Canadian by-elections, 2012

[adma]

Also, those Liberal bits from 2008 in the central-west part of the riding makes sense, because that's the wealthiest part of the riding.

Sorta...but not entirely; it's like the Annex in that it was "champagne socialist" until the Green Shift Grits tilted the plate in their direction in '08...

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It'd be interesting, and not all that implausible (depending on who's nominated), if the NDP wins that seat...

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By the way, the federal NDP held the riding between 1968 and 1979.  It is normally a Liberal riding though.

Remember that back then, the riding was much larger and rather strangely configured, reaching all the way down to Cambridge.

Even so, for the NDP to do well isn't out of the question: keep in mind that its federal (and by proxy, maybe, provincial) vote in 2011 was probably significantly "suppressed" by former Liberal MP Andrew Telegdi absorbing so much of the nominal anti-Tory energy--the inverse of the cratering-ex-incumbent situation in Brant, Welland, etc...

[adma]

FTR the riding also has the University of Waterloo, making it a "university riding". The NDP could win there, but I don't know. It didn't even go NDP in 1990, when it was an open seat. That was Witmer's first victory, where she got 37% . The NDP was 2nd at 29% and Telegdi, was running for the Liberals, and got 24%. BTW, if he runs, he'll likely win.

Re 1990, I'd offer that it was an odd circumstance in an overall odd election, and that it probably would have gone NDP had Witmer, through her strong 2nd place finish in '87, not been positioned as the official "pox on the Peterson house" choice around these parts.  (And for the record, pre-Witmer it was solidly provincial Liberal for years under Ernie Epp, back when the Liberals were something of a "SW Ontario Heartland" provincial party of record.)

And also, within the present boundaries (i.e. factoring out rural Wellesley and Woolwich and taking in the northern fringe of Kitchener), K-W would have been nominally NDP in 1990.

All that, plus Telegdi's federal record, helps to affirm the "more a Witmer seat than a PC seat" argument--but even if Telegdi were the standard-bearer, the biggest crimp for the McGuinty Liberals, currently, is their low (and even 3rd-place?!?) standing in the polls.  It's in light of apparent Horwathmania that I'm offering a "monitor the NDP" argument; at any rate, I doubt we're back to the old pattern of such byelections working out as straight PC-Lib slugfests with NDP marginalized into single digits (or behind-the-Greens) anymore...

[adma]

Herb Epp. Not Ernie Epp. Ernie was an NDP MP in the 1980s.

Thanks.  All those elected Epps in the 80s blur into each other.

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Is there a reason for the NDP surge in Ontario and nationally lately? Mulcair bump?

Many things. Nationally, Mulcair helps, definitely. The Tories have also been pretty incompetent lately (unpopular budget, lying about F-35's, trust issues) and the NDP is now seen as the alternative, not the Liberals. Mulcair has a pretty good team and there has not been any gaffes (yet?).

Ontario's different. Sure, the NDP is in second place (provincially and federally), but who knows where that support is coming from? It might just be that the party is consolidating their support in ridings that they won last year? The Tories would still probably win 60+ ridings in the province even if the numbers are 37 Con - 31 NDP.

Provincially, actually, it appears to have a lot to do with Andrea Horwath's performance relative to the McGuinty minority-budget negotiations--she seems to have struck a popular (and populist) chord there...

[adma]

I doubt Kitchener-Waterloo will go NDP as they generally get below the provincial average here,

Though they were actually above the provincial average here in 2007, thanks to a serious campaign by school trustee Catherine Fife--unfortunately for her, that was still the "strategic vote = Liberal" era; but if anyone were to score the seat for the NDP now, it'd be her, I suspect...

[adma]

Interesting to note (re this byelection being about about "restoring" the Liberal majority) that Andrea Horwath entered Queen's Park under similar circumstances, i.e. a byelection that came to be about restoring the NDP's Official Party Status.  (And there as here, the riding demographics were favourable to the party making the "restoration" bid, even if the departed member was from another party.)

