Canadian Elections!

[shadowplay]

Mulcair loudly supports Israel, for a start. Supporting Israel doesn't really play to the left in this country. On the domestic side of things, he only supports decriminalizing marijuana (traditionally the NDP favour full legalisation). Justin favours full legalisation. He's also mandated that all Liberal MPs must vote pro-choice. These aren't particularly centrist policies he's going for. He takes bold stances, like his father did. On the other hand, the NDP have been trying to broaden their appeal, and in the process have dulled down their beliefs.

 

[warpus]

The thing is that Trudeau looks at public opinion when throwing his hat into those rings. In Canada pro-legalization, pro-choice, etc. are not very bold stances. They are what most of the electorate want.

You are right that the NDP have shifted a bit to the right, in order to attract more Liberal and Conservative voters. But in terms of party policy, they are still well to the left of those parties.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Can people please stop keeping the Harper regime in power? That would be great, thanks.

I keep trying, but...

What really sets the Liberals and NDP apart at this point, as far as policies go? I'm getting the impression that Trudeau is running to the left of the NDP (which appears to have moved a little bit more towards centre-left).

A lot of the local long-time NDP supporters here in Toronto don't like Mulcair and are supporting Justin and the Libs instead. I strongly suspect his support of Israel has a lot to do with it. My sister is a registered member of the NDP and won 't support them with Mulcair at the helm.

As I see it, there are a few glaring differences between them. Take the Senate, for instance (please! ). It's more than obvious that many of the senators are utterly corrupt, and Mulcair has been saying he wants to abolish it. Waaay back when Harper was openly part of the Reform Party, they were pushing the "Triple-E Senate"... Elected, Equal, and Effective. Alberta has had several "senate elections" piggybacked onto our municipal elections, in which people can vote for a candidate whose name is put on a list for the PM to consider appointing. The PM is under no obligation whatsoever to appoint these people, and winning this "election" doesn't really mean anything. I always officially declined my senate ballot because I think it's a dumb way to do things, and it was only Conservatives and right-wing independents who ever ran here, anyway.

I don't know what Trudeau has said, but Senate reform is one of those constitutional headaches that needs to be dealt with but nobody wants to do. In the meantime, we're still waiting the outcome of Duffy's trial and getting almost daily reports of some new bit of corruption and fraud from the others.


The other major thing is C-51. Justin voted for the damn thing, to avoid a scenario of the Conservatives labeling him 'soft on terrorism' during the coming campaign. He insists that "when" he's elected and becomes PM, he'll repeal it first thing. Well, those of us old enough to remember the 1993 election can recall Chretien's promise to repeal the GST, and Sheila Copps promised to resign her seat if he didn't follow through. Well, he didn't, and she was highly indignant when her constituents and others insisted she follow through on her promise. So she resigned, the riding had to go through a byelection, she ran again, and won. So that was a month's wasted time and money and absolutely nothing was achieved other than a fledgling attempt at holding an MP accountable for a campaign promise.


I took time out during writing this post to watch tonight's episode of 'Big Brother'... and there was a campaign-style attack ad. The writ isn't supposed to be dropped until September.

 

[Evie]

As for Israel, I'm pretty sure Mulcaire is the least pro-Israel of the lot.

 

[danjuno]

I just looked at the polling on wikipedia. Since when is NDP in the lead?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I just looked at the polling on wikipedia. Since when is NDP in the lead?

My guess is that a lot of people hate Harper even more than they hated Mulroney, people are angry that Justin voted for Bill C-51, and there are several new anti-Trudeau attack ads on TV.

That, and ever since Alberta dumped the Conservatives after 44 years and went NDP, there's been a feeling going around that anything is possible.

(just guessing, though, as I haven't seen the latest polls )

 

[Bootstoots]

]They recently won Alberta and I did not see that coming. (To Americans, that is like the Democrats taking Texas.)

My impression of how this occurred is that the Conservatives split into two similar-sized parties, which is political suicide in a first-past-the-post system. Meanwhile the Liberals were virtually nonexistent, leaving the NDP to win the majority of the seats with 40 or 41% of the vote. The majority of Albertans still voted for one of the conservative parties, but the split cost them control of the provincial parliament.

If the same thing were to occur in Texas (say, the Tea Party splits off the Republican establishment) then the Democrats would easily win in exactly the same way. On another level, though, the Alberta result is even more extreme than a Democratic sweep of Texas: Texas had reliably Democratic governments until the mid-1990s. The Dems used to hold most Southern state legislatures and this changed only in the last couple of decades, well after the South started going Republican in presidential elections.

It occurs to me that the Alberta result is the opposite of how Canuckistanis usually do things, with a united Conservative Party facing both the Liberals and the NDP. Is the split between Liberals and NDP a major reason Harper et al. keep winning? And are the Liberals and the NDP similar enough that they would form a coalition if they collectively do well enough but neither gets a majority on its own?

 

[Evie]

Actually, there was a study posted online recently that pointed out (looking at opinion polls before the vote regarding "Which party would you rank second") that even if you removed either Wildrose or Conservatives, NDP would still have won.

