Talk Elections

In under a year's time Canadians will go to the polls.  My thoughts on the parties and regions are as follows, but off course things as usual will likely to change between now an election day.

Liberals

Justin Trudeau has decent approval ratings with all showing him over 40% and most over 50% so while he has lots of haters, especially amongst the Conservative base, overall I think he is heavily favoured to be re-elected next year.  The real question is will it be another majority or be reduced to a minority.  At the moment it looks like a majority, but polls are volatile enough I wouldn't be shocked if it was a minority.

Conservatives

They've done a good job at holding on their base of 30% and some polls show them above the 35% mark, but while they have a good chance of improving on their 99 seats from 2015, I think winning is a very long shot.  Not impossible but not likely.  Also even if they win a plurality, NDP and Liberals will probably gang up to keep them out so I think for Scheer the real question is does he increase the seat count enough to stay on as leader and try for PM the next time or does he fail to make headway and perhaps even lose seats thus being forced to resign as leader.  Half the population has no opinion of him so he will probably get the core 30% that always vote Tory, but whether he can appeal beyond that remains to be seen.

NDP

Generally have gotten a lot of negative press and Singh's approval rating is fairly low.  Also with Trudeau taking a fairly left of centre stance, I think he is somewhat squeezed out.  Still he might perform better than expected on the campaign trail.  I think the biggest determinant in how well he does is how big a threat the Tories are.  If the Liberals have a healthy lead, I think the party will do alright as progressives will feel they can safely vote NDP without risking a Tory government, but if polls are tight, probably not so much as a lot of progressives will then strategically vote Liberal.

Bloc Quebecois

Never want to totally count them out, but they seem to be on life support and I suspect will probably not be much of a factor.

Green Party

They are polling well now, but I find since in most ridings they are a throw away vote usually things fall a bit as more people vote strategically.  That being said I could see them picking up a few more seats on the Southern part of Vancouver Island where they are quite strong.

People's Party

I doubt it will go very far.  It might appeal to some of the more right wing elements who think Scheer is insufficiently conservative, but libertarianism has never really had that broad a support and also with poor vetting will probably attract a lot of nutbars.  Also most Tories despise Trudeau with a passion, so I think vote splits on the right are unlikely.  If Tories lose, as I think they will, it will be because they did attract enough middle of the road voters, not due to splits on the right.

Atlantic Canada

I suspect the Liberals will once again dominate this region, although I think the Tories will win back a few of their traditional strongholds so not a Liberal sweep like last time, but still Liberals winning the vast majority.  Almost certainly over 20 seats and highly likely over 25 seats.  NDP will come more down to local candidates so if they win any seats it will be due to strong local candidates.

Quebec

At the moment Liberals are in good shape to not only hold but gain seats, however support is quite soft so as Quebec is always unpredictable no guarantee the gains will materialize.  Conservatives will probably hold onto to the majority of seats they have now, but unless Scheer really impresses Quebecers I think at best they might pick up a seat or two and could just as easily lose a few seats too.  For the Tories their support is very concentrated in the Quebec city region, so whether they get 15% or 30% doesn't make a lot of difference seat wise.  Only changes if they fall below 15% in which they lose many of their seats or go above 30% in which they start flipping many other seats.  NDP will lose most of their seats and I think the east end of Montreal is really the only area that is naturally a good fit for them.  It's possible a few MPs might hold on due to personal popularity.  Bloc Quebecois as mentioned above while People's Party will go nowhere, in fact I predict Bernier loses his riding.  Just a question of does he split the vote enough to allow the Liberals to win it or do the Tories hold on.

Ontario

With Wynne gone and Ford now premier who is quite polarizing, I would say the Liberals are favoured to win the majority of seats here.  Holding onto all 80 will be a stretch but I think the odds favour them winning over 60 seats.  40 seats is their absolute worse but I only see that happening if the economy tanks or a scandal emerges.  Tories should hold most of their seats and maybe pick up a few close ones, but doubt they will beat the Liberals.  Mind you they got 35% and I could see them dropping as low as 30% thus costing them seats at the same time a slight uptick and better vote splits could net them 50 maybe even 60 seats.  In Ontario you can flip a lot of seats with a relatively small vote swing.  NDP will win some seats, but how well they do as mentioned above will largely depend on the Tory threat, otherwise gain if Tories are not a threat, stay where they are if they are.

Saskatchewan/Manitoba

Tories will probably win the majority of seats here and will almost certainly come in first in Saskatchewan although Manitoba could go either way.  Regina, Saskatoon, and suburban Winnipeg will be the battlegrounds while I expect them to win big in all rural seats save the two Northern ones.  Liberals should do well in Winnipeg, but outside of there, only really three seats I think they have a shot at; Ralph Goodale's they will hold if he runs again while the two Northern are possibilities.  NDP might gain back a few in Winnipeg and has some potential in Regina and Saskatoon, but my guess is they win seats in both provinces but finish behind the Tories in both and behind the Liberals in Manitoba.

Alberta

The Tories will obviously win the vast majority of seats here, but I doubt it will be a clean sweep.  Liberals will be in a tough fight to hold the four seats they have.  For them turnout amongst millennials will be a big factor as most boomers hate the Liberals and Trudeau, but millennials in Alberta are more inclined to support them and Alberta has the youngest population.  A strong millennial turnout and they should hold and possibly pick up a few more urban seats, while poor millennial turnout and lose all four.  With Linda Duncan not running again, I could see the NDP getting anywhere from 0 to 2 seats.  Provincial election could have an impact since if NDP does better than expected you might see many progressives coalesce around them whereas if they lose badly in the spring most will probably coalesce around the Liberals.  Either way don't see them winning any seats outside Edmonton.

British Columbia

Probably a three way race with each having their strength.  Liberals are probably favoured overall, but it will be a mixed bag.  They should do well in the Lower Mainland, but not so much in other parts of the province.  Tories are likely to rebound a bit from their low of 30% but how they do seat wise will depend heavily on vote splits.  Strong vote splits and they could more than double their seat count, but weak vote splits and will likely struggle to hold what they have.  NDP should do okay, but if provincial government's approval rating tanks that could cost them seats, but hasn't happened yet.  My guess is Interior largely Conservative, Lower Mainland largely Liberal with a few NDP and Conservative seats, while Vancouver Island largely NDP.  Greens as mentioned should be competitive south of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, but whether they can gain any new seats or not remains to be seen.

Territories

Liberals likely take all three, but either the Tories or NDP could pick up seats here if they have a strong candidate as in the North local candidate as opposed to party tends to matter more.

Hopefully the Tories win and win in a landslide,


Trudeau has been one of the worst pm's ever

If the Tories win it won't be a landslide.  One term PMs are quite rare so I think the Tories beating the Liberals in seat count is a steep, but not impossible hill to climb.  Actually winning a majority will require a lot of things falling into place as at the moment they are a long ways away from it.  Now true, if every voter who in the last provincial elections voted for centre-right parties (BC Liberals in 2017, WRP + PC in AB in 2015, Saskatchewan Party in 2016, Manitoba PCs in 2016, Ontario PCs in 2018, CAQ in 2018, NB PCs + People's Alliance in 2018, PEI PC's in 2015, NS PC's in 2017, and NL PC's in 2015) also voted Tory federally, that would be sufficient, but I am skeptical of them doing as well as their provincial counterparts in pretty much every province save Alberta as in all other provinces each one had certain things going for them the federal party lacks.

Yah I know they wont win in a landslide, all Im saying is they deserve to.


I dont think winning a majority is implausible but it depends on what type of campaign they run. If they run a milquetoast campaign and run away from Harper they will lose. They need to run an aggressive campaign

I think their challenges are regional.  Harper is still hated in Atlantic Canada so they can win there but they have to return to their Red Tory roots and that will anger a lot of their base.  Quebec is always a wild card and usually it either embraces them (like 1958, 1984, or 1988) or soundly rejects like in most elections, no in between and usually we don't get any clues until about two weeks before the election.  I think had Horwath won last June or Wynne somehow got back in, the Tories would be in great shape to make gains in Ontario, but since Ford is premier who is very polarizing and divisive, that will probably hurt them there.  Ontario has a long history of voting opposites federally and provincially so with the PCs now in control at Queen's Park, that hurts the chances for the Tories federally.  They already hold the majority of ridings in the Prairies and not enough ones they don't hold to make a big difference.  BC seems to have swung leftward of recent so that could change if the provincial NDP tanks, but at the moment things don't look good for them, at least not in the coastal areas (I live here so I would know) which is the majority of the province.

To be fair, its not all bad for the right in Canada.  Unlike in 2015, we now have four provinces with 2/3 of the population with centre-right governments and that will likely grow to six as in New Brunswick Liberals likely to be defeated on the throne speech this Friday thus making room for the PCs and Alberta will likely swing rightward next May provincially.  So in all probability you will have over 80% of Canadians living in provinces with centre-right provincial governments so having a centre-left federally sort of balances things out.

Muh Omar Khadr?

That was a disgrace in every way.

Why exactly should the Charter of Rights and Freedoms not have applied in this case?

He committed Treason(Since Article V was invoked)  so he should have been thrown in prison for life without the possibility of parole for that crime.

He is also a Terrorist and killed an America Solider so he should have been tried for that murder not released and given 10 million dollars

Why should the Charter of Rights and Freedoms not have applied in this case?

The fact of it is, just like in America, the Charter applies to everyone, no matter their moral standing.

He never was acquitted of Treason , so he should have been charged with that

So are you suggesting that Justin Trudeau should have in some manner forced the courts towards a certain ruling?

he should have deported him to the US

It is illegal in Canada to send people to face trails in countries where they could face the death penalty.

Fine next time the US shouldnt send Canadian terrorists who killed US soliders back to Canada for trial.

Even putting aside this technicality, I don't see why you think Canada's human rights code should have been ignored.

He should have been charged with Treason

Wrong Premier to blame to blame, in any case. When Trudeau arrived in power, he was already free on parole and suing the government for 20 millions for breach of Charter rights and illegal deportation (case which would have been lost according to case law).

Hmm, I thought we shouldn't be judged for what we did as kids? Just ask your newest Supreme Court Justice. Oh wait, we're talking about a Muslim here, I forgot. ::)

This thread is an absolute dumpster fire. Hopefully it gets deleted and we can start anew a bit closer to the election.

Have to quibble with Miles characterization of Atlantic Canada.
Red Toryism in Atlantic Canada is not same as Red Toryism on the pages of the Globe & Mail. We love our EI benefits, which is why Harperism flopped, but a more free spending, semi-populist (i.e. not as far as Fordism) conservatism could make some solid inroads here.

There has been a ~12% swing which is likely concentrated among rural Anglos. Just eyeballing it I would project the Tories picking up half a dozen rural Anglo seats quite easily and quite possibly more if the Liberals falter a little bit.

He murdered an American soldier and is a terrorist



The fact that you libs have been defending the fact that he was released is another reason why you guys deserve to be landslided in 2019

Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister when he was released, in any case.

He didnt give him 10 million dollars


The fact that Trudeau did that is unforgivable


He should have deported him to America and yes while America has the death penalty , America is Canada's top allies and since he killed one of America's soldiers he should have been deported to America to face trial.

I hope the rest of Khadar life is miserable

1. The options on the table were pretty much setting now and give him money or spend millions in lawyer fees and give him 20 millions (+ his lawyers' fees) in a few years when he wins his lawsuit. I would rather blame Guantanamo Bay's methods, which are what gave source to the payment. I'm rather annoyed to have to give money to him because of abuse by the US Government.

2. There is extensive case law banning Canada from deporting people if they would possibly face death penalty. Options there would be either USA abolishing death penalty or Canada amending its Bill of Rights, neither of which will happen.

the fact is Trudeau could have still hit him with additional charges of treason . Remember Trudeau called Harper out for many years for keeping Khadar in prison

Pretty naive of you to try and say something actually relevant, tbh :)

Lets stay on topic instead of personal opinions here.  If you think the Khadr cheque will have an impact then mention it and why, but leave your personal politics out.  If you want to discuss that, start in page in the personal politics section.  I created this just as created one for PEI and Newfoundland as following US Election Atlas policies, it says don't create one more than a year out so I create a topic usually just under a year before the election as now with fixed dates much of what happens in terms of events will be about each party positioning themselves to win or make gains as opposed to what is best policy.  Otherwise the focus is going to be for all three parties on winning and thus it will all be about what groups they think they can pick up and avoiding any controversial statements or policies that could sink their chances.

"you guys"? You're the first person here to ever accuse me of being a Liberal. :P

Memo to Old School Republican: get out of this thread, you're derailing it.

Oh, and back to the topic at hand: somehow, I *can* see Maxime Bernier winning his own seat, even if his party dumpster-fires elsewhere.  In effect, he might as well be "independent", much like his father in 1993...

Thanks I try my best :P

He is quite popular in his riding, but his stance on supply management might hurt him.  I believe his riding has more dairy farmers than any other riding in Canada so probably not the best riding to be in when going after one of the largest contributors to the local economy.  If he were a suburban riding or rural riding with few Dairy farmers (not many in the Prairies) it might work in his favour.  Both Legault and Ford despite being conservatives are strong supporters of supply management and for good reasons.  Their strongest showings were in rural ridings where dairy farming is an important part of the economy.

Nanos has some recent polls out showing Liberals with an almost 12 point lead and the Tories at 27.5%, the lowest they've been since May 2017.  Whether this is a trend or blip, hard to say but would be interested to see other pollsters weigh in.  Mainstreet research should be out soon and Quito Maggi tweeted PPC doing better than other pollsters.  If true, my guess is the carbon tax stance is hurting the Tories.  Most people want action on climate change, but don't want it to cost too much.  If the carbon tax didn't involve rebates, it might be a winning issue for the Tories, but the inclusion of rebates turns the tables.  MQO as mentioned in PEI and Newfoundland headings has polls for the provinces.  For Nova Scotia, looks good for the Liberals, but the Tories have decent numbers, their problem is the NDP is very weak so lack of splits, but if they can hold their numbers and NDP gets an uptick could regain some of the ridings they lost in Mainland Rural Nova Scotia.  In New Brunswick, Tories have a slight lead over Liberals so likely the results would be similar to the last provincial election.  While things can change, I would be shocked if the Liberals sweep New Brunswick again.  I suspect the Tories will win seats in New Brunswick, maybe Nova Scotia, but not likely in PEI or Newfoundland.  For the NDP, any win in Atlantic Canada will probably come from having a popular candidate in a riding where there is no chance of vote splits.  It looks like much like PEI, Greens due to probably provincial strength are getting a strong bounce in New Brunswick.

Nova Scotia

Liberal 50%
Conservative 34%
NDP 10%
Green6%


New Brunswick

Conservative 38%
Liberal 35%
Green 15%
NDP8%

With those numbers, I suspect Tories would easily take Tobique-Mactaquac, New Brunswick Southwest, and Fundy-Royal.  Saint John-Rothesay, Fredericton, Miramichi-Grand Lake, Central Nova, and Cumberland-Colchester would likely be close battles.  West Nova seems to have swung pretty heavily Liberal, so skeptical about a Tory pick up here.  South Shore-St. Margaret's only went Tory due to strong Liberal/NDP splits which are lacking at the moment.  Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe and Madawaska-Restigouche have large Francophone communities so I could be wrong, but I am thinking the provincial government and unpopularity of Higgs and PANB amongst Francophones (fairly popular amongst Anglophones, but not Francophones) would probably hurt their chances never mind in 2015 it appears the Anglophone conservative vote dropped a lot, but it didn't implode like it did in Francophone areas.

Mainstreet research is out nationally.  Liberals similar numbers to Nanos, but Tories doing somewhat better although even though the topline numbers may suggest a competitive political landscape, the regional numbers paint a much bleaker picture for the Tories.  BC is close, Tories have a big lead in the Prairie provinces and that is the main reason the party appears competitive but running up the margins there may push vote total up, but not seat total.  Ontario and Quebec, Liberals both have large leads and are in great position to hold the seats they have now and in Quebec even gain, while the Tories in both cases are in good shape to hold what they have now, but to win or even come close they need strong gains in at least one if not both provinces and that is not the case at the moment in either.  In Atlantic Canada, Liberals still maintain a large lead although Tories are up enough from 2015 to probably win a few seats thus avoiding a complete shutout, but Liberals would still win the lion's share.  NDP is very weak and their low support here (although for whatever reason Mainstreet always seems to underestimate them compared to others) is probably one of the biggest things Trudeau has going for him provided this holds.  The people's Party is at 3.8% so higher than most other polls, but still a very small number but enough to cost the Tories many close seats.  Nonetheless, while combining CPC + PPC would put the two in a statistical tie, Liberals would still win a majority even if all PPC votes went to the CPC due to vote inefficiency of CPC.