[adma]

Why?

A Liberal victory could be seen as a resurgence of the Liberals, especially in the all important 416 area. Etobicoke Centre doesn't have the right demographics to go NDP. Both Etobicoke Centre ridings avoided going NDP in the 1990 provincial wave.

Yeah, but it'd more likely be seen as a resurgence of the Liberals at the expense of the Cons, not at the expense of the NDP.

What the NDP is really seeking here is a "barometer result", not victory per se--though yeah, you'll find those who mouth words about coming through in a three-way.  (At best, I suspect the NDP could "unexpectedly" ascend into the mid-20s a la Don Valley East--and even that isn't necessarily a barrier to Liberal victory, no matter what the strategic-voting advocates tell you.)

[adma]

I suspect it's redundant in the end.  After all, polling indicates that the Grits/Borys already has a ten-point advantage, even with the NDP holding its 2011 share...

[adma]

Interesting Calgary Centre is the most left wing seat in Calgary. I wonder if the NDP will bother trying to win it.

Actually, it's more of a draw w/Calgary Centre-North on that "inner urban" front (and Calgary North East has, for various mostly-ethnicized reasons, proven even more of a left-of-Tory stronghold lately).  And btw/CC  and CCN, CC has more of a "Liberal" history, and CCN more of an "NDP" history.

Yeah, the NDP have reason to try; but don't be surprised if the Liberals try to pull a few "Nenshi progressives" and "Swann Nation" provincial Grits as well...

[adma]

Its worth noting that historically the NDP has been in single digits in Calgary Centre,

I don't know what you mean about "historically"; from what I can tell, aside from the AudreyAlexa downtime, the NDP seem to been in double digits (if not *too* far in) at least as often as it hasn't.  (And remember that this is Calgary, where *any* party that isn't Conservative is lucky to crack 20%.)

[adma]

It's probably more Mulcair's warpath against the tarsands that renders the NDP uncommonly doomed here, than the simple historical fact that it's Calgary...

[adma]

I also as a general rule think it is best to try and win at least one seat in every province even though I agree Alberta will be a weak spot for the NDP much the way Quebec is for the Tories. 

Then again, the NDP already has its one seat in Alberta...

[adma]

I guess this'd be like Brian Topp running in Etobicoke Centre...

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Related to MPP John O'Toole, I presume?

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Quite frankly, i think the reason the NDP keeps hitting the ceiling in Oshawa is that they keep running a succession of "old NDP" candidates who appeal to the CAW crowd but are not all all attractive to all the middle class suburbanistes in Oshawa who do NOT work for GM and who might be open to the NDP if the candidate wasn't always such a throwback to another era. As long as the NDP keeps running people like Sid Ryan and a succession of CAW local presidents they will keep hitting that ceiling. Maybe in 2015 they will find a candidate who the auto workers like but who also has some appeal to the suburban commuters who live in Oshawa who might want a progressive alternative to harper and Co.

And plus, let's face it, Harper + Co. have been attractive to locals, esp. w/seat incombency,  It isn't just a matter of "progressive alternative"; it's a matter of giving voters a concrete excuse to reject the Conservatives.  And in Ontario in 2011, Laytonmania wasn't enough of an excuse to eject a Con-incumbent.

However, now there is a good excuse for Ontarioans to reject the incumbent Conservatives--majority hubris.  (Obvious case in point: Bev Oda.)  And any upset potential for the NDP would be more out of populism than progressivism--the same populism that led a lot of those 1990 Rae-NDP voters to vote federally Reform three years later.

It's also worth noting that a lot of 2011's best NDP polls in Durham actually happened to be in newer subdivisions, in places like Bowmanville's outer reaches--maybe reflective of Layton's appeal to the kinds of younger demographics that set up their first home here...

[adma]

Except that we're not talking about Sid Ryan-or-whomever per se.  We're talking about present-day (that is, 2012, not 2011) Harper vs Mulcair--which may be enough to override any tired-union-hack stigma...

