Canada 2011 Official Thread

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     Given that recent polling has shown the Conservatives running about as well as they did last time, this seems like a potentially foolish move on the part of the Liberals. Has there been any significant criticism within the opposition of this move?

Opposition believes contempt of Parliament and the recent slew of corruption/accountability failures with PurgaTories can help them. There's the Bev Oda fraud, the G20 bloated costs, the F-18 bids, 2 prorogations in a row, government refusing to give Parliament the cost of its programs and so forth. And the opposition probably just said that they had enough with Harper practically laughing in their faces and told him to go f himself.

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So, yeah, May 2. Harper is going on with his lies.

He's going to campaign hard on the "coalition" and spread his lies about how coalitions are evil illegal things. What a pathological liar.

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What are the statistics on governments that lose a vote of confidence and then win the subsequent election? The chances don't seem great if Joe Clark and Paul Martin were any indication. Maybe the Liberals can at least hope that history is on their side?

If I remember correctly, the Conservatives were still polling behind the Paul Martin Liberals when the government fell in 2006.

Discounting Trudeau's engineered 1974 defeat, all those brought down by NCMs have lost. Meighen 1926, Dief 1963, Clark 1979, Martin 2005.

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He's going to campaign hard on the "coalition" and spread his lies about how coalitions are evil illegal things. What a pathological liar.

People will eat it up. They do up in northern Ontario, and though everyone hates Harper there, they believe his verbal diarrhea.

Yeah, that's the sad thing about this country. People are stupid.

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Depending on what polls are to believed, the Tories are on the cusp of a majority.

Here's where we shape up:
Greens: 0 (no one thinks Elizabeth May will win)
NDP 25-40
BQ 45-55
Liberals 55-75
Tories 145-160

That's if you believe the IR poll. There is a good chance that the Grits will win more seats than in 2008 and there is a chance that the Tories will win less seats than in 2008. A more accurate view would be:

Greenies: 0, low chance of 1
NDP: 25-40
Bloc: 40-55
Liberals: 60ish-high 80s/low 90s
Tories: high 130ish-low 160s

Harper's goal seems to be to win a majority without winning over 30% of the pv in Quebec which has, afaik, never happened but which isn't to say can't happen. I fathom Harpy hates Quebec ever since arts cuts 2008/coalition 2008 and certainly his whole "coalition with teh separatist!" doesn't scream Quebec brown-nosing 2006-2008 style.

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I have to say, Mulcair looks like an epic leader. Why do so few politicians these days opt for even the most modest of beards?

Mulcair is an opportunistic egomaniac.

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I've seen plenty of signs that the NDP will gain seats - I can rhyme them off - Surrey North, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, Newton-North Delta, North Vancouver Island, Edmonton East, Palliser, Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Parkdale-High Park, Davenport, Gatineau, Dartmouth, South Shore-St. Margarets, St. John's South-Mount Pearl.

I'm not sure what "signs" you need to see that the NDP can and probably will gain seats. Most polls have the party slightly above what it got in the last election and a rising tide raises all ships.

I can also rhyme off a whole bunch of vulnerable NDP seats in a list which might be just as long. Let's stop being hackish and get the head out of the sand and realize that while nothing says the NDP won't gain seats, nothing says the NDP won't lose seats.

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Have there been any boundary changes?

No. There should be some by the next election.

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I don't see why all talk must always be that this will be an epic Liberal rout, that the Liberals are doomed and so forth. Sure, Ignatieff is a poor leader and the odds aren't good. But Ignatieff is probably a marginally better leader than Dion - who also had sh**tpoor leadership numbers and when expectations are so low anything marginally positive can boost you up. Remember 1988.

At any rate, a Tory majority would be awful for this country; but if the people are retarded enough to go for it, then maybe the idiots should suffer the consequences and live with it afterwards. But for those who aren't idiots, it will be awful.

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This thread is turning into a real hackfest.

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I regret breaking the hackfest, but here's Nanos' poll. It's the first serious reliable poll out there since EKOS/HD.

Purgatories 38.4
Libs 28.7
NDP 19.6
BQ 9.1
GRN 4.1

Nanos was best in 2006, but Angus-Reid performed best in 2008.

