dagblog - Comments for "CANADA'S ORANGE REVOLUTION: FINAL WEEKEND "

Don't get me started on those

quinn esq — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:38:43 +0000

In reply to My apologies to quinn, who

Don't get me started on those 308 jokers. I looked at 6 polling firms results last night - all ones that he listed and included at 308 - and every one had the NDP at 30%-33%. Naturally, his model concludes with 27%. And it's just as I said, you get ENORMOUS seat increases as your popular vote increases past a certain point. Basically, it's 10 seats for every 1% at this level, so an extra 3-6% is easily the difference between the NDP looking like interesting upstarts (78 seats) and serious challengers for the crown (100 seats and up.)

His model, as I read it, takes the polls, and then adds in all sorts of fancy features like incumbency, being in cabinet, star candidate etc, to "refine" the results. What it doesn't have is some clause that says, if the NDP surges, they probably can't get out the vote, so our broken numbers may end up being justified by the back door. And I was really quite miffed when I saw his projections - taken as a LEADING EXPERT - spread across the Globe and elsewhere.

The right thing to do would have been to yank the results, when you cannot even get step one - the polling results - to show usefully. Rule 1 - do no harm.

And also, bah. ;-)

Gotta vote gotta vote!

I'm pretty sure Obey's

quinn esq — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:15:51 +0000

In reply to As sleep beckons, I thought I

I'm pretty sure Obey's rich.

In fact, yeah, I know he is. Rich. Rich as hell.

He can pay for both of us probably.

In fact, once our Commies New Democrats come into power, can't we have him imprisoned and take all his money or somesuch? I think that's how it works now.

Popcorn. Good idea. And some of Obey's liquor.

As sleep beckons, I thought I

acanuck — Mon, 02 May 2011 08:03:31 +0000

In reply to CANADA'S ORANGE REVOLUTION: FINAL WEEKEND

As sleep beckons, I thought I should warn the canadophiles among you not to expect live-blogging of the election results today (Monday) -- at least not before 10 p.m. ET, when the polls close in British Columbia.

There's the little matter of a $25,000 fine for broadcasting, tweeting, or otherwise communicating vote results to people who could potentially still vote. Posting them at dagblog would be surely be illegal. I'll weigh in as soon as I can.

http://www.globalmontreal.com/decisioncanada/Elections+Canada+stands+firm+social+media+election+night/4656122/story.html

I wonder what Elections Canada will do about CNN and other U.S. news outlets, who will have known election results from Newfoundland and the Maritimes for several hours. Will someone with a kill switch cut off my cable if they try to broadcast them? There was talk of revising the 80-year-old law, but it didn't happen for this election.

So unless someone's got $25,000 they're ready to put up on my behalf ...

My apologies to quinn, who

acanuck — Mon, 02 May 2011 07:03:20 +0000

In reply to CANADA'S ORANGE REVOLUTION: FINAL WEEKEND

My apologies to quinn, who hates ThreeHundredEight and their methodology, in that order, but they've just released their aggregate of the final day's polling. Here are their final predictions of seats and vote percentages:

Conservatives 143 seats 36.4%

New Democrats 78 27.3

Liberals 60 22.8

Bloc Québécois 27 6.7

(A further 5.6% say they'll vote for the Green Party, but I expect many will switch in the voting booth, quite possibly to the eco-friendly NDP.)

http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/

The big news from this aggregate of 10 polls is that the NDP surge didn't collapse over the final weekend of the campaign. In fact the party gained 2.2% overnight, for an increase of 19 seats over yesterday's prediction. The Bloc fell an equally impressive 1.7 per cent, for a loss of 13 seats. The Liberals fell 1.3 per cent, costing them five seats, while the Conservatives basically held their ground, losing just one seat to the NDP.

Will all those professed New Democratic converts turn out to vote? Will the party gain a further one or two percentage points of support by the time polls open six hours from now, putting it into the 90/100-seat range? Impossible to predict in this most volatile, exciting Canadian federal election ever.

On the individual riding level, some projected results are mind-boggling. My constituency, considered a safe Liberal seat, is going to the NDP by a full 51%. Thomas Mulcair, who at present is the only New Democratic MP from the province, is racking up 64.5% support. Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québécois for the past decade and a half, is within 0.2% of losing his seat to a Dipper.

Can't wait to cast my ballot, and pop me some popcorn.

More than 24 hours before the

acanuck — Sun, 01 May 2011 20:43:43 +0000

In reply to CANADA'S ORANGE REVOLUTION: FINAL WEEKEND

More than 24 hours before the first vote is counted, lots of people are gaming out post-election scenarios: which party leader resigns first, which gets first shot at forming a government, who gets second, etc. All of it predicated on the New Democratic surge holding up tomorrow and all those new converts turning out to vote. If it does (and if they do) Stephen Harper won't get the majority government he firmly expected when the election was called a month ago.