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I think the NDP's support in the core areas of Oshawa have been overstated by some of the posters here (just by eyeballing the data, it appears they lost by a sizeable margin in a hypothetical core seat). It's not the early 90s and even with the "orange crush", they were only able to increase support in most polls by 1-3%. That doesn't bode well for the next election. I think the clearest example of the continued erosion of NDP support was shown in the provincial election.  They achieved a swing that was less than the provincial swing even while they ran on a platform that was basically tailored for Oshawa.

It's not necessarily that dire--and besides, that "only" 1-3%-increased-support was by default of the NDP already having competitive strength here, i.e. they were already in a 2011-esque position in 2008, 2006, 2004.  The bigger NDP jumps in support were dead-cat-bounces in neighbouring ridings where the party was hitherto a writeoff.

If anything's being overstated here, it's the forever-uniform nature of the Conservative vote--but then again, it's also worth observing that against the Laytonmania grain, there was a rather noticeable NDP-to-Tory swing in a lot of the hitherto most heavily blue-collar NDP-leaning polls in places like Hamilton and Windsor; and of a sort that's not merely explainable through Liberal collapse--it's almost as if the NDP had already maxed out in those polls and the Tories repatriated a lot of "Reagan Democrat" apparently-NDP-populist types who once might've supported Reform.  Perhaps a bit of that was in effect in Oshawa as well.

But that was 2011.  This is 2012.  What may be hurting the Tories now is "majority hubris"; and Bev Oda's an A-1 emblem of that--and, look at it this way, if in this Durham byelection, the Cons are significantly below 50% and the NDP significantly above 30% (heck, just plain being above 30% might as well be "significant"), that'd probably foretell an NDP victory in Oshawa proper...

[adma]

And I hate to say it, but Rob Ford is slightly more competent than our mayor was. However, Ford is more right wing. 

*More* competent?  Didn't realize O'Brien was *that* bad--either that, or you haven't been at the heart of the Toronto scene.

But there's also something of a difference btw/the Toronto and Oshawa situations--that is, Oshawa isn't that immigrant-y or non-white-y, it really is closer to the old-school "Reform" demographic.  Indeed, remember that Layton's more marked 2011 gains tended to be in ethnoburbia (witness Scarborough, BGM, etc); while, as I've indicated, the NDP didn't gain all that much or even fell back on behalf of the Tories in their traditional Broadbentian lunchbucket-labour union zones.

And another thing about Oshawa is that unlike other blue-collar NDP nodes like Hamilton and WIndsor, it does not have much of a base of Copps/Munro/Herb Gray "Lib-Lab" strength; Ivan Grose won here in the Chretien era largely upon coattails, and versus a Reform/Alliance base that saw this as one of their more competitive Ontario prospects.  Other than the Grose interregnum, this is that ultimate Ontario odd-duck: historically, a true Con-NDP marginal--or if not that, if one were to extend today's dismissiveness t/w the NDP to the past, Broadbent was as much of a fluke as Grose was.  And to go crudely by Chretien-era "united right" tallies, the Conservatives ought to have scored this by more than a 3-way margin fluke in '04--but it's pretty much explained by the Cons having gained this at all in '04 that Colin Carrie has warded off all wouldbe NDP competition since.  And a lot of the reasoning here is as "external" (i.e. safety with Harper) as it was with Grose (i.e. safety with Chretien).  In a seat where regardless of NDP positioning, the Tories have traditionally had an upper hand over the Liberals--the Tories benefit.  (It also explains why Jerry Ouellette has held tight provincially: once they nab the ring in a weak-Liberal circumstance, they hold tight.)

But now, w/the unprecedented situation of the NDP in Official Opposition (and actually proving its mettle there), the circumstances have changed.  Which is why NDP prospects in *Durham* are deemed worth discussion, never mind Oshawa...

[adma]

Maybe not, but I couldn't imagine anyone more incompetent than O'Brien. He was a lot like George W. Bush. And boy, when Bush came to down, you should have seen how giddy OBrien was. He was like a hero to him.

