With a fall election all but certain, its been hard not to ponder the possible outcomes.
I believe there are 3 possible outcomes, they are:
1. The Conservatives win a minority government. It will probably be an increased minority with the Conservatives taking some seats from the Liberals in suburban Ontario and in the Maritimes. Also, the conservatives will take some seats from the Bloc in rural Quebec, and the NDP will knock out some Liberal seats in the urban centres. Stephane Dion will resign on election night and a leadership election will be called (or Dion will pull a John Tory, but be forced out at a leadership review). The Conservatives will be able to govern as if they had a majority.
2. Canada will become Harperland. If the Conservatives run another excellent campaign like in 2006, Dion fumbles everything and the Lib attack ads backfire, Harper will be able to appeal to the solid majority, which will allow the Conservatives to hold on to their western seats ( and probably get more in BC) and get a total of 60 seats in Ontario, 30 in Quebec, and 20 in the Maritimes. this will result in a solid majority government. The Bloc and the Liberals will be decimated. If Layton plays it right, the NDP might be within striking distance of the Liberals in the seat count (the NDP can only do this if they become a populist working class protest movement like they were in the 1980s). As a result, the Conservatives might become the natural governing party, and Layton will realize his dream of almost replacing the Liberals. Oh, and the Bloc will be sliced in half.
3. Now the more unlikely, but still possible if Harper pulls a Paul Martin. The Liberals squeak out a small minority, something like 120 seats to the Conservatives 110, and the government doesn't last long, something like Joe Clark's. Harper does a massive reorganization and is able to pull off being reelected. Or, if Dion allows it, Layton joins in a coalition with the Liberals, and Canada has its first NDP government!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
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5 comments:
Your three outcome scenario is resonable. The only issue I have with your posting is the statement that we will have an NDP government for the first time in Canadian history. We already had one during the Trudeau minority term in office. (I'm too lazy to look up the exact dates.)That was the period when the Liberals and NDP nearly spent us into bankruptcy with evey goofy social program they could dream up.
My money's on outcome number 2. The surest bet.
OPosted by: Grind a Grit
Look at it this way: in 2006, the Conservatives had everything going for them. They were still riding on the hype of having united the right, the Liberals were still getting tarred with the sponsorship scandal, the RCMP was spreading rumours of another scandal (that turned out to be untrue,) and the Liberals were also scarred by the internal warring between the Martin and Chretien camps.
Yet despite all this, the Conservatives only managed little more than a third of the popular vote, and a very thin minority government.
The 2006 election was the high point for the Conservative Party.
Thanks for commenting on my site.
Your predictions seem reasonable.
I think the Conservatives will be well organized for this election. I don't think that they/you are going to try to reach out to all Canadians. Essentially, Harper will run a selective focus campaign of maintaining their strongholds, reducing the donut holes around some of the major cities, and cracking the Bloc zone.
I do think that the Liberal Green Shift policy will be very confusing for the voters. Dion will be spending too much time explaining it and less time attacking Harper. Also, the Liberal team is not fully united behind Dion.
The NDP needs to aim for a gold medal. Layton needs to attract progressive left of centre voters by attacking Harper. Never aim for the number two man, Dion in this election. It doesn't mean that the NDP will form the government--far from it. Nevertheless, it needs to send a message to the voters that it is ready to govern.
If I were Harper, I would decline to debate Dion and the others this time--or at least postpone it until very late in the campaign. I would even recommend that he debate the Green Party leader one-to-one. He won't get any votes from the environmentalists; he will send some Liberal voters over to the Greens.
I would say there are four possible outcomes, two likely and two unlikely.
1. Liberals win a minority by gaining a few seats in Atlantic Canada, some of the suburban Montreal seats and pick up a good chunk of the seats they lost in 2006 in Ontario. Many of Harper's policies towards Atlantic Canada and Ontario have not been very good for those regions and many still think he holds the traditional Reform view which is contempt for those areas. In the case of Quebec, the Bloc is declining, but this is going both ways, Liberals in the Greater Montreal and to a lesser extent NDP, while Tories in Rural Quebec.
2. Tory Minority, which could either be increased or reduced just depending on how the campaign goes.
The two unlikely scenarios are.
1. Tory Majority - Dion makes a major fumble and Harper takes advantage of it and goes onto win a majority. This would presumably have to happen near the end of the election as most Canadians still are uncomfortable with a Harper majority and many soft Tory voters would back off if a majority looked likely.
2. Liberal majority - As silly as this sounds to many, a 10 point swing in a campaign is not heard of and pretty much every poll puts the Liberals above 30%. The only way though I could forsee this is if the NDP and Green Party vote collapses. I think the Tory vote is pretty solid and won't go much below 33%, but the Green and Dipper vote is quite soft and most of them hate Harper will see the Liberals as the lesser of two evils. In essence you would have to have a united left against a united right and since those on the left outnumber those on the right in Canada, you would get a majority in that scenario.
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