Canadian federal election - 2015

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Am I correct in saying that Saskatchewan = the South?

No. They're more prairie populist. Saskatchewan = North Dakota maybe.

Complete with N Dakota's tendency to return Dem senators/congressmen here and again.

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As recently as 2006 the NDP was in power in Saskatchewan and its not at all inconceivable that they could come back to power in the eventual 'post-Wall era". The main difference between Saskatchewan and Alberta is that Regina and Saskatoon are much smaller cities than Calgary and Edmonton and that Saskatchewan has much more wheat farming while Alberta is more cattle ranching and also the oil and gas sector is bigger in Alberta.

In a good year the Saskatchewan NDP tends to sweep Regina and Saskatoon and win the smaller cities of Moose Jaw and Prince Albert and the heavily FN northern ridings in much the same way as the Alberta NDP swept Edmonton, Lethbridge, Red Deer and Medicine Hat and took the most seats in Calgary and won several northern ridings.

Though the urban-rural political divide in Sask has become much more marked in recent years; up to a generation or so ago, the "agrarian socialist" tradition still had clout.

Above all,  what *really* explains the NDP strength in Sask is that Tommy Douglas got his political foot in the door early and set the tradition going.  Whereas in Alberta, "prairie populism" headed down the Social Credit path instead.

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Re MH-C-W: if you're projecting from 2011 figures, keep in mind that Jim Hillyer ran his infamous "invisible campaign" across a lot of that turf, which brought the Con vote artificially down...

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Re MH-C-W: if you're projecting from 2011 figures, keep in mind that Jim Hillyer ran his infamous "invisible campaign" across a lot of that turf, which brought the Con vote artificially down...

Jim Hillyer is running in MH-C-W is he not? I agree that this is the model's most outlandish target, but if he is the candidate again in MH-C-W there is no reason to inflate the conservative number there.

Yes, he is and the LaVar Payne, the incumbent retiring Medicine Hat MP refuses to endorse him, citing his poor constituency work.

Yet something still feels "off" when we're dealing with a seat which *doesn't* include Lethbridge and *does* include Cardston.  And the NDP would have to poll at provincial Edmontonian levels in Medicine Hat to overcome *that*.

Also, even LaVar Payne tended to underpoll by Alta standards--in 2008 thanks to post-Monte Solberg schism in the ranks, and in 2011 thanks to Medicine Hat's Mayor running for the Liberals.

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To paraphrase Mackenzie King: "Coalition if necessary, but not necessarily coalition".

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At 24%, I highly doubt that the Liberals would be in the 83-103-seat range.  *Half* of that would be likelier.

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What makes the Atlantic so pro-Grit btw?

It was pretty pro-NDP before Trudeau was elected as leader and Harper reformed EI.

Not really, though Alexa made them viable there.  And remember that their most consistent redoubts have been more like singular personal-mandate affairs (Godin, Stoffer, Harris, and maybe to some degree Leslie as an Alexa carryer-onner)

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The Conservatives will fair better attacking the Liberals, because that's where they're going to make the most gains. A strong NDP means the Tories can appeal to blue Liberals who are afraid of an NDP victory.

Except that there's not much left to gain.  More like, that's where they'll cement the most holds.

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Again: below 25%, I *cannot* see the Liberals winning 80 seats, much less 100.

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Angus Reid's Ontario numbers seem more apt to me.  As nice as it is to think that ridings like Perth-Wellington, Oxford, Chatham-Kent-Essex and Elgin-Middlesex-London are "leaning NDP" - I don't think the Tories are under 30% in Ontario.

Are there are any seats held by the Ontario PCs that the federal Tories could really lose - besides Nipissing perhaps?

Of those four, CKE's likeliest--after all, provincially, the ONDP got 31.1% vs Rick Nicholls' 37.8% last year...

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Essex and Brantford-Brant aren't PC though.

Don't confuse Essex with CKE.

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You guys really think the federal Tories are likely to do worse than Hudak in southwestern Ontario?  I think he came close to hitting the floor in the province.

Depends on how the chips may fall.  After all, province-wide, the NDP gaining seats like Sarnia-Lambton and CKE could be counteracted by the Cons holding more of its 416 fortress, thanks to Grit collapse and weak NDP infrastructure...

