Nova Scotia Election, 2013

[Citizen Hats]

Timberlea-Prospect
This riding consists of two communities; Timberlea, a working class suburb, and Prospect, a poor rural area with a few large oceanfront properties. It has been represented by NDP MLA Bill Estabrooks. Estabrooks is a colourful character and is known for being down to earth. During the MLA spending scandal, it came out that Estabrooks claimed a mere $300 for constituency expenses and bought most of his office furniture on Kijiji!(Canadian version of Craigslist). The riding should be safe NDP but has two wildcards. Estabrooks will not run again, so the NDP will loose his rather large personal vote, and the Tories are running Bruce Pretty who nearly won Halifax West and got a large personal vote in the normally Tory unfriendly Prospect area. I'm still calling it safe NDP, but it could be surprisingly close on election night.
Safe NDP

I happen to be working in Timberlea-Prospect, and I would estimate that the Estabrooks personal vote is a very large share of the vote

[Citizen Hats]

The Liberals, of course

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I heard anonymous is attacking the NDP for making fake Twitter accounts.

That's what I've heard too- that they use hootesuite to schedule and generate a huge volume of tweets such that they drown out everyone else for their followers. 

Also interesting enough is that all of their campaign videos on youtube have nearly the exact same number of views...

What kind of sensible campaign dedicates so much time to such fluff?

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McNeil is going negative again. You're in the lead genius!

Worked for Premier Dix, didn't it?

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Mildly amusing find: My fiance's next door neighbour has Liberal, Tory and NDP signs on her lawn

Dexter's own sister has a Liberal and and NDP sign on her lawn. It's a split household

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McNeil has the momentum. Plus, the NDP support is fairly soft in NS. It doesn't have the history that the other 2 parties have. Most NDP voters in the province didn't vote NDP 20 years ago.

I'm not sure what "momentum" means. Up until 8:01pm on May 14, Adrian Dix supposedly had "momentum" in BC and was expected to win. If you buy into the idea that people like to vote for a winner - the polls showing the BC NDP wayy ahead should have been a self-fulfilling prophecy.

While momentum is an annoying squishy concept, Dix didn't really have momentum. He had a polling lead. He had been more or less steady for months, and he had lost some support across the writ-period, while still having a significant lead in public polling

[Citizen Hats]

Just to show you how far right the NDP has drifted... They're attacking the Liberals for refusing to do corporate welfare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb17RRC2Slc&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL3n8DIycvkcWgywkzvE6ICc_IIPxx5jnD

And the Tories are calling for price controls! Sounds like the only sensible free marketer's choice is the Liberal Party

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Imagine the polls were wrong again though...

People aren't afraid of the Nova Scotia Liberals in the same way that they fear handing power to the Wildrose Alliance or the BCNDP, which makes [vigorously knocking on wood] a voting-booth swing unlikely

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He personally said it was one of his favorites. His children found it amusing as well, without understanding the words

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Being "boring" and responsible seems to work well for the NDP in Manitoba - they have won 4 terms now and it also worked well for the NDP in Saskatchewan 1991-2007.

I totally get that some people might be disillusioned that the NDP didn't bring about a socialist revolution in one term in Nova Scotia...but i just don't see what they've done that merits losing almost half their vote from last time.

With Bob Rae's government, they came to power just as a massive recession hit, ran up a stratospheric deficit, had lots of incompetent cabinet ministers who had to resign AND had a totally break-up with the party base over the "social contract" (sic.)....nothing has happened in Nova Scotia that is remotely comparable to any of that. So, I'm back to wondering what has happened.

In settled societies, political relationships can be old and comfortable. A sufficiently attractive alternative alternative can be a winner, but they have to give people a reason to break those old patterns. I talked to lots of people who said "I voted Liberal all my life, but I voted for Dexter, and what did we get? My son still can't find a job without going west and they're still shutting down my town's school'' If they ain't getting anything special, they'll do what's comfortable. 

Of course, the opposite of the Rae Route would be the Dave Barrett Route, who passed an act an average of every three days in British Columbia. He was also dropped from power, but hsi party was much more lasting than Rae's

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Wooo Timberlea-Prospect!

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Strange how he can't seem to wrap his head around the fact that people don't like to have the province subsidize the federal government's ships...

Dexter blames voters and MSM for his loss. Geez, never pegged him for a sore loser.

Well, he has a point. He lost because voters didn't voted for him, like any politician which lose.

[Citizen Hats]

Ugh. Depressing.

Oh! Beautiful!