Canadian by-elections, 2012

[adma]

Re Durham: doing more litmus whittling-down, the following polls went more than 30% NDP: 84 (N  side Hwy 2 as it enters Clarington: ergo, practically Oshawa overspill); 90 (mid-north Courtice); 95 (straddling Hwy 2 thru much of Courtice; lotsa townhousey stuff); 101 (84's opposite gatepost-into-Clarington); 107 (mid-south Courtice); 113 (Regional Road 22's gateway from Oshawa); 114 (E edge of Courtice sprawl straddling Hwy 2); 116-2 (gateway into Bowmanville via Hwy 2; plus some new subdivision) 128/128-1 (new/newish Bowmanville SW subdivision); 130/136/137/138 (60s/70sish SW BV subdivision; I think Reform once did well here, may be wrong); 139/140/140-1/141-1 (far-NE BV new/recent subdivision); 146 (slightly further south version of the aforementioned; next to an ex-POW camp, believe it or not); 150 (NE of downtown BV; includes a "Trudeau Drive", believe it or not); 153/155/156/159/160 (straddling Hwy 2 through the bulk of BV's downtown core; then S on Liberty St; much traditional NDP turf, including postwar CMHC housing); 179 (mid-subdivision SW of Newcastle's core); 183/184/186 (the entire urban-suburban NE of Newcastle); 500 (senior's poll won by the NDP; the only non-Tory poll in the seat)

[adma]

Ahhh i see your point, the keep this a minority. Interesting point... i wonder if we will see PCs voting NDP with this announcement?

Or, more properly, Witmer voters--those who opted for the person rather than the party.  (Remember that federally, K-W hasn't been anything like the Conservative stronghold it is provincially.)

[adma]

It was an all-female (4 parties) cast in 2007, too, when Fife previously bore the NDP standard.  (Only getting into high teens; but that's with Witmer an incumbent, and when the strategic electoral climate generally didn't work in the NDP's favour, whatever the credentials of the candidate.)

[adma]

Well, the Greens made gains in 2007, too: don't forget.  (And it's also worth noting that she did better than her 2011 successor--or, for that matter, her 2011 federal counterpart.)

[adma]

I think an NDP win is a longshot here simply because in the past they haven't gotten over 25% in a long time.  Even in the last federal election they scored below the provincial average although I do wonder how many of the Liberal votes were from university staff and students who voted strategically as like many university ridings, it appears the Liberals held their vote better than elsewhere. 

You're overlooking the huuuuge, exceptional factor in K-W federally in 2011 that skewed everything: Andrew Telegdi--who ran practically (and in a way that anticipated the present Etobicoke Centre circumstance) as a Liberal-incumbent-cheated-through-recount, hogging all the "strategic left" energy and, in a way, forcing the NDP camp into a little-more-than-nominal effort.

Had Telegdi not run, and the NDP not shoved into the margins by the Telegdi factor, it would have been much different--and K-W isn't a hyper-strategic-Liberal-into-eternity Etobicoke Centre or Don Valley West circumstance, either...

[adma]

I should also note the NDP didn't do very well in Kitchener Centre either.  Cambridge is really the only area in the metro K-W area where they have a strong base.  While Telegdi no doubt helped, I should note that in both suburban Ottawa and Toronto you had several ridings without incumbents where the Liberals came in second.  Also it seems in most university area ridings the Liberals did quite well like Guelph, Kingston & the Islands (which lacked an incumbent), London North Centre, Kitchener-Waterloo and even in Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, the Liberals were quite strong around McMaster University, they just did horrible everywhere else in the riding.  My understanding is Kitchener-Waterloo has above average income as well as more educated than most ridings and that is the demographic the Liberals are usually strongest amongst, otherwise too educated to vote Tory, but too wealthy to vote NDP.

Well, in Kitchener Centre, Karen Redman was Telegdi's "partner in crime" when it came to surprise/narrow 2008 Liberal defeatees aggressively bidding for a 2011 comeback--though with a 2008 losing margin larger than Telegdi's 17 votes and a stronger NDP challenge, it wasn't quite as bald a "strategic left" consensus in her case; but still, she skewed the KC picture as well.  And when it comes to the kind of suburban Ottawa/Toronto ridings you're alluding too: the infrastructure in place in such seats already heavily favoured the Liberals--we're talkiing about the kinds of seats where where even factoring out the AudreyAlexa terminally-single-digit era, "normal" NDP shares pre-2011 were closer to 10% than 20%.  Whereas in K-W, NDP reached high teens except when Green took a big bite in '08 (indeed, it had the *highest* NDP share in Waterloo Region in '06, higher even than Cambridge--though that may have been partly a kneejerk reaction to the Conservatives having nominated a turbanned candidate that year.)