Liberal 39.3%
Conservative 34.6%
NDP 10.8%
Green 6.8%
PPC 3.8%
BQ 3.4%

Frankly, with a NDP number that low, I'd worry that they're poised to be "Audreyed" a la 1993

Mainstreet always puts them on the low side, so I think they will still get over 12 seats.  They will probably lose most in Quebec, but the east side of Montreal voted heavily QS so think they have a chance there.  In Ontario they should win some while in Manitoba as the unpopular NDP government, which hurt them in 2015 is gone, they should hold or maybe gain.  In BC have a strong base and pockets where they always do well and unlike in 1993, the BC NDP government has recently decent approval ratings so they won't be dragged down by them like they were in 1974, 1993, 1997, and 2000 (caveat that assumes the BC NDP government's approval stays where it is and doesn't tank).  In Saskatchewan, they are the main alternative to the Tories not the Liberals and with a strong urban/rural divide and an end of the gerrymandered rural/urban split ridings, they should win a few urban Saskatchewan ones.  Never mind Scott Moe while popular, not as popular as Brad Wall was in 2015 and his strong numbers are more due to sky high support in rural Saskatchewan, in the two cities he is not so popular.

Definitely possible, but I think this happening is about as likely as the Liberals dropping below 100 seats or Tories falling below 70 seats.  I could see NDP falling below 20 seats, but think below 12 is not very likely.

Two bills renaming ridings passed the House and are now in front of the Senate.

C-377 renames Châteauguay-Lacolle in Châteauguay--Les-Jardins-de-Napierville. Makes sense, as Lacolle isn't in the riding (the boundary commission even admitted their mistake) while Les-Jardins-de-Napierville is a county covering most of the riding.

C-402 renames 16 ridings.

Cape Breton-Canso in Cape Breton-North Nova.
South Shore-St. Margaret's in South Nova
Syndey-Victoria in Cape Breton by the Sea.

A bunch of horrible Tourism Board like names.

Bellechasse-Les Etchemins-Lévis in Lévis-Bellechasse-Etchemins. A fine choice, going by population order rather than alphabetical.
Jonquière in Jonquière--Haut-Saguenay. Makes sense, it makes clear the riding is now covering a large rural component (unlike the old Jonquière-Alma).
Manicouagan in Côte-Nord. Common sense.
Saint-Hyacinthe--Bagot in Saint-Hyacinthe--Acton. Bagot isn't a county since the 1979 reforms, being replaced by Acton MRC.

Mississauga-Streetsville in Streetsville-Meadowvale-Lisgar. More confusing
Nickel Belt in Greater Sudbury-Nickel Belt

Charleswood-St. James-Annisiboia-Headingley in Winnipeg West-Headingley
Regina-Lewvan in Regina West
Calgary-Signal Hill in Calgary West. Great ideas
Fort McMurray-Cold Lake in Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche-Cold Lake

Burnaby-South in Burnaby-Douglas
Langley-Aldergrove in Langley-West Abbotsford
Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon in Abbotsford-Mission-Fraser Canyon

Ugh those NS names are horrible. No one uses ______ Nova in real life.

Don't all Mississauga ridings have the name Mississauga in them?  Why take one out?  Also, Greater Sudbury - Nickel Belt is confusing, but I guess you can't really name all the (formerly separate) surrounding municipalities. 

Re Mississauga: it's almost like Toronto-Danforth in reverse.

And isn't Greater Sudbury and Nickel Belt practically one and the same?  Better off calling it Nickel Belt-Sturgeon Falls, then...

'Cape Breton by the Sea' is hilarious given a) rather obviously all of Cape Breton is by the sea and b) that the riding covers some of the most horrifying postindustrial dystopia in all North America...

I think it would be a mistake for Tories to rely heavily on personal attacks on Lil Justin. I understand there's something about his personality that drives the cadre nuts, but it's clear your median swing voters don't share this antipathy, finding him on balance a nice enough person. For some reason, the conservative party of Canada really likes its negative campaigning, but I don't see it working unless combined with some national recession (which of course can't be ruled out).

Weird question: can Liberals penetrate more of Calgary, given their liberal Mayor and vast expanding population?

Unless oil rebounds strongly, they will be lucky to hold the two seats they hold.  While not Trudeau's fault for lack of pipeline being built or low oil prices, being government of the day doesn't help.  That being said Calgary-Confederation is probably the lowest hanging fruit.

In terms of Tories attacks, agreed as the base hates Trudeau with a passion but amongst swing voters they don't love Trudeau but don't either hate him with a passion.

I would be very surprised if my hometown swung any more towards the Liberals in 2019. Had Hehr and Kang not both received sexual harassment allegations, they may have been able to keep their seats, but the Liberals now have pretty slim odds in both seats. That said, it's worth noting that Calgary Skyview behaves very differently than the rest of Calgary, so if the Liberals find a strong on-the-ground candidate and Kang doesn't try to run as an Indy, they could still win. Depending on candidates, Centre and Confederation will be close, but ultimately I think the Conservatives will win both.

Calgary is an interesting case because it has a growing small-l liberal streak, but still votes big-C Conservative in partisan elections overall. With a rapidly expanding, young, and highly educated population, Calgary will continue to become friendlier to progressive candidates as time goes on, but it will take time and a concentrated effort by parties and candidates to break the Conservative hold on the city.

How come Singh is running in BC when he lives in Ontario

B/c after his shaky start as leader, he was under intense pressure to get into the Commons sooner rather than later, so he announced in August that he'd run in the eventual by-election in Burnaby South, which was vacated in mid-September by former NDP MP Kennedy Stewart so he could run for Mayor of Vancouver. Unfortunately, not being a fortune teller, he couldn't predict that the MP for the riding he represented for 6 years in the Ontario legislature (& in which he'd likely coast to victory) would resign, so if he says he's changing his mind & running in Brampton, then not only does that screw over the Burnaby NDP, but it also makes him look like a huge hypocrite after declaring he'd run in BC.

Because all of Canada is now a suburb of Toronto :)

Agreed, but what would you propose as an alternative strategy?


Long term sure, but in the short term, low oil prices and lack of pipeline progress have pushed unemployment well over the national average. That negative Tory campaign during a recession strategy that you mentioned would be more applicable here than the rest of the country. The Liberals are already down 7-8% since the last election in Alberta and its not like they had much room to fall outside the big cities.

Plus, as Miles mentioned, both of the Liberal Calgary MP's have been MeToo'd which doesn't help.

As I understand it, a big problem in Canada at the moment is that although baseline growth is good, wages are stagnant and cost of living expenses are rising. I'd base a national conervative campaign on those sort of lines: GST cuts, vigorously campaign against carbon taxes (which of course worked very well for the LNP, although Miles post above suggests that isn't enough at the moment) and, most importantly, further immigration (note I don't mean a "Muslims will eat your kids" campaign, which isn't necessary here and has the potential to backfire).

Not groundbreaking stuff as campaign fodder, obviously, but I can't see how the whole "Trudeau is an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet" line will actually work, unless the man independently soils his image or the economy collapses and he comes across as Nero at his fiddle.

Forum's new poll is different from the other polling firms. It gives a Conservative majority.

Conservatives 43%
Liberals 34%
NDP 11%
Greens 6%
Bloc 4%
Others 1%
 
http://poll.forumresearch.com/post/2908/federal-horserace-december-2018/ (http://poll.forumresearch.com/post/2908/federal-horserace-december-2018/)

They don't seem to be polling Bernier's party. Considering the Conservative party has had trouble staying over the mid-30s, at 43% it would be a big shift.

Léger's November poll is more in line with the average of polls.

Liberal 39%
Conservative 33%
NDP 14%
Green 5%
People 4%
Bloc 4%
Other 1%

Bernier's party demographics is more male and 18-34 of age.

http://leger360.com/admin/upload/publi_pdf/Federal%20Politics%20(final)%20-%20November%202018.pdf (http://leger360.com/admin/upload/publi_pdf/Federal%20Politics%20(final)%20-%20November%202018.pdf)

There is a section rating satisfaction with actions taken by the government. Regional numbers give a geographic idea even if samples are small.

Creating jobs and economic development: 53% satisfied (highest in Atlantic, lowest in Alberta)
Deploying international policy to restore Canada's image: 51% (high Atlantic, low Alberta)
Legalizing use of recreational cannabis: 48% (high Atlantic, low Quebec)
Renegotiating NAFTA: 48% (high Atlantic Ontario, low Alberta Sask/Man Quebec)
Creating carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gases: 45% (high Quebec, low Alberta)
Incuring deficits to support Canadian economy: 37% (high Ontario Atlantic, low Alberta)
Purchasing Trans Mountain pipeline: 34% (high BC, low Quebec)

On abolishing the monarchy: 39% for, 32% against, 25% don't know (the For option is boosted by the 65% in Quebec)

On how many immigrants Canada welcomes: 9% too few, 40% enough, 45% too many, 5% don't know   

Abacus federal poll

LPC 35%
CPC 34%
NDP 17%
Green 7%
Bloc 4%

This firm measured accessible voter pools. 53% would consider voting Liberal, 48% Conservative and 43% NDP, 36% Green and 18% for People's Party.

In BC the accessible voter pool is 54% Liberal, 48% Conservative, 47% NDP
Ontario 59% Liberal, 52% Conservative, 52% NDP
Quebec 50% Liberal, 37% NDP, 33% Conservative, 29% Bloc

They also show to which party voters would go if they changed thir mind.

http://abacusdata.ca/canadas-political-mood-as-2018-comes-to-an-end/ (http://abacusdata.ca/canadas-political-mood-as-2018-comes-to-an-end/)

About how many points would all of you say the LPC has to win by to keep their Majority?

I would say with current regional breakdowns Liberals need a 3 to 4 point lead so actually only a few points more to retain their majority.  Tories need about a 10 point lead so still a long ways from a majority.  In fact I figure the Tories need a 2 point lead in the polls just to beat the Liberals in seats.  The reason for this is voter efficiency.  Tories have the same problem Hillary Clinton had, win big in areas they are already strong in so lots of wasted votes (that would be Alberta and Saskatchewan) while Liberals win in a lot more areas but where they win it tends to be by much narrower margins.  The Liberals will likely get below 20% and 10% in far more ridings than the Tories so fewer wasted in votes in no hope areas, while unlike 2015, I suspect there will be few Liberal ridings over 60% and few or any of 70% and probably none over 80% while with the anger at the Liberals in Alberta and Saskatchewan, I think you will see a lot of over 60%, over 70% and even a few over 80% for the Tories.  Rural Alberta is the Tories' strongest area and there is no place where the Liberals are likely to win as big. 

It also depends on the opposition--that is, if worst case scenarios re Jagmeet Singh's NDP leadership come to pass, we could conceivably see the most "binary" Canadian election in eons, not unlike the 2017 UK election.  In which case, even a modest share difference might not stand in the way of a majority in either direction...

Depends how totally the NDP collapses. A lot of the Liberals' vote efficiency is because there are a number of seats where they would have enormous margins in a straight LPC-CPC fight but the LPC numbers are brought down by sizeable NDP votes. If the NDP does really poorly (<10 seats) at the next election, which doesn't seem implausible, the Liberals probably don't have a vote concentration advantage because they'll be approaching 70%+ in a lot of urban ridings.

Let's remember that the Libs were disadvantaged in 1979 because *they* had the overly-plumped-vote circumstance--Quebec was for them then what Alberta/Prairies is for CPC presently.

A lot, too, might depend on whether Bernier's PPC has any discernable ballot-box traction, whether as winner or as spoiler...

Ironically it is Alberta not Quebec where Bernier is most popular so if he does gain any traction, probably will be mostly in Conservative strongholds thus reducing their margins but not costing them the seats so more vote efficient.  That being said unless he somehow gets into the debates, I suspect his party will go nowhere.

If Bernier's party gets back their deposit anywhere besides Beauce, Yellowhead and Calgary Heritage wouldn't be the worst places to do it.

Will Bernier win his own seat to begin with? Also, how much do you need to get back a deposit in Canada?

Deposits were abolished by a judge in 2017.

Mainstreet found a tight race between Bernier and the new CPC candidate, who seems to be a star recruit in his own right.

To get deposit back is 10% and outside his own riding and rural Alberta I suspect there will be few of those.  He will probably lose his own riding the question is to whom.  Will it go Tory as it is a fairly conservative area or will the splits be strong enough to allow the Liberals to come up the middle, hard to say.

Jeppe just posted about that Mainstreet poll. Bernier and the Tories are tied at about 35% in Beauce. Everyone else is around 10%

If the PLC took 22 % of the vote in Beauce in the last election, maybe Beauce could be winnable for Trudeau.

I'm pretty skeptical on that.

The Liberals are more or less matching their 2015 Quebec result. If we re ran the 2015 election and split the 2015 Tory vote equally in two, the Liberal candidate would still be down by 7%. The Tories are actually up in Quebec as well. The only way the Liberals win this seat is the Tory/People's vote spluts perfectly and there's a substanstial trend towards Trudeau in rural Quebec. That riding poll indicates that if there's a trend, it's in the wrong direction for the Grits.

Since a few natives got arrested last night for protesting, I’m curious to see how they vote. Is it split between NDP and the Liberals? Will the recent pipeline controversy lead to a changing voting pattern?

It depends on which band/tribe but usually I find they tend to vote massively behind one, rarely split within any band/tribe but is split overall as one band might go massively NDP another massively Liberal.  Add to the fact turnout amongst First Nations tends to be very low in fact many deliberately refuse to vote as they feel it legitimizes being colonized.

To add to what Miles said, there's a weird southernesque racial voting pattern in northern Mantoba and Sasketchewan.

If you look at poll maps for thos ridings on

http://www.election-atlas.ca

In those areas the white areas will vote 80%+ or the Tories, and the reservations will vote NDP/Liberal by similar margins.

That even goes for southern ManSask ridings: other than major urban centres, the patches of non-blue tend to be reserves.  (Or to a limited extent and depending on the election and place, Metis.)

Scott Brison is not running for re-election.  Since this was a Tory stronghold before he crossed the floor, this would normally make this a target for the Tories, but with how badly they were damaged in 2015, I suspect the Liberals should be able to hold this even if not quite the same blowout as in 2015.

Preface: I still think the Liberals win Kings-Hants rather comfortably.

The Tories have recovered quite a bit in Atlantic Canada, and rural Anglo ridings are the sort of place where I would expect the recovery to disproportionately occur. Also, local politics matter a lot more out east, so Brison's departure will hurt the Liberals more than a typical popular cabinet retirement. The Tories could scrape out a victory if everything goes right.

My actual prediction for a surprise Tory win is Cumberland-Colchester.

I wouldn't call it that much of a "surprise"; Bill Casey's about the only thing in the way of its becoming the likeliest Tory pickup in Nova Scotia--probably because it's the least "Celtic fringe" of NS's rural-based seats (i.e. more of a synergy w/Anglo New Brunswick)

Candidate update:

The Tories are running several former MP's in Atlantic Canada: Scott Armstrong (Cumberland-Colchester),  Rob Moore (Fundy-Royal), and John Williamson (New Brunswick Southwest). All three have a decent chance at reclaiming their seats.

They have also have a possible star candidate; Chris d'Entremont in West Nova. d'Entremont is the Tory MLA for Argyle-Barrington and is a former cabinet minister. West Nova should still go Liberal but d'Entremont could make it interesting.

Also, for Conservatives, they have Robert Coutu, mayor of Montréal-Est in La-Pointe-de-l'Île running against former Bloc leader Mario Beaulieu.

Interesting, so is the NDP:

Andrew Cash in Davenport (defeated in 2015, a good fighting chance, still lean-LPC, but that's a strong candidate for the NDP)

Svend Robinson in Burnaby North-Seymour (did not run again in 2004, a good chance as well in a three way race)

I expect some of the class of 2011, who were defeated in 2015 in Quebec might run again as well

oh god I read that as Roy Moore

Yasss

Anyone know where the new Bloc leader is going to run?

Going by what took place last few election cycles it seems most polls are fairly useless until the last 2-3 weeks before the election.  Is that because Canadians are more fickle or the nature of a 3 party system  manes that votes are more likely to be tactically minded and more likely to shift how they vote up until right before the election.   

