

Recent polls have shown the NDP is ahead on the Prairies, so it's clear they're ahead in some of those ridings.

[Hatman 🍁]

I'm seeing some pretty weird interpretation of provincial election results here. The NDP's problem in Manitoba is that an NDP government is in power there; it's pretty well established that the federal NDP tends to do poorly in provinces with NDP premiers. That'll still be a problem come next election. The NDP's problem in Saskatchewan is the ridiculous riding boundaries. That shouldn't be a problem come next election.

Of course in the next election if the federal Liberals are led by Bob Rae and the NDp by Thomas Mulcair there will be a weird role reversal where the Liberals will be stigmatized by being led by a man known for being a totally incompetent "tax and spend" premier - who managed to do both very incompetently, while NDP will be led by a man who was widely viewed as having been a competent cabinet minister in a Quebec government led by an ex-Tory leader!!

By 2015, the NDP may start to look like the moderate centre left pragmatic party that any suburbanite can be comfortable with - while the Liberals are stuck with Bob Rae's legacy and prattle on about euthanasia and drugs.

If the Liberals are squeezed from both sides, and the two alternative governments are either Tory or Dipper, swinging voters will likely begin to vote accordingly, and be comfortable with either. BC and Manitoba both are effectively two-party with the NDP and a party on the right (although BC may be changing to three parties, and then possibly change again into an NDP vs BC Conservatives two-party system... remains to be seen). Regardless, the NDP has demonstrated that it can perform well and attract swinging voters when it is a credible alternative government.

Yes. Let's not pretend that NDP-Tory swing voters are some mythical beast; they've always existed in the West, where the NDP is strong, and given the new strength of the NDP nationwide one would expect that to spread to the rest of the country.

The NDP does poorly in Manitoba when their provincial counterparts are unpopular (1988). In 2011, they were briefly unpopular at that point of time as well. If Selinger is popular in 2015, it might be good for the federal NDP.

[Hatman 🍁]

If Mulcair is perceived as moderate, even if he isn't, that can only be a good thing.

[Hatman 🍁]

If Mulcair is perceived as moderate, even if he isn't, that can only be a good thing.

Yeah...just not too moderate.  And I hope he doesn't succeed in trying to drop the "socialist" wording from the NDP's constitution....and I also hope he talks about taxing the rich....PLEASE!  The NDP is social democratic, after all...ACT LIKE IT!  And if I hear him say "sustainable development" or "competent public administration" one more time, I swear my head will explode. 

For me, it's "Dutch disease". If he says that one more time, my head will explode.

[Hatman 🍁]

And yet for their projected seat totals, they give the NDP 15. WTF?

[Hatman 🍁]

Yeah, I thought as much. Blair would've been an NDPer through and through, and would probably get involved in provincial politics depending on the province.