Election 2015
- Thread starter Edward Campbell
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The Globe and Mail have updated their Election Forecast again, and, again, the Liberal chances of forming a government get stronger and stronger:
If the election happened today, there is a ...
21% chance that the Conservatives get the most seats
0.2% chance that the NDP gets the most seats
80% chance that the Liberals get the most seats
And, a
11% chance that the Green party gets more than one seat
0.4% chance that all three parties win 100 seats or more
16% chance that the Liberals get a majority
If the election happened today, there is a ...
21% chance that the Conservatives get the most seats
0.2% chance that the NDP gets the most seats
80% chance that the Liberals get the most seats
And, a
11% chance that the Green party gets more than one seat
0.4% chance that all three parties win 100 seats or more
16% chance that the Liberals get a majority
- Reaction score
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Liberal minority won't last long, they need a majority to do anything they campaigned on. Balanced budget law is in the books, they'd have to hold a vote to amend the law, which will likely be made a confidence motion and the NDP and Tories will vote against as they both campaigned on balanced budgets.
The best they can hope to do is be caretakers and try to get a budget passed with little to none of their election promises in it, totally impotent.
The best they can hope to do is be caretakers and try to get a budget passed with little to none of their election promises in it, totally impotent.
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PuckChaser said:
NDP aren't stupid. They aren't against deficits. They will prop up the Libs long enough for the Libs to get the good new gov't feeling or screw up like Martin. It will be a couple of years before the anti-Harper, anti-CPC stuff dies down. Just settle in for a few years of Liberal gov't at the very least.
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Underway said:
The problem is, if they prop up the Liberals with deficit spending they lose the centre-left Layton and Muclair fought to get, along with all those votes. It would basically doom them into distant third party status again.
Brad Sallows
Army.ca Legend
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The central irony here is that the Liberal vote against the evil racist xenophobe Harper coalesced...by following the lead of Quebeckers for whom the NDP stand on the niqab issue was too liberal and insufficiently racist and xenophobic. The NDP should be able to capitalize on that - not now (not enough time), but for the next election.
- Reaction score
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This column, by Margaret Wente, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is predicated on the assumption that we "won't have Stephen Harper to kick around any more," so it is time for a bit of a retrospective:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/despite-the-rap-sheet-harper-isnt-the-worst-pm/article26845638/
Now, earlier in this thread, Altair provided a better list of Prime Minister Harper's failings:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/despite-the-rap-sheet-harper-isnt-the-worst-pm/article26845638/
Despite the rap sheet, Harper isn’t the worst PM
MARGARET WENTE
The Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Oct. 17, 2015
When I thought about the subject of this column, I wondered if I should have my picture re-shot with a paper bag over my head. I don’t think this piece will win me many fans. So here goes. Is Stephen Harper really the worst prime minister in Canadian history? Is his coming rebuke at the polls the result of a massive strategic failure on his part? Are Canadian voters finally waking up and rejecting everything he stands for?
My answer is no. Please bear with me while I explain myself. I won’t bother to repeat the rap sheet against Mr. Harper. It is long, and you know it well. I am also not about to argue that you should vote for him. I think his personal characteristics don’t wear well in office and, after more than nine years in office, it’s time for a change.
But he hasn’t been a total disaster. Far from it. His economic management has been generally fine. Canada did the right things during the economic crisis and weathered it remarkably well. Job creation is respectable, household incomes have gone up, and federal public-sector debt has gone down. Mr. Harper has greatly expanded our trade links and capped it off with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a far-reaching and enormously important deal.
He hasn’t exactly gutted the welfare state, either. The Conservative government has spent billions on infrastructure investments, aboriginal programs and ambitious new initiatives in the North. It has dropped bags of money on the middle class. It has steadily lowered taxes. (Note that the other parties strenuously deny that they will raise them, except for taxing that odious 1 per cent.)
My colleague John Ibbitson’s new book, Stephen Harper, is a balanced and masterly account of the Harper years. As he points out, Mr. Harper’s most important goal has been to shrink the size of the federal state, and he has succeeded. He did this in large part by handing a lot of money, authority and taxing power back to the provinces, no strings attached. This had the salutary effect of ending the federal-provincial wrangling that used to suck up so much time and energy. It also helped to dampen the sovereigntist movement in Quebec. On the constitutional and federal-provincial front, Mr. Harper has given us a decade of merciful peace.
He has been sound on national security, in a way that is occasionally excessive but also resoundingly supported by most Canadians. His immigration policy is generous and smart. His government has been a staunch defender of gay rights in bad parts of the world, and his global championship of maternal health has truly made a difference. There’s no sign that most Canadians want major changes to any of this.
