Who's going to be the next Liberal leader?

[Brandon716]

Yet you listed no close Liberal seats like Kitchener-Waterloo. How very biased of you.

While you may be wishing for a Conservative majority, I'll be happy to see the opposition take form.

To be honest, I am tired of elections. The next election is guaranteed to bring another minority government of some form.

I wished the coalition agreement would just go through, Harper be voted out, and let the Liberal-NDP coalition come to fruition. It just makes sense, and the next 2-3 years can test whether coalitions will work for Canada.

Maybe in the future the Liberals and NDP can come to a different kind of coalition agreement where they don't run competing candidates against one another. The NDP is the serious left alternative in certain parts of Canada, while Liberals are the serious left alternative in others. And the division of the left really isn't something that needs to continue IMO.

But I don't necessarily advocate that kind of Liberal-NDP coalition, only if Ignatieff gets stuck in minority never-never land would that make sense.

 

[adma]

Yet you listed no close Liberal seats like Kitchener-Waterloo. How very biased of you.

What's the bias? It's just going by the hypothesis that *if* the Tories hold everything they have already, even those they won by a recount...

 

[Brandon716]

Whoaccio didn't take into consideration any of the close Liberal ridings that went Conservative is all, kind of well wishing without taking all the facts into consideration.

 

[adma]

Yeah, but it's still strictly for the sake of statistical argument--that is, in the most recent election, those are the "magic 10" seats which stood within a hair between minority and majority for the Tories. Thus, it's relatively immaterial, not to say presumptious, to assume the Liberal seats gone Tory are absolutely a one-election fluke--especially since a lot of those one-election flukes, from Essex to GlengarryP&R, have endured for two or three elections already. Aside from the imponderable of the Iggy effect, "let's just say" that the existing seats stay Tory again--and if a few shift away, there may be others outside that magic 10 that may shift toward the Tories, esp. if the party's polling over 40% nationally.

Besides, other than the Danny Williams'd Newfie seats, Bill Casey-gone-indy and the footnote case of Wajid Khan, the only seats the Tories lost last time were Louis-Hebert (their weakest Quebec link) and Edmonton-Strathcona.

 

[afransen]

That's relying on low Liberal polling and strong NDP polling in the future as well. Harper has injured himself this week and Iggy actually posted slightly higher leadership numbers than Harper. They should be worried (just wait for the scorched-earth ad campaign in the works).

 

[adma]

Exactly. For flat, strategic, sake-of-argument purposes, I've been factoring out an "Iggy bounce"--but really, it's hard to figure the Liberals going *down* under him, and remember that for all their polling depths, the Grits under Dion still out-seated John Turner. So, there's a good *seat* foundation there. And if Iggy fares worse (at least seatwise) than Dion, that'll be due to outside factors, like the electorate actively deciding Harper's worth a solid majority mandate--sort of like Pearson being no match for the Dief landslide.

An interesting possibility, too, if the Tories go into firm majority territory: Iggy losing his own seat. (Not that it's a likelihood, of course.)

 

[Brandon716]

Its Iggy time. LOL

 

[lordmandeep]

NDP will go down next election.

The whole Coalition thing, hurt them.


Harper is no position that Diefenbaker was in 1958 ^^^......

The next election will be interesting. If it is another boring election, Harper could win a majoirty.

However if it is at least as interesting as the Jan 2006 election (voter turnour went up 5%!), Harper will be hurt, as the Liberal supporters have turned up.


I tell you, Tory support went up hardly nothing, the Liberal support collapsed last election, LITERALLY!!!!

It went down 4000 votes in my area alone and 7000 in the riding beside me. Tories went up max 3000 votes.

 

[kEiThZ]

Its Iggy time. LOL

Repeatedly proven wrong, the scoundrel resorts to inane humour.

Now are you finally convinced that the Libs have no need of the dippers. They just needed stronger leadership than Dion could provide.

 

[Brandon716]

NDP will go down next election.

The whole Coalition thing, hurt them.

Who knows, my preference would be let the coalition work and not have another election right now. Either we we'll end up with a minority government. The coalition offers stability that a new election really can't offer.

 

[adma]

And who knows, the coalition optics may change if Liberal + NDP by themselves, sans Bloc, outseat the Conservatives, or even earn a combined majority tally. (Remember that in the chaos of Paul Martin's first minority mandate, they fell short of a "combined majority" by one or two seats or so--that's where the melodrama of the Chuck Cadman vote kicked in)

 

[Brandon716]

Yea, you never know. But one thing I think can happen if the coalition goes ahead as planned, it'll have time to prove that coalition government can work. After a few years