If you're just using a Dubyah barometer of incompetence: believe you me, Rob Ford's worse (though it'd more likely be his brother Doug who'd have that O'Brien giddiness).

I'll spare you the details--but once you Google up and consider Rob Ford's gaffes-on-record, O'Brien practically comes across Mel Lastmanish by comparison...

[adma]

Incidentally, I've divided Durham's 2011 e-day results into geographic sectors, with these quick-and-possibly-mildly-inaccurate results...

uxbridge rural--: Con 2149 (58.75), Lib 692 (18.92), NDP 533 (14.57), GP 253 (6.92), Ltn 19 (.52), CHP 12 (.33)
uxbridge urban--:  Con 2456 (53.39), Lib 1036 (22.52), NDP 738 (16.04), GP 342 (7.43), CHP 19 (.41), Ltn 9 (.20)
scugog w rural--  Con 1411 (58.35), Lib 434 (17.95), NDP 390 (16.13), GP 158 (6.53), CHP 17 (.70). Ltn 8 (.33)
pt perry--  Con 1896 (53.64), Lib 750 (21.22), NDP 652 (18.44), GP 206 (5.83), CHP 22 (.62), Ltn 9 (.25)
scugog e rural--  Con 1691 (57.17), NDP 633 (21.40), Lib 404 (13.66), GP 204 (6.90), CHP 21 (.71), Ltn 5 (.17)
darlington rural--  Con 2183 (58.23), NDP 775 (20.67), Lib 537 (14.32), GP 189 (5.04), CHP 52 (1.39), Ltn 13 (.35)
courtice--  Con 4436 (52.35), NDP 2280 (26.91), Lib 1293 (15.26), GP 386 (4.56), CHP 52 (.61), Ltn 27 (.32)
bowmanville--  Con 6560 (51.85), NDP 3454 (27.30), Lib 1897 (14.99), GP 589 (4.66), CHP 114 (.90), Ltn 39 (.31)
clarke rural--  Con 2369 (56.16), NDP 868 (20.58), Lib 677 (16.05), GP 215 (5.10), CHP 70 (1.66), Ltn 19 (.45)
newcastle--  Con 1464 (50.87), NDP 731 (25.40), Lib 506 (17.58), GP 147 (5.11), CHP 18 (.63), Ltn 12 (.42)

[adma]

No, I was there when Ford was elected, I don't think it was so much of a gay issue than it was just the fact that outer-Toronto was trending conservative at the time - just like, in 2011, quite a few ridings in Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough went Conservative.

Well, if one were to paint all Toryism with a common brush.  Look, if Dubyah-keister-kissing is all you can point to as evidence of O'Brien being "worse" than Ford (or maybe more properly, the double-headed monster that is Rob + Doug Ford), you haven't comprehended the fullness of Ford-style ineptitude.  (Indeed, that's been the problem with a lot of Ford's critics over time: that they've offered overly softball generic right-of-centre evil/buffoonery/thuggery comparisons--O'Brien, Mel Lastman, Dubyah, Boris Johnson, Mike Harris, etc...)

[adma]

I thought I read somewhere that she's running again--then again, there seem to be indications that the Liberal candidate may be running again, either.

In any case, this byelection may well be a litmus on whether Ontario's ConLib seats gone ConNDP are set to continue that pattern, or whether 2011 was a blip.  (Especially since 2011's Grit candidate ran a much more active and media-ballyhooed "anti-Oda" campaign--for him to finish 3rd vs a skeleton NDP candidate must have startled everyone in his camp and beyond)

[adma]

Nice Map!... you could pretty easily just split that with a knife along the Uxbridge/Scugog border

Or more properly, along the old Ontario/Durham County border (which'd divide Scugog in half).

As far as redistribution goes, I could just as well see Scugog/Uxbridge combined with Brock/Georgina/E Gwillimbury/Whitchurch-Stouffville, or some such combo, i.e. totally divorced from PickAjWhitOshClar...