CanPol - Fall election: Do we have an issue yet?

[Wezil]

What's so funny about Stockwell Day?

[Ben Kenobi]

A quick look at the message board FreeDominion and one can see that the people who were the CA's base supporters generally are not Harper supporters. They may hold their noses and vote CPC, but if the leader of the CPC was more left leaning and from Ontario, I don't know if they'd even do that.

Exactly. The party core are Day supporters. They are pro-life social and fiscal conservatives like you see in the States. The only reason they support Harper is because he was less bad than the other alternatives, especially Belinda Stronach.

I'd agree that, given the current political situation, the best the CPC can hope for is about what they have now. I'm not sure if that shows that Harper is a terrible leader, though. Personally, if an election is called this fall, I think the absolute best the Liberal Party could hope for is (if things worked out perfectly, and with a bit of luck) is maybe a 120 seat minority.

Unless they break through the west, this is an impossibility. The last time they won a minority, the Conservatives were under 30 percent. Now they are at 35. The real reason for the deadlock is twofold:

One, the Bloc stranglehold on Quebec, and two, the Maritimes supporting the Liberal party. It works the other way as the Liberals cannot gain traction in Western Canada, which will only be increasingly a problem as redistribution increases their seat share after 2010. Taking 75 seats out of the equation, leaves only about 240 seats to fight over. In order to acheive a majority, this means you now need to get 155 of those 240 seats, or just under 2 to 1.

So I see the upper bound for the CPC being around 145 seats, while the upper bound for the Liberals is about 120 seats.

Unless they change in the west, their upper bound is 90 seats. Conservatives are just too entrenched in western canada and in rural ontario.

(Though they should've done that already, if they had any leader other than Elizabeth May, I'm sure they would have).

Well their strongest seats have been out this way and Green support is declining. One of the leftist parties will have to die.

[Ben Kenobi]

I still don't see why Stock is considered to be a 'bad' leader. He was shafted and never got a chance.

A somewhat sobering thought is that in the 2002 leadership convention, while Harper recieved 55% of the vote, Stockwell Day was in second place with 37%. After his disastrous leadership, he still managed to secure 37% support.

I think it's really unfortunate he was regarded as a pariah. He actually led the breakthrough into Ontario and won 2 seats out there, whereas the Reform party had won 0 under Preston. He was done in by the massive expectations created and a hostile media that did not want to see a true conservative leader.

[Wezil]

I just knew BK would be a fan of Stockwell Day.

[Flubber]

Then vote for Ignatieff. We've got 1279738302 leftist parties out there.

Ben

whats wrong with wanting someone a little more centre right than out on the fringe right?

For better or worse there is a significant portion of the electorate that thinks that Harper is "really" an out on the fringe kinda guy and that his true colors will be revealed only if he is given majority power. Those folks will never vote for the CPC under Harper.

However if you had a leader who had less of Harper's righty baggage, perhaps someone with a Progressive Conservative past, that might kill the whole "Conservatives are scary" angle.

What I want is a conservative party that actually IS conservative on fiscal matters and which is centrist enough on social policy to be acceptable /electable to most Canadians

[Flubber]

Well their strongest seats have been out this way and Green support is declining. One of the leftist parties will have to die.

Probably true but as it stands you should be all in favor of them living for a long long time-- Since neither Green nor NDP voters are very likely to have the Conservatives as their second choice*, you should applaud them continuing to split up the "lefty vote".

* The Greens though can be an interesting mix since I do know of people that are fairly conservative in most things who have embrace the environment as their biggest issue and are Green supporters because of that. I would actually be intrigued to see if they would track what the second choice of Green supporters would be... hmmm

[Ben Kenobi]

Probably true but as it stands you should be all in favor of them living for a long long time-- Since neither Green nor NDP voters are very likely to have the Conservatives as their second choice*, you should applaud them continuing to split up the "lefty vote".

Out west they are considered the second choice, but you are right. I'd rather see the Greens continue to earn about 10 percent of the vote every election, and make it that much harder for 3 leftist parties to topple the conservatives.

* The Greens though can be an interesting mix since I do know of people that are fairly conservative in most things who have embrace the environment as their biggest issue and are Green supporters because of that. I would actually be intrigued to see if they would track what the second choice of Green supporters would be... hmmm

Depends on where they are. Second choice of conservatives would probably be the greens, and the second choice of the greens would probably be the dippers.

