I’m just throwing this out there, because, based on what Stephen Harper has been saying, as of right now, it seems fairly unlikely, however elections can cause strange things to happen.
Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper agree on little. But it does seem that Ignatieff and Harper DO agree that a government headed by Jack Layton would be disastrous for Canada.
Consider a scenario where, as I have previously posted, Parliament returns with the NDP around 100 seats, The Conservatives at around 145, the BQ at 15, and the Liberals sitting around the 48 seat mark.
Obviously, Michael Ignatieff will be gone as Leader of the Liberals, and someone will be chosen to take his place. I can see in this scenario a – yes, I’m going to say it, and I’m choking as I do – some sort of informal “agreement” forming. Not between the Liberals and NDP, but – here it comes – between the Conservatives and the Liberals. Maybe not a spoken one; maybe not even an announced agreement, but a simple agreement that with a few small changes to the budget, the Liberal caucus would agree to support the throne speech and budget, keeping Stephen Harper in the PMO as the lesser – from the Liberals’ viewpoint – of two evils.
The numbers in the title of this page say it all. The Conservatives seem set for a majority government; however things can still change – especially since Nanos’ does a three-day rolling poll, dropping the oldest data with each day’s release.
The Conservatives currently could win between 159 and 205 seats,
Next is the NDP who, amusingly have either the potential of being wiped out at 7 seats or cruising to Official Opposition at 94 seats.
The Liberals are in deep trouble. While their seat spread is much smaller, Michael Ignatieff has the potential of leading the Liberal Party to their worst defeat in history: anywhere between 38 and 51 seats – worse even than John Turner did in 1984, when Turner won 40 seats.
The Bloc Quebecois can win anywhere between 16 and 45 seats.
The volatility and high spread in seat counts is caused by the poll’s margin of error in Quebec. The poll has the NDP at 36.5% and the Bloc Quebecois at 27.4%, however the sample size means a margin of error of 6.3%, which puts numerous seats into play.
The latest Angus Reid poll released today shows some interesting numbers:
Conservative: 147 (anywhere from 146-184)
New Democrats: 99 (anywhere from 10-99)
Liberal: 44 (anywhere from 44-68)
Bloc Quebecois: 17 (anywhere from 17-46)
While looking at the actual polled numbers it appears like a Conservative minority again, we do see that the Liberal+NDP numbers are not sufficient, in and of themselves, to bypass the Conservative plurality; which means they’d need to rely on the Bloc Quebecois for support to put Jack Layton into 24 Sussex Drive. First, it is highly unlikely that Michael Ignatieff would be able to stomach that idea, and second, the Canadian public would never accept a coalition – formal or informal – with the Bloc.
The numbers are very positive for the Conservative party. Despite polling 35%, the concentration of NDP support is in Quebec, at the expense of all other parties. This pulls down the national support figure for the Conservatives, and pulls up the same figure for the NDP.
Excluding Quebec, you see some startling changes (and, because I don’t have sample sizes for each province, this is a rough estimate based on an extrapolation, and the numbers do NOT add up):
Conservative: 42
New Democrats: 28
Liberal: 25
This is a more accurate glimpse of what’s going on in Canada, when you take out the NDP surge in Quebec.
I can’t imagine how Michael Ignatieff can sleep at night, knowing he’s made the biggest blunder of his (abbreviated) political career.
In the same vein as my last prediction, put out this morning from the data supplied by Nanos Research, here is one based on the data supplied by the most recent Ekos poll, also released today:
Ekos is an interesting firm. Their results are always very low for the Conservatives and high for other parties. They had similar issues during the 2008 campaign. Their methodology uses a recorded message over the phone (both to landlines and cell phones) where the participant is not required to talk to a person. Given the results are very far off from the other polling firms, and given they off by 3% in 2008, whereas Ipsos Reid and Angus Reid, both with much smaller sample sizes were far closer, this leads me to believe that Ekos’ methodology has a flaw in it somewhere.
The title of this blog appears on Twitter, so I have tagged it with the appropriate hashtags to ensure that it gets placed correctly. Unless you are a Twitter user, it won’t make much sense to you (like when Jack Layton said “Hashtag Fail” at the leaders’ debate) but for those of you who do follower Twitter, you’ll get it.
Throughout the election campaign, I have been monitoring the polls and posting seat predictions to Twitter. These have bounced all over the place as the polls have moved, which has made the campaign a bit of an emotional roller coaster.
Things are, in a nutshell, getting very interesting.