Both really.

Also remember, in some Provinces and Riding's it can be 4-way races if you include the BQ in Quebec and the Greens in BC and select individual riding's... 

He has said in the Montérégie region but not the specific riding.
There is one Bloc MP in the region and he's running again so Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will not run in that one. PQ MNA Catherine Fournier was elected in the provincial riding of Marie-Victorin (part of Longueuil) and he could benefit from her help. Problem is that part of Longueuil is in the federal ridign Longueuil-Charles Lemoyne which includes not Bloc friendly part like Greenfield Park. Maybe it's more difficult to beat an incumbent Liberal MP so Blanchet is looking at the NDP held ridings (also targeted by Liberals).

It could be Longueuil-Saint-Hubert. Might wait to see if NDP MP is running and maybe who could be the Liberal candidate. Bloc finished third there but I think it's better to be parachuted in a more urban riding than rural (less territory to cover in campaign and usually less important to have a local figure). If Blanchet wants to avoid to face a Liberal MP, other possibilities are Salaberry-Suroit, Saint-Hyacinthe and Beloeil-Chambly. The first two have a regional city with many rural small towns so not ideal for someone from outside to land there in my opinion. 

The Quebec Premier has started a list of demands to federal parties ahead of the federal election.

Have a single income tax return for provincial and federal government managed by Quebec
$300 million in compensation for costs incurred by asylum seekers crossing the border
More power over the selection of immigrants
Funding for public transit projects
Compensation for dairy farmers hurt by the Nafta renegotiation

The filing of a single tax return managed by Quebec was a motion supported by all parties in the National assembly last year. Conservatives and Bloc are for it. NDP adopted it as policy last year but seem to have changed their mind and no longer support it, the Liberals look like they are against.

Scheer has presented five policies to appeal to Quebec:
More autonomy over immigration
Single income tax return
Name a Quebec minister in charge of the federal economic development agency for Quebec
Incentive for retirees to work
Invest to stop wastewater flowing in rivers

https://ipolitics.ca/2019/01/21/scheer-presents-first-wave-of-tories-quebec-centric-policies/ (https://ipolitics.ca/2019/01/21/scheer-presents-first-wave-of-tories-quebec-centric-policies/)   

Pandering.

He's from Drummondville, and Drummond is currently represented by an NDP MP (Francois Choquette).  He represented Drummond in the National Assembly from 2008-2012, and then Johnson from 2012-2014.  My bet is that he will run there.

https://www.journalexpress.ca/2019/01/28/leffet-yves-francois-blanchet-se-fait-sentir-dans-drummond/

Won't run in Drummond.

Three former Liberal candidates are considering running for Tory nominations.  This will be interesting as no doubt the Tories can use this as proof the Liberals have abandoned the centre and swung too far to the left.  Might not amount to much, but probably something the Liberals would rather not have or at least they would probably like to get some former Tories to run under their banner in exchange to offset this.

David Bertschi (Liberal candidate 2011 in Ottawa-Orleans) running for Conservative nomination for Orleans.  He endorsed Erin O'Toole back in 2017 as CPC leader so already leaning that way.

Andrew Kania (Liberal MP Brampton West 2008-2011) endorses the Tories and is considering running for them in Brampton South.

Wendy Yuan (Liberal candidate Vancouver-Kingsway 2008 and 2011) running for Tory nomination in Steveston-Richmond East (interestingly enough Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido was first elected in 2000 as a Canadian Alliance MP and for Reform Party in both 1993 and a 1996 by-election so talk about swapping places).

The path to an overall victory for the tories requires turning a good number of CAQ voters into Con voters, so...yeah they kinda have to pander.

Steveston-Richmond East is my riding. I'd consider voting for Wendy Yuan over Joe Peschisolido.

Mainstreet is out today and now the first non-Nanos poll this year.  Liberals big lead in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, 6 points ahead in Ontario, while Tories slightly ahead in BC and massive lead in the Prairies.

Liberal 37.2%
Conservative 35.1%
NDP 11.5%
Green 7.2%
BQ 3.5%
PPC 4.2%


Interesting, Tories would have two point lead if PPC votes all went to them, but with such a small percentage I think will only matter if super close.

This might strike some as counterintuitive; but drawing from the Reform experience a quarter century ago, might PPC be stealing populist votes from the NDP as well?

Certainly possible.  In Europe, many of the right wing populists are gaining from traditional social democratic votes, in Toronto many of the strongest areas that voted for Rob Ford in 2010 and Doug Ford in 2014 are NDP/Liberal areas in the suburbs.   Likewise Trump won many traditional Democrat blue collar areas.  However with only 4% its such a small number that it is tough to really tell, it would need to be higher to get a clearer picture.

Given Mainstreet's track record in recent years, perhaps we should take their numbers with a grain of salt.

True, but the numbers are very similar to the Nanos numbers.  The only real difference is that Bernier's party has more support.

If (and that's a big if) they're polling over 1%, it probably depends on region. The People's Party is doing best in Alberta amd Quebec. Quebec, I can see, but I have a hard time imagining Bernier taking many votes from 2015 Alberta NDP supporters. His demographic there would be cranky Tories.

MQO research is doing federal polls for each Atlantic province and so far for PEI has Liberals well in front at 52%, Tories in second at 30% while Greens at 10% and NDP at 7%.  That would seem to imply a Liberal sweep while the Tories are doing a lot better than 2015, still got a ways to go before winning seats there, but such shifts would be enough to win seats in New Brunswick.  I suspect Tories will win a few seats in New Brunswick, maybe Nova Scotia depending on how things go, but I don't expect them to win any seats in either PEI or Newfoundland & Labrador.

I think there was a fair number of populist Bernie-Trump voters that many Dems refuse to acknowledge. This group quite possibly swung the election and tipped the Rust Belt. I don't see Bernier gaining the same traction (minor party), but he could gain support among libertarian leaning folks, myself included.

I think amongst libertarian leaning folks, it will come down to how close things are in the polls.  If it is clear the Liberals are going to be re-elected anyways, then many might decide to take a chance on him hoping a strong showing by the PPC would influence the Tories in policy and leader next time around.  While if close in the polls like now, I suspect most won't want to risk a vote split as most libertarians I know hate Trudeau with a passion and getting rid of him is more important than getting their ideal leader.

Leger Quebec poll:  (https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2019/02/04/bloc-et-conservateurs-a-egalite)39/21/21/8/6. Grit gains, Dipper shutout and Bernier threatening to split the Quebec City vote.

NDP at 8%?! Geez Louise.

Which makes me thinking that Beauce, for example, could be winnable for the LPC.

If you get a perfect split, absolutely, although I think Bernier's popularity is overrated in Beauce.  His riding has a large dairy farming industry so it will be interesting how his stance on supply management goes over, but certainly possible.

He lost his own riding during the leadership ballot, if I recall correctly.

EDIT: Correction/Clarification - I've checked the Wikipedia maps, he led on the first ballot in his riding, however Scheer won a majority of his riding on the final ballot.

If everything goes perfectly for the Liberals they can win Beauce. I'd put the odds at something like 45-45-10

Ironically I believe his riding has the greatest number of dairy farmers of any riding in Canada and many of them signed up specifically to stop him from becoming leader as he was the only one promising to dismantle supply management which may sell well in Alberta, but does not in rural Quebec.  Legault and Ford maybe small c conservatives but both are strong defenders of supply management as they know it would hurt a lot of their rural support.

I'm just going to pop in here and note that Quebec in 2015 was:

35.7 Lib
16.7 Con
25.4 NDP
19.3 BQ
2.4 Other

So the poll has Libs up 3, Con up 4, BQ up 2, Bernier gaining 6, and and NDP down 17.

Nowhere to go but up!

Really?  Except for 1965 and 1988, single digits was the NDP norm for QC pre-2008.  The main thing standing in the way of that now is token incumbent seat bounce...

It's like at a hockey game when your team is trailing 5-1 with 5 minutes to go, and the other team scores to make it 6-1.  I always say "this will just make the comeback all the more exciting!" :)

Long time Liberal MP Mark Eyking (Sydney-Victoria) will not reoffer in October. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/sydney-victoria-mp-mark-eyking-won-t-reoffer-in-2019-fall-election-1.5016477) Should still be a safe Liberal seat. Other Nova Scotia Liberals not running again are Bill Casey (Cumberland-Colchester), Scott Brison (Kings-Hants) and Colin Fraser (West Nova), all of which will be more interesting races than Sydney to one degree or another.

Sydney-Victoria is quite safe so don't think the Liberals will have any trouble holding it.  Ironically provincially it went quite heavily PC, but the PCs provincially are Red Tories so lots of crossover votes.  West Nova and Kings-Hants I think will stay Liberal too although probably tighter than 2015, but I think it will take a few elections for the Tories to recover from the 2015 disaster.  Cumberland-Colchester I could see flipping, in fact of the Nova Scotia ridings it is the only one I think the Tories have a reasonably decent shot at.  Although wouldn't be surprised if it stays Liberal as I doubt the Tories will get over 50% there and with NDP being so weak, 40% might not be enough.

With the recent cabinet resignation and bombshell on the SNC-Lavalin meeting it will be interesting to see if this has any impact on the polls.  My guess is it will have a minor impact short-term, but whether it damages the Liberals or not depends on what comes out and how long the issue drags on.  People tend to have short term memories so usually you need a whole series of such scandals to bring down a government.  Nonetheless any negative press close to the election will be what is top of mind.  I also think it depends on who the ballot question is about.  Considering how cynical Canadians are, if on Trudeau its probably bad news for the Liberals since while not hated by any means, he hasn't lived up to the high expectations people had.  But if on Scheer probably good news for Liberals as nothing inspiring about him and plenty of areas you can attack him, mind you he was safer choice than Bernier who would have been a disaster for the Conservatives.

 The Tories will try to frame it as does Trudeau deserve a second term, Liberals is Scheer too extreme and risky to vote for, and NDP neither of the two main parties are working time to try something different.  NDP's main problem is the Liberals have pushed enough leftwards so not a lot of breathing room for them. Tories by contrast do have the potential to appeal to Blue Liberals/Red Tories who are probably not keen on Trudeau's big spending, but the risk is become too centrist and risk the PPC gaining thus splitting the vote so caught in a tight spot.  Go too far right and thus fail to win the key swing voters they need, go too much towards the centre and risk a split on the right.

Yeah, the Tory situation in Cape Breton is really weird right now. Cape Bretoners tend to really dislike the Tories, even the provincial red ones. It was the base of the provincial Liberals for a very long time. Cape Breton is having a healthcare crisis right now due to an aging population, being unattractive to physicians etc, and they have way more hospitals per capita than the rest of the province, which are going to be consolidated. The provincial Liberals have done a poor job managing the issue, and the last Tory leader (who wasn't especially effective otherwise) did a very good job of exploiting it.

West Nova I can see as sleeper as the Tories have a star Francophone candidate.

It will help Liberals in Quebec, as it's seen as taking risks to protect a Quebec company and its well-paying jobs (and so agrees the Bloc, wierdly).

Maybe but adscam really hurt them there.  I tend to think this will cause a short term dip in the polls much like India trip, but unless it drags through the summer the impact in the next general election will be minimal.  Liberal strength in Quebec is more due to NDP collapse, BQ struggling to stay alive, and CPC never except in a few occasions like Mulroney in the 80s being quite weak outside the Quebec City region.

Well it was nice having Ruth Ellen Brosseau in parliament

The PM’s office might have interfered in judicial proceedings and people in Quebec might say that that is great???

The Quebecois are quite protective of their institutions. SNC-Lavalin (the corporation at the centre of all this), is a major employer and one of a handful of major global companies based in Quebec. The expectation is that Quebecois voters will look the other way on the scandal. Punditry seems to confirm this, with Francophone newspapers apparently taking a much more sympathetic approach to the affair than the Anglo media.

Yes, the view here is than some Ontarians/Anglophone high-ranking public servants in Justice Ministry and Ontarian newspapers are teaming up to destroy a Quebec company.

First post scandal poll is out from Campaign Research (https://www.campaignresearch.ca/single-post/2019/02/13/Conservative-Party-has-a-clear-lead-over-the-Liberal-Party-just-8-months-out-from-the-electionurl)

Conservative: 37%
Liberal: 32%
NDP: 14%
Green: 7%
Bloc: 5%
People's: 3%

Large change from pre-scandal polling but not a major shift from the last Campaign Research poll, which had the Liberals and Tories statistically tied.

Ah sh-t.

There's an argument to be made that this is all the NDP's fault for bucking Tom Mulcair. He'd be ravaging the government on the daily in Question Period and come off like a reasonable, responsible, progressive leader. Instead there's bumbling Singh who has a snowflake's chance in Hell of presenting the NDP as a reasonable alternative to the Liberals.

But I digress.

NDP voters made a serious miscalculation. I know they wanted someone to outcharisma Trudeau but it's the Liberals. Something like this was bound to happen eventually.

The Conservatives are even more corrupt, they're just more brazen about it and they have most of the media on their side.

For instance, CBC did a series of stories about a decade ago on how the Conservatives helped the pipeline industry cover up oil spills, but outside of the CBC, it was never reported on.

Could be accurate but this is Nick Kouvalis' firm.

He's really going to do it. He's really going to lose. Unbelievable.

I think it's more likely that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigns.  I certainly hope he is considering doing that.

You must be kidding.

His principle secretary just resigned in a way that made no sense "I'm resigning because I've done nothing wrong."  (He said he's resigning so that he can better defend himself.  Of course, to many people, his resignation will be seen as an admission of guilt, so he's hardly set himself up well.)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the only one on the ladder who's higher.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As to the scandal itself, there is no question the right wing media (Post Media, Global News and Corus Entertainment) and the Conservative Party are both completely insincere on this and only a fool could believe that a Conservative government under Andrew Scheer would not be more corrupt.

When the hysteria over the woman jailed in the healing lodge came up, the Liberals defended the decision to place her there by pointing out the independence of the prison system and the criminal justice system. At that time, the Conservatives and the right wing media argued "nobody understands or cares about an abstract issue like an independent criminal justice system, and nobody should care."

However, now both are insincerely claiming there is nothing more important than an independent judicial system. For both the Conservatives and the right wing media this is nothing more than scoring political points and trying to get resignations.  

That the noxious and hyper-partisan Pierre Polievre is one of the Conservative Party leads on this whole thing should tell everybody that Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives don't give a rat's ass about the underlying issue of an independent criminal justice system.

However, for people like me who do see the need for an independent criminal justice system, the evidence seems fairly clear that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did attempt to interfere and therefore is not fit to be Prime Minister.

That Andrew Scheer is not fit to be Prime Minister is beyond clear.

I would rather have Justin Trudeau and the Liberals lose in a landslide so Andrew Scheer has the mandate to accomplish all the things Stephen Harper was unable to do on his agenda and more.

You want to see Canada become as neo-feudalist as the United States is?

No I want Canada to thrive economically like the US

Canada's economy is doing fine in aggregate and is doing it without a $1 trillion annual federal budget deficit as has been temporarily boosting the U.S economy.

The last thing Canada needs is right wing economics that benefit the wealthy at the expense of everybody else, whether it's through allowing the environment to be used as a free dumping site, tax cuts for the wealthy that promote wealth inequality or what-have-you.

For someone who goes to such efforts to chronicle GOP misbehaviour south of the border, that your first response to a Canadian Liberal scandal on Atlas was #BothSidesTenYearsAgo is rather telling.

Hacks gonna hack I guess.

Agreed. It would take a big smoking gun for the PM to resign, and even then, we're so close to an election its more likely the Liberals just go down in defeat with Trudeau rather than change leaders so late in the game.

This is going to be a great election for the Greens and PPC.

Your argument was 'but it's the Liberals' which implies either that the Liberals are inherently corrupt or are worse than the other political parties.  What response other than what I gave would you expect?

If you want to see a Conservative Party hack, take a look in the mirror.

You're missing my point entirely. My experience with you has been that you are very quick to discuss conservative scandals at home and abroad. If you want to argue about which parties are corrupt fine... But LavScam broke over a week ago. It's potentially a huge scandal in our own backyard. And you didn't say anything about it on Atlas for a week, and when you finally did comment, the first thing you posted was "Tories are bad too".

Looking through this thread, we see a Liberal scandal, and what do you post? A one liner about the PM and paragraphs and paragraphs about how the Tories are bad. Sounds like something a hack would do...If it looks like an anti-Tory hack and talks like a hack... well it's probably a hack.