[Ben Kenobi]

whats wrong with wanting someone a little more centre right than out on the fringe right?

What you want is Ignatieff. Harper is already centre-right and is well to the left of his base. I'm sorry, but I've heard this over and over again. Seriously, if you want someone to the left of Harper, go vote for Iggy.

For better or worse there is a significant portion of the electorate that thinks that Harper is "really" an out on the fringe kinda guy

And for those people, we have the BQ, the Liberals and the Dipper party. Plenty of options on the menu.

However if you had a leader who had less of Harper's righty baggage, perhaps someone with a Progressive Conservative past, that might kill the whole "Conservatives are scary" angle.

Fine, vote for Iggy. He has no 'scary conservative baggage', despite the fact that he is an American, has only resided in the country less than 5 years.

What I want is a conservative party that actually IS conservative on fiscal matters and which is centrist enough on social policy to be acceptable /electable to most Canadians

What you want is the Liberal party.

'Centrist' to you on social issues, means proabortion, pro gay marriage, pro everything except conservative. Social moderate + Fiscal conservative = Liberal party of Canada.

Social conservative + Fiscal conservative = Conservative Party of Canada.

[Ben Kenobi]

I just knew BK would be a fan of Stockwell Day.

At the time I preferred Presto, and was one of the DORC supporters. My opinion of Stock has gone up considerably in the last while.

[Flubber]

Ben

believe it or not there are other folks that could lead the Conservatives other than Harper and not everyone that has reservations about Harper is necessarily wanting anything to do with the Liberals or Ignatieuf.

Assume for a second if Harper had acted pretty much identicaly to what he actually has as PM with two exceptions

1. avoided the promise and the run at gay marriage-- he had no chance to win and placating his base probably cost him a lot from the centre

2. had his background in the PCs rather than Reform


If you could change just those two things, there would probably be another 20% of the population that would not pretty much discount Harper as an option. I guess the question is if Harper were otherwise the same would he still have the support of the righties

[Ben Kenobi]

believe it or not there are other folks that could lead the Conservatives other than Harper and not everyone that has reservations about Harper is necessarily wanting anything to do with the Liberals or Ignatieuf.

How would your ideal candidate differ from Ignatieff? That isn't clear to me.

[Flubber]

How would your ideal candidate differ from Ignatieff? That isn't clear to me.

Since I have

1. made very few comments about Ignatieuf
2. made zero allsuions to "my ideal candidate"-- I find this unsurprising


But my ideal candidate wouldn't have reducing EI qualification periods as their 'big issue'

[Ben Kenobi]

But my ideal candidate wouldn't have reducing EI qualification periods as their 'big issue'

Well please go on. I'm sincerely interested in your opinion on this matter.

[ShaneWalter]

What you want is the Liberal party.

'Centrist' to you on social issues, means proabortion, pro gay marriage, pro everything except conservative. Social moderate + Fiscal conservative = Liberal party of Canada.

Social conservative + Fiscal conservative = Conservative Party of Canada.

A social conservative party will never form government in Canada. Most people in Canada are pro-choice. Most people in Canada are pro-gay marriage as well.

I'm not really sure how Harper compares to Ignatieff because I'm not really sure what Ignatieff's stance on anything really is. I didn't really think that there was much of a difference between Paul Martin and Harper though.



Flubber, I don't really think that people are concerned about Harper's position on social issues. From my understanding, the concerns are more that he advocated for a "firewall" policy for Alberta, and he has given speeches earlier in his career that made him seem to prefer a more "Americanized" Canada. I mean, Harper was a member of the Young Liberals Club in highschool, but switched political alleigances to the PC party after disagreeing with the National Energy Policy. His time with the Reform Party was short, he left due to a disagreement with Preston Manning in the mid 90's, only returning to run for leadership of the Canadian Alliance in 2002.

[Ben Kenobi]

A social conservative party will never form government in Canada. Most people in Canada are pro-choice.

Most people in Canada want restrictions on abortion, and they do not want to pay for other people to have an abortion.

Most people in Canada are pro-gay marriage as well.

It's never been put up for a vote. If 40 percent of Canadians support banning gay marriage, than that is enough of a base for the Conservatives to win a majority government.

The point is that there are 4 liberal parties, and 1 conservative party, even if the majority of Canadians believe in something, the conservatives can still represent a minority that is not well represented.