Then we come to what he didn’t do. He didn’t launch any big new nation-building projects. Liberals think this shows his lack of vision; in fact, it just shows he’s a Conservative who thinks government should be modest in its aims. Many progressives desperately long for the good old days of the vision thing. Whether ordinary Canadians do, I’m not so sure.
After nearly a decade in power, it would be amazing if Mr. Harper could hang on to his majority. Over time, any government collects more baggage than a wagon train. The fatigue factor sets in. Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, and Jean Chrétien all wore out their welcome. And Mr. Harper – sour, dour, dictatorial, mean, secretive – wears out faster than most. Forget loveable. He’s not even likeable.
This time, there’s a pull as well as a push. Mr. Harper has faced some truly awful opponents – the drearily anti-charismatic Stéphane Dion, the carpetbagging professor Michael Ignatieff. His luck wasn’t going to last forever. Enter Justin.
Mr. Trudeau has a lot of energy and a sunny disposition. He has learned, and has run a good campaign. Most important, he has passed the competency test. He may not be a rocket scientist, but people think he’s good enough. They aren’t buying Mr. Harper’s threat that he would screw up the economy. They’re right. He wouldn’t, even if you think some of his economic ideas are pretty silly.
In short, strategic failure is not to blame for Mr. Harper’s imminent loss of seats, and probably of power. He’s the same guy with the same policies that he has always been. But Harper fatigue has set in.
Harper fatigue is different from Harper derangement syndrome, an affliction that plagues large swaths of the media and the academic class. These folks believe that he is the Prince of Darkness, and they’ve had a disproportionate impact on public discourse. To hear them talk, Mr. Harper is out to destroy democracy itself. People who are regarded as serious intellectuals have variously described him as Putinesque, Peronist, Stalinist and fascist. Last week, the painfully unfunny Mary Walsh did a comedy skit in which she called him “Stasi Steve” and “Herr Harper.” (The CBC thought this so witty, it was posted on the broadcaster’s website.)
Fortunately Mr. Harper isn’t Hitler, and democracy in Canada is alive and well. Every so often, we throw the bums out and replace them with new bums. This is natural and healthy. The outgoing bums will look better in the rear-view mirror. The new bums should enjoy their welcome while it lasts.
Now, earlier in this thread, Altair provided a better list of Prime Minister Harper's failings:
Altair said:
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Altair said:
This deserves a better answer than the one I gave above.
Question period is interesting and it's decline and fall can be traced, directly and exclusively back to the autumn of 1977 when TV was introduced to the House of Commons.
(I can recall attending QPs before that: the questions were, generally, crisp and about facts germane to a MP's constituents ~ "How many bandersnatches, Mr Speaker, did the Minister's department order from the XYZ Company in 1975,
and at what cost?" And the minister concerned popped up and said, "I thank my honourable friend for the question and I will provide a written answer very soon." It was good, honest, meaty stuff and it was boring.)
Marshall McLuhan was right, and TV, a "cool" medium, threatened to expose the obsolescence of HoC debate and discourse because it, TV, required too much effort on the viewer's part to "fill in the detail" to "get" the story (in contrast to, say, a novel or a movie, which McLuhan described as "hot," requiring little if any additional effort). Pierre Trudeau's communications experts, including his Chief of Staff, Jim Coutts, who was a superb political tactician, quickly understood the problem and they "fixed" QP, first, from the government side, by answering almost all questions with "canned soundbites," often including mean spirited personal comments, which, while being almost devoid of information, each contained one key element of the Liberal narrative. The Liberals perfected this in opposition, after 1984, when they learned, quickly, to frame each question in the same way. (Now, in fairness, the Conservatives learned this trick, too, and they pioneered the canned, made for TV, question in the late 1970s.) The end result was the quip from a former Speaker, Peter Milliken, who told one frustrated MP, who (rightly) complained that his question had not been answered, something like: "That's why we call it Question Period, not Answer Period."
Again in fairness, Justin Trudeau has suggested that he wants some reforms, along line of the UK's "Prime Minister's Questions," and that will help ~ if he follows through. But someone, and I doubt it will ever be a Liberal, needs to break away from the "soundbite" ~ Preston Manning tried in 1993 and it was a resounding failure: Jean Chrétien batted his serious, polite questions right out of the ballpark and made Manning a bit of a laughing stock in the media, which loves the canned, soundbite friendly back and forth of QP, for being a naif.