But dont listen to me, I'm just a hack for a party I don't vote for half the time. After all I did complain about the Liberals being corrupt during a Liberal corruption scandal ::)

Just to back this up:
1.In regards to the healing lodge hysteria, the Conservative Party public safety critic called for Minister Ralph Goodale to personally overturn the decision.

When Goodale argued he did not have the power to do this based on the independence of the Criminal Justice System,  the right wing media (National Post, Corus Entertainment/Global News) argued seemingly all as one "the Liberals are going to have to come up with a better argument than some abstract principle that nobody understands or cares about in order to defuse this situation." (Andrew Coyne would likely have been an exception.)

2.The reports that Andrew Scheer was also meeting with executives from SNC Lavalin, and that this new deferred prosecution option was actually started during the previous Conservative Government. (I don't know if it ever got beyond the civil service stage at that point.)

3.The Conservatives using Pierre Polievre as their lead on this (along with Justice critic Lisa Raitt.)  Among other things, Pierre Polievre wore a shirt with a Conservative Party logo on it to an event that was supposed to be non-partisan in the lead-up to the last election.  I can't think of any greater dog-whistle the Conservatives could be sending to interested supporters of 'we're not actually interested in the independence of the judiciary' than making Pierre Polievre (who isn't even a lawyer) the co-lead on this file.

4.The Harper government using the Justice Minister as a partisan agent during their last term by passing several laws that it knew were unconstitutional just so they could be struck down by the courts, so the Conservatives could fund-raise off of that, and attempt to run against the courts.

In further regard to the right wing media  (of course, this highlights the opposite problem as well, that the institutions themselves can't be trusted to follow due process and equal protection) when Auditor General Michael Fraser's report on the Canada Revenue Agency came out, one of the problems it highlighted was the grossly favored treatment given to wealthy Canadians versus every other Canadian.

Both the Post Media Chain and the Star Chain reported on this report and bullet pointed several of the highlights in the report.  The Star Chain (I usually read the free Star Metro) mentioned this unequal treatment in a bullet point, the right wing Post Media Chain did not.

No, his argument simply notes that in this particular case the liberals fall under quite a cloud of suspicion and the other Canadian parties do not. If the accusation are true, then the real criminals sit in government, and not in opposition as you have quite bizarrely asserted previously.

His line 'but it's the Liberals' stems from a dishonest right wing Canadian narrative that the Liberal Party of Canada is uniquely corrupt and uniquely arrogant.  This is what my comment was addressing.

As my previous post shows, the Conservative Party is thoroughly corrupt. "Morally corrupt" as Maxime Bernier put it.

Nice attempt at a strawman argument though.

When you assert that pointing out that this Liberal government in this particular case may have acted in a corrupt fashion is the exact same thing as saying that the "Liberal Party is uniquely corrupt" is a classic example of putting words into another's mouth that they simply did not say so as to argue against a strawman rather than what they actually said.


Now, I understand that you have argued your subjective belief that the Conservative Party of Canada is "morally corrupt." That may, or may not, be true, but, in either case it is  totally irrelevant to any consideration as to whether, or not, the Liberal Party, or more specifically its Premier, acted in a corrupt fashion in this particular case.

My opinion is that paying brides is often a necessary condition for doing business in countries characterized by rampant corruption, and, that passing laws against such bribes, which is more accurately described as being extorted, is a pretentious moral posturing. However, my view didn't prevail, and, the law is what it is. If it is the law, there should be no exception for corporations too big to jail, or too big to fail.

This thread's being, er, distracted by politics.  In the end, it's not about which side is *right* (or clean, or corrupt, or whatever), as much as it's about how the virtues and pitfalls communicate themselves to the voter. 

And at this point, it's still far from clear that it's all a fatal blow to Liberal chances--the election's still a ways off, and the presently-hobbled Libs can ultimately still generate a fair bit of not-the-Cons momentum.  (If this all happened midcampaign, as in the 2006 election, things would be a lot different.)

Ipsos has a new poll (https://globalnews.ca/news/4973581/trudeau-government-leaks-support-snc-lavalin-wilson-raybould-poll/)

36-34-17
No detailed splits that I could fine. Similar to the Campaign Research poll, it shows a modest bump for the Tories


Agreed. A knockout blow would require big news after summer break. For now the Tories and NDP are just going to have to hope for a drip drip of bad news stories adds up to something bigger.

Absolutely not.  The use of a phrase such as 'but it's the Liberals' doesn't come from nowhere.  I explained the narrative that buttresses the phrase and it's a false narrative.

This really isn't worth debating, especially with a person whose signature indicates they are a supporter of Traitor Trump.

The phrase "but it's the Liberals'" certainly comes from somewhere, but, your claim that it is a statement that the Liberal Party of Canada is "uniquely corrupt" originates in your imagination. In this very thread you have bizarrely asserted that the Conservatives are especially corrupt by such means as guilt by association tactics and criminalizing politics. Well, folks on the other side are equally entitled to argue that the Liberal Party of Canada is especially corrupt, as well. But, you simply won't grant them that privilege. In an act of rhetoric that allows for no dissent from your viewpoint you claim that any noting of corruption by the Liberal Party of Canada, and more specifically its premier, is actually a claim that only corruption exists in one party. That is morally wrong, and, intellectually indefensible.

And whatever the scandal, either side is going to be handicapped for being "who they are" to a certain type of voter of an opposite inclination.  That's why holding-one's-nose strategic voting has *always* existed--indeed, it might be argued that the current Lib circumstance might ironically push *more* panicky voters (presumably of the ex-NDP/Green sort) into the Lib camp so as to desperately try to deny the Cons a majority...

Gibberish.

The NDP is a total disaster his year. I wonder if Charlie Angus would have done better. Less than a decade ago, people were saying the Liberals should disband and merge with the NDP.

Ah, shades of 2004-2006 :P

Or for that matter, the 2010 Toronto mayoral election, where what was polling as a blowout for Rob Ford turned into a 47.1-35.6 Ford-Smitherman margin instead.  (And similarly in 2014, promiscuous progressives piling into the John Tory camp as an antidote to Doug Ford--and maybe provincially in 2018, where Premier Ford's winning margin was much tighter than anything that looked to be in the cards when Patrick Brown was PC leader.)

Detailed data on Ipsos website:
https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/Liberal-Re-Election-Chances-in-Jeopardy (https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/Liberal-Re-Election-Chances-in-Jeopardy)

Poll was done Feb13-18 so before Butts' resignation..
Tories lead 38% to 32 in Ontario. Liberals still lead in BC with 37%, in Quebec with 38% and Atlantic with 50%.

42% approval of the performance of the government, drop of 9% since December. . 38% government deserve re-election.

Leger did a poll February 15-19. The difference from the November poll, Liberals -5, Conservatives +3
https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Federal-Politics-February-2019-FINAL.pdf (https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Federal-Politics-February-2019-FINAL.pdf)

Conservatives 36%
Liberals 34%
NDP 12%
Greens 8%
Bloc 5%
PPC 4%

In line with Ipsos besides NDP numbers but regional differences from Ipsos, could be due to smaller regional sample. Leger has in Atlantic the Liberals only leading 42% to 36, in Ontario a tie with Liberals 38% to 37, in BC the Liberals only at 22% to Cons 36%% Cons, Manitobas/Sask a tie at 40% (?).

36% are satisfied with the government, a drop of 9% since November, Trudeau drops 7% in the best Prime Minister category but still leads at 26%, Scheer 21%, May 8%, Singh 6%, Bernier 4%.

67% of people are aware of the SNC case.
41% believe the PM did something wrong, 12% no wrong, 41% not sure.

57% want a change in government, 27% government be reelected, 15% don't know.

Maybe because Liberals had more choices than Conservatives but Harper leads the best Prime Minister of the last 50 years with 24%, Pierre Trudeau 22%, Chrétien 19%, Mulroney 13% (Mulroney is first in Quebec)

The second part of the survey is about most important issues, which leader does best on issues and level of immigration.
https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Federal-Politics-February-2019-FINAL-day-2.pdf (https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Federal-Politics-February-2019-FINAL-day-2.pdf)

This, Mulcair was a real leader.
Angus would've done much better too.

Not surprised Harper came in first, but bet on worst prime-minister would be up there too.  Quite polarizing as for those on the right, he is the only real right wing prime-minister we've ever had (Mulroney and Clark were fairly centrist so more popular amongst swing voters, but probably less so with base) so I would expect pretty much almost everyone who is firmly on the right side of the political spectrum to put him as best.  I suspect pretty much anyone on the left side even if only slightly left of centre would put him as the worst.  Mulroney, and Chretien were close to the centre so Chretien less hated by the right than either Trudeau but less liked by left whereas Mulroney less hated by left than Harper, but less liked by the right than Harper.  Paul Martin, John Turner, Kim Campbell, and Joe Clark were in office for such short periods it is unlikely anyone would have that strong an opinion on them either way.  Whatever one thought at the time, none as PM at least (as cabinet minister different story) left any lasting impacts.

There was another poll showing the Liberal party losing a few points. It was a Mainstreet poll done in Quebec for Cogeco on February 17.

LPC 40%
CPC 21%
Bloc 17%
NDP 9%
Green 6.5%
PPC 4.6%

76% have heard of the SNC-Lavalin story.
In its decision about SNC's request should government consider economic impact of possible guilty verdict of the company at trial: Yes 52% No 23%

Should government intervene to avoid a trial for SNC and give them a big fine with a remediation agreement or let the judicial process continue its course: 41% intervene, 49% let the judicial process run

Do you believe Prime Minister Trudeau version of the event? Yes 25% No 55%

Are you satisfied with Trudeau's job on this file?
Very satisfied 14.5%
Satisfied 21.7%
Unsatisfied 36%
Very unsatisfied 14%

Now that the Federal Election is the next big thing, there are a sizeable number of Liberals who haven't yet announced their re-election. There's a few like Yves Robillard and John McKay who are older and would be no surprise, but there are some which were unexpected. A few like Marwan Tabbara have a lot to worry about, but others like Ralph Goodale, Amarjeet Sohi, and Anju Dhillon have not announced yet.

Latest polling from Nanos (tracking) (February 22 release) and Angus Reid (February 24 release.) The interesting thing about the polls is that they are in rough agreement regionally save for Quebec.  (Nanos regional breakdown can be found by looking up 'Nanos on the numbers.'

Overall
Nanos
Liberal: 36
Conservative: 34
NDP: 15
Green: 8
B.Q: 4
PPC: 1

Angus Reid
Liberal: 31
Conservative: 38
NDP: 14
Green: 8
B.Q: 4
Others: 5

Atlantic
Nanos
Liberal: 45
Conservative: 31
NDP: 12
Green:8
PPC: 3

Angus Reid
Liberal: 40
Conservative: 34
NDP: 8
Green: 10

Ontario
Nanos
Liberal: 40
Conservative: 34
NDP: 16
Green: 10

Angus Reid
Liberal: 37
Conservative: 40
NDP: 14
Green: 7

Prairies
Nanos
Liberal: 19
Conservative: 57
NDP: 13
Green: 4
PPC: 3

Angus Reid
Saskatchewan/Manitoba
Liberal: 28
Conservative: 50
NDP: 10
Green: 3

Alberta
Liberal: 19
Conservative: 60
NDP: 9
Green: 5

British Columbia
Nanos
Liberal: 33
Conservative: 30
NDP: 20
Green: 16

Angus Reid:
Liberal: 28
Conservative: 33
NDP: 21
Green: 13

Quebec
Nanos
Liberal: 43
Conservative: 15
NDP: 13
Green: 5
B.Q: 16
PPC: 1

Angus Reid
Liberal: 24
Conservative: 24
NDP: 14
Green: 10
B.Q: 22

It could be a meaningless statistical blip for the NDP, but these recent polls suggest the NDP decline has stopped and there is a slight uptick (13 to 14 to 15% with Nanos in the last couple weeks.  Of course within the margin of error.)  

However, to the degree that these polls suggest a possible change in fortune for the NDP, Jagmeet Singh happened to get elected at the right time, as a sustained increase in support would likely be credited to his getting elected to Parliament and his performance in Parliament even though it might be a coincidence.

Jody Wilson-Raybould appeared before committee yesterday and testified that she faced 'veiled threats' about SNC-Lavalin and, that the group pressuring her included the Prime Minister. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wilson-raybould-testifies-justice-committee-1.5035219)

Trudeau's camp has moved from denial to talking about saving jobs in Quebec. Scheer called for the PM to resign, and Singh is calling for an independent inquiry. I think Singh's coming off the best here. Scheer's call for resignation was over the top, and not the best for the opposition electorally either. Trudeau is coming off as cynical talking jobs after the denial, and direct testimony from JWR. I think it's safe to say sunny ways are over.

Will be interested the see the polls in the next week or so.

Trudeau will probably win reelection this fall regardless of the scandals.

I think at this point it is too early to say the exact fallout.  I expect much like the India trip the Liberals will see a drop in the polls, but with 8 months to go there is still plenty of time to recover.  If the Tories remain in the lead Scheer will come under increased scrutiny so the question will become are people comfortable with him as PM or not and is not implausible people might decide Trudeau is the lesser of two evils.  I think Trudeau's bigger danger is winning another majority will be harder although not impossible.  Also each negative action damages the brand and over time it adds up so even if he wins in 2019, another scandal in his second term might prove fatal in 2023 whereas without this it might have not, otherwise accumulation of baggage.  I think Trudeau handled it quite poorly, mind you Scheer's call for Trudeau's resignation was a bit over the top while Singh's of a public inquiry was probably most reasonable.

We do however live in a more polarized electorate and the 30% or so who are part of the Conservative base, this will just further re-enforce their views while for the progressives whose primary goal is to prevent another Tory government, they might not be as enthusiastic about voting Liberal as in 2015, but unless the NDP pulls ahead of the Liberals they likely still will.  For the shrinking swing vote, it will come down to are they comfortable with Scheer or does he come across as too extreme for them.

Very possible, I think a big question is while the many normally non-voters who showed in 2015 show up again.  Amongst Liberal voters in 2015, the only ones I can see switching to the Tories are those that normally vote conservative and their vote in 2015 was a one off, so simply returning to normal voting patterns and that group on its own is not large enough to get Scheer into government.  Trudeau's bigger problem is much of his win in 2015 was based less on switching voters from other parties over (although did gain a lot of NDP ones from 2011, less so from the Tories), but rather getting many non-voters to show up and vote Liberal.  With this, there is a risk many of the first time voters in 2015 might just stay home whereas the Tory vote is very motivated and you can be sure they will show up.  Otherwise I think turnout is key.  If turnout is again in the high 60s, I still like his odds, but if falls to low 60s gets more competitive and if it falls below 60% then I think the Tories have a good shot.  Actually not just in Canada, but US and UK too turnout seems to be the big factor in determining whether right or left wins as left tends to do better when turnout is high while right when low.

That is true to an extent though it's not really cut and dried. In 2017 first time voters and people who didn't vote in 2015 (mostly young, ethnically diverse, economically insecure, remain supporters) broke extremely heavily in Labour's direction and will alone have cost the Tories their majority. However on the other hand people who don't regularly vote turning out for the EU referendum (middle aged to retired people living in small town and post industrial areas) were the main reason why Leave won. If turnout falls amongst these types of people going forward it will help Labour and hurt the Tories. The Lib Dems are the party that benefits most from low turnout though as most low information/irregular voters tend to opt for the party that they want to form the government in general elections i.e. Tory or Labour.

Yep. Not even the Sponsorship Scandal has stopped Paul Martin's PLC to win the 2004 Canadian Federal elections by 7 percentage points nationally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship_scandal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Canadian_federal_election

Yes and no.  Harper was ahead despite the party being less than six months old for much of the campaign, but lost due to a number of bozo eruptions by candidates, much the same way the Wildrose party lose in Alberta in 2012.  Tories are more established so have better infrastructure although on the bozo eruptions part it could go either way.  Being more established they will probably due to a better job of vetting candidates at the same time with social media its not just bozo eruptions during the campaign, but even ones from 10 years ago and you can bet the war rooms from each party will scroll through people's twitter accounts carefully and publicize anyone that can help paint the party as extreme.  Also sponsorship scandal was more seen as something to do with Chretien not Paul Martin whereas Trudeau was directly implicated here.  So certainly I think that does suggest those suggesting it will mean Trudeau will be defeated are wrong, but also it could be fatal although won't necessarily.

