Canadian by-elections, 2015

[DL]

The Ontario Liberals won last year with 39% of the vote. Polls now show them as low as 24%... That's a huge drop

Indeed, although we're what, three years out from an election? Let's start speculating in 2017.

I'm not speculating about 2018, I'm speculating about what would happen in a provincial by election in ht every near future

[DL]

In 1979 the entire BC provincial election took place right splat in the middle of the federal election campaign! it was easiest for the NDP to manage this because the NDP is the only party in BC that is vertically integrated - so federal and provincial NDP candidates shared campaign offices and canvassers took literature for both federal and provincial candidates together.

It was harder for the other parties since Social Credit was basically an amalgam of federal Liberals and Conservatives so they couldnt actually share any resources or campaign together.

[DL]

The Liberals and Conservatives have sometimes not run candidates in by elections created to get a leader into the house. But the NDP and its predecessor the CCF have never followed that "chivalry" and it is an article of faith in the NDP to always run a candidate no matter what. In 1941 in York South, the Liberals actually played a bit of a fast one. They announced with great fanfare that they would not run a candidate against Tory leader Meighen. Then they had all their people quietly campaign for the CCF candidate who ended up y
Up beating Meighen and sh**t circuiting his attempted political come back

[DL]

If the NDP formed government, the cabinet ministers they would appoint from Quebec would have to have some regional representation...i.e. someone from the Quebec City area, from the eastern townships etc..

I think Robert Aubin from Trois Rivieres could get something...not to mention some of the McGill students from 2011 who have really proven themselves, or someone like Philip Toone

[DL]

Wildrose won a couple of seats in Calgary in 2012 under Danielle Smith so its not as if they have never won there before...I think Jean is still a liability for Wildrose who could be an obstacle to them ever winning

[DL]

Final:

Saint-Henri--Sainte-Anne
PLQ: 38.64%
PQ: 29.89%
QS: 20.73% (beyond good result for them, almost double their best result here of 11%)
CAQ: 5.2%

I think this SHSA result could have some interesting long-term implications. Quebec Solidaire has already got three seats in Montreal and its no secret that the PQ under a repulsive Berlusconi-type rightwing leader like Peladeau is now a very very hard sell in places like Montreal. QS could successfully target a couple of PQ seats in areas that went NDP federallly such as Rosemont, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Bourget etc...and pretty soon the PQ will be completely run off of the island of Montreal!

[DL]

If Quebec Solidaire wants to have any chance in a riding like Laurier-Dorion, maybe its about time they dropped their support for sovereignty and just focused on being a leftwing party fighting for social justice. Lets face it - separatism in Quebec has become a very "passe" issue and is now morphed into a rightwing xenophobic cause that is wrapped up in islamophobia. QS's vestigial adherence to separatism is holding them back from becoming any kind of a real force in Quebec politics. The people who are still hard core dyed in the wool separatist (and they are dying out) are the people who will vote for Peladeau no matter what.

[DL]

The BC NDP should pick up Coquitlam-Burke Mountain pretty easily - they narrowed the gap in that seat from 2009 to 2013 and right now the Christy Clark government is scandal ridden, and extremely unpopular. Its typically easy for the opposition to gain a marginal government seat in a mid-term by-election...holding it in a general election can be another story - but if you want to send a message to the criminals running the BC government - a by-election protest vote is an easy gesture. In fact the only time the government has won a byelection in BC in the last 30 years was when Christy Clark very narrowly won Vancouver Point Grey right after she became Premier - and even that was much close than it should have been and she ended up losing that seat in the general election.