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E.R. Campbell said:And an update on the Ekos rolling poll:
Source: http://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2015/10/stalemate-continues/
Ekos says:
[Ottawa – October 16, 2015] As we enter the final weekend before Election Day, vote intentions appear to be settling in. At 34 points, the Liberals hold a marginal lead over the Conservatives who are at 33 points. At 23 points,
the NDP are well back in terms of popular support, but the rather efficient distribution of their support means they will likely still be looking at a fairly impressive seat count on Monday.
The Liberals continue to lead in the key battleground of Ontario, although there is some evidence that the race may be narrowing here. Although the NDP maintains its lead in Quebec, the race remains unclear with both the Liberals
and the Conservatives vying to make gains. The Liberals hold a clear lead in Atlantic Canada, while the Conservatives lead across the Prairies. British Columbia is still very much anyone’s game.
The Liberals may be peeling back the senior vote from the Conservatives, as the Conservative advantage here has narrowed significantly over the last week. The biggest divide, however, remains education. The Liberals maintain a
clear lead with university graduates, while the college educated have rallied around the Conservatives.
To account for those who have already voted, either at an advance poll or by special ballot, we ask Canadians whether they have already voted in this election. Overall, the two groups – those who have already voted and those who
have not – mirror each other fairly closely in terms of party preference. Nevertheless, the Conservatives hold a slight advantage among early voters; indeed, if the election was called off and the victor determined by ballots
already cast, the Conservatives would likely eke out a slim minority. Surprisingly, the Green Party fares quite well among early voters, which is highly notable for a party that routinely struggles to get its supporters to turn
out on Election Day.
Finally, while we know that the percentage of early voters in our survey is exaggerated due to social desirability and other factors, we note that cellphone users are showing up in comparable numbers to their landline-using counterparts.
Of those who do not have access to a landline, 23 per cent tell us they have already voted, compared to 26 per cent on average. This is a rather significant finding, as cellphone-only households have historically been less likely to
vote and we would speculate that this does not bode well for Stephen Harper’s prospects.
And an update on the update to the Ekos rolling poll ...
And the Winner is… We Don’t Know
EVIDENCE POINTS TO LONG MONDAY NIGHT NAIL-BITER
[Ottawa – October 17, 2015] We have upped our game in trying to discern the winner of what is shaping up to be a historically important federal election. We have run parallel HD-IVR and live interviewer surveys. We have significantly
increased the sample size in the home stretch. We have double- and triple-checked the sample diagnostics. We have even done formal experiments with different ballot questions. Despite all of this, we still see the final outcome as very fuzzy.
Nothing is much different in this more richly resourced polling of the last couple of days. At 33.7 points, the Liberals remain statistically tied with the Conservatives who are just a fraction of a point behind at 33.3 points. At 21.9 points,
the NDP is not a serious contender for the lead, but is still likely to be a major player in the next Parliament. Our two-day roll looks like our three-day roll and everything is moving within the margin of errors. At this stage, we believe that
either the Liberals or the Conservatives will achieve a slender minority.
The demographic and regional variations are modest but worth noting. Quebec seems to be a pretty tight and newly fluid three- (and maybe four-) way race with the NDP holding a modest advantage. Ontario is leaning Liberal, but there
are a plethora of virtually tied contests (particularly in the 905 region) that are uncertain at this stage. British Columbia is once again an uninterpretable mix of three and, in some cases, four parties.
We will be offering a seat projection tomorrow based on what we believe to be perhaps the strongest riding prediction model extant at this time.
The winner will hinge on turnout and, while predicting who will show up is a notoriously challenging task, we can offer the following predictions:
Overall turnout will be higher than in 2011 and the higher the overall turnout, the poorer the prospects for Stephen Harper (advantage centre-left).
The Conservatives have a highly engaged voter base and they had a slight lead in the advance polls. Older Canada is leaning strongly Conservative, they are going to vote and there are more of them than in 2011 (advantage Conservatives).
The cellphone-only population looks like they will show up this time. Cellphone-only households make up a much bigger share of the voter population this time out and they continue to be less supportive of the Conservative Party. They
have told us that they are more engaged and certain to vote than in 2011 and they appeared to show impressive participation in the advance polls (advantage centre-left).
And
Source for everything: http://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2015/10/and-the-winner-is-we-dont-know/
- Reaction score
- 4,310
- Points
- 1,160
Two editorial cartoons from Brian Gable in the Globe and Mail that neatly sum up these last few days of the campaign:
This seems to have been the conventional wisdom, for the past week or so ...
BUT
This may be weighing on the minds of many voters when they vote tomorrow.