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Nanos day 2

Purgatories 39.1
Liberal 32.7
NDP 15.9
BQ 8.7
Green 3.7

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I love this thing:

http://predictor.hillandknowlton.ca/predictor/

Is it accurate?

No. Swings rarely work and work even less in Canada. If I recall correctly, this is from the same thing which predicted Mario Dumont would lose his own seat in 2008. So, yeah.

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Day 3

Conservative   39.4%   +0.3   
Liberal   31.7%   -1.0   
NDP   16.1%   +0.2   
BQ   8.5%   -0.2   
Green   4.4%   +0.7   

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I hate this sh**thole of a country.

Conservative   41.3%   +1.9   
Liberal   30.3%   -1.4   
NDP   16.0%   -0.1   
BQ   8.5%   NC   -
Green   3.7%   -0.7   

Seriously, how can people be so dumb? We're not Sicily.

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If Stephen Harper's Conservative Party wins a majority in Parliament this year, what would be the deadline by which he would have to call the next election?  2015?  2016? 

Presumably 2015, which would mean four years of reactionary incompetent far-right governance. But if the idiots who live here want that, maybe they deserve to be screwed over.

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Somebody on the door to door run told me he was voting only because he was pissed with Harper's lies on coalitions. One of my profs as well.

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I saw that poll the other day in the paper. Needless to say, I was quite surprised. But, I mostly read the Sun (not out of choice, usually), and it tries to avoid anything that would support anybody but the Tories.

I refuse to touch either of this city's newspapers. Metro and 24hours tend to of far more worth (as is The Fulcrum).

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Nanos' daily tracking makes them appear to be the top pollsters above all others, when in fact they haven't been the top pollster since 2006.

Anyways, Nanos' poll for today now sez:
CPC 39.8 (-2.5)
LPC 30.2 (+1.8)
NDP 16.5 (+0.1)
BQ 8.3 (+0.3)
GRN 4 (+0.2)

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What seems pretty confirmed is that the Greenies will do quite badly. Nanos has them at 3-4%, but they don't, iirc, poll them like the others. Other pollsters have them in the 6-8% range. Considering they overpoll by 1-2% in those other polls, it seems pretty clear that they'll take under their 2008 levels.

All of this because May has turned the party into a Elect Me Party at the expense of all others.

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Two ridings in Montreal do have polls done of them:

Lac-Saint-Louis: Lib 46%, Con 26%, NDP 12%, Green 8%, BQ 7%
Outremont: NDP 47%, Lib 27%, BQ 14%, Con 7%, Green 5%

Obviously the record of constituency poll is bad just about everywhere, etc, etc, etc.

I'm not sure what makes you say that. We don't tend to see all that many riding polls in Canada - but when they are done - they tend to quite accurate.

Have a look at the slew of riding polls (mostly in QC) in 2008.

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Former NWT Premier Joe Handley is also running as a Liberal in Western Arctic, which could make it a three-way NDP/Purgs/Grit battle.

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Does the Bloc actually win any votes from Anglophones?

There are a handful of Anglophone nationalists, maybe 5-10% of the overall voting block perhaps, who vote BQ/PQ. The PQ I know has traditionally had a few Anglo MNAs, like former Green leader Scott McKay these days. There was also Westmount's Equality Party MNA who crossed the floor to the PQ

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Grits, dippers... Where do all those silly nicknames come from ?

Grits dates from George Brown's Clear Grit reformers in Upper Canada. Quoting Wikipedia: "Clear Grit" was a complimentary term meaning tenacious or dedicated. The name derives from a quote by party member David Christie who describes the movement as "all sand and no dirt; clear grit all the way through", a reference to the type of sand preferred in the preparation of masonry.

Dipper seems to come from the acronym NDP.

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So, French debate is finished.

To my opinion, Duceppe and Layton were very good, Ignatieff was average and Harper was totally useless. Said unrelated things all time and had a very weak voice. Seemed asleep more than anything else.

I'm not sure who won out of the 3 (probably Duceppe, though Ignatieff impressed me) but Harpy definitely lost. His fraudulent 'sweet honey' robotic 'i love kittens' voice pissed me off, and he was either off the mark on most issues or downright lying.