True, but we should note a few key differences from Adscam/2004: Paul Martin wasn't implicated directly in the scandal like Trudeau is. The Tories had only existed for 6 months on E day 2004 and their predecessors were in chaos. Lastly, the Martin-Liberals were polling much, much higher than the Trudeau-Liberals pre scandal breaking. People were speculating about a 200 seat majority in 2003.

Trudeau could definitely still survive, but I think the comparison to the Sponsorship Scandal only goes so far.

The collateral "bozo factor", though, might be provincial gov'ts (esp. Ford in Ontario, and potentially Kenney in Alberta)--remember how a big reason for 1993's NDP collapse was the perceived catastrophe of the Rae gov't in Ontario, and to a lesser extent turmoil w/the Harcourt gov't in BC; and Mike Harris fright/fatigue arguably didn't help the federal right-of-centre forces in Ontario from the late 90s to well into Harper's term in office...

Definitely true with Doug Ford, less sure about Kenney.  Agree outside of Alberta he would be quite unpopular, but pretty sure the Tories will win almost every seat in Alberta.  If anything Kenney might be more like Klein who was very popular in Alberta (I don't think Kenney will have Klein like approval ratings though), but widely mocked in the rest of Canada and often used as a whipping boy of what the Tories would be like if they ran federally.  The main problem with that is Kenney will be new on the job and although people have some familiarity of his as federal minister any unpopular harmful policies are likely to come after the election not before. 

At the same time Wynne's popularity even in October 2015 was not much different than Ford's is now and didn't stop Trudeau from winning in Ontario.  Yes her popularity fell quite a bit after and true I think she probably did more harm than good for Trudeau there, after all the Tory vote held up better in Ontario that it did in BC, Manitoba, or Atlantic Canada where they saw much bigger drops thus suggesting if Wynne weren't premier Tories probably would have done even worse.

 That being said with relatively few Liberal premiers that does help Trudeau and with mostly small c conservative ones that may be somewhat problematic for Scheer.

Well, Victoria just went even further into the likely Green category.

I'm not thinking of Kenney in terms of Alberta, so much as nationwide impressions--much as was the case with Bob Rae in 1993.

And with Wynne in 2015, she and her government still had a soft-focus "good stewards of power" net-plus reputation--by and large, I'd claim she was still more of a Justin-deal-sealing "Premier Mom" net plus than minus at that time.  And as for the Con vote holding up: it's not just a matter of Ontario vs other provinces, it's also about *where* (and among whom) in Ontario and said other provinces.  Like in Manitoba, it was really more of a "Winnipeg" matter--outside of Winnipeg, the patterns were consistent w/the rest of the rural Prairies--and in the Maritimes and BC, it was a matter of vestigial Red Tories and "promiscuous populists", if you will.  And likewise, where the Cons "held up" best in Ontario were more foretellings of patterns that became clear under Ford (eg the more-marginal-than-expected losses in York Region ethnoburbia)

That's not necessarily true; Yes this has been a green target for a few elections now. But your assuming that the NDP in Victoria, a solidly NDP city both provincially and federally, will not be able to nominate a strong/star candidate. The Greens will also run a strong candidate though, this will be a tight race and interestingly it's not between the two arguably leading parties.

While the Greens did really well in 2012 by-election 34% vs the NDPs 37%, almost winning, come the general election it was 42% NDP vs 32% Green, that was 2015 during the NDP collapse. The LPC and CON vote is already pretty low at 11% each, it might come down to who can get their base out and who can poach more from the LPC.
I think it's too early, I do think Jagmeet being in the house will be a positive boost to the NDP and if Green voters are motivated by opposition to Trans Mountain both parties oppose this, and the NDP is still in the better position with 40+ MPs now. But the NDP have to be really focused here, and really prepared for an all out fight; the NDP policy is already more left and green then 2015 so that might dull the Green vote somewhat. The party may have to be wary of any anti-BCNDP vote, but I don't really see that the provincial gov't is still rather popular with the NDP/green voter (unlike in the 90s).

The NDP knew this was coming, it was known he was not running again earlier in the year but he was waiting till after the by-election to officially announce.

When were the Tories up in 04? The chart on Wikipedia showed them improving from a large deficit, but they never took the lead at least during the campaign.

That all makes sense. I'm just going off of qc125's projections, which puts Victoria at solid Green: http://canada.qc125.com/districts/59041f.htm

The Greens jumped 20 points from 2011 to 2015, and I think it's reasonable to suggest that bodes well for them in 2019.

In regards to the Greens I guess the question is if this is finally that "Green Surge" or not, I'd guess it depends on how May and Singh perform.

Also, would it be wrong to see this GE as essentially 2 elections?  Tories vs Liberals and NDP vs Greens?

The last poll in BC, had the Greens at 13% up from 9% in 2015, and i'm certain that's concentrated in the Lower mainland and the Island. I will give that while the NDP saw a decrease the greens have probably been one of the biggest benefactors along with the Liberals. If that continues, say the NDP still only comes out after the election at 14-15% and they can not nominate a strong/star candidate Victoria is likely lost to the Greens. I still think it is premature to say the seat is Green especially since they lost it by 10% last time when the NDP tanked.
Even with the Green success in the Provincial election, they supplanted the BCL as the opposition to the NDP in the two Victoria seats, but topped off at 30%.

It all depends on if Jagmeet and the NDP can regain support, and BC will be one of those places they are going to focus on where they can gain.

They never took a substantial lead but they did poll into a statistical tie and even David Herle is on the record saying in 2004 their own internal tracking showed Harper would have won had the election been held two weeks earlier.  The reason is the Tory vote was more efficient as they only got 9% in Quebec so few wasted votes there while Liberals still got 22% in Alberta so even where the Liberals lost they still got lots of votes while the Tories were irrelevant then in large swaths of the country.  Ironically in 2006 it was the opposite, the Liberal vote was more efficient due to their implosion in Alberta and the strong jump in Tory support to 25% in Quebec.  In fact I believe up until the final weekend there was a real possibility of Liberals winning the popular vote but Tories win more seats.  But after the Randy White tape and stupid remark Paul Martin supported child pornography there was a last minute swing over the final weekend to the Liberals.  If you look in 2004 at advanced polls vs. e-day the difference was noticeable as Tories especially in Ontario won many and in fact in 10 ridings they won in 2004, it was due to advanced polls and actually lost e-day ones.  Now to be fair Tories always seem to do better in advanced polls than e-day ones.

Ya, that stings... interesting here: some talk he could be eyeing a seat in Victoria? There are already two former NDP MPs in the BC government, Malcolmson (Nanaimo) and Jinny Simms (Surrey-Panorama). where would he run? Stikine is already an NDP riding but Skeena was lost in 2017, would be my bet.
Anyway, big loss for the NDP. But also, it's been on the walls he had already said "he had not made up his mind" if he was running again, likely following Murray's logic that neither one wanted to announce retirement while the Burnaby South by-election was ongoing.

https://twitter.com/richardzussman/status/1101590069998243842?fbclid=IwAR2Uf7ReEDG4d9CdIHqf6ZDKpPSdPjQXCYaKH8U0nEc6htgO_TvwCCQaofw

Remember that when it comes to "scientific" election projection sites, they go by polls; and the Greens have a habit of overpolling btw/elections.  So at this point, I *might* take any done-deal Green prediction for Victoria with a grain of salt.

And at this point, too, I might view the other end of the country instead as goes Green-surge potential.

The "now to be fair" is the important point here.  For that reason, I'd be guarded about using the polls in advance as a barometer.

Another Layton-Mulcair frontbencher, Nathan Cullen announced he isn't running in 2019.

Some one term Liberal MPs have announced they are not running again in the last days:
TJ Harvey, Tobique-Mactaquac
John Oliver, Oakville
Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Whitby

All three, low hanging Conservative fruit.

This doesn't look good for the Liberals as all three went solidly Tory in 2011 and the areas did in the most recent provincial elections while all three were pretty narrow Liberal wins in 2015 suggesting while some may be personal, also suggests a lot of close ridings may very well flip back to the Tories unless they screw up badly.  If it were more random might mean less but when all in close ridings says a lot about what they think their chances are.  I think if long term MPs like Scott Brison, it could be just wanting to spend more time with family, but when first term different story.  I don't believe either NDP or Tories have any first term although NDP has a fair number who were first elected in 2011 while for Tories most are from the 2004 and 2006 class of those not running again.

For Nathan Cullen a huge blow, but I am guessing he might run provincially in 2021.  North Coast and Stikine are both NDP held so if either retires possibility there.  May also run in Skeena which could be interesting as both him and current MLA Ellis Ross are high profile although I would put my money on Ellis Ross holding if Nathan Cullen doesn't run, but on Nathan Cullen if he does.

I still think the NDP will hold the riding, but I suspect the Tories will do better than they have in recent elections and will start to look more like it does provincially.  NDP blowouts on coast and Indian Reserves.  Tories win inland towns like Smithers and Terrace, Kitimat could go either way as while traditionally NDP, BC Liberals did win it in 2017 (my guess is LNG as this is supposed to be where one of the major LNG projects are was a big reason), Prince Rupert stays NDP but not a blowout.  Usually Nathan Cullen would win Prince Rupert by 30+ margins whereas provincially usually NDP margins over BC Liberals only around 5 points.  So NDP holds areas where they win provincially, but Tories win the polls the BC Liberals do provincially which is enough to make it closer, but not enough to win it outright.

Bold prediction: Trudeau remains PM due to the Liberals taking advantage of an NDP collapse in Quebec.

Nothing bold about that in fact most likely outcome.  Even if Liberals are reduecd to a minority he remains PM.  Heck much like BC, if the Tories only win a plurality of seats the NDP will likely prop up the Liberals much like the Greens are in BC so unless BQ rebounds in Quebex (they won't work with them) or Tories get a majority he remains PM and both those while plausible are not likely.

I also think the Ford premiership in Ontario might harm the federal Tories in the province. That's just a hunch, though.

Here is the numbers so far from what I've seen:

13 NDP MPs (30% of caucus) not running again, 15 (15% of caucus) Conservatives so far, and 17 (9% of caucus) Liberals and counting, seven of them first-termers. (that's a shock there)

https://twitter.com/janephilpott/status/1102660614307172352

Was already posted in the General Discussion thread, but seemed relevant to election analysis.

Jane Phippott just resigned from cabinet so looks like the bottom of this hasn't come yet.  Her riding no doubt was one of the top Tory targets of Liberal cabinet ministers.  Went PC provincially by almost 20 points and she only narrowly won so only Amarjeet Sohi (Edmonton-Mill Woods) I would say was in greater danger, maybe Karina Gould (Burlington), and Maryam Monsef (Peterborough-Kawartha) not too far behind although in case of Burlington that is more your traditional fiscally conservative but socially liberal area, otherwise similar to Conservative-Remain areas in UK and Romney-Clinton in the US so with a uniform swing more vulnerable, but looking at demographics and provincial results perhaps not.  Either way this is a huge blow to the Liberals and while not fatal by any means, Trudeau needs to find a way to turn this around quickly if he wants to stop it from spiraling out of control.

I wonder how mny of those first-termers even expected to win in the first place, given how the Libs looked to be potentially a third-party force going into the 2015 election...

It depends, a lot were nominated back in the spring when Liberals were still tied or slightly ahead in the polls.  It was after Alberta election NDP saw a big bump that hurt Liberals as well as Tory attack ads were beginning to take their toll.  Its true in August, I know a number of Liberal party members who more or less wrote him off but many of those back in April still thought he had a good chance and did again in September.  There were probably some but I don't think it was like NDP surge federally in 2011 in Quebec or NDP win in Alberta in 2015 where you had a whole wack of members elected who never thought they would.  Even in Ontario, while I suspect vast majority of NDP MPPs thought they had a shot, probably some were not expecting it.  I don't think Toronto-St. Paul's or St. Catherines were on their target list in March 2018 and likewise I don't think Ottawa West-Nepean was either which they nearly pulled off an upset. 

By York Region standards, Philpott's win wasn't *that* narrow--in fact, it was the Libs' second best in York after McCallum's seat.  And likewise, provincially, it was the Tories' second lowest share in York (after Newmarket-Aurora) and second lowest margin (after Vaughan-Woodbridge).

And I would say it's because it's the most "Burlingtonian" seat in York Region, i.e. it's got more affluent non-ethnoburban gentility than the rest, the kind that finds CPC/Ford populism a bit on the coarse side.  (Food for thought: in the Ballantrae Golf Club gated community, which one'd "normally" expect to be a Conservative stronghold, the provincial PCs only prevailed over the Liberals by 4 points last year.)

True enough although Whitchurch-Stouffville still has a rural feel to it.  Also Calandra got 42% federally so that is a pretty solid base to work from.  In both cases it would be for Ontario Cons +7 as Conservative support is around 7 points above whatever Conservative support is overall in Ontario.  So if Conservatives fall below 35%, then only if NDP does much better than expected can they pick this up.  If in upper 30s will depend on if NDP stays in single digits or rises to double, while if Tories get over 40% in Ontario, they will almost certainly flip this one.  So I think overall Ontario numbers will be a good guess so if under 35% for Tories stays Liberal 35-40% for Tories could go either way and if over 40% Tories then they flip it.

CBC reports all ministers have stated their support for JT. Some more appropriately than others.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1102723294443261952

New poll from Ipsos (https://globalnews.ca/news/5021267/trudeau-approval-rating-snc-lavalin-wilson-raybould/)

40-31-20

Compared to the last Ipsos, 2/18

LPC - 34% - -3
CPC - 35% - +5
NDP - 17% - +3

New poll from Nanos: (http://www.nanos.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019-03-01-Political-Package.pdf)

34.7% CPC (+1.1)
34.2% LPC (-1.5)
15.5% NDP (+0.5)
  9.1% GPC (+0.7)
  3.6% BQ (-0.1)
  0.7% PPC (-0.5)
  2.2% Others (-0.2)

Actually, I'm not denying the likelihood of the Cons winning it (or *any* seat in Ontario where they still managed a 40%+ share in loss).  I'm merely stating that it's not *as* Conservative as it seems--which is a reason why, despite Whitchurch-Stouffville and Calandra's incumbency, it flipped in 2015 while Markham-Unionville went the other way; up to that point, conventional wisdom would have had it the other way around.  And even rural Whitchurch-Stouffville isn't the dominant rightward-pushing factor it once might have been, what with Stouffville proper rapidly suburbanizing (and the aforementioned Ballantrae GC being in the rural part).

That is, even before her cabinet-resignation-on-principle, Philpott would, in the event of Justinian electoral disaster, probably still have kept (with the help of riding demos) some electoral dignity intact--a federal version of what happened provincially last year to Steven Del Duca or (even more to the point) Charles Sousa or Kevin Flynn.

Does this all get forgotten 3-4 months from now like Indiagate?

Wilson-Raybould threw it all away just to make Justin look ridiculous.

And a man in his position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous.

Does anybody here think there is a chance if things get bad enough Trudeau will resign before the election or do you think regardless of what happens he is staying on as leader until e-day.

Nah. Even if he survives this, the scandal is too big to just forget. India just made him look silly. This scandal and how he's handling cuts to the core of his brand.


I mean, if the Liberals drop below the NDP, maybe he quits, but otherwise I doubt it.

This is the second-best federal poll for the Greens since 2015. Will be interesting to see whether they pick up any votes from turned-off Liberals.

I'd be more interested in if they can take from the NDP.  I'm beginning to wonder if there's any possibility the Greens could actually beat the NDP in votes?  Or if the Greens could get Official Party Status?  (Though I recognize both are very long shots.)

I mean yeah, they’ll be taking from both, but I specifically meant I’m interested in seeing whether the current fallout from SNC-Lavalain will move Liberals to Green and whether those numbers will hold if so.

