CanPol: May(?) 2011 Election. Vote today!

[notyoueither]

I'm thinking the actual NDP poll will be a bit lower than that reported in day by day opinion. The candidates issue, last minute appeals to the Liberal faithful, lack of follow through by people who do not have a history of turing up to vote, etc.

Still, the NDP should be coming back with significantly more seats than the Liberals. Then it gets interesting.

With or without Ignatieff, will the Liberals (and Bloc) really go along with making Layton PM? Would they not be running the risk of turning Jackists into a new and enlarged base for the NDP? One or both of those parties has a gun to its head from the NDP surge. Will they pull the triggers on themselves?

I'm thinking we are looking at another 2 years of Harper minority. I think it will be at least that long before the Liberals will want to return to the polls. What remains to be seen is if the Liberals and Conservatives together have the seats to keep the NDP at bay and ignore the Bloc. They likely will.

[Uncle Sparky]

It can happen I guess since this surge is unprecedented

We have a 'first past the post' system. In 1993, the PCs under Kim Campbell went from a majority government to 2 seats. They received over 2 million votes though.

On election night, October 25 93, the Conservatives were swept from power in a Liberal landslide. Campbell herself was defeated in Vancouver Centre by rookie Liberal Hedy Fry. She conceded defeat with the wisecrack, "Gee, I'm glad I didn't sell my car."

My old provincial seat in Winnipeg (Crescentwood) was a frequent 3 way battle. It wasn't unusual for the victor to have less then a couple of hundred votes more than the 3rd place candidate.

We know the Cons will win many Alberta, Sask & Mb rural seats with huge pluralities. Those will be 'wasted votes' since in each riding whether you win by 1 vote or 20,000, you will still win one seat. If the Cons stay at around 35% nationally and the NDP stays at 30%, the NDP could end up with more seats (winning close contests) then the Cons.

I've always been a fan of proportional representation, where a party wins seats equal to the percentage of votes it receives. Of course, we would never see a majority government again, nor will the PMO be allowed to exert disproportional power.

[Asher]

Told you Layton was a nude creeper.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/983321--layton-camp-denies-alleged-massage-parlour-incident?bn=1

Layton camp denies alleged massage parlour incident


Joanna Smith Ottawa Bureau

COURTENAY, B.C. —The New Democrats went into damage control after Sun News Network cited unnamed sources saying police found its leader Jack Layton naked in a Toronto massage parlour in 1996.

The campaign has released a statement to media by Olivia Chow, the NDP incumbent in Trinity—Spadina who is married to Layton.

“Sixteen years ago, my husband went for a massage at a massage clinic that is registered with the City of Toronto. He exercises regularly; he was and remains in great shape; and he needed a massage,” said the statement released shortly after the new television network aired its report. “I knew about this appointment, as I always do.”

“No one was more surprised than my husband when the police informed him of allegations of potential wrong doing at this establishment. He told me about the incident after it happened,” Chow said in the statement. “Any insinuation of wrongdoing on the part of my husband is completely and utterly false, which is why after 16 years and eight election campaigns that my husband has campaigned in, this has never been an issue.

“In the last hours of this election, this is nothing more than a smear campaign in an attempt to question my husband's character,” said Chow. “This is another reason why politics in this country need to change and on Monday, Canadians will have their chance to do just that.”

The campaign said it would soon release a statement from a lawyer and would work on issuing a statement from Layton himself.

Campaign spokeswoman Kathleen Monk, travelling with the campaign, went into damage control on Friday evening as media covering the Layton tour started hearing about the report while waiting to go to a rally in Courtenay, B.C.

“There was no conviction made and this even happened 16 years ago and eight election campaigns have happened since that time, so I suggest that we get ready because we have a rally to go to. . . so let’s get on the bus,” a clearly nervous Monk said as she was surrounded by cameras and microphones in the lobby of a hotel on Friday evening.

Monk later told the Star on the bus that she thinks the statement from Chow speaks for itself.

“This is just a smear campaign. This is what this is and this is what's wrong with politics, frankly, and this is why we need a change,” said Monk.

[notyoueither]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/the-strange-death-of-liberal-canada/article2004564/

The ‘strange death’ of Liberal Canada
JEFFREY SIMPSON | Columnist profile | E-mail
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Apr. 30, 2011 2:00AM EDT
Last updated Saturday, Apr. 30, 2011 8:56AM EDT


Michael Ignatieff, being a man of letters and cultivated intelligence, is quite likely familiar with George Dangerfield’s 1935 classic book, The Strange Death of Liberal England.