Nanos Research released their latest daily tracking poll this morning, so I fed the data into my seat predictor and this is what I came up with. Remember a Parliamentary majority requires 155 seats:
When I factor the margin of error into my calculations, we get a spread of seats which each party is likely to win. I prefer to use the spread rather than a definite number because polls, and specifically seat predictions, are notoriously volatile:
My methodology is fairly simple, and is based on a number of assumptions:
(a) That the same number of people will vote in this election as voted last time.
(b) That party support is uniformly spread across the geographic regions published by the polling firm.
(c) That party support is not affected by local demographics, such as ethnicity, faith, or other facts which drive votes one way or another.
(d) Independent candidates are not considered.
The calculation process involves breaking the country down into geographic areas similar to those used by the polling firm in their data gathering, and working out the party support in that particular area as a percentage. Then, the change in support from last time is applied on a riding-by-riding basis. A new winner is then calculated.
On a national scale, and, to a lesser extent, a provincial scale, this is fairly accurate. I ran models during the campaigns of 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008 and each time, I was reasonably close at a national level, however it can not – and does not – come close to predicting individual riding results.
Things are looking very well for the Conservatives, who are in clear majority territory now. Michael Ignatieff’s political career is pretty much over, Jack Layton, if the trends continue, may just become leader of the Official Opposition, and Gilles Duceppe seems to be on track to retirement.
The campaign has not started well for Michael Ignatieff. Yesterday, just after the confidence vote in the House of Commons, Ignatieff came bustling out through the doors into the glare of the television lights prepared for his interview.
The first questions right off the start were regarding whether he would enter into a Parliamentary coalition with the Bloc Quebecois and NDP should the May 2 election result in yet another Minority Parliament as happened in 2004, 2006, and 2008.
Ignatieff danced. He dodged. He weaved. He equivocated. He did anything he possibly could to avoid actually answering the question:
A quick history lesson: towards the end of 2008, in a brazen case of political opportunism, the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois decided they didn’t like the results of the last election, and realized that, in our Parliamentary democracy, by working together – they thought – they could usurp power from the party that Canadians sent into Parliament to govern.
I have posted earlier that Canadians don’t elect their government; and that is still true. Canadians elect their legislature, and the various members of that Legislature form Parliamentary coalitions within that legislative assembly – they’re called “Caucuses.” When we elect our MPs, we know, by nature of the party to which they belong, which Caucus they will be sitting with once Parliament returns to session.
Sometimes – and this is perfectly legal and legitimate – some caucuses agree to work together and form what is known as a Parliamentary Coalition. From the point of view of Parliament, there is no party affiliation, just caucus membership, with a label attached to that caucus for reference purposes.
That is all well and good; because the voters know, at the time of an election, what caucus their candidates will be joining. Floor-crossing (joining a different caucus) is legitimate, but it is frowned-upon by the Canadian voters. Members who cross the floor are very rarely re-elected.
In 2008, had the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc decided to campaign on a platform of forming a Parliamentary coalition, what they tried to do towards the end of that year would have been reasonable, since Canadians would have known it was coming, however, in the campaign of 2008, Michael Ignatieff said this:
In the election campaign of 2008, Ignatieff ruled out the idea of a coalition:
“‘Wake up, there’s no coalition with Jack Layton,’ he said. ” (click here for reference)
Later, he signed on to the coalition:
This morning, once again, he ruled out a coalition. Again, with this tweet:
M_Ignatieff
A Liberal government will not enter into a coalition with other federalist parties http://lpc.ca/bue #cdnpoli #elxn41 #lpc 11-03-26 7:12 AM
In an arrogant and condescendingly-titled press release, Ignatieff lectures us on “The Rules of our Democracy.” In it, he rules out a formal Parliamentary coalition, explaining that he would work on an issue-by-issue basis with other parties to get legislation passed.
Which leads me to a number of points:
Michael Ignatieff has changed is mind on a coalition so many times, how do we know he won’t change it again?
Since Michael Ignatieff ruled out a coalition in 2008, and then signed on to one, we clearly can’t trust what he is saying about it now.