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The Conservatives finished second, 8% behind the NDP. It is adjacent to Harper's Quebec lieutenant riding so they will target this and could benefit if there is a more even split of NDP and Bloc vote.

Be careful with assessing Con chances in Jonquiere; it's been more of a spot Jean-Pierre Blackburn thing than a genuine Con-lean thing in recent years...

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Yea, the Liberals did manage to win provincially in Barrie by 4 points.

They won the northern riding but not the southern riding, which was my point.

The last federal election saw Barrie at 57% CPC. The two new ridings are at 54% and 61% CPC, with the northern, more rural riding being less conservative than the original. Not a big difference, but it's clear which one is worth targeting. Even though it's an open seat now, 61% CPC would put Barrie-Innisfil as one of the safer CPC ridings in Ontario.

Actually, re Barrie, it's a bit more complicated--which is why I'd rather momentarily look upon it as a functional draw.

Yes, BSOM goes into this with the "weaker" Con mandate, and that's by and large because it contains the Lib-leaning heart of Old Barrie.  But also skewing things are the bits of other ridings: neither Bruce Stanton nor Kellie Leitch to the north enjoyed as overwhelming a landslide advantage as Peter Van Loan did to the south, and complicating Leitch's case was Helena Guergis's independent candidacy.  And given current Ontario polling showing the options looking less obviously "binaural" as they once did, here's a *different* twist we must consider: while the Liberals definitely had their stronger (if still 3rd place) notional 2011 numbers in BSOM (assisted by "riural" strength in exurban Midhurst and Medonte's resort/vacation subdivisions), the NDP actually have a slightly *higher* 2011 share in Barrie-Innisfil than in BSOM--in fact, the lakefront communities and subdivisions in Innisfil proper (much like their Georgina counterparts across Lake Simcoe) have long been defined by a "white trash populism" that could readily go NDP if it found that option viable.  As happened in 1990--in fact, when Simcoe Centre (i.e. Barrie + Innisfil + Bradford) went NDP that year, its share was strongest in the Innisfil part.  And strangely enough, if you parse the numbers it doesn't seem like subsequent suburbanizing growth has dampered that NDP potential in Innisfil, either.

So, don't just write off one on behalf of the other, despite whatever the 2011 notional numbers may tell you.

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If he has any interest getting back into politics, he would be a star recruit for the provincial Liberal Party and in many ways, his Red Toryism would be a much better fit for them than it is for the federal Conservatives, if he has any driving interest in provincial issues.

Though, coming from the Canadian Alliance wing, James Moore isn't so much a "Red Tory" as a mainstreamish Con whose "liberal" values are more of an authentically generational trait than anything.  (By comparison, Pierre Poilievre is more of an out-and-out zealot.)

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If Ontario actually had close to a three-way split in the popular vote, I suspect that the seat distribution would be LETHAL for the Liberals. In would guess than in that scenario the NDP would sweep northern Ontario, the downtown and lower income parts of the GTA, the industrial towns of Hamiltonb, London, Windsor, Oshawa, Sarnia etc... the CPC would win all the rural seats and the more upper income parts of the GTA like York Region, Halton etc... and the Liberals could be left with almost nothing - what is their area of strength in Ontario? there is none

The way things are flattening out, I can see the Libs gaining 905 seats almost in spite of themselves...

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As long as Liberal + NDP >169, the movers appear at 24 Sussex.

Though the optics would be awkward and a little kneejerk if it were CPC with around 165 and NDP and Lib with 85 apiece.  Just saying.

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As long as Liberal + NDP >169, the movers appear at 24 Sussex.

Though the optics would be awkward and a little kneejerk if it were CPC with around 165 and NDP and Lib with 85 apiece.  Just saying.

It's still a loss of seats for the Conservatives. A Liberal/NDP coalition would enjoy a stronger popular mandate than it did in 2008 (http://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2014/12/it-is-neck-and-neck-as-we-head-into-election-year/), especially since it will not involve the Bloc. And why will Justin risk a caucus revolt and support keeping Steve in 24 Sussex when, as leader of the only party which gained seats, he can move in himself?