Abacus is out to today and very bad numbers for the Liberals, not just topline but government now has an approval rating of only 34% while 48% disapprove and positive impression of Trudeau is down to 33%, negative at 46%.  At year's end approval rating and impression of Trudeau was slightly positive.  Looks like it was a tie from Christmas to mid February and then Tories pulled ahead.  https://abacusdata.ca/has-the-snc-lavalin-wilson-raybould-controversy-impacted-public-opinion/

Conservative 36%
Liberal 30%
NDP 17%
Green 9%
BQ 5%
Others 3%

So I think notwithstanding Innovative research numbers this is taking a toll on the Liberals.  Will it be fatal, not necessarily as a lot can change.  There is a chance Tories are peaking too early since as long as they are behind no one pays attention to them, but once it looks like they might win focus shifts.  At the same time the Liberals absolutely cannot afford to slide further since if when they go on summer recess if they still have numbers like this, they can probably rule out of a majority and while need to rely on Scheer stumbling to even get a minority.  But this could be a flash in the pan and as this fades off front page news numbers could recover.  I remember in 2005 when the Jean Brault testimony at the Sponsorship scandal let to the Tories opening up a 13 point lead which was in April 2005, but by July of 2005 Liberals were back in front with a 10 point lead.  Now true Harper ultimately did win but he stayed behind until January 2006.

To elaborate on the Innovative Research numbers Miles mentioned:
Liberal: 36%
Conservative: 32%
NDP: 13%
Green: 9%
Bloc: 5%
People's: 5%

More or less unchanged from their pre-scandal polling.

Worth noting they seem to use a fixed panel rather than random sampling. That may result in a stickier sample even if it is weighted.

Big question is whether Trudeau survives the scandal ?

With no obvious successor I think he will.  As for winning in October, agreed a majority is going to be an uphill battle but not impossible especially if both Scheer and Singh underperform.  Likewise if he has some big bold promise that is popular with the public like lets see universal pharmacare that might help too.  Still I think there is a better than even chance he remains PM since as long as Liberals + NDP + Greens get at least 170 seats he stays on even if Tories win a plurality.  Now I don't think he will rely on the BQ so if Tories + BQ is greater than 170 seats Scheer becomes PM, but since BQ is more left wing than right wing probably doesn't pass a lot and has to run a fairly centrist govt risk losing on a non-confidence.  Now if Tories + PPC get over 170 seats then expect a very right wing government, but asides Bernier's own riding, I don't see PPC winning anywhere else and even there I think it will be a tough fight. 

As for Tories getting a majority, unlike six months ago it is now at least plausible but still an uphill battle.  Liberals still ahead in Atlantic Canada and Quebec even if things have tightened a bit while still competitive in Ontario and British Columbia.  Tories need a solid lead in the last two mentioned to win a majority, winning half the seats in both won't be enough.  Prairies should largely go Tory and outside Winnipeg will probably be able to count the non-Tory seats on one hand.

Nanos is out today.  Interesting Tories and Liberals tied in Atlantic Canada.  While skeptical whether this is true or not, if true could be a huge problem for the Liberals.  The good news is also tied in BC and Ontario while Tories at 64% in Prairies so a lot of wasted votes there while Liberals still well in front in Quebec.

Conservatives 36%
Liberals 32.9%
NDP 17.9%
Greens 8.3
BQ 3.6
PPC 0.5%

PPC pretty much irrelevant, but I think most on the right are driven more by hatred of Trudeau than like of either Scheer or Bernier so not surprised they are swinging behind whom has the better chance of defeating Trudeau.

In terms of raw support, the NDP seem to have been the main beneficiary of this scandal.

With those regional breaks I suspect that the Liberals would get a few more seats than the Tories even if the Tories edged them in the national popular vote by as much as 3%. That being said, it really doesn't matter. Even if the Tories edged the Liberals in seats, Trudeau as sitting PM would have the right to meet the house and present a Throne speech and I suspect that there would be zero chance that the NDP would vote to make Scheer PM, nor would they vote to precipitate a snap new election. IMHO the only way that Scheer becomes PM is if the CPC wins a majority.

Generally concor although if Tories + BQ are a majority not sure Liberals would want to rely on them mind you not sure BQ would want to support either so suspect it would be short lived.  If Tories win a plurality I don't think it would last the full four years but probably at least 2 maybe 3 years.

Makes sense, But as we've seen the CONs can get at least 4-5 years out of minority, 2006-2011. But if i'm not mistaken the CONs relied more on the LPC for support then either the BQ or NDP?
2006 & 2007 Budgets were CONs + BQ
2008, 2009, 2010 Budgets were CONs + LPC (2010, about 30 LPC MPs abstained)

I suspect if such happened we would be back to the polls in under a year.  BQ and CPC have little in common but BQ and Liberals for obvious reasons won't work together either.  LPC might abstain but current LPC is more left wing in both party membership and caucus than it was back then.  A lot would probably more than anything depend on public opinion polls and what the public wanted as knowing an election could happen anytime soon parties would not want to do anything to hurt their chances.

Nanos has a history of having pro Liberal numbers, which means it could be even worse for the Liberals.

Actually since 2004, Nanos has been within a point of the actual result in their final polls so they have one of the best records.  They use CATI which while expensive is the most accurate and usually what parties use for internal polls.

Well, a double-barrelled beneficiary--of the scandal, and of finally having their leader in Parliament.

Agreed. IF Jagmeet performs well/above expectations or even at expectations, the NDPs numbers should go up even more. If Jagmeet under performs the NDP could see their numbers drop even with the scandal.

The LPC is already showing its desperation with the "well it's us or Scheer" tactics to bolster their left-flank, which while very desperate (and completely false) is a known tactic to rally progressives to the anyone-but-conservative. It's a terrible tactic but can work, even though in 2015 the LPC benefited from this NOT working, as the third party in the House ended up winning even when the NDP was in the better position at that time.

Agree on seat count. The Liberals could very well win 50+ seats in Quebec on 35% of the vote, which would go a long way to offset their 905 losses.

I'm not so sure about your assertion that the Tories will only form a government if they have a majority though. In the vast majority (all?) of the recent successful attempts to form a government excluding the party with the most seats, the excluded first place party has been a long serving, unpopular incumbent (e.g. BC 2017, Ontario 1985). An ABC coalition or accord makes sense if say Harper had a minority in 2015, but I don't think the optics would make as much sense for the NDP now given that:

a) They would propping up a Trudeau government that just got it's wrist slapped for corruption.

b) Scheer doesn't trigger progressives like a Ford or Harper figure.

It's certainly possible that they keep Trudeau in power even if he finishes 2nd, but I'm not seeing a compelling reason why the NDP are certain to do that rather than letting Scheer form a minority government and forcing an election in 6-18 months.

Actually, anyone party to "left" social media will tell you that he *does*--if more by way of extension from Ford/Harper (and beyond that, Trump, Yellow Vests, Pizzagate nutters, etc).  And it's not like he's given signals of moderation the way that Patrick Brown did as Ontario PC leader--probably because he also seeks to ward off rightward leakage to Bernier...

()

I actually think, all things considered, that Trudeau and the Liberals are doing a remarkable job keeping their heads above water. A scandal like this, so close to an election, for an only marginally popular ruling party, would often be pretty much lethal.

7% for the Dippers in Quebec. 7.

Will any of their Quebec MPs survive?

If the Quebec vote was split as it is in the poll at Lib 35, Con26,BQ 17, does that imply a huge Liberal sweep if those numbers held up, or is their vote not efficiently distributed?

Campaign Research has the QC breakdown:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y83dKTltgfgbSu_LIdcvvupVAqkYWuNP/view

LPC - 29%
CPC - 23%
NPD - 16%
BQ - 16%
Green - 12%
PPC - 3%

I think you can get a sense from the Provincial election when the CAQ won a majority on 38% and only 3 seats in Montreal-Laval.
Last federal the LPC did well and won all over the province, except the Beauce-Quebec City area. But their vote is inefficient normally as its heavily concentrated in MTl-Outaouais area. BUT If the CPC and BQ fight each other out in the Lanaudière-Laurentides (North Shore suburbs) and in the South Shore suburbs of the Montérégie--Centre-du-Quebec regions where the BQ currently holds seats and the CAQ's conservative agenda won over, I could see a) the LPC sneak in and pick up BQ seats even some NDP ones and/or b) some of the NDP MPs in these areas, 6 current MPs win with 30s%. and hang on. The BQ/CPC split could also help the Liberals in Quebec City.

But wild card is both the Green vote, does it stay this high? and where is that 12% coming from? and will the NPD be able to rally back in Quebec to around/above 20% now that they are in a better position with an elected leader and Boulerice as Deputy leader?

Leger out for Quebec only, would be interested to see regionals but seems CPC has gained some from BQ and PPC.  For BQ, they seem more your rural nationalists as opposed to progressive types like they were under Duceppe.

PLC 35%
CPC 26%
BQ 17%
Vert 9%
NPD 7%
PPC 4%

I guess that one of the reasons why the NDP is doing so badly is because their progressive base knows that they won’t win the next election and so they decided to throw their support to Trudeau in order to stop Scheer because they would rather have Trudeau as Prime Minister than Scheder and they know that the LPC has the best chance of stopping the CPC from taking power.

Though as we see above, they're doing 7% in one poll and 16% in another--are they sinking away, or are they stabilizing or even modestly recovering, one wonders..

16% is national while 7% is Quebec only.  In BC they have a strong base, while Ontario they are usually in the 15-20% range and some polls show a slight uptick there.  Also have a somewhat weakening base in Sask/Manitoba too.  Prior to 2011, NDP support in Quebec was always well below what they had nationally so could be just a reversion to normal.

The 16% was the Quebec region polling numbers from Campaign research. I think what we see is volatility and people parking votes.
But I can't disagree with your synopsis of the NDP vote. I think the NDP has good chances of gaining in BC; probably some room for gains in ON as well but very concentrated in Toronto and possibly their old bases (Hamilton, N.ON and Windsor) even in 2011 I think the NDP was only at 25% or so, high mark was provincially at 34%, but that is unrealistic here... 15-20% is about right. But with the CONs up, mostly coming from the LPC, the party does have a shot if they target key ridings where they were second to the LPC.
The prairies their is a base but it's weak now due to multiple reason, some internal, but I don't see any of the MPs in danger of losing their seats... Regina-Lewvan could be a gain or a less (depends on what Weir does... the cause of most of the NDPs problems here)
Atlantic Canada, ugh I think the party has a shot a Halifax... and maybe St. John's East, other then that this is still a LPC/CONs playground.
Quebec has some strong individual MPs, survivors of 2015, the party is really just trying to save them and I think they probably can save about 10-12 based on local personal popularity, and local vote, see the QS ridings and you can see a correlation to some degree (Sherbrooke, Abitibi, MTL)

You can see the focus on addressing the above numbers by the shuffle in the caucus leadership. Deputy Leaders are from SASK (Benson) and QC (Boulerice), House leader BC (Julian) Deputy House Leader from QC (Trudel). The high profile Justice is moved to ON (Ramsey) while Deputy Justice BC (Murray) is "demoted" somewhat.

Also, the Quebec NDP is not panicking and they keep announcing decently known candidates. The wife of Amir Khadir in Laurier--Saint-Marie. I know then here, in Abitibi, to replace Saganash, there is actually 2 candidates, one of them being a mayoress.

Yeah.  How the NDP and the Bloc could be tied at 16% *nationally* would be beyond me...

To add to what MaxQue said, the NDP have a better chance than one would normally expect given their poor polling in Quebec, especially now that the Liberals have come back down to their 2015 result. Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie and Laurier-Sainte Marie are especially good candidates for NDP holds.

Both seats have a good sized NDP margin, and no other party in the area is an obvious candidate to take lots of votes from the NDP. The Liberals are too federalist, the Tories too conservative, and the Bloc's more rightish anti-immigration approach is a bad fit for the area.

Heck, the Tories managed to hold a seat in Quebec on like 5% of the vote in 2000 :P I won't count the NDP totally out yet.

In Laurier-Sainte-Marie, some have reported that Steven Guilbeault will be the Liberal candidate. He's a well known environmentalist. He could attract the young progressive of the riding who has environmental concerns, the voter who would not vote for the Liberal party but by the candidate and his star power (unless it is only seen as green washing for the party).

Seems like there will be competition for the environment issue. The Bloc wants it to be one of their main issues, NDP also, there is always the Green party and the Liberals maybe with Guilbeault will want to show it's a concern for them.

Anyone running for the federal Liberals in Laurier-Sté. Marie will quickly be tarred as “Monsieur Pipeline” and if it’s Guilbeault he’ll be seen as a sell out

Those with environmental concerns, will not vote Liberal, they are not the party of environmentalism based on their term in gov't. Guilberault will spend all of his time defending the LPC track record; he will be attacked by the NPD, Greens on their lack of environmentalism. BUT I see the LPC point was to go after NPD/BQ/Greens votes and as you mentioned I expect to see "Green-washing". The only LPC talk track is Carbon Pricing, everything else is Harper legacy policy.

The NPD announced that Nima Machouf; Epidemiologist, former Project Montreal municipal candidate in 2009 and wife of former Quebec Solidare MNA/co-Leader Amir Khadir will be running for the nomination.

It will depend on polls as most environmentalists know Scheer will be even less supportive of their demands than Trudeau.  If Liberals have a solid lead or its clear the Tories are going to win, then they will probably vote for what they want, but if close, I think a lot will vote strategically.  Also what riding they live in will matter.  If in a safe Tory riding like Rural Alberta or no hope Tory one like Downtown Toronto and Island of Montreal, a lot will go elsewhere as no risk of splitting the vote, but if competitive ones like 905 belt many will probably vote Liberal strategically as the Tories have a strong base but not majority so every NDP and Green vote gained increases the chances of the Tories winning here.

Certainly some voters will vote strategically...but I just have to pop in and say to look at the 905 and Outer Toronto in Ontario 2018. Tons of ridings where the Tories ran down the middle between the NDP and the Libs. Maybe things will be different when there  is two parties rather then three in contention, but don't trust the voters. As the saying goes "A individual voter is smart, voters as a group are stupid."

Back to the riding in question... it's Laurier-Sainte Marie. The Tories got 4% there last time. I don't think ABC strategic voting will be a problem for the NDP there.

Agreed, this is likely to a 3 way race, 4 way if the Green vote actually holds (I am still skeptical that the greens will poll that high, as they did in Outremont by-election but hey, stranger things)
NPD-BQ-LPC fight here. Both the LPC and NPD look to have strong candidates in place, so we will need to see who the BQ nominates; but this area is very left wing so I give the advantage to the NPD here.

I think Hochelaga might be the one to watch; NPD MP is not running again as well, in 2015 the race was much closer then Laurier--Sainte-Marie, 3 way again with the LPC-NPD-BQ only 3% or so separated all three of them! I don't think any of the nominated candidates are personal "star" candidates that would add a few point to personal popularity. Desperately one the NPD needs to hold.

Nanos Weekly Tracking numbers: Breakdowns by region, age, sex

https://goo.gl/wdGdui


3/15
LPC - 32.6%
CPC - 35.5%
NDP - 19.8%
Green - 7.7%

Philpott gives Wells an exclusive where she says there's a lot more about SNCL that needs to be publicly told and denies interest in federal or provincial leadership. (https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/jane-philpott-theres-much-more-to-the-story-that-needs-to-be-told/)

That url needs to be compacted.

Alex Nuttall not seeking reelection.

11th Conservative M.P to not seek reelection (not including those who already resigned and didn't serve out the full term they were elected to.) The wheels are falling off the Conservative bus. Scheer has a nice smile though.

Even though he's a first-termer sitting on a recount margin, I think it's pushing things to frame this as a wheels-falling-off-bus circumstance.  Among a caucus of a hundred or so, many of which have been there for several terms, 11 not seeking reelection doesn't seem particularly abnormal...

It was meant hyperbolicaly since every time a bunch of people leave, the media and the hyper partisans often chant "the wheels are falling off" or some such thing.  The right wing dominated mainstream media is less likely to do that with the Conservatives, however, that was certainly the narrative with the NDP.

To be precise though, it isn't just the 11 not seeking re-election (so far), but another, I believe, 7 left without serving out their full terms. (Dianne Watts, Jason Kenney, Rona Ambrose, Stephen Harper, Gerry Ritz, Peter Van Loan and Denis Lebel.)

He is my MP lol.

And those defeated for re-nomination, like Brad Trost.

And then there are these kinds of former sitting members...
https://www.hilltimes.com/2019/03/25/disappointed-former-ontario-conservative-mp-chisu-leaves-party-will-run-as-a-peoples-party-candidate-in-the-upcoming-election/193688

Lol, Jagmeet Singh has a higher favourability rating than Trudeau now, according to Angus Reid (39% vs 36%).

Ipsos Poll:

CPC - 40%
LPC - 30%
NDP - 21%

https://globalnews.ca/news/5103763/trudeau-approval-rating-snc-lavalin-budget/?fbclid=IwAR1Njh2a4HQjGPFsVk4NnN69fkDmKg1X1Z_iO6n-AyaUUafyYSfhT68hTyo

Even with The Liberals and NDP cracking over 50%, does FPTP ensure that the Conservatives win even with 35%.