And while you have a point about a certain sustained "university/educated class" skew t/w voting Liberal in 2011, remember that some of it had to do with a perception that Michael Ignatieff was "one of them"--in a post-Iggy era with the NDP consilidating its claim upon Official Opposition and plausible-government-in-waiting in lieu of the Liberals, it's those town'n'gown "Iggy Grits" that might be most open to sliding NDPward.

Generally speaking, K-W may be of above-average income and education--but not to the point where it's an "Oakville" or "Ottawa-Orleans" kind of riding.  It's a SW Ontario heartland riding, where under non-abnormal (i.e. non-Telegdi) circumstances NDP pars tend to be higher.  A lot of it is affluent; but a lot of it isn't--student-class, and even a fair-sized and very NDP-amenable blue-collar element in North Kitchener.

Provincially speaking: yes, Witmer won in 1990; but within these boundaries (thank North Kitchener!) the seat would have gone NDP.  And the reason for Witmer winning in an otherwise NDP year had more to do with 1990 being more of an "anti-Liberal" than "pro-NDP" vote per se, and Witmer had already gotten her foot in the door as a "non-Liberal replacement-MPP-in-making" through a strong if futile 1987 bid.  If Witmer weren't the PC placeholder, her seat, too, might have gone with the province-wide NDP flow.

Right now, we're talking about the NDP (federal and provincial alike) on a roll--and if there's a candidate perfectly expressive of that fact for K-W, it's Fife, who could very easily assemble a grand coalition of "Witmer Tories" and "Iggy/Telegdi Liberals" en route to victory--and as with Witmer in 1987, Fife in 2007 could be seen as a foreboding dress rehearsal for a future open seat.  (Even if she was third rather than second; but such was the state of the ONDP in 2007.)

It isn't that she absolutely will win; it's that she should be taken absolutely seriously as a contender.

[adma]

I wouldn't call KW necessarily SWON but its definetly got much of the same characteristics... i'd call it that transition zone between the GTA and SWON... Historically (90s) it was very working class, germanic/white, auto/industrial (Cambridge in particular)... but since then RIM helped boots it to be a very Yuppie/hi-tech super boom area that one woul think votes Liberal and well with the Gov't for the most part (as you can see the seats now are moslty gov't or Liberal Guelph being the standout). Yes it has its relative affluence but also i'd say a growing commutter population since housing is way less then in TO.

RIM and high-tech notwithstanding, I still wouldn't bunch K-W (or even Guelph, for that matter) up w/the GTA--and besides, in a post-Orange Crush environment when old easy-pigeonholes of "NDP constituency" have been rendered archaic, apparent yuppieism or GTA-commuterism isn't necessarily a barrier to real or latent NDP support.  After all, Cambridge has been subject to the same demographic forces as K-W and Guelph; and yet the NDP has swung back to a clear federal second place there, and the ONDP nearly turned it into a 3-way marginal.

And besides, once again, when it comes to Guelph or K-W federally, the Liberalism (and perhaps, too, the impression thereof as grandfathered down provincially last year) was more out of circumstance than out of "natural conviction" (other than the town'n'gown "Iggy Liberal" phenomenon).  With Guelph, we had the rare circumstance of a SW Ontario seat that stayed Liberal in '08--one of only two such seats west of Peel Region--and yet, that was a under-third-of-the-vote circumstance squeezed out of a chaotic 4-way-race situation.  No matter; the Liberals went into 2011 as incumbent, and under a whole lot of pressure thanks to the '08 result they soaked up all the "strategic left" energy, decimating the once-competitive Greens and knocking the NDP beneath their 04-06 share.  None of this had anything to do with "GTAification".

Keep in mind that in the 2011 federal disaster, by the time E-day rolled around the Liberals were basically reduced to supertargeting four SW Ontario seats: salvaging Guelph and London NC, and taking back those two Kitchener-area seats (with the former seatholders) which they unexpectedly lost in '08.  They only batted 1 for 4; but those were the only SW Ontario seats where they surpassed 30% (or even a quarter) of the vote.

