Canadian by-elections, 2017 (next event: Calgary-Lougheed, AB prov.: Dec 14)

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I knew Shan would probably win, but that is certainly an impressive victory. I figured voters would've got sick of him running for election every six months. So what, we are now headed for a third school board by-election to fill his seat?

Perhaps always constantly running for office in basically the same area helped? He had the name most people knew from the million times he ran. 45% is still really impressive. My first fear was, ugh is he going to bold in 2018... but at the news conference he said he's running again for council (was specific) in 2018. I think Councillor of MPP was really where he wanted to be anyway.
It will be nice to have some more suburban progressives on council, there aren't many (Carroll, Perruzza, Augimeri, Colle, now Shan)

There were other cases in 2014 where an impressive previous run/runs made a Council-bidder an open-seat shoe-in (Justin Di Ciano in Etobicoke stands out)

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The notional 2011 result was the byproduct of added west-of-the-404 polls from Peter Kent's Thornhill superstronghold (which were still something of a Lib-Con draw in 2015), and the Tamil-leaning eastern polls getting caught up in Laytonmania.  With the NDP all but disintegrating as a factor by 2015, the bigger question might be if the "ChinaCon" swing evident in CPC winning Markham-Unionville (or the provincial PCs winning Scarborough-RR) might migrate into the less uppity environs of Milliken, Armadale, et al.

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40 out of 50 polls: 52-40 NDP.

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I wonder what the result would have been like had Meili not been the NDP candidate...

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1.Emilie Taman, Ottawa-Vanier a former federal prosecutor (essentially fired for seeking the NDP nomination for the 2015 election, she's now a law professor.  Personally I can see both sides of whether a a public servant in a non partisan position should be allowed to run politically)

Important, too, to note that she's the daughter of former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour.

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=2.The actual Green Party vote in Saint Laurent (not just its vote percent) increased over 2015.

What was the story there w/ Daniel Green?

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Unlikely. The practice in toronto has been not to have a byelection when we are past the half way mark of the city council term. I expect council to pick a temporary replacement who will promise not to run next year

David Soknacki?

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Sad! The NDP has a fairly low ceiling, clearly. Would've needed the Liberals to do a bit better to bring the Tories down.

Not really.  More that voters chose to "back a winner" (i.e. the presumption that the PCs will win the next election.

Worth noting that this is the first time the provincial PCs have won a seat beyond Nipissing in 30 years.

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Patrick Brown sure is showing that he is a contender.  However, some of the reaction is quite hyper-sensationalist, making it seem like this PC win would be akin to a  Toronto-Danforth, or other leftist riding, win.  This was a seat that went Conservative federally, was on the PCs radar.  Sault Ste Marie has had 3 way splits for some time.  It is not that shocking that the PCs won.

And lest we forget, it was the top riding in Ontario for the Confederation of Regions in 1990.

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One thing to keep in mind about Northern Ontario is that the cities are actually far more right wing than the rural areas (at least economically), so while the NDP can win in areas like Kenora, Algoma, Nickel Belt, Timiskaming and Cochrane, it will have trouble in Sudbury, the Soo and Thunder Bay. There is a base in those cities, but they can only win with the right vote splits.

One of the key issues the NDP will have to deal with is bridging the populist North with the bobo ridings in southern Ontario, something they are now having trouble with. Jack Layton was able to do it, but Horwath and Mulcair could not.

Citywise, don't forget Timmins--though there, the "bourgeois tendencies" have tended to be counteracted by the rest of whatever riding it's in.

And speaking of Timmins, federal NDP leadership contender Charlie Angus practically personifies the populist North/bobo South bridge idea.

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Just because Soo's a city doesn't mean it's a *city* city.  It's more the size of Muncie than Indianapolis, after all.  (And it's not really a "college town", Algoma notwithstanding.)

For the record: across the river, Chippewa County went 59.1 Trump vs 34.8 Clinton.  (In 2012, 53.2 Romney, 45.6 Obama.  In 2008, 49.5 McCain, 49.0 Obama.)