That is, if one assumes that it's as cut and dried as "two left parties vs one right party".  *Which it isn't.*  And at 165-85-85 numbers, who's to say that the caucus revolt wouldn't be in the *other* direction?  I mean, to try and assemble a coalition out of *that* circumstance would be as airheadedly twerpy as things get: "oooh, we milquetoasts just *have* to get together to Stop Evil Evil Evil Stephen Harper" in the worst way.  And Harper would stomp the blazes out of such a Coalition Of The Wimps.

Of course, the "Coalition Of The Wimps-ness" reduces with every shave off Harper (i.e. it becomes more plausible in a 135-100-100 circumstance).  Though personally, I feel that even existing Con seat projections are a bit over-pumped-up through projection-from-2011 methodology, i.e. there's more "potential" in more seats than the opposition realizes...

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The entire Liberal campaign will have been entirely about providing a safer-than-NDP choice to replace Harper. It's conceivable the Liberals will support a Conservative minority government with a more Red Tory-style leader (so they can claim to have removed Harper), but there aren't any left. And Harper isn't the type of person who will quit unless he was truly forced to.

But again, if it were an extraordinary 165-85-85 circumstance--even if 85 + 85 = 170, it'd look ridiculous.  With those figures, the practical likelihood is that Harper would continue governing on a "conditional" basis a la 2006-11.  You don't like it?  I don't like it?  Tough titty.

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Forum's seat projection is just so bad. The NDP would get more than a 25 seat margin with a 7% victory, and no way would the Conservatives lead the Liberals by 30 seats if their vote share is equal. Mess.

Why not with the latter?  After all, the Cons have incumbent-seat advantage, and the Libs could very well now suffer from the same monkey-in-the-middle syndrome that eternally kept its UK namesake's seat totals down...

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And for every 1997, there's a 1983, i.e. Labour w/209 seats on 27.6%, SDP w/23 seats on 25.4%.

Better by-any-means-possible comparisons to 1997 might be the most recent Quebec (on behalf of CAQ) and Alberta (on behalf of Wildrose) elections.  Or even, to a limited degree, the 1990 Rae landslide in Ontario, where the depleted PCs lost overall share yet still gained seats, firmed up existing incumbent seats, and drove a number of Liberal incumbents to third.

If there's something like *that* anti-Con dynamic working, then we might see the the third-place Liberals taking back a lot of the 905 belt "anyway".  But as of yet, it's hard to tell if that's the case, or if the Grits are cognizant of the fact...

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Trudeau won in 2008 and 2011 because he had built up a ground game that was strong enough to overcome incumbent advantage and one-time wave over-performance, respectively. That's what reduced the swing away from the Libs/BQ and toward the NDP.

However, I think his ground game was also augmented by a touch of Grit-central "Save Justin" overdrive--perhaps inadvertently sacrificing a few presumed "safe seats" (NDG, Pierrefonds-Dollard, etc) in the process.

Also, any NDP gains were likely tempered by the Bloc candidacy of Vivian Barbot, the former MP who, pre-Orange Crush, seemed Justin's primary threat.

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Never, ever did I say strategic voting was the only reason, but it absolutely exists. All you got to do is look at voting patters in adjacent ridings. I know you're originally from Ottawa, so let's look at Ottawa for an example. The neighbourhood of Carlington is split down the middle, with the eastern half in Ottawa Centre and the western half in Ottawa West-Nepean. Not much difference between both halves demographically. Yet, the NDP won the eastern half, and did not win the western half. Progressives in the eastern half voted NDP because Paul Dewar was the MP, and they knew they had to vote for him to stop the Conservatives. In the western half, where the NDP has never won before, progressives were split. Some voted NDP due to the surge, while others voted Liberal, knowing that the NDP never does well there. As a result, the Conservatives won most of the polls there due to vote splitting.

Not just vote splitting, but "incumbent advantage" and "perceived viability", i.e. if the boundaries of OC were redrawn to include *all* of Carlington, there wouldn't be such hesitancy in the hitherto non-NDP parts.  (A little like how in the various draws of Niagara Centre/Welland riding, a lot of the the "parts added" magically discovered their inner NDPdom.)

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Doesn't make sense that the NDP would do better in Kingston provincially than federal. Weird.

Maybe it's a "candidacy matter", if they're using past-provincial/current-federal candidates for the question--Holland being provincially stronger for the NDP, Gerretsen being federally stronger for the Liberals...