Incidentally, may I correct an earlier point: while it had the highest NDP vote tally, K-W did *not* have Waterloo Region's highest NDP share in '06--it fell short of Kitchener Centre by half a percentage point.  (But it's worth noting that Kitchener Centre's candidate in '04 and '06, Richard Walsh-Bowers, ran as an independent in K-W in 2011--perhaps further depressing the NDP vote through perceptions of a schism, versus the "solid front" behind Telegdi.)

[adma]

Also with consideration of the whole "affluent demo" question: true, there are big swaths of suburban Waterloo that are ordinarily disinclined (even by 1990 standards) to vote NDP.  However, we're dealing with a situation where the PCs are the incumbent party (and on top of the provincial polls); yet the "inclination" is more Liberal/Red Tory moderate (and therefore indisposed to Randy Hillier-ish excesses).  With that under consideration, the NDP could well prevail over a "split right", sweeping a whole lot of North Kitchener and downtown Waterloo polls as the other parties cancel themselves out elsewhere...

[adma]

Incidentally, while I haven't yet done a provincial 2011 divvying-up, here's a federal 2011 divvying-up of Kitchener-Waterloo--rough, un-double-checked figures, and using strictly e-day regular and "400" polls (but not "500" polls, or advance or special polls)

laurelwood--Con 1970 (44.32), Lib 1620 (36.45), NDP 663 (14.92), GP 161 (3.62), PP 24 (.54), Ind 4 (.09), ML 3 (.07)
rummelhardt--Con 1878 (44.28), Lib 1608 (37.92), NDP 564 (13.30), GP 175 (4.13), PP 6 (.14), Ind 6 (.14), ML 4 (.09)
northfield--Con 2256 (43.68), Lib 1677 (32.47), NDP 926 (17.93), GP 262 (5.07), PP 19 (.37), Ind 16 (.31), ML 9 (.17)
lexington--Con 4491 (47.81), Lib 3060 (32.57), NDP 1405 (14.96), GP 386 (4.11), Ind 22 (.23), PP 20 (.21), ML 10 (.11)
university--Lib 1193 (41.77), Con 790 (27.66), NDP 662 (23.18), GP 162 (5.67), PP 31 (1.09), Ind 13 (.46), ML 5 (.18)
ec waterloo--Lib 2534 (37.54), Con 2522 (37.36), NDP 1240 (18.37), GP 394 (5.84), PP 30 (.44), Ind 24 (.36), ML 6 (.09)
beechwood--Lib 1296 (46.50), Con 975 (34.98), NDP 380 (13.63), GP 117 (4.20), PP 12 (.43), Ind 6 (.22), ML 1 (.04)
wc waterloo--Lib 1380 (47.21), Con 901 (30.82), NDP 393 (13.45), GP 231 (7.90), PP 12 (.41), Ind 5 (.17), ML 1 (.03)
westvale--Con 1598 (42.26), Lib 1362 (36.02), NDP 624 (16.50), GP 176 (4.65), PP 11 (.29), Ind 6 (.16), ML 4 (.11)
nw kitchener--Con 1777 (44.58), Lib 1187 (29.78), NDP 870 (21.83), GP 119 (2.99), PP 14 (.35), Ind 13 (.33), ML 6 (.15)
nc kitchener--Lib 1266 (37.85), Con 1116 (33.36), NDP 674 (20.15), GP 250 (7.47), PP 19 (.57), Ind 15 (.45), ML 5 (.15)
ne kitchener--Con 1202 (38.98), NDP 837 (27.14), Lib 834 (27.04), GP 171 (5.54), PP 22 (.71). Ind 16 (.52), ML 2 (.06)
bridgeport--Con 870 (53.21), Lib 364 (22.26), NDP 326 (19.94), GP 62 (3.79), PP 7 (.43), Ind 4 (.24), ML 2 (.12)

[adma]

I don't rule out the PCs winning Vaughan. Let's not forget that Julian Fantino won Vaughan federally for the Tories by a huge margin and just like the PCs won Waterloo thanks to Witmer's personal popularity...a lot of the Liberal toe in Vaughan was a personal vote for Sorbara...the PCs also ran a very weak candidate in Vaughan who was controversial for having previously run for the Liberals against Fantino...and lost.

