2012 NDP leadership convention

[adma]

One out-of-caucus possibility the mainstream media is offering: Brian Topp.

Oh, and re "strike from the list for age reasons": Raj Pannu would be over 80 come the next federal election.

[adma]

Julian, Dewar, Ducasse, Topp VS Mulcair

I doubt the NDP would put up w/a leadership race w/o at least one viable female contender.

[adma]

Plus she's unilingual, an automatic disqualifier for anyone who aspires to lead a federal party.

More properly, she isn't fluent in French.  But as far as "unilingual" goes: as you can tell by her accent, even English isn't her first (or at least "formative") language...

[adma]

At a moment like this, Olivia would come off worse if she *didn't* look, uh, "horrible" for the occasion.

[adma]

Who said it has to be subtle? Though even the best-laid plans can go awry: just ask Gerard Kennedy, Bob Winters or Paul Hellyer.

Or Michael Ignatieff in 2006.

[adma]

Robert Chisholm, and Francoise Boivin are too politically weak to win, they could not even win past elections on their own "home turf"

In Chisholm's case, that's unfair.

[adma]

I don't think a "labour" reference is an "OMG moment"--look, she's NDP, she is what she is.  "Labour" just isn't that much of a critical dirty word in Canadian terms.  "Socialist" might be.  But not "labour".

[adma]

I have never seen Peggy Nash described as "too leftwing" for the NDP.

Not too left wing for the NDP. Too left wing to win an election in Canada - and I'm operating on the assumption the NDP voters will purposely pick a leader they think can win an election in Canada, which means that anyone who is even "Mainstream" for the NDP is "too left wing" for this leadership race as I see it.

Then again, Stephen Harper was seen as too right wing to win an election in Canada.  With "Reform" or "firewall" being even bigger "stigma words" than "labour".

In the end, Peggy Nash is no less mainstream than Jack Layton, really--except that her background is in labour/unions, not the municipal politics stage.  Which, in the end, renders her dryer, not left-er.

[adma]

Personally, I feel that both Leslie and Ashton would be shocked that you're discussing them in such horny-nerdy-boy terms.

[adma]

PEI matters to the NDP as rural Devon matters to the Labour Party.

Could Charlottetown be a Plymouth or Exeter equivalent in utero?

[adma]

Mulcair would have been courted by the Mulroney Conservatives in 1984, for sure.  (Remember: Nick Auf der Maur ran for the Tories that year)

[adma]

WOw, todays seems to be a big day for endorsements!

Peggy Nash got some big municipal endorsements from ON and BC, can we see the targetting yet?:
Adam Vaughan, Toronto City Councillor for Ward 20

Interesting.  He's usually thought of in terms of his Liberal family lineage...

[adma]

Is there any rationale for the Liberal Party to continue to exist in Canada. How many people fall into the category of "too smart to vote Tory and too rich to vote NDP"?

Well, the Lib (Dem) Party continues to exist in Britain.

And besides, anti-Conservatives need a viable parking spot in seats like Don Valley West.

[adma]

Oshawa's changed a lot...but unlike in the post-Rae years, we're dealing with an oppositional rather than third/fourth/fifth-party NDP, which ought to provide a psychological boost in areas like Oshawa that do have NDP history.  And furthermore, a lot of Oshawa's Conservative vote to date has been the default of incumbency/strong-government/safe-choice assumptions--IOW in 2011, it was a bolstered NDP vs a bolstered Conservative party, which in the case of Ontario's Tory-incumbent seats generally tended to favour the Tory incumbent, especially since the NDP surge was mid-campaign out of the blue.

The difference this time is that Oshawa'll have to share its "905 NDP targetability" with an unforeseen number of other 905-belt seats, for any number of reasons.

[adma]

The 905 is pure suburbia and exurbia, and as such is generally incompatible with social-democratic politics in Canada. It excludes the city of Toronto (that's area code 416). Oshawa, as mentioned, was historically the exception to this rule, but that's fading. As for Bramalea-Gore-Malton, that was a particularly strong candidate running first federally, then provincially. The region is simply too wealthy overall to be conducive to an NDP surge, barring a targeted and successful appeal by the party to Asian voters (particularly South Asian).

It isn't that the region is incapable of supporting the NDP (unlike some rural areas in Ontario), it's just that the party is starting from a weak position and has economic arguments that don't play so well to the wealthy 905.