He'll almost certainly get the most seats, so he could try to govern from a minority position. But this would be his third minority government in a row. It's starting to get old. It's also becoming clear Harper will never persuade Canadian voters to trust him with unrestricted power. They'd rather take a chance on a coalition of the center-left. Which is what we just might get. As Randy Boswell explains, they've worked very successfully in the past:

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/decision-canada/Liberals+have+long+history+operation/4691323/story.html

There's also this useful take

Obey — Sun, 01 May 2011 05:23:11 +0000

In reply to If I got to hand out

There's also this useful take by David Frum, everyone's favorite Canadian conservative (or not).

... don’t credit Jack Layton [the NDP leader] too much. The NDP did not earn its Quebec surge. It did not recruit good candidates, it did not build an infrastructure in the province. Layton is the beneficiary of political change, not its author. ...

If you want to credit anything, credit a mega-trend in the Canadian economy. Canada used to be a big Michigan: a manufacturing economy with some resource industries attached. Suddenly Canada finds itself a big Norway: an energy economy with some services and manufacturing attached.

... This change in the Canadian economy is shaking Canadian politics. Those regions that feel they are losing ground want more help from government than the Liberals will give. Those regions that are gaining ground want less government intervention than the Liberals can accept.

The old Liberal game — campaign left, govern right — no longer works. The prospering parts of Canada no longer trust Liberal governance. The distressed parts of Canada are no longer satisfied with Liberal campaigning. The Liberals used to hold the centre, both geographic and ideological, and squeeze the margins. Now the margins are having their revenge: It is the centre that is being squeezed.

In short, there isn't much of a market of centrist government anymore. And the Liberals have failed to adjust accordingly, failed to tack left where the electorate is.

I think there is a lot of truth to this, though Layton clearly deserves a lot of credit for (i) drawing Quebec leftists away from the separatist Bloc Quebecois, and (ii) presenting the country with a credible leftist Prime Ministerial leader that leaves people comfortable with moving away from the 'serious' party of government, the Liberals.

Thanks..Now I have to assume

A Guy Called LULU — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:43:53 +0000

In reply to Well, I've been trying to

Thanks..Now I have to assume some more that you think he can deliver on his campaign promises, or at least move things in that direction, and that he is an honest man, or you would not be excited. I hope it happens and I hope it then becomes an example we folks down south can look to for inspiration. We might have to adopt a parliamentary system first, though.

Best of luck to Canada, and

bwakfat — Sun, 01 May 2011 03:09:14 +0000

In reply to Well, I've been trying to

Best of luck to Canada, and to the U.S. as well.

Show us the way, Quinn.

Well, I've been trying to

quinn esq — Sun, 01 May 2011 03:02:47 +0000

In reply to If I got to hand out

Well, I've been trying to avoid making the one obvious extrapolation to American politics from all this, but here goes. Even though everyone was expecting the Republican-type party to gain increased backing and form a majority and run the country for the next 4 years, all the energy formed up around a different region of the political spectrum entirely. That region NOT being the traditional center-liberal party - which had become more and more corporate - even though it was being led by an extremely intelligent, well-educated, media-savvy moderate. Rather, the public was found to be disgusted with BOTH these old centers of power, and rather, got tapped further out on the left. Turn to the bottom of the NDP platform page (link below) and those 5, fairly calm, promises are all there really was. But then compare with the Dems today. The NDP is promising to help on health care, increase your pension, cut small business taxes, control credit cards and help with energy and telephone bills, and help clean up politics. In short, cutting the pressures on you and your budget. As opposed to... cutting Medicare and Social Security, etc. And while Jack personally may be likeable, what he's most known for is being a bike-riding green, for being pro-cities, consistently anti-war and pro-immigrant.

http://www.ndp.ca/platform

There'll be lots of ways to slice this, and it's certainly not that a carbon copy of the NDP campaign is needed, but what absolutely cannot be missed is WHERE THE ENERGY IS - AND THAT'S FURTHER LEFT. And that goes, even though the experts, the discussion, the polls, all of it SEEMED to say it'd be further Right.

Seems to me that Wisconsin also held a similar tale.

Might be something we're missing with the "tack toward the Republicans" strategy.

If I got to hand out

A Guy Called LULU — Sun, 01 May 2011 01:08:47 +0000

In reply to Just noticed, over at TPM,

If I got to hand out assignments I would put you and Quinn to work writing a blog intended for a wide U.S. audience outlining and explaining the recent history and dynamics of Canadian politics, and the significance of the good turn you think is about to come about. I apologize for being as ignorant [almost?] as other U.S. Americans about Canadian politics and so I don't have ideas to tie to the names you throw out or the various parties you mention but I am guessing/assuming that if I knew enough to write it that I would be as excited as you guys are. I don't know who I am pulling for except that it is the same guys that you guys are pulling for. I hope you are jumpin' for joy after the results come in. Bueno!