Then again, one might also argue that Julian Fantino had "unfair advantage" in 2011 through his byelected incumbency, versus the hapless Iggy Liberals who were at that point concentrating more upon salvaging whatever 416/905 incumbents it could.  If it were Fantino vs an incumbent Bevilacqua, the race would have been a lot closer.

But then again, the "no standing Liberal incumbent" situation there may foretell a "no standing Liberal incumbent" situation here...

[adma]

And *federally*, they did only 11.6% last year.

Interestingly enough, the ONDP gor 11.7% in Vaughan in 2007 vs 18.7% for the PCs--perhaps dead-cat-bouncey with the help of an Italian candidate vs a parachute-y South Asian (?) PCer...

[adma]

I don't deny she's a good candidate, in the sense that anyone who's been seriously involved in local administration and community work is a good candidate. But in this sense a lawyer who's on various charity boards and who came within 7% of winning last time for the Liberals is also a good candidate. All three candidates strike me as reasonably good candidates in this sense, but not the sort of "star" candidate that ordinary voters actually have a personal opinion of.

Fair point about the mayors on wikipedia, though, Max.

Though I'd argue that had Fife been the ONDP candidate in 2011 and the K-W left-of-centre picture not been so skewed artificially Liberalward by the federal Telegdi circumstance, she might even have nipped Rogers for second place or at least come a much closer 3rd.

And never mind star candidates; we're also talking about leadership "that ordinary voters actually have a personal opinion of"--and generally speaking, such "personal opinion" has been much more favourable to Horwath than to Hudak or McGuinty.

Thus while the crude notional odds don't favour the NDP in K-W, the Fife + Horwath + byelection juggernaut suggests that such existing notional-odds logic ought to be tossed out the window...

[adma]

*But*, as proof that patterns die hard, I'm hearing of a Forum poll for K-W that shows the Liberals and PCs tied at 36%, and the NDP at 20%.  (If someone can post a link, please do so.)

[adma]

A bit of an aside here: has anyone done (or is in the process of doing) polling maps for the 2011 Ontario election? (Esp. ones where we can figure which polls are which)

[adma]

Definite proof that "candidacy matters", as well as of my "Telegdi skewed the picture" argument--though it's oddly telling how the media's downplaying the NDP element on behalf of "Liberals no longer in the lead", etc...

[adma]

it might not be the candidate so much as the campaign

Or both, in coordinated tandem.  Fife gave the ONDP incentive to pursue this as a serious, *winnable* target, despite naysayers pointing to the 2011 fed-prov results as proof that K-W is RIM-yuppying terminally away from such targetability.  Otherwise, a solid 20% might have been possible on Andrea Horwath's simple coattails--but 30% is the result of the Fife juggernaut, with added boost from this being a resource-concentrating byelection rather than the lost-in-the-ozone circumstance of a general election...

 

[adma]

Fife is a good candidate, and worthy of a good campaign for sure. But she's not winning it on name recognition alone. I doubt most voters would have heard of her before the by-election. Can you even name your public school trustee? I can't, and I voted for her!

I addressed the name-recognition-alone point in my "in coordinated tandem" statement  And besides, we're not just talking about your regular school trustee, we're talking about a "trustee and chair of the Waterloo Region District School Board and president of the Ontario Public School Boards' Association".  We're talking about a big shot here--and one who would be familiar to K-W voters from her previous provincial run in 2007, at which time she was already something of a star-candidate-albeit-shame-about-the-party case.

And don't be too hard on school trustees, even if you can't name your own--very often, it *is* a launching pad to political power.  (Toronto has a fair number who went straight from trustee to provincial elected office: Kathleen Wynne, Donna Cansfield, the newly-elected Michael Coteau and Soo Wong, even Rosario Marchese in the NDP camp.  And while the party of choice often helped, trusteeship *did* hold its inherent star-candidate coattails...and in the case of Wynne and Cansfield, especially in the throw-out-the-anti-education-Common-Sense-Tory-bums atmosphere of 2003...)

[adma]

And there have been trustee byelections in Toronto in the past year, to replace Coteau + Wong after they were elected to Queen's Park...