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I have none.  What is the Poe Lock?

(hey, I have personal ethnic licence ;-) )

As for the Soo, the far west is rural-dominated, right?

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You guys are dating yourselves with these All in the Family references!

Given that the alternative is the vapid airheaded Game of Thrones talk in the 2017 French Legislative Elections thread, gladly so. ;-)

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The last federal result suggests that Kelowna at large might be moving "leftward"...which in this case, means centreward, i.e. if the BC Libs continue to be seen as a viable "grand coalition" entity, they've nothing to fear.  (Especially considering how Justin didn't exactly shun his party's provincial namesake.)

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Speaking of the new Toronto Centre riding, I don't think the Tories can win it without Rosedale, so it will be a two-way fight.

Or, if the Tories are headed for a clear majority and Horwath continues to have a "Toronto problem", a two-way fight for *second*.

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How about Swift Current?  After all, it's been held by the NDP before (most recently during the 1991-99 Romanow majority years).  And even if they don't win, in Brad Wall's absence the NDP's almost certain to have one of its highest swings here, if not *the* highest swing...

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Even comparing 2015 to 2004, the Tories are up 5-10% in Swift Current.  It's definitely harder for the NDP to do well there than in 1995.

In this case especially, highest swing does not necessarily mean winning swing.  And it also depends on the respective candidates on offer.

As far as federal-result comparisons go, remember that a Con-ward "push effect" is in place for Cypress Hills-Grasslands that wouldn't be so marked for a provincial-style Swift Current standalone.

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Outremont was more a Mulcair seat than NDP so I actually think there is a real risk it would flip to the Liberals.

Actually, Outremont, thanks to its "urban progressive" base, was the NDP's strongest QC seat over the Alexa/Layton years; and that was prime reasoning behind Mulcair's running there in the first place.  If it now seems "more Mulcair than NDP", it's thanks to the Justin Liberals repatriating the urban progressives--Mulcair "saved" Outremont in 2015 in much the same way that Justin "saved" Papineau in 2011.

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This is correct. There really are no "NDP seats" in Quebec. Outremont is as close as you're going to get to one. As evidenced by the last two elections though, it definitely has a lower ceiling than other ridings in the province, due to being home to more habitual Liberal voting populations...

Or at least, it was as close as you *were* going to get to one in the 90s/00s, with Mile End being the base of their (and later Quebec Solidaire's) support.

One thing that helped is that Outremont was actually more of a Liberal-Bloc marginal, which gave the pre-Mulcair NDP hope of coming up through the middle.

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Right now, the Bloc's closer to the Cons than to the Libs.

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And only 4 votes behind the Cons.

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And re byelection extremists, we can't forget the provincial case of Sam Oosterhoff in Ontario.

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If the NDP under Jagmeet Singh is reduced to 19 seats, that'll be one heck of a bomb.

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If the NDP under Jagmeet Singh is reduced to 19 seats, that'll be one heck of a bomb.

True, although looking at the history of the party, 30 seats seems to the average and asides from 2011, the 44 seats they got in 2015 is their second best showing beating Ed Broadbent's 1988 record of 43 seats. 

But still; that's a fall *back*. A *significant* fall back; over half its seats lost and reverting to Layton '04 square one.  And I highly doubt the party was allowing for that kind of result in choosing Singh as leader--if they were, they'd have chosen a duffer like Howard Hampton succeeding Bob Rae in Ontario.  Or for that matter, like Ed Broadbent *seemed* to be in 1975 (or even Alexa succeeding Audrey in 1995).

It's not about historical NDP "averages" here.  It's about what they're banking/gambling on with their present chosen leader.

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If the NDP under Jagmeet Singh is reduced to 19 seats, that'll be one heck of a bomb.

I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but let's refrain from using the word bomb to describe Singh's political trajectory.  There are many places, even in Canada, that equate brown with terrorist, and this kind of language doesn't help.

I definitely meant "bomb" in the Heaven's Gate or Ishtar sense.  (the movies, that is)