The years before, during and after the First World War, swallowed up the British Liberal Party in a “strange death,” strange because of “the approaching catastrophe of which the actors were unaware.”

Now, peering into the electoral abyss at the end of a campaign Mr. Ignatieff and his party so resolutely sought, Liberals might be witnessing their own “strange death,” or at least a new stage of political deterioration that spells the end of Liberal Canada.

Liberal Canada lasted a long time, from the election of Wilfrid Laurier in 1896 to Pierre Trudeau’s departure in 1984. A recovery ensued under Jean Chrétien for almost a decade starting in 1993, but the conservative forces were foolishly divided in those years and the Liberals themselves were corrosively split into two factions that time eventually made devastatingly public in the sponsorship scandal.

Liberal Canada’s singular contribution had been to keep French Quebeckers and other Canadians united in one country. In retrospect, the 1981-1982 patriation of the Constitution, engineered brilliantly by Mr. Trudeau, weakened that bridge by turning many francophones away from the Liberals. In reinforcing a country, he lost a large part of a province for his party.

The Liberals have not won a majority of Quebec’s seats in a general election since 1980, and now they’re reduced to a shrunken harvest of largely non-francophone voters. They are the party, honourably, that stands for a strong central government in a province that doesn’t want one.

Liberals thought they could count on the immigrant communities for whom Mr. Trudeau and his legacy were so popular. But when the Harper Conservatives began contesting some of those communities with sustained attention, changed policies and repeated blandishments, even this pillar of the shrunken Liberal coalition, already weakened by the long-ago departure of Western Canada and the more recent disaffection of Quebec, began to shake.

So, too, Liberals were being ousted from the industrial and northern cities of Ontario they had dominated for so long. And for a party that had pioneered protection for the official languages, they were even losing ground in French-speaking areas outside Quebec, such as Acadia, Eastern Ontario and St. Boniface.

The arching coalition of Liberal Canada, therefore, had been shrivelling for years, even if “the actors were unaware” of the unfolding decline. Mr. Ignatieff and his advisers convinced themselves that the anti-democratic tactics of the Harper Conservatives and economic uncertainties post-recession had made the electorate ready for a change, although there was little evidence of such a readiness.

As a student of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Mr. Ignatieff forgot the lessons of the Russian general Kutusov, who waited and waited for events to destroy Napoleon, refusing to give battle until the French had been weakened by their own follies sufficiently to be defeated in combat.

The “approaching catastrophe” wasn’t what Mr. Ignatieff and his advisers had in mind when they precipitated an election the country mostly didn’t want. That they might be replaced by the NDP as the alternative to the Conservatives never crossed their minds, for when had that party climbed above 20 per cent in the polls?

They were confident that the more the country saw of Mr. Ignatieff, the more they’d admire him. But the reverse occurred, and some of those who couldn’t abide the Harper Conservatives turned to Jack Layton, who’d been around for almost a decade as NDP Leader and who kept repeating much of what he always said, a threat no Liberal took seriously until it was far too late.

Defeat will mean less public money and fewer private contributions. It will cost the party MPs, morale and purpose. Liberals have burned through three leaders in six years, convened a policy conference, tried campaigns of bold ideas and less courageous ones, and now can only recall through the mists of memory a time when there was a Liberal Canada.

Various polls have the Liberals at 18 to 22% and on a downward trend.

[Uncle Sparky]

http://www.muslimcanadiancongress.org/20051203.html

The NDP now had endorsements from The Toronto Star, the Muslim Canadian Congress & Tommy Chong.
Sounds like a 'big tent' to me.

[notyoueither]

I wonder how many Martin Liberals (rightish) are going to go along with a PM Layton?

A bit early to be counting chickens, Uncle Sparky.

[notyoueither]

Nanos has the NDP wave cresting, with a small decrease yesterday along with a bounce for the Liberals and a small increase for the Conservatives.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20110430/nanos-poll-saturday-110430/20110430?s_name=election2011

Poll suggests Tories 'teetering' to majority

[Ben Kenobi]

Conservative Majority, and Layton backlash. Iggy's likely done.

[Theben]

conservatives in Canada need your help, Ben. Go quickly, before it's too late!

[Ben Kenobi]

Not in my riding.

[Medex]

conservatives in Canada need your help, Ben. Go quickly, before it's too late!

Canada had an awesome bowel movement the day ben crossed the border. Lets not spoil the memory of that great day.