[adma]

It may depend upon what council or school boards decide--sometimes a byelection, sometimes a "temporary" appointment.

In any case...

http://www.toronto.ca/elections/by-election-2012/tdsb-17-20/

Ward 17: 5151 votes; winner w/974 votes.

Ward 20: 6422 votes; winner w/1849 votes.

NB: in the riding of Don Valley East, where former Ward 17 trustee Michael Coteau ran and won for the Liberals, 974 votes would have been good enough for 3% of the provincial vote.

[adma]

Well, a strong second would be very good in Durham and Calgary Centre. They don't need to win.
And I'm sure than NDP hopes there is no election in Etobicoke.

"No chance" is one thing; hoping there is no election is another.  And I doubt the NDP is so easily ego-bruised that they'd hope for no Etobicoke Centre byelection...

[adma]

I also agree that the NDP would lose political capital in an Etobicoke Centre by-election.

That is, if they had that much political capital there to begin with.

But AFAIC, the fright-of-Liberal-oxygen thing is a petty throwback to bad old ways, and it really belongs more to the extreme liquidate-the-Liberals wing of the NDP (or, for that matter, the more traditional liquidate-the-NDP wing of the Grits).  As I see it, at worst they'd lose as much capital here as the Conservatives did in the Toronto-Danforth byelection--and of course, if a Etobicoke Centre byelection was bunched with several others where the NDP has a greater chance of, at least, overtaking the Liberals, the net "lost political capital" could be more negligible than some are fearing...

[adma]

Exactly--that's why I think the NDP must be pursuing a "liquidate-the-Liberals" strategy. It's their best shot at taking power.

Except that that sounds a little too much like the Liberals' "liquidate the NDP" strategy of yore.  And it's a little beneath whatever Jack-Layton-farewell-letter principles.

My feeling is: yes, ideally, the NDP (or at least, the party's organizational braintrust) would like to usurp whatever they can of "Lib-left" support--but on their own terms and with a dab of swayable "Con-populist" and mushy-middle support as reinforcement (let's not forget that even a lot of recent Harper voters have been mushy-middle) and by picking their battles carefully and by minimizing embarrassment and injured egos.  So when it comes to Etobicoke Centre, what matters is not that they win; what matters is that they're "still standing" even in the event of a Liberal victory in a seat where, as everybody admits, the odds run heavily against the NDP.  The old "moral victory" thing, I suppose--long an NDP punchline, but actually a good, constructive way to handle loss, treating an election more as a litmus of real-and-potential support than as a raw you-win-or-you-lose proposition.  And it's not unlike what's led the *Conservatives* to power, deconstructing opportunities in apparent no-hope seats, etc.

As I see it, the NDP can absorb an Etobicoke Centre loss...at least as long as they hold close to their 2011 share; and even if not, they might absorb a loss in the same way that Labour in the UK has absorbed being relegated to a depositless third in strict Tory-Lib Dem races.  And of course, it helps if there are several byelections happening at once--now, if an "inevitable " poor third in EC is accompanied by either-or-a-combination-of a reversion to third place in Durham, falling even further back of the Liberals in Calgary Centre, and (the clincher) losing or even nearly-losing Victoria--*then*, cue the alarm bells.

Such a loss-absorption strategy is already in place in Ontario, where an "inevitable" poor third in the upcoming Vaughan byelection looks set to be counterbalanced by the ONDP significantly overachieving in the Kitchener-Waterloo byelection.

[adma]

Vaughan 2011 provincial map:



(Also, introducing my new master key which I used on this map)

I wouldn' t mind such Ontario '11 maps with keyed-in poll numbers (no, I don't mean from *you*; just generally, as a convenience)

[adma]

Something tells me this "war on teachers" biz is playing right into NDP hands in K-W--and the only reason why it's not registering with the Libs + Tories is the old "aah, look at the 2011 results: the NDP can't win" fallback...

[adma]

Something tells me this "war on teachers" biz is playing right into NDP hands in K-W--and the only reason why it's not registering with the Libs + Tories is the old "aah, look at the 2011 results: the NDP can't win" fallback...

That riding poll from some time ago ought to have set them straight--it had the NDP a close second.

"Rogue poll".  "Unrepresentative sample".  "Not consistent with 2011 patterns".  When it comes to finding convenient alibis, where there's a will, there's a way.