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

[DC Al Fine]

EKOS: 33.4/26.7/25.6.

That's not as strange as I thought it would be. The way Graves was talking, I thought he'd have the Tories at 40%

[DC Al Fine]

New Innovative Research Group Poll:

Lib 31, NDP 29, Cons 29, Grn 6, BQ 5 , Oth 1

Their numbers for the Tories in Ontario and the Prairies are way too low for me to believe.

Their Prairie sample size was less than their Atlantic Canada sample, and we all know how huge Atlantic Canada's margins of error are

[DC Al Fine]

Curious if this will affect voting patterns among Sephardic Jews - probably not at all, I suppose most of them voted Conservative and will vote Conservative. Are there any data where Canadian Sephardic Jews are polled as a distinct category?

Not that I'm aware of. There's barely any polling of Jews in general, much less their sub groups. The only thing I'm aware of is that the 2011 exit poll that showed Jews voting ~50% Tory.

[DC Al Fine]

http://www.news1130.com/2015/10/02/conservative-issues-immigrants-backfiring/

Reasonable to assume the same thing is occurring in the 905 area. The implications for both this election and the future are serious.

I second Foucaulf's complaint about there not being any link to the poll itself. Not that it's your fault, but it's annoying that I can't check and see if there are any issues with the poll itself. It would also be nice if we had any riding polls of Brampton or Richmond to confirm. There were some Brampton ones done in Jan/14 that had us neck and neck with the Liberals, but who knows what could have happened since then.

[DC Al Fine]

The anti-weed campaign is really stupid. What on earth does Harper think he's doing? This is not the way to win the elections.

I'd suggest two possibilities:

1) The Tories are trying to use it as a wedge to win over ethnic minorities (Optimistic answer)

2) The Tories feel they are in trouble and are trying to turn out their base (Pessimistic answer)

Either way, they are probably hoping that pro-weed people either don't care enough to change their vote or are so pro-drug that they'd never consider the Tories anyway. This sort of thing can work,  although I'm inclined to think its a bad idea in this case.

[DC Al Fine]

If the Conservatives hand Justin Trudeau a majority because they went too far with their alienating, xenophobic rhetoric, which seems possible if trends hold, I'll be so, so pissed.

Once again, it is much, much, *much* too early to be making these kinds of predictions!

That said, that particular scenario if it came true would be, in my estimation, rather poetic justice.

I disagree, actually. The anti-Harper sentiment is strong, and if it becomes clear which party the progressives should coalesce behind (and in this case, it's evidently going to be the Liberal Party), the movement of voters, en masse, from one leftist camp to the other could be staggering. I would not be surprised to see the NDP at 20% and the Liberals at 40% in a week and a half.

Lets wait and see. Nanos is the only one showing the Liberals in the mid-thirties, and they aren't exactly known for underpolling the Grits. I'm waiting for another firm to confirm the Liberal numbers before I start talking about a Liberal surge.

The NDP can blame nobody but themselves on this. Triangulation is a dumb strategy and it seems left-wing parties will only learn it the hard way.

The way Mulcair campaigned boggles the mind. Bland, boring, forgettable. Basically made no attempt to control the narrative once the campaign kicked off properly. Like Holmes said, the NDP were handed a platter of issues that were theirs to lose, with a popular and trusted leader at the top, as well as an incumbent government most people are tired of, and they inexplicably pissed it all away. If recent provincial elections have taught anybody anything it's that Canadian Liberals are horror movie villains that never die.

Several NDP and Tory friends have expressed this sentiment to each other:

"I hate your party and your ideas are crazy... but at least you aren't the effing Liberals!"

[DC Al Fine]

Meh, I don't hate the Liberals that much. In office, they seem mostly bland and useless, but not actually harmful - and certainly not as harmful as Harper has been in the past decade. Biebertrudeau seems like an empty suit, but in the past they had pretty good leaders even from a left-wing perspective.

Come now Tony, most of our hatred of the Liberals has nothing to do with policy. It has everything to do with their arrogance and the fact that they are an amorphous, unideological, centrist blob that keeps stealing our (either NDP or Tory) platform

[DC Al Fine]

The other prairie parties are dead.

Well Alberta's is just clinging on to existence, but they've been kicked down a few other times and returned, so I wouldn't quite pronounce them deceased yet. And Manitoba's liberals are polling fairly high - reaching the 20's - although that might be an illusion I guess.

If we're looking at non-Liberals, Union Nationale and three Social Credit parties all stayed dead.

[DC Al Fine]

I have heard that the Liberals vote in Quebec is being limited by the fact that they are led by a Trudeau, due to ongoing animosity towards his father. Is this true, do Quebecois still resent him enough not to vote  for his son?

Not really, just ongoing difficulties with francophones. The party had a massive decline in Quebec between 2003-2006 due to adscam and other factors, and they've struggled there ever since.

As Rogue Beaver noted, the party has a lot of baggage and is ideologically unsuited to most francophones.

[DC Al Fine]

Recent Forum riding polls in GTA

Brampton Centre
39-32-25

Markham-Stouffville
51-40-6

Mississauga-Malton
44-29-20

Scarborough Centre
43-36-19

Spadina-Fort York
42-37-17

Toronto Centre
42-37-17

[DC Al Fine]

Nanos, finally shows a (tiny) decline for the Liberals and a (tiny) gain for the NDP.

[DC Al Fine]

Tory Mississauga candidate defends gay conversion therapy.

On an interesting note, said candidate is Sikh.

[DC Al Fine]

Way, way, WAY too early to start saying things like "Prime Minister Trudeau". What is this, May 1968?