The fact that federal Conservative support crashed in that area of Vancouver is also  warning sign - the BC Liberal MLA ran for the joined at the hip federal Conservatives and was crushed. I'd be surprised if the Greens get more than their usual 3% of the vote in that area - in the federal election and in the last provincial election the Greens got low single digits throughout suburban Vancouver and they are as moribund as ever...meanwhile the BC NDP leads in every province -wide poll and their new leader John Horgan is very popular and a much bigger draw than his predecessor Adrian Dix was... He seems to be getting good press and is a real "HOAG" (helluva guy)

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn+palmer+horgan+takes+gloves+launches+sharp/11502840/story.html

[DL]

We should take anything "lotuslander" says with a boulder of salt since his main purpose in life seems to be to act out on his "NDP derangement syndrome" - his predictions tend to be dead wrong almost 100% of the time. Just a few weeks ago he was saying the federal NDP would get just 5 or 6 seats in BC - they got 14. He said the Green party would easily win Victoria from the NDP - it went NDP in a landslide. He said the Conservatives would GAIN seats from the NDP on vancouver island - they lost every single one by a wide margin while the NDP swept 6 out of 7 seats on the island. He said the Tories would GAIN NDP seats in the Lower Mainlaind - they got blown out of the water and came in third in riding after riding that ended up being Liberal/NDP contests. He poo-poohed the idea of the NDP having strength in the BC interior after a mega rally in Penticton - the NDP ended up win South Okanagan-West Kootenay AND Kootenay Columbia - both ridings  that were notionally CPC seats after redistribution.

Caveat emptor  

[DL]

The last poll on BC provincial politics was from May of this year - and it shows that Horgan is by far the most popular party leader in BC - and numerous polls have shown that Christy Clark is just about the most hated premier in Canada with disapproval numbers getting well above 70%

http://www.insightswest.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Slide3.png

[DL]

It's pretty common knowledge that the BC Liberals are petrified of John Horgan. He has a common touch, is a hit with blue collar workers and call also charm the Board of Trade. When the BC NDP was picking a successor to carol James, the BC Liberals were on their hands and knees praying to God that the NDP would NOT pick Horgan since they knew he would be impossible to beat. They were relieved when Adrian Dix won instead. Horgan is so popular and such a unifying force in the NDP that when he initially said he didn't want to run to be leader after Dix stepped down, everyone begged him to reconsider and the moment he decided to run, all other candidates for the leadership drop out and instead it was a coronation for Horgan. How often do you see a major political party pick a new leader by acclamation? I can only think of when Mike Harcourt was acclaimed as leader of the BC NDP in the late 80s.

Canada is clearly swing to the left. We have seen that federally and in the last series of provincial election in Alberta, Ontario etc... The rabidly right wing BC "Liberal" (aka Social Credit) Gov't is clearly on the way out.

[DL]

The only "ism" Christy Clark believes in is "narcissism"

[DL]

Getting back to the issue of byelections - one will be called very soon (perhaps as soon as next week) in the Ontario PC-held seat of Whitby-Oshawa...this could be an early test of Patrick Brown's leadership.

[DL]

As most of us know - federal and provincial politics in BC are very disconnected. The BC NDP attracts the votes of people who vote NDP federally plus the votes of left of centre types who vote Liberal federally - of whom there are many. The Social Credit party (under its fake name BC Liberals) is supported by federal Tories and by that shrinking segment of very rightwing federal Liberals... Even in Ontario where the lines between federal and provincial parties are more blurred than in BC - the same Forum poll that had the federal Liberal enjoying a honeymoon also said that Kathleen Wynne is gown to just 231% approval and that an Ontario election how would mean a PC government with the Ontario NDP as official opposition.

We can speculate all we want about the provincial political scene in BC - at some point someone will put out a poll on provincial political preferences and then we will have some hard numbers to look at rather than this silly guessing game.

[DL]

speculate all you want Lotuslander..,your predications for BC in the federal election were virtually all dead wrong. You seemed so 100% certain the Green Party would win Victoria that I actually felt sorry for the humiliation you must have felt when the NDP held it easily and won 14 seats in BC, the largest number since 1988.

We can all editorialize all we want with personal pontifications...I'm sure sometime soon there will be a provincial poll in BC and I predict it will probably give the BC NDP a low to mid single digit lead and will have the greens at an irrelevant 10% or so...but we shall see. We may not see any public domain BC polls until the new year.

[DL]

Calgary-Greenway MLA Manmeet Bhullar (PC) died in a car accident.

Very sad news - by all accounts he was quite a nice guy. He was also touted as a likely contender to lead the Alberta PCs when they pick a permanent leader...