Will Ignatieff Pull The Plug On Harper Monday?

[adma]

That sounds more like Dion. Layton's definitely a politician, and his main goal over everything is to surpass the Liberals to become the official opposition. Look at Saanich-Gulf Islands last election: even though the NDP candidate was forced to drop out of the race due to indecent exposure, his name stayed on the ballot and the NDP carried out a phone campaign to get people to vote for him instead of the environmentalist Liberal, allowing the notably regressive Tory cabinet minister to be re-elected. They did the same thing in Durham, though that was a less close race.

Yeah, yeah, we've been through this before, you're making a mountain out of the "NDP phone campaign" molehill, even the party itself would be embarrassed by such overzealous shenanigans in the name of partisanship, and it isn't like the Liberals or Tories (or even Greens) aren't guilty of similar antics on occasion.

Re Saanich-Gulf Islands, look at it this way: any such "phone campaign" clearly scarcely worked if at all. Briony Penn actually did astonishingly well in vacuuming up the NDP vote in a seat without a terribly strong Liberal history, and it isn't like the rump NDP vote which remained was the sort which would have gone Liberal wholesale, anyway. And at the same time, there was still a *Green* candidate running (who got almost twice the NDP vote)--perhaps he should have withdrawn as well to further "unite the environmentalist left"?

My feeling is that Penn reached her plateau, or close to it; and don't think that she (with an assist from the national leader, naturally) didn't actually drive some erstwhile Liberal-friendly voters into the camp of the "notably regressive" Gary Lunn (whose percentage increased, after all). For it to resolve any further on Penn's behalf would involve a French-style runoff system or Aussie-style preferential-ballot system, either of which would have been better at forcing NDP types to "like it or lump it" than the existing FPTP. (Maybe that's an argument for electoral reform...)

 

[adma]

In the 80s, when the NDP was winning a lot of rural seats, it was simply a matter of protest. Mulroney had become identified with Quebec as the Liberals always were. The NDP were the only Quebec-free option.

Or for that matter, given where most of those seats were, they were the only non-Mulroney, pro-West option--and it helped that *provincially*, the NDP had a strong record of governing or on the opposition benches in the Western provinces...

 

[Brandon716]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/06/24/ekos-poll-voter-intention-conservatives062509.html

Tories take narrow lead after Liberal election threat: poll
Thursday, June 25, 2009
National federal vote intention
Conservatives: 34.8 per cent.
Liberals: 32.6 per cent.
NDP: 14.3 per cent.
Green: 9.3 per cent.
BQ: 9 per cent.

Job approval

Stephen Harper:
34 per cent approve.
46 per cent disapprove.

Michael Ignatieff:
32 per cent approve.
37 per cent disapprove.

Source: EKOS

These poll results are pretty much what I thought. Ignatieff was hurt by crying for an election and not calling his own bluff. It made him look weak and spineless.

But I also think its a temporary blip on the radar so the poll is relatively insignificant in the long term. I just hope that Iggy doesn't continue to go down in the polls and suffer the Dion effect of a boom with an unrepairable bust because of the 24/7 Conservative marketing machine.