If suburbia is so "incompatible with social democratic values" why do you suppose the NDP regularly wins seats in the Vancouver suburbs in places like Surrey and Burnaby and Coquitlam and Maple Ridge. The 905 region is very diverse. Some seats like Thornhill are very rich an unwinnablr for the NDP but there are demographic trends that are turning Brampton and parts of Mississauga into extensions of Scarborough. There are more and more low income, largely south Asian areas in 905 and as the NDP emerges as the Lear alternative to the Tories, I think you will see some big NDP breakthroughs there next time. Already the latest Ontario poll by Forum Rsearch shows NDP support in the 905 'burbs to be at 30%!

Even Thornhill's present absolute-barrel-bottom NDP weakness might have less to do with income demographics per se than with ethnic-bloc demographics; not unlike how Mount Royal has become the weakest NDP seat in Montreal.  (Though it isn't as if impressions of Mulcair as "pro-Israel" will make Thornhill winnable, either.)

On the whole, I'd agree that the bigger 905 barrier for the NDP is a history of weak ground troups; otherwise, it'd be as viable as it is in much of Greater Vancouver.  The "too-weathy 905" argument pertains more to Oakville or Dufferin-Caledon circumstances than Brampton/Mississauga circumstances--and indeed, Bramalea-Gore-Malton almost did Greater Vancouver one better last time, which may augur surprisingly well...

[adma]

The suburban areas where the NDP wins in Vancouver are a lot different than the 905. Burnaby and Surrey are much more ethnically diverse and less well off. The areas of suburban Vancouver that are more wealthy, and less diverse tend to be more like the 905 (North Van, Langley, South Surrey, etc)

Though increasingly *less* significantly different--and it's safe to say that some of the 905 seats lower on the average-household-income list (say, Miss E-Cooksville) *could* now be targetable on Surrey/Burnaby grounds, esp. if the NDP actually start looking like a viable proposition for more than just poteaux-level candidates now that they're Official Opposition.

Have you ever been to Mississauga or Brampton these days?  They're absolutely ethnically diverse.  (And as proof that average-household-income doesn't always jibe with political inclinations, one of the seats lowest on that list, Richmond, has *never* been much on NDP radar, federally or provincially.)

[adma]

And another thing which'll have to help the NDP in the 905 is if prominent ex-Liberals in the area incline in their direction--maybe not altogether doing a Francoise Boivin, but...

[adma]

Or, he would have been, pre-2011 (and certainly not provincially in places like Manitoba)

[adma]

The "orange wave" already hit suburban Toronto and I don't see why they can't sweep Scarborough, expand from their showing in Bramalea-Gore-Malton to other Brampton seats, and pick up Mississauga East-Cooksville, Ajax-Pickering, etc.  They do after all win these types of seats in suburban Vancouver.

Though a barrier in Ajax-Pickering might be if Mark Holland runs again for the Grits.  (Still, in a seat like that, the NDP ought to try harder than the last couple of poteaux-level outings--the last one where the candidate locked himself out of campaigning through a pre-booked vacation.)

[adma]

Ajax-Pickering appears too wealthy and suburban to go NDP.  After all much of the assumption goes on the idea that every Liberal vote would vote NDP if the Liberals weren't around.  I think ridings like York West and the Scarborough ones are far more likely.  Also if it looks like the NDP cannot beat the Tories in seats but can reduce them to a minority and form a coalition, you may see a lot of strategic voting thus Ajax-Pickering would then go Liberal.  As for ridings like St. Paul's, you might see the Liberals split right down the middle or perhaps even go Conservative despite disagreeing with their social policies.  Vancouver-False Creek in BC goes for the BC Liberals and it has a similiar profile to St. Paul's.  In addition in Ajax-Pickering, the Tories got 45% so it would be tough to win that riding without pulling away some Tory votes.  A riding like Don Valley East or Scarborough Centre is more doable since the Tories got under 40% and the NDP over 25% in both.

For the record, the geography encompassed by Ajax-Pickering "went NDP" provincially under Bob Rae in '90 (Scarborough-Rouge River didn't).  And while one can offer the suburban-growth counter-argument; in truth (such was Layton's reach) a lot of the highest-growth, newest suburban development was actually *above* the seat's NDP par last time.  So, transposed to 1990ish patterns, that might mean a solider, not weaker, hypothetical grip. 

So, nothing should be ruled out, even the "NDP pulling away Tory votes" prospect.  But yes, I agree that York West, DVE, the Scarborough seats are more likely--I don't think anyone's disputing that, even those offering hypotheses on behalf of Ajax-Pickering...

[adma]

I'm not assuming anything, except to say that in order for the NDP that have to win in Ontario they'd have to drive down the Liberal vote significantly. 

Well, two things would help: Liberal non-incumbency in critical seats, and official opposition status raising NDP efforts beyond skeleton token level.

Don't forget that a few existing Liberal incumbents, like Judy Sgro, are getting up there in years and could well retire by 2015...