National level figures are hard say for sure "yes", generally yes. But its the provincial level results that will dictate this; there can be huge differences from Province to province.

The LPC won a large majority with 39% but heavily from Ontario, Quebec, BC and Atlantic.
The CPC can also win a majority with 39%... but in 2008 at 37% the CPC won a minority. At 35% the CPC would likely win a minority. BUT again depending on where the NDP and LPC votes/seats came from.

With 40% nationally, Ontario would grant the Tories a majority.

Given the electoral geography right now, I'd guess the Tories can't drop much below 40% before getting into minority territory. Trudeau will likely win a lot of Quebec seats on ~35%, and the Tories will waste tons of votes out West.

Angus Reed

Consv: 37%
Lib: 28%
NDP: 17%
Green 8%
BQ: 5%
PPC: 4%



http://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019.03.26-federal-release.pdf

Poll consists of a lot of sub regional break downs. (ie Rural Sask)

Conservatives leading outside of Montreal (in a 4-way race)

Some interesting sub polling right

NDP leads the city of Vancouver, tight three way race
-NDP - 29%, LPC 27%, CPC 23%

Metro Van the CPC is taking the lead; could be wasted votes south of the Fraser?
- CPC 37%, LPC 28%, NDP 22%

GTA is very tight, LPC will lose seats but still lead with a weak NDP, might not be as many losses as though?
-LPC 39%, CPC 36%

Montreal Split is interesting, I can't see any losses for the LPC, but the NDP is still holding their own.
-LPC 37%, NDP 20%, BQ 19%, CPC 15%

Central;/Edmonton is more competitive then I would have thought?
CPC - 40%, LPC 30%, NDP 19%

Interesting SASK break down, the CPC is polling both 42% in Regina and Saskatoon, but big differences between the LPC and NDP.
In Regina we have the LPC 23%, NDP 16% (Goodale effect?)
In Saskatoon we have NDP 39%, LPC 12%

In Toronto, strong LPC numbers hard to see any real losses, maybe one or two to each the CPC and NCP? NDP would be concentrated in Central, CPC would be in the old suburbs, central North York/Midtown
-LPC 45%, NPD 23%, CPC 21%

CBC says Grit caucus wants to expel JWR and Philpott next week. The recording is indeed with Wernick.

Link to audio for those interested (https://ourcommons.azureedge.net/data/ConversationJWRandWernick-e.m4a)

Wernick and Trudeau do not come off well here. Tape disproves Butts claim about government not knowing. JWR was upset.

Lol, Trudeau is screwed.

Those defending Trudeau (mostly criticizing Raybould) point out that Raybould knew she was recording herself.  However, I don't hear anything from Wernick in the recording that suggested that she was taken aback by her speaking style or thinking to himself "she sounds oddly preachy."  I don't know how often they spoke though.   

Paywalled Hill Times story reconfirms caucus wants to expel JWR and Philpott, both got roasted in their respective regional caucus meetings. Ironic that pro-Centre Grits screamed about not recording meetings while leaking the entire story to Hill Times.

JWR and Philpott could be expelled from caucus as early as tonight. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-caucus-wilson-raybould-philpott-1.5079404?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar)

That seems like it would be an extremely counter-productive decision for the Liberals, especially now that the tape has been released.

Let's toss the whistleblower (who has tons of evidence) out of caucus. Surely this won't harm the Liberal Party brand or our chances of re-election ::)

https://twitter.com/tvanouvelles/status/1113153214264770565

Special Grit caucus in 3 hours to expel JWR and Philpott.

In the face of these scandals coming out, does Trudeau survive & win reelection as PM ?

Jwr out.

Aaaannnd, she's gone.


Canada is notorious for having unexpected swings but...I do not expect this to end well for the Liberals, especially now that JWR has been expelled from caucus.

Personally it seems like JWR was trying to extort to stay in power, seeing the texts that she sent out that where just released. 

Does JWR run again? If so, under whose banner?

To be honest, I could even see the 3 opposition parties declining to field a candidate against JWR if she ran as an independent.

http://www.nanos.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Political-Package-2019-03-29.pdf

LPC : 34,6 %
CPC : 35,1 %
NDP : 16,1 %
BQ : 4,4 %
GPC : 8,1 %
PPC : 0,5 %

This election is still a toss-up and 6 months is an eternity in politics. It has been recently reported thatCanada is warming twice faster as the rest of the world and yet Andrew Scheer has still not yet unveiled his damn environmental plan six months after promising to do so.

Can't imagine the Tories doing that. NDP, probably not either. Greens would do it in a heartbeat.

I think she does, & I think she does it as an independent, though it'll be a tough win for her without a party. The riding would have a lame duck backbencher that couldn't do anything for them; might've been different with electoral reform but not with FPTP.

In terms of crossing floor and winning.  Markham-Stouffville is a very marginal riding and would probably go Conservative if an election were called today so Philpott could potentially win if she crossed the floor to the Conservatives, but she always struck me as being on the left of the party so don't think she would be a good fit.  NDP is very weak there so would have no chance.  JWR represents an urban riding and I find in urban areas candidate matters less than in rural areas.  If she runs as an independent I suspect she will draw votes from all parties but not enough to win.  Vancouver-Granville is a pretty solid Liberal and only goes Tory or NDP if either is heading for a majority nationally.  North side is a Liberal/NDP battleground while south side is a Tory/Liberal so Liberals win by being strong throughout it.

Perhaps in isolation, but given the broader range of evidence, and the Prime Minister not letting JWR discuss the period the texts cover, it seems like a small piece of pro-Liberal evidence in a sea of anti-Liberal evidence and coverage.


Agreed. Her seat is just a little too winnable for the Tories and NDP. I could kind of see it if she represented a seat where one or both of them had no hope, but her seat is definitely in play if the Liberals falter... especially if a strong independent candidate is in the mix.

https://twitter.com/cmaconthehill/status/1113860575203692544 My bet is if she wants to continue in elective politics, she joins Horgan and he gives her an advisory post till he can open a Vancouver seat next provincial election.

Yeah, if I were JWR, I'd just jump into provincial politics instead. She'd have a bright future there.

Interesting on JWR, provincial politics could be the way to make a real difference, and still be involved with party politics.

Also, Philpott might consider taking a look at Ontario Liberals, they are having a leadership race.

Jenny Kwan NDP MP, also made similar comments to May, the NDP would be willing to listen to them if they wanted to talk. I highly doubt it though, JWR maybe but probably not. a) JWR would have to sit as an indie, the NDP do not take-in floor crosser's, she could then seek the NDP nomination (this is what Maria Mourani did before the 2015). b) she would have to defend voting against NDP bills like Postal Banking and Housing as a right, which is NDP policy so.

In completely different BC news, PPC is imploding due to far-right infiltration and accusations of racism and xenophobia from founding members. (https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/04/04/mad-at-max-berniers-peoples-party-of-canada-is-revolting-in-british-columbia.html)

No surprise, but good news for the Tories.  Fewer splits also PPC helps take all the nut cases, still party needs to be careful since if they don't vet their candidates carefully could sink them.  UCP is making the race in Alberta more competitive than expected for that reason.

This poll also says that across the City of Vancouver federal Liberal support has collapsed to 25%, tied with the CPC while the NDP leads with 33% thestar.com/vancouver/2019

Another poll out yesterday shows a similar pattern in Winnipeg- big Liberal drop from 2015 and NDP gaining ground

There’s no way Hedy Fry loses my riding.

Probably not though if she retired that seat would be totally up for grabs. Sometimes people do stay past the best before date. Jim Bradly was supposed to be unbeatable for the Ontario Liberals after having been an MPP since 1977 and then last June he finally lost. I get the sense that Hedy Fry has a certain iconic image but that she has just been calling it in lately and isn’t doing much of anything and thinks she can coast with a “job for life”

That ought to put Vancouver Granville and Vancouver South in play.


Fry also had the advantage of winning a seat that has since become much more favourable to the Liberals thanks to demographic changes and realignment. Bradley was more akin to those dinosaur Blue Dogs who got swept away in 2010.

Vancouver Centre is the Vancouver equivalent of downtown Toronto seats that will go Liberal or NDP depending on  who has momentum...at one time the Tories were competitive there - it was Kim Campbell's riding after all - but now its purely a Liberal/NDP contest. If Hedy Fry retired it would quickly be a Liberal NDP tossup.

And other than the freakishly high 2015 result, Hedy Fry's really been more of an opposition-split safe-middle-option beneficiary over the years--ReformAllianceConservative being too far right for outright victory in this kind of seat, yet the condo-ization of False Creek plus "NDP can't win" conventional wisdom impairing things at the other end, plus a left-split circumstance through the Greens (particularly w/Adriane Carr in 2008/11).  And like Toronto Centre, it's the kind of seat that could have gone NDP in 2011 had the party nominated better than they did.

For the NDP, it's federally winnable in the same way that Spadina-Fort York was provincially winnable in 2018.  (That is, if Jagmeet gets some Andrea-like lift in the sails.)

As someone who lives in Hedy Fry's riding, it is a fairly safe Liberal one.  The PCs used to win but that was back when they were Red Tories and you didn't have the urban/rural divide you did today.  Also when Kim Campbell was MP, the riding extended all the way to UBC whereas now its largely the downtown peninsula and False Creek so much smaller than it was then. 

Reason it favours Liberals is you have well to do areas like False Creek, Yaletown, and Coal Harbour which will never go NDP, while you have the West End which with it being mostly apartment rentals and large LGBT population would never go CPC, while Liberals win by being competitive everywhere.  It is somewhat like Toronto Centre, but also has some similarities to Cities of London and Westminster in UK, which still votes Conservative, albeit not by as big a margins as it used to.  In a lot of ways it is more akin to Toronto Centre before last redistribution when it still included Rosedale as opposed to it under its current boundaries.  In UK, it would be like combining Cities of London & Westminster with Poplar & Limehouse.  Also never mind Cities of London & Westminster would probably be Liberal in Canadian context as wealthy so goes Tory, but it also voted 75% remain so probably wary of right wing populists if there is a centrist alternative.

 A riding poll has been commissioned for a hypothetical Jody Wilson-Raybould independent run in Vancouver-Granville (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestar.com/amp/vancouver/2019/04/05/exclusive-wilson-raybould-could-beat-vancouver-riding-rivals-by-nearly-double-digits-poll-suggests.html)

JWR: 33%
Liberal:24%
NDP: 21%
Conservative: 15%

I see no problem with her running as an independent. Even if she loses, she could still join the BCNDP, and she'd be welcomed with open arms.

In 2011 Hedy Fry, "almost" lost with the NDP surge, winning 31% to 26% (tied with CONs) and 15% for the Greens. I think that was the closest in recent years. 2015 Fry under a LPC surge won 56% to the NDP 20%. I agree had the NDP ran a stronger candidate in 2011 they "could" have won here, it would have been close though.

I Think the NDP could win Vancouver Centre but only under a perfect storm (even without Fry) for the NDP, they need the CONs or the Greens to be stronger, in particular in Yaletown and Coal Harbour... like 2011, then poll very high everywhere else. The southern boundary in 2015 shifted north from West 16th to West 6th, but based on 2011 that hurt all parties as all parties won polls in this strip.   
If you look at the Provincial election, VanCentre is basically VanWest End and VanFalse Creek, the NDP would have won using the votes from 2017. What I take from this is that the NDP has to become the vehicle for left-progressive voters and Fry has too strong of a name to do that right now.
If the polling actually turns out like 33/25/25 The NDP has a shot at VanCentre but It's still a long shot, but it is the next most winnable riding in Vancouver

Actually the next most winnable seat for the NDP in Vancouver would be Vancouver Granville if JWR didn’t run again

Yes, you're correct (26% vs VanCentre at 20% from 2015) Tanks!
BUT I think it depends on what JWR does too to see where the MDP focus's...

What's the possibility of a Green surge if they win PEI in two weeks? In my opinion I think with the inept leadership of the NDP they could be tied or within 1-2% of each other if that occurs.

To repeat: post-byelection, it's no longer so clear that Jagmeet's leadership is "inept".  (Though to continue to frame it as such certainly serves the pro-Liberal media narrative.)

Here are some seats I believe the Greens can win on a good night:

Saanich-Gulf Islands (obviously)
Victoria (their top target and a seat which includes Andrew Weaver's district)
Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke (another Vancouver Island battleground, where former Liberal David Merner is running as a Green)
Nanaimo-Ladysmith (the by-election isn't long after the PEI Election and Paul Manly is running for the Greens)

And if that surge really happens:

Fredericton (David Coon's seat is here and they came third last time)
Guelph (student seat where Mike Schreiner won)
Cowichan-Malahat-Langford (getting the effects of the Victoria area surge, this also contains the area represented by Sonia Furstenau, however it's likely the best seat for the NDP wholly on the island)
West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea To Sky Country (the best named riding anywhere, the Sunshine Coast area has a Green tinge, but this only goes in a Liberal collapse)
Charlottetown (residual from provincial election)
Malpeque (same as Charlottetown)

I think they will definitely take Victoria and Saanich and are in a good position in the other two (of which Nanaimo is the better shot), but I don't see them taking anywhere else. In Fredericton they could play spoiler and allow the CPC to oust Matt Decourcey, considering the CPC are taking at least three other NB seats.

I mean, it wouldn't be impossible to see a local boom in PEI, but I highly doubt your average Canadian will even be aware that PEI has had an election, let alone change their vote.

Yup. It's important to remember that PEI is teeny tiny, only about 150k people. Non political junkies wouldn't notice.

The Greens have seemed to turn their attention to Atlantic Canada, I could see if the Greens win PEI that could translate into a surge in the 4 riding's there, enough to win a couple? perhaps, IF there is a big swing from LPC->GRN since the Liberals own the island federally.
Look at the candidates in the Halifax ares, the Greens are going to heavily focus here:
- Jo-Ann Roberts (who was a strong second in Victoria) is running in Halifax
- Lil MacPherson (former mayoral candidate) running in Dartmouth-Cole Harbour
- Richard Zurawski (HRM Councillor) running in Halifax West

Halifax in particular will be a three-way fight between the progressives; I'd say Dartmouth-Cole Harbour is now a LPC/GRN contest and Halifax West in another three-way race between LPC/CONs/GRN

Victoria is safer for the NDP without a star green candidate, but I expect the Greens to still come in second there

Perhaps, but in the Atlantics provincial Liberal voters are often Conservatives (Egmont area ridings on PEI) and vice versa (Cape Breton ridings in NS.) In Vancouver Island, climate change is also a far bigger issue than in the rest of Canada. Indigenous issues seem to matter here too. Victoria has also lost its attractive NDP candidate, but now has a Green indigenous candidate. I also think the Grits will sweep Halifax.

If you're interested in predictions, try the Election Prediction Project website.

The NDP is likely to nominate a young and well known city Councillor, so while Murray will be a lose I think Laurel Collins is a very strong and much more well known candidate then the Greens this time. But this is still a two-way race with the NDP-Greens. The NDP has also nominated a grand chief to run in Nanaimo-Ladysmith; while I agree the Greens will due well and improve over 2015, I don't see them yet winning any more ridings on the Island given the NDPs move to the left vs the 2015 election. I see the LPC losing votes to both the Greens and NDP which should shore up the NDPs current MPs

Malcolm Allen is going to try to win back his Niagara Centre seat for the NDP. He was MP from 2008 to 2015 and lost narrowly last time to a no-name Liberal who barely campaigned. In the current environment Allen should have a good chance to win...especially since that riding voted deep orange in the provincial election

Re Egmont, I feel that became federally Conservative more through its being an open seat in a Lib-unfriendly climate (and w/a credible standard-bearer in Gail Shea) than through anything more innate--in fact, it was the only PEI seat to stay Liberal in 1984.

Vance Badawey isn't *quite* no-name; he served as mayor of Port Colborne for the better part of two decades.

And while the riding has a deep orange provincial history thanks mainly to the legacy of Mel Swart/ Peter Kormos/Cindy Forster, the NDP won by a less-than-deep-orange 6.7% over the PCs last time around--yes, they still won; but this is very much blue-collar Obama-Trump country so I wouldn't rule out the federal Cons, either.  (Though conversely, the Cons' Rob Nicholson is retiring in Niagara Falls next door, which might well put that seat into play going the *other* direction.)

