Canadian by-elections, 2012

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But the poll does prove that Vaughan is still a safe Liberal riding. Fantino winning is just based on his popularity.

*And* the fact that he was technically "incumbent" in 2011 (thanks to the byelection), and the Liberals at large were in disarray.  Were it Fantino vs an incumbent Bevilacqua, it would have been much closer.

Oh, and re Kitchener-Waterloo: go back to some of my posts 'way earlier in this thread, pin-pricking assumptions that the seat was "too yuppie/high-tech/affluent" for anything other than a Tory/Liberal race.  Look: when I said the last federal result was "skewed by Telegdi", I meant it, I really meant it.  And, now you know what I was getting at.

And altogether, it's worth considering that this lowly provincial byelection might be, by proxy, the first *real* test of the Orange Crush's resilience and "potential for growth"...

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Isn't Kitchner-Waterloo a university seat though?

It is; but even that's been used as an anti-NDP argument in the past, pointing at Liberal wins and near-wins in Guelph, Kingston, London NC etc...

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I suppose it's fair to say that students vote NDP, grads vote Liberal?

More like: professors and related egghead types voted Ignatieff in '11.

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Hash, I should warn you I am splooging on the keyboard right now

Well, Fife *is* a bit of a cutie, though that sounds like an overreaction;)

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I suppose one can claim Vaughan as a more sobering NDP result--though by post-Rae, pre-Orange Crush standards, for them to float to 11% in a byelection seat like that would be astronomical.  (NB: in the 1991 byelection that returned Sorbara to Queen's Park, the NDP got 1.97%.  Green got 2.10%.  And then there's the federal Fantino byelection to consider...)

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NDP 36% PC 35% OLP 22% ...Based on these figures, Forum projects a seat count of PCs, 48; Liberals, 30; and NDP, 29"... The NDP loses out since the vote is badly distributed, i suspect heavily centred in TO, other cities (Hamilton, Windsor, London, Ottawa) and the north, possibly seats in SWON too.

I put little credence on that Forum projected seat count, since it likely hinges upon an awkward "uniform swing" model--which, if based upon 2011 results, would mean that Kitchener-Waterloo would be nowhere near that magic 29.  (Remember that the apparent NDP "bad distribution" is the result of their concentrating their past electoral resources in a handful of "winnable" seats--which may well top out at 29 or so.)

My suspicion is that if the NDP's in that polling stratosphere, a lot more seats are drawn into their orbit than it may appear--and the Liberals are flirting with losing official party status...

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I would be willing to bet my life savings that if the ONDP gets 36% of the vote in the next Ontario election and the Liberals get reduced to 22% - the NDP will have MORE seats than the Liberals wayyyy more.

And Dalton's left looking like this

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...and son of MPP John O'Toole.

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I'm very sceptical about that poll. It could see the Tories losing Calgary Centre if there was a two way race and the opposition vote consolidated behind one candidate - kind of like the way the NDP won Edmonton-Strathcona in 2008 and again in 2011 where it was literally 43% NDP 42%CPC and with the Libs and Greens in low single digits. When the Reform Party lost Calgary Centre to Joe Clark in 2000 it was also a two way race where the Liberal and NDP vote literally evaporated and consolidated behind Joe Clark

But I cannot see the Conservative vote in Calgary Centre falling as low as 32% where they could lose in a four way race with even the NDP in the teens. I think that the Tory "floor" in Calgary Centre is probably about 40% and this poll has them way too low.

Then again, it's Calgary Centre.  And unlike 2000, we're dealing w/a governing party to protest against (even w/a native-son leader)--and echoing the provincial scene hereabouts, the Grits may well be a reasonable parking lot for "Red Tory" voters.

I also wonder whether Joe Clark might have done even better vs the Alliance in 2000 had he not been pre-judged a loser in a lost cause...

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It truly depends on whether one means "NDP progressive" or "Liberal/Green/Red Tory progressive", of course--the latter which might have more clout w/the Mount Royal + condos bunch.  After all, this is Calgary's Smitherman Nation, not their Ford Nation....

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Umm... the riding already went Reform over the PCs... in 1993 and 1997.

And probably would've gone for Reform's Alliance successors in 2000 were Joe Clark not the PC candidate.

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Over 50 in Durham, less in CC. Then there are some claiming the Greens will do well in Victoria...

If it's over 50 in Durham, it's due to the favourite-son stature of the Tory standard-bearer.  But I can still see token sinkage here; though it'd be surprising to see the Cons sink under 40--and even there, an opposition split works on their behalf...

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Excellent news. A Liberal win in CC would mean another nail in the NDP coffin.

Though if the NDP has a solid hold in Victoria and the Liberals are plausibly relegated to 4th in a seat they held less than a decade ago, that kind of counterweighs things, no?  (Besides, a poor CC NDP result may more likely bespeak the party's lingering retrograde lunchbucket stale-brandedness in that city--a malaise more akin to Lingenfelter's Sask than Layton's Canada.)

All in all, the Liberals potentially outpacing the NDP in Durham might be a stronger signal of the bloom being off the Dipper rose, even though that's a place where the NDP in second would have been a pre-Orange Crush pipe dream par excellence...

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The NDP should place 2nd in Durham. They have a strong candidate, and it is next to Oshawa after all.  BUT, it is exurban Toronto, which usually is a wasteland for the NDP.

Prior to the Orange Crush, even w/said strong candidate and even w/being next to Oshawa, to predict 2nd place here would've earned one horselaughs.  Not that they *won't* place 2nd; but I'd go w/the polls indicating that it's more of a race for 2nd than a race for 1st.

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Then again, who knows if the added attention to Calgary Centre actually now being winnable or at least competitive for a non-Conservative might carry on into the next general election...

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Not unlike the fed-prov results in Ontario at the height of the "NDP-Green" split in the late '00's (esp. in campus towns like Guelph, Waterloo, Kingston, etc)