[notyoueither]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/andrew-steele/does-laytons-rise-mean-more-tory-majorities/article2005799/

Does Layton’s rise mean more Tory majorities?
Andrew Steele
Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Sunday, May 1, 2011 12:26PM EDT


For generations, New Democrats have looked longingly at Britain and wondered when Canada would send its Liberal Party to permanent opposition and allow social democrats to become the second major party.

The 1922 watershed was the election in which the Liberals split into factions loyal to H.H. Asquith and David Lloyd George, allowing Labour to become the opposition and the Conservatives to win victory.

Another election the next year left Labour in a strong position and in 1924, the Liberals were pushed down to just 40 seats as the electorate polarized between a working class Labour Party and a middle class Conservative Party.

The result was realignment.

Realigning elections are when the coalitions supporting political parties permanently shift, creating entirely new dynamics that drive the politics of the country. They can happen suddenly in a single election, or more gradually over twenty years.

Famous examples are Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to get white Southern voters moving from the Democrats to the Republicans in the wake of the Civil Rights Act. It smashed the Roosevelt Democrat coalition and allowing the GOP to hold the presidency for seven of the next 11 terms.

Jeffery Simpson notes the similarities between the “Strange Death of Liberal England” in the 1920s and the current crisis facing the Liberal Party of Canada in today’s Globe. What Simpson didn’t talk about was the implications of the realignment in Britain in the 1920s.

Prior to the realignment, the Liberals had been the primary force for social progress in Parliament. Liberals laid the foundations of the welfare state with the People’s Budget of 1909. Liberals ended the power of the House of Lords. Liberals introduced health and unemployment insurance. And they were electorally successful, governing for the majority of the previous 50 years under Gladstone, Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith.

Part of this was due to the growing clout of progressive liberalism in the early 20th century. Part of it was due to electoral pressure from a snappy little third party calling itself Labour that was scaring the willies off the middle class but beginning to get some appeal with working men. Like the NDP in Canada, Labour at the turn of the century served as a Parliamentary pressure group that drew the centre to the left.

But the realignment of the 1920’s changed British politics. The Liberals were replaced by Labour as the dominant progressive party, while the Conservatives grew and became the dominant party of the middle class, and of Parliament.

Just as the Liberals governed Canada for the majority of the past hundred years, so have the Conservatives dominated post-realignment Britain. In the 89 years since the 1922 election, the Conservatives have held power for 53. That’s a 60 per cent record, much better than they were doing in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Labour frightened the middle class, and was less electorally competitive than the Liberals as the major progressive party. They had one period of fundamental reform following the Second World War, but couldn’t sustain an appeal to the middle class until New Labour in the 1990s, which some social democrats equate with Tory lite.

When they did get into power, they did so through pragmatism and compromise that infuriated the true believers in their midst. They would quickly be sent back to the opposition benches, never winning two successive majorities until Blair.

Ralph Miliband, a social democrat intellectual and father of the current Labour Leader, wrote a book saying their shift to a compromising party of government undermined their earlier status as an electoral machine that pulled the Liberals to the left, and pulled the entire party system to the right. In essence, he argues Labour’s buying into the parliamentary system preserved and strengthened the capitalist system, creating the conditions for neo-liberalism to become the dominant paradigm.

In contrast to this electoral struggle, the Conservatives, previously the party of the aristocracy, were able to rapidly gain share with the middle class, and become the dominant party in Britain. They won several successive majority governments, critical to sustaining conservative reforms and making them unassailable to quick reversal by Labour. Under Thatcher, Major and Cameron, Conservatives have prized austerity and fundamentally altered British society.

New Democrats rejoicing in their new poll standings should consider the implications of their success. If Britain is any guide, the result will be more Conservative majorities, not less. And for anyone who has progressive values, that’s a bad thing.

[Uncle Sparky]

No it won't be a Tory Majority.

My Prediction:

Con - 124
NDP - 96
Lib - 62
Bloc - 24
Green - 1
Ind - 1 (ex-Con Helena Guergis)

So, what are your bets?

[notyoueither]

I think you are in the range of likely results, but actual results are wildly unpredictable.

[notyoueither]

If things go right for the Conservatives Harper will have his majority.

In past elections NDP support has dipped in the final days of the campaign. I'm not in a good position to judge, but if the argument that a vote for either the Liberals or NDP will lead to an NDP government has an impact, many of those last minute switches (the blue Grits and the non-partisans) will go to Harper.

Does anybody expect the full level of NDP polling support to show up at the polling stations? If lower turnout than polled plays out, a lot more Liberal and Bloc seats become vulnerable to the Conservatives.

It boils down to IF the polls are under-reporting Conservative votes and IF they are over-estimating NDP votes, then a Conservative majority is entirely possible.