Taking his comments at face value for a moment – and I want to be clear that I don’t trust his statement at all – supposing he’s telling the truth and really, truly is ruling out a coalition, then why the hell are we now in an election campaign?! Let’s look at the facts here: At dissolution, the Liberals held 77 to the Conservatives’ 143, and a Parliamentary majority is 155 seats. To pass the Conservatives and form the largest caucus in the House, the Liberals would have to gain 34 seats from the Conservatives, and MORE than that if they pick seats up from the NDP or Bloc while the Conservatives retain theirs. Given the state of the polls, where the Conservatives seem to enjoy a very large lead, accomplishing that kind of a result would require three things to happen:
Ignatieff and the Liberals running an absolutely PERFECT campaign.No campaign is ever perfect, however. Ignatieff has already experienced his first gaffe, after all – before the campaign even began when he dodged and danced around the coalition question yesterday.
Harper and the Conservatives running a disastrous campaign.In the year 2000, Stockwell Day and the Canadian Alliance ran, what many consider to be a disastrous campaign, and Day STILL managed to win 25% of the popular vote and raise his seat count from 60 (out of the old Reform Party) to 66. Simply put the hope of passing the Conservatives in terms of caucus size is slim at best, none at most likely.
The Liberals having an issue which actually galvanizes and engages Canadians. The Liberals seem to be running on a platform of:
Harper Bad; Ignatieff Good.Whoopie! You know what Joe Lunchbucket Canadian says about politicians? (I have had this said to me time and time again myself) ”They’re all the same, and they’re all as bad as each other.”
Conservatives are unethical; Liberals aren’t.Joe Lunchbucket Canadian shrugs his shoulders and says, “sure. They’re ALL unethical.” The “scandals” the Liberals are tying to pin on the Conservatives aren’t resonating with Canadians. First, because Canadians, by and large, don’t give a rodent’s rectum (sorry, Menzoid) about Parliamentary procedure, and second, because on the scale of scandal, these just aren’t even on the radar screen for most Canadians.
We don’t like the military or the justice system.Obviously, those are my words, not the words of the Liberal Party, which prefer to use the term “jets and jails” as if alliteration makes it “cool” or something. Obviously alliterative terms will be remembered easily, however I think Canadians, by and large, won’t bite on this issue either. The issues I think most Canadians are worried about are economic issues – ensuring they have a job next week, and are able to make their mortgage payments, buy food and clothing, and send their kids to daycare. When it comes to “jets and jails” most Canadians likely think, “well, we need to defend our country, and we need to put dangerous people somewhere where they’ll be kept away from my kids.”
So, without an issue to galvanize Canadians, the Liberals have, well, nothing. Parliamentary “pseudo-scandals” and witch hunts in an obscure committee which votes along party lines to recommend Parliament find the government in contempt (and then have a non-Confidence motion prior to the government actually being formally held in contempt) is a pretty weak reason to force an election.
All this leads us to one possible conclusion:
Michael Ignatieff has forced this election simply because he wants to be Prime Minister.
Either he knows he can’t expect Canadians to engage with a platform built on “ethics”, “contempt”, and “jets and jails”, and thus he can’t expect to win the election by passing the Conservatives in terms of seat count. So, he is planning a formal Parliamentary coalition or a formal cooperation agreement with the NDP and the Bloc. Now, of course, he is denying it during the campaign. This means he has a hidden agenda; or
Or, he thinks he actually can defeat Harper on issues that Canadians aren’t engaging in. Perhaps he believes, as most Liberals seem to believe, that having the Liberals running government is the Way Things Are Done in Canada, and that it’s only an aberration that the Conservatives are in power right now. If only the voters would see the world the way Michael Ignatieff sees it, they would flock to him in droves and propel him into the Prime Minister’s Office.
Either way, this election, as the Conservatives say, is Michael Ignatieff’s election. He wants to be Prime Minister, and, by golly, he will force an unneeded and unwanted election to do it.
Sometimes – and this is perfectly legal and legitimate – some caucuses agree to work together and form what is known as a Parliamentary Coalition. From the point of view of Parliament, there is no party affiliation, just caucus membership, with a label attached to that caucus for reference purposes.
Bob Rae Thinks You’re Stupid
March 9, 2012 4 Comments
This is my first video blog entry. Well, if you count “Bye Bye Barlow” it’s actually my second. Either way, here it is.
There are a few technical things I’m still not entirely happy with, but after a week of messing around, it’s time to publish it anyway.
Filed under Political Tagged with Bob Rae, Canada, Commentary, Conservative, Conservative Party of Canada, Criticism, Election Fraud, Elections, Liberal, Liberal Party of Canada, NDP, New Democratic Party of Canada, New Democrats, Nycole Turmel, Opinion, Pat Martin, Politics, Robocall, Stephen Harper, Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, video, Voter Suppression