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editorial-cartoons-for-october-2015/article26577881/
This seems to have been the conventional wisdom, for the past week or so ...
BUT
This may be weighing on the minds of many voters when they vote tomorrow.
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editorial-cartoons-for-october-2015/article26577881/
- Reaction score
- 4,310
- Points
- 1,160
The Liberals have come out with a cute, charming, funny ad. I like it.
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Absolutely, and its really going to come down to vote efficiency. I think a lot of the Liberal ridings will be won with giant margins over second place candidates, which means they poll higher but still only get 1 seat. Someone mentioned earlier here about a tie in seats, and it could very likely come to that.Technoviking said:
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- Points
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PuckChaser said:
It could, and, looking at this graphic ...
... one could not be blamed for suggesting this as a potentially plausible result:
Province BQ CPC GRN LPC NDP Others
Territories: 1 1 1
BC: 19 1 7 15
AB: 32 1 1
SK: 12 1 1
MB: 11 1 2
ON: 45 61 15
QC: 8 8 28 33 1
NB: 1 9
PEI: 4
NS: 10 1
NL: 6 1
TOTAL: 8 128 1 128 70 3
Edit: clarity
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- 180
I can't wait to see the results of the election simply to determine which pollsters are cooking the books. The wide swings in the same time period are incomprehensible. With a couple point swing in Ontario and the historic Liberal difficulty in finding the polling station, anything can happen.
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http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/election/what-the-conservatives-ndp-and-liberals-are-promising-to-spend-if-elected-1.2614562
Seems like the promises made by each party in this election has finally been tallied up...
Looks like our debt is about to sky rocket if the Liberals get in (assuming they keep any of these promises, and assuming they can get these measures passed if they only receive a minority government).
Seems like the promises made by each party in this election has finally been tallied up...
Looks like our debt is about to sky rocket if the Liberals get in (assuming they keep any of these promises, and assuming they can get these measures passed if they only receive a minority government).
- Reaction score
- 4,310
- Points
- 1,160
E.R. Campbell said:
There is another update to the Globe and Mail's Election Forecast confirming the ever so slight, last minute softening of Liberal support:
"Our election forecast, based on recent polls and historical data, projects the likelihood that a given party would win the most seats, if an election were held today. Our algorithm was designed in consultation with
political scientist Paul Fairie (read more about how it works). This page will be updated often with new polls. Scroll down to explore the data.
Last updated: Sunday, October 18 9:45AM EDT
If the election happened today, there is a ...
22% chance that the Conservatives get the most seats
0% chance that the NDP gets the most seats
79% chance that the Liberals get the most seats
And a
97% chance that the Liberals and NDP have a majority together
46% chance that the Bloc regains official party status (more than 12 seats)
13% chance that the Liberals get a majority"
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E.R. Campbell said:
I love playing with data sets like this.
I ended up identifying three specific echo chambers where the musings resonate externally.
In Montreal - for the Liberals - we have Hochelaga, Laurier, Outremont, Papineau and Rosemont. Message carried by LaPresse and the Gazette and Radio Canada.
In Toronto - again for the Liberals - we have Danforth, Davenport, Parkdale and Rosedale.
Message carried by the Globe and the Star, CBC and CTV.
In Vancouver we have Kingsway, Quadra, Vancouver East, Granville and Surrey.
Vancouver being Vancouver it is an internalized community that has a strong union/NDP element that cordially detests the elitist Liberal element. It doesn't have a media voice of its own but it resonates with youngsters across the West, if not across Canada - carried by the social media.
What I find interesting is that there is little evidence of a similar echo chamber for the Conservatives. The National Post was founded by Conrad Black to supply that but he has been discredited and his paper strives to compete in a left-leaning environment. Global is in a similar position.
Having said that the non-Liberal/NDP vote seems to be strongest (no surprise here) on the Prairies and the interior of BC (Joel Garreau's "Empty Quarter") but also resonates "dans La Beauce" and the other rural areas around Quebec City.
The other area not touched by the Liberal/NDP is the BQ heartland of the Lower St Laurence. From Rimouski to Gaspesie and Lac St-Jean.
The two Quebec regions are, I believe, the same regions that supported Brian Mulroney and Real Caouette's Social Credit parties.
What does this mean? I dunno. But I suspect that I leaves the MSM in the undesirable situation of which they accuse the bloggers and the kids...they are hearing what they want to from their neighbours and friends. Or in less friendly terms, they are drinking their own bathwater. A problem common in London and Washington as well.
Fat lady hasn't sung yet. It will be interesting to read the results on Tuesday.
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