The bottom line was that both parties had factions that would prefer the NDP to the other right-wing party, because the NDP is overall closer to their electoral objectives. Most obvious being the "Anybody but the Conservatives" right-wing vote, who certainly prefer Wildrose, but would have joined the NDP if given no right-wing option.

 

[Zelig]

The standard narrative is that the government change in Alberta wasn't about a change in conservative values, but rather a change in the parties such that the conservative parties were no longer populist parties as they were in the past.

 

[Evie]

That doesn't sound like any of the narratives I heard.

EDIT: more specific numbers, the polls found that on the eve of the election Wildrose voters were split:

33% of NDP supporters
21% of PC supporters
15% of Alberta Party supporters
9% of Liberal supporters
16% of undecided
5% would not vote
2% supported other parties.

Take 33% of the Wildrose vote (24.2%), add it to the 40.9% the NDP already got, and you're already at 48.6%.

They only need to fetch 1.5% more to get into absolute majority territory, and they can easily get that from the 10+% of undecided Wildrose voters and liberal voters.

The NDP didn't win on the back of a divided right. They won fair and square as the most credible alternative to a government people had gotten sick off.

 

[Bootstoots]

It sounds then like the NDP really were favored. I was under the impression that Wildrose were quite right-wing, so I'm surprised that more of them would prefer the NDP to the Conservatives. Are there large political differences between Wildrose and the Conservatives, or was it more a matter of voters being fed up with the Conservatives for reasons that weren't political in a left-right sense?

 

[Evie]

I would say that a lot of Wildrose vote was right-wing fed-up vote ; people who were quite happy with the Conservatives ideologically but had gotten fed up with them in practice.

 

[Zelig]

That doesn't sound like any of the narratives I heard.

Presumably you'd miss it if you avoid the National Post/Globe & Mail duo.

Jesse Kline: Alberta election 2015 — Prairie populism at its finest
Alberta already was an NDP province

 

[danjuno]

My guess is that a lot of people hate Harper even more than they hated Mulroney, people are angry that Justin voted for Bill C-51, and there are several new anti-Trudeau attack ads on TV.

That, and ever since Alberta dumped the Conservatives after 44 years and went NDP, there's been a feeling going around that anything is possible.

(just guessing, though, as I haven't seen the latest polls )

I'm sorry, what? Alberta? Canadian Texas voted a left-wing party into power? Something is very wrong here. I want to be happy that the entrenched party has been thrown out, but this just gives me a feeling of dread, like some key balance of the universe has been unbalanced and the fabric of reality is starting to unwind.

 

[Evie]

Well, the thread here about the Alberta elections did refer to it being Opposite Day in Alberta...

 

[Viregel]

As a non-Canadian, I'm curious if there's any parallels between this and the UK elections - do shy Tories exist in Canada to any great extent? I say this because there's been a lot of discussion about the polls here, and in the last UK general election, virtually every poll was wrong. I'm not too knowledgable about Canadian political history, but it would be interesting to see the Conservatives do well despite the polls, as a result of people saying they'll support one of the other parties to polling organisations but voting Conservative anyway. Or it could just be that the polls are completely right and they're going to get crushed.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The writ isn't supposed to be dropped until September.

And... we're off! Welcome to the next 78 days of campaign hell - more than twice as long as it's normally supposed to take. Stephen Harper chose the August long weekend to drop the writ, when most voters are off camping or on holiday somewhere, and one of the federal leaders was literally up in the air (on a plane) and so unable to convene a press conference to make his first speech of the campaign along with the others. It's still an hour before we're scheduled to hear from Justin Trudeau.

Steve can't be heaved soon enough for me!

 

[classical_hero]

I would say that a lot of Wildrose vote was right-wing fed-up vote ; people who were quite happy with the Conservatives ideologically but had gotten fed up with them in practice.

That does seem to be understanding of the situation. The main conservative party was thrown out because they thought that conservatives would vote for them even if they really aren't doing conservative things and it came back bite then hard on the behind.

 

[Evie]

But they were thrown out in favor of a left-wing party (and polling,again, make it clear that the disenfranchised conservative actually prefered a left-wing party governing to the left over the conservatives)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Regarding the current election ()... if you need to confirm whether you're on the voters' list, don't bother calling Elections Canada. Their "office is open but is unable to take your call." The caller is then directed to use the Elections Canada website.

That's great for people with internet access. But what about the people who don't have that, or don't trust it?

Harper can blanket the country for months with his obnoxious ads, drop the writ on a holiday weekend when most people wouldn't have been paying attention, authorize some ditzy woman in Calgary to phone me LAST WEEK and ask if the Conservative candidate in the riding of "Red Deer LAY-combe" can count on my support, look the country in the eye and lie about not campaigning on the taxpayer's dime... and then not bother to have the office up and running so people can make sure they're on the voters' list.

Add to that the fact that the Chief Electoral Officer of the entire country is no longer allowed to encourage people to vote, and I get the impression that the last thing Harper wants is for seniors, students, disabled, homeless, etc. to exercise their right to vote.

Heave Steve.