This.

For all we know, Mulcair could recover, or the Bloc could win enough seats to ruin the coalition math, or Harper could win a majority or....

No sense bringing the fat lady out to sing yet. This is Canadian politics after all.

[DC Al Fine]

I should also point out that Nanos had the NDP at 24% this far out in 2011. Big swings can happen.

[DC Al Fine]

FYI, the last few days of Nanos polling shows the NDP stabilizing and the Liberals declining.

[DC Al Fine]

Mulcair attacks Trudeau in town hall

He attacked him among other things, for supoorting C-51 and not denouncing TPP.

Good move on the NDP's part. Being more progressive than thou can work.

[DC Al Fine]

The fact that Mainstreet didn't bother polling Gatineau or Hull suggests they are safe NDP.

[DC Al Fine]

Some more riding polls from various pollsters

Cowichan-Malahat-Langford
35-28-19-14

Nanaimo-Ladysmith
35-26-21-18

North Okanagan-Shuswap
41-38-12-9



Fredericton
43-32-14-12


Essex
38-37-22

Kenora
40-29-28

London North Centre
48-32-15

London West
38-37-20



Notre Dame de Grace-Westmount
40-33

[DC Al Fine]

One thing to keep in mind about the BQ that will also hasten their extinction is money. The BQ has very very very poor fundraising and has been almost totally dependent on the per vote subsidy which has been phased out. In this election the took all the money they had saved up over the last four years from the quarterly cheques of subsidy money and blew it all on the campaign. After October 19 they will be deeply in debt and have almost no capacity to raise any money. They may even have to file for bankruptcy.

Also keep in mind that the only thing giving the BQ any life at all right now is Gilles Duceppe as leader. But a. Even if the BQ wins a handful of seats Duceppe faces a very uphill battle in his own seat of Laurier-ste. Marie. It's a very downtown, cosmopolitan bohemian Montreal riding where the BQ's "Front Nationale" style racist campaign is unlikely to resonate. Also Duceppe is 68 and would be very unlikely to stick around for long anyways, particularly if he is leading half a dozen MPs with no official party status and no balance of power.

Yeah. I think the Bloc will make minor gains this time and then fade away in the next several years.

Will Mulcair resign if the NDP finishes third? And if he does, who'll replace him?

If they manage to get anything under what they got at the last election (103 I think it was), then yes, he'd have to.  They really need to find someone a little more charismatic.  Had Jack been around, this would have surely been an NDP sweep.  I think Mulcair's move of the party to the centre, and his lack of charisma is what helped with the demise.  Everything seems calculated, whereas with Jack, everything was for the good of the people.  I have a hard time thinking of someone who has the charisma to bring the party to win. Someone who is a little less offensive, like Dewar or Nash, could make good options.  If they really want to go after the Youth-Vote, trying to get someone a little younger could help too.

I wouldn't want Dewar. He has major French issues, which is a problem if you're running to win rather than have the balance of power.

As others have noted, the NDP are sort of caught in a Catch-22. The Liberals don't suffer from the same radical left reputation, so they can afford to outflank the NDP when the NDP goes centre. However if the NDP goes left, they'll get slammed as extremists. I don't think its as simple as replacing  Mulcair.

[DC Al Fine]

Basically where the PQ does best provincially. There were not many people interested to lead the Bloc last time so a Bloc without Duceppe... I don't know who would be leader

Yeah, the Bloc really buggered things up with the whole Beaulieu thing. Fortin and Bellavance both had reasonable shots at re-election and would have made decent leaders.

Does the Bloc have any decent candidates? I recognize a few old MPs on their slate but no names really jump out at me.

[DC Al Fine]

My own view is that had Joe Clark remained on as leader until the sponsorship scandal came to light, that the P.Cs under his leadership in the next election would have come close to sweeping Ontario and maybe much of the Atlantic and likely some parts of Quebec as well.

The PCs could not have come close to sweeping Ontario because maybe 1/3 of right-wing voters in the province were loyal CA voters, and PC voters tended to be concentrated in more Liberal areas, like suburbs. They may have gained, but not enough. They also would not be able to break through in Quebec under a western leader in Joe Clark. They may have gained seats in your hypothetical 2004, but they couldn't hit 30 across Canada, and such a party has no long-term future.

So, you leave out that the result that poor decision making by the parties involved played a role in their eventual demise and they were maybe not as inevitable as you seem to be suggesting.  (In the case of Clark, there had been rumors for a number of years following the 1995 referendum that some Federal Quebec Liberals had been engaged in illegal activity, as was more or less eventual brought to light.  He should have found out at what stage those rumors were being investigated before resigning as leader.)

You can answer "poor decision-making" to a lot of things, but that ignores the reasons behind the poor decision-making. Also, are you blaming Joe Clark for not being able to see the future in this post?

Indeed. The idea that a PC party led by Joe freaking Clark would be able to even somewhat unite the right is risible.

[DC Al Fine]

Wife and I just voted in an advance poll. We were the only voters there. I'm told it was more crowded on Friday and Saturday.

[DC Al Fine]

Could Leslie herself be in danger, considering the Liberals are expected to romp the Atlantic?

Paging DC.

Yes, she's definitely at risk right now. I suspect she'll hold on, but its not a sure thing.

[DC Al Fine]

Leslie's French is nothing to write home about, but its good enough to credibly run for national office AFAIK

[DC Al Fine]

To elaborate on what Toaster said.

Algoma-Mantoulin-Kapuskasing
45-30-20

Timmins-James Bay
62-21-11