Link?

I think the NDP was going to try and target this riding regardless of who the candidate was. With the recent political scene I think Welland is a Con-NDP fight, like Oshawa. Having Malcolm Allen run again is very good for the NDP though, so probably a toss-up between the NDP-CONs, I'd now throw in Niagara Falls as well, depending on the candidates but Provincially the NDP has strengthened its hold there. I think much of that is the MPP himself though.

The wheels continue to fall off the Conservative bus.  They are now up to 13 retirements with two former experienced cabinet ministers having announced they won't run again:  former Minister of State for Finance Kevin Sorenson and former Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson.

http://www.electionprediction.org/2019_fed/index.php is the current project.

http://www.electionprediction.org/method.html is the guidelines.

I'm Sam on that website.

Not with a Liberal incumbent in place, unless Justin's set for a Wynne/Iggy-level collapse.

Last election Niagara Centre was close to an even three way split. The federal Liberals won’t lose by as much as the Wynne Liberals did provincially but they will drop at least ten points from their 2015 landslide which would put them firmly in third place in a rising line Niagara Centre

What factors make a riding competitive between just the Tories and the NDP, as opposed to the Liberals? Is there some demographic element, or is it historic?

Has there been any rumblings out of Nanaimo-Ladysmith?  I'm interested in if the whole Green surge would be boosted if Manly pulls off a win, and how likely that is.

I think there's also the potential for the PEI provincial election to have rumblings federally, perhaps enough to tip the by-election in their favor.

Partly historic, but there are ridings like Sarnia-Lambton and Essex which are no good for the Liberals, but the Tories or NDP only beat the other by a few points. It's a mix of urban and rural but also has a lot of manufacturing . In recent years the Liberals have done poorly in these areas. Even in 2014 the OLP had only one seat in SW Ontario, and that was in London. These areas are drifting more to the Tories.

Some are more historic, like Oshawa (formerly held by Ed Broadbent), Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo, Saskatoon West (Saskatchewan has gone back to hating Liberals, unless their name is Ralph), and Elmwood-Transcona (formerly held by Bill Blaikie), where the NDP have ancestral vote and do well in provincial elections. But in many of these, the Liberals did well there last time, and having a historical link isn't enough (ask Rebecca Blaikie.)

Which'd be like when Allen first got in in 2008.  But that election, and the two before it, were still technical 3-ways.  It's only 2011 that saw the *real* Liberal plummet.

And also, if we go by conventional wisdom/wishful think/forced narrative that the Jagmeet Dippers are still goners, there's a chance that having previously served will serve Malcolm Allen no better than it served John Maloney in 2011.  (Note how I qualified that logic.)

In Ontario it's as mentioned here historic, but also demographic. They are typically smaller urban cities (100K or under populations) in SW Ontario and are typically or historically manufacturing or industrial based, which has a long history of unionization. The ridings in general are those urban-rural ones, Sarnia-Lambton, Chathan-Kent, Brantford-Brant, Essex (in fact the NDP gained this is 2015). These are regional centres so they tend to be where the larger hospitals/schools are, which again is heavily unionized.
These areas you see populism is more prominent, both the progressive populism and reactionary/conservative populism. pocket book policies play well here, which has not been where the Liberals campaign from, but the CONs do and the NDP does sometimes (or partially). Liberal support tends to come from wealthier people, but this group seems to swing between the CONs and LPC. 

Canadian Green supports kinda resembles that of the Lib Dems in the UK.

In Toronto, I only have a sense what's going on for the NDP in four ridings.

Toronto-Danforth:  Documentary filmmaker Min Sook Lee looks like she has it as her strongest opponent has dropped out.

Davenport:  Former MP Andrew Cash was acclaimed in December.  He is pretty much the perfect fit for the riding.

Parkdale-High Park:  Mayoral candidate and human rights lawyer Saron Gebresellassi and Foodshare executive director Paul Taylor are both seeking the nomination.

York South-Weston:  Yafet Tewelde seems to be the only one running and he has the backing of former MP Mike Sullivan.

The first three are very low hanging fruit, YSW is a "next tier" riding held by Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen.  No challengers yet for Bill Morneau (Toronto Centre) and Chrystia Freeland (University-Rosedale), also in the next tier.

But in some of these (esp. federally, as per this thread), the trend is quite recent, or qualified by spot circumstances.  Like in Sarnia-Lambton, the NDP only rose as a solid second-place factor over the past decade or so.  In Brantford, it was largely the personal strength of Derek Blackburn that kept the seat federally NDP through the 70s and 80s; but then the provincial Nixon Liberal machine transposed itself federally through Jane Stewart in the Chretien years.  And rust belt populism in Chatham-Kent and Essex actually worked to *Liberal* favour pre-Y2K--not only was Essex the bulwark of the Whelan family, but in 1988 (when the Libs were the strategically favoured alternative to the NDP's Steven Langdon) it saw what might well have been the worst Tory result in the *country* that election.

Davenport is in my view the most likely NDP gain anywhere. The swing provincially was huge, and like the former MPP, the current MP is little more than a rank and file Liberal. This is one of the few areas where the NDP are still very palatable. Interesting that neither the Liberals or NDP nominated a Portuguese candidate, although obviously Cash is the best candidate here.

I still expect Parkdale-High Park and Toronto-Danforth to go orange. They're probably the next two likeliest gains on the list, unless Jack Harris runs in St. John's East as is rumoured.

In the Toronto riding of Humber River-Black Creek, I am hearing that veteran city councillor Maria Augimeri and former TDSB trustee and 2018 council candidate Tiffany Ford are interested in the NDP nomination. 

WOW, stellar candidates the both of them! I'd be happy if either were to run! Augimeri's ward unfortunately was not in Humber River-Black Creek (was the Downsview portion of York Centre).

The retirement list seems to have reached an end. The Conservative retirements aren't that significant. For the Liberals, the two most interesting for me are in Cumberland-Colchester, to finally conclude what the Bill Casey effect really did, plus Oakville as Kevin Flynn is running for the Grits. There is another former MPP, Yvan Baker running against a former CPC MP (as well as Peter Fonseca, but he's an incumbent in a similar race to Baker.) Should be interesting to see how personal vote plays out here.

The NDP have of course lost the most personal vote. They could have a frontbench of Singh, plus only Peter Julian, Alexandre Boulerice, Don Davies, Niki Ashton, Jenny Kwan and Brian Masse, which is being generous to them in my definition of top players. This is with Nathan Cullen, Murray Rankin, Linda Duncan, Romeo Saganash, Irene Mathyssen and David Christopherson all retiring, as well as Ruth Ellen Brosseau, Matthew Dube and Daniel Blaikie losing. They have a few good quieter MPs, such as Wayne Stetski (also very vulnerable), Sheri Benson, Richard Cannings, Gord Johns and Scott Duvall, but they are looking to have one of their worst caucuses at this rate. On the plus side, Andrew Cash, Paul Taylor and Yafet Tewelde, could be good candidates if they win, which is likely in the first two cases, plus there are possible returns from Svend Robinson and Jack Harris. If Harris runs, he'd likely win against an awful MP in Nick Whalen.

You forgot Charlie Angus.

You are assuming REB, Dube and Blaikie will lose; REB and Dube won in 2015, I likely see them both winning again, REB I am more confident with. Blaikie I see winning again, recent polling has the NDP up in Winnipeg and his profile is much stronger now over 2015 when he was new.

You left out Tracey Ramsey who was (along with Blaikie) one of two pick-up's in 2015 for the NDP (who was high profile during the SNC hearings), Jenny Kwan longtime BC MLA and former Cabinet Minister, Pierre-Luc Dusseault another 2015 survivor and the youngest ever MP and now a finance critic, Guy Caron a leadership candidate and a highly regarded economist in his own right.

Your forgetting for candidates Matthew Green a Hamilton City Councillor to replace Christopherson, Lauren Collins another City Councillor replacing Murray; Bonita Zarrillo, city Councillor replacing Donnelly in Port Moody—Coquitlam... all strong local candidates
in Parkdale-High Park you have Saron Gebresellassi former mayoral candidate going against Paul Taylor (two high profile candidates who are in strong positions to win);
filmaker/lecturer Min Sook Lee in TO-Danforth, another prime target
Christine Saulnier with the CDN Centre for Policy Alternatives n Halifax
Leah Gazan, lecturer and leader of Idle No More Indigenous movement in WinCen. and Bob Chamberlin a BC grand chief running in Nanaimo-Ladysmith by-election.
To replace Cullen, there a strong cast so far; Annita McPhee the President of the Tahltan Central Government, Taylor Bachrach Mayor of Smithers and Smithers Town Councillor Greg Brown.

I could go on, but I think discrediting the NDP is a mistake as there are strong candidates in place along with strong MPs... who might not be on the MSM.

I don't think REB or Dube will win, I appreciate your optimism, but I just don't see it. Some polls have the NDP at 7% in Quebec. REB, Caron and Boulerice are the only candidates I can see getting re-elected (maybe Dusseault or Aubin stuns us all.) Ramsey and Blaikie are also quite vulnerable in my view, and to say that Ramsey is a good candidate isn't wrong, but so is Chris Lewis. The CPC are also doing very well in the Prairies; people did not expect Toet to defeat Maloway in 2011 and he only lost very narrowly last time. Granted, some of those Indigenous Candidates will be strong. And how could I forget Charlie Angus? I had wanted him to win the election. In a way, they all seem good against the hyper-partisan Liberal representatives in my opinion.

My point is that may still not be enough for the NDP. With their numbers, they are unlikely to lose . And where there are candidates like Matthew Green, inevitably they may have a hard time filling the footsteps of someone like David Christopherson. Seats like Fin Donnelly's were notionally Conservative in 2011, and so they are at risk. The seats gained on Vancouver Island are probably not going Conservative again (other than the two Northern ones if we're in CPC majority or near-majority territory), but in the Southern half they are undoubtedly at risk.

I'm a CPC/NB PCs supporter so I feel we have equally good candidates, but the effec . Just like for you, someone like Daniel Lee should definitely win in Willowdale, but if the Liberals do well Ali Ehsassi would win. Same goes for Marty Morantz in Charleswood-St James, Rick Perkins in South Shore-St Margaret's, Irshad Chaudhry in Scarborough Centre, and Milad Mikael in Mississauga Centre. Some CPC MPs like Robert Gordon Kitchen in Souris-Moose Mountain, Rachael Harder in Lethbridge, Bob Saroya in Markham-Unionville and Cathy Wagantall in Yorkton-Melville get little coverage for themselves outside of their ridings despite being talented and experienced.
They could and in some cases should be in the executive in my view, but if they don't win then that's due to national trends. Voters won't recognise these new NDP candidates as well as their predecessors, or they may abandon their personal vote if they no longer find the NDP palatable (that applies particularly in Quebec, and I don't think that's solely due to this popular notion that Jagmeet Singh and his turban are out of step with Quebec, but simply because the NDP is no longer the progressive voice for Quebec in government or the main opposition party Quebecers can coalesce behind.)

I think we need to be clear with Quebec, right now we can't predict it. The NDP have polled as high as around 20% and as low as, as you mentioned 7%. My feeling is for REB, she can likely survive due in part to her solidified position. I can realistically see the NDP hold 10-12 of their MPs if the NDP polls on the high side of 18% or so.

For Ramsey; the Windosr-Essex region while the CPC will increase the voter, should remain NDP as much of that will be LPC; while Lewis is a good candidate and performed well in the provincials, the three ridings all remained NDP on a massive swing towards the PCs province wide. Now we are post Ford, who has not done the Conservative image any favour. Ramsey has incumbency as well as a very good term under her belt. CPC will win more seats in ON, I feel the trend will look like ON18, gains in the GTA area, and Eastern/NE Ontario where the seats are LPC (Bay of Quinte, Northumberland, Nipissing)
Agreed, the CPC is polling very high out west, I can see the CPC winning 4 in Winnipeg and 4 in Alberta all held by the LPC)
My point with the new candidates replacing highly regarded MPs, the local ridings have done a good job of finding locally well known candidates with government experience (municipal) these are all (with the exception of Port Moody-Coquitlam) strong NDP seats. The Van suburbs are true three way races, and the CPC and NDP have all been up in BC.
All those CPC candidates, I agree I can see them winning.
For the NDP, I think we are seeing, slowly some of the NDP->LPC voters from 2015 migrating back. Jagmeet is performing well in the House, and policy wise have made strong announcements (that importantly is pleasing the base, in contract to Mulcair) The sunny ways LPC is gone and the boogeyman and fear mongering LPC is back (and some of that is justified since Scheer is frightfully regressive socially and scares people like me) I'm NDP/Dem.Socialist if you could not tell :P

Indeed. I should make it clear don't think the NDP will lose all those open seats. I can't see them losing Hamilton Centre or Skeena-Bulkley Valley. and I think they are the favourites in London-Fanshawe and Edmonton-Strathcona. Their strength in BC at different levels should help them in Nanaimo-Ladysmith as Horgan is doing decently in the relevant files. If you aren't on Election Prediction Project already, I wouldn't mind seeing some of your projections.

Side point, but if there is one NDP MP I wouldn't mind winning at the expense of the Conservatives, it's Georgina Jolibois. She has been a very strong MP on the Indigenous File, something both my party and the governing Liberals have failed on. Charlie Angus will win without question, but with Romeo Saganash gone, he could use another strong voice.  If any other group were flooded every year and needed help from the government, they would do a better job than this.

Indeed, the NDP class of 2015 are just as good, if not better than the class of 2011, which is probably a thing with waves where bad candidates can be elected. In 2011 you got Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, Brad Butt and Sana Hassainia, and in 2015 you got Nick Whalen, Rene Arseneault and Jati Sidhu (but there was a REB/Boulerice in 2011 and an Erskine-Smith/Wilson-Raybould/Blair in 2015.) Good candidates lose in bad elections and bad candidates win in good elections, which is unfortunate but that's party politics.

I see Duterte trashed Trudeau.

Rodger Cuzner, one of the best MPs in Ottawa is retiring. (he was the MP for Cape Breton-Canso)

Safe for the Grits, but this is their 5th retirement from Nova Scotia (Brison, Casey, Eyking, and C Fraser also.) Casey's seat will likely go blue, Fraser's is also at risk. The others are all advantage for the Liberals; Brison's old seat of Kings-Hants is the most vulnerable of the likely/safe Liberal districts here.

It will be interesting to see how much of the Liberals' Kings-Hants margin was Brison's personal vote. He was very popular there, but the riding is also more naturally Liberal than a typical rural Anglo one.

Pretty sure Cuzner's riding will stay Liberal, very safe one although ironically it did go mostly PC in the last provincial election but I doubt that will spill over federally.  Bill Casey's is most likely to flip, Fraser's possible but considering how heavily the area went Liberal I think they will hold it by a narrower margins.  Brison's is a traditional Tory seat, but a Red Tory one so I think Liberals have better chance here.  If federal Tories had a Red Tory leader they could probably win it, but ever since the merger there is no way the base would let that happen.  Looking at Nova Scotia in terms of potential Tory pickups.

I would say Cumberland-Colchester is only likely one at the moment.  Central Nova, West Nova, South Shore-St. Margaret's and Kings-Hants possible but not likely.  Central Nova would flip if Peter MacKay returned but I think with him out it will probably stay liberal but by a much narrower margin.  In South Shore-St. Margaret's, Gerald Keddy's wins were always very narrow and he benefited from a strong split on the left so if NDP does better than I think Tories could win it, but if they remain in the ditch Liberals should hold it even if Tories rebound to high 30s (that is their ceiling there).

It’s also quite conceivable that the NDP could win back Halifax from the Liberals

Well, there's about a week left in Nanaimo-Ladysmith, have there been any rumblings in the riding about how the race seems to be going?  Or has it been quiet?

Hard to say, but I think it is fair to say the Liberals who were never strong to begin with there will win it.  Most likely the Greens or NDP.  A remote chance Tories win, but very unlikely.  Greens did well last time and are gaining in polls so could win.  Traditionally an NDP stronghold so wouldn't surprised if they held it.  Tories haven't won here since 2000 back when NDP was at low point and Canadian Alliance at high point in BC.  Although Tories did get 40% in 2011 and that was with the left united behind the NDP.  I doubt Tories will get much above 30%, but if they got in low 30s and had perfect splits possible, but essentially they would need to pull an inside straight.  So toss-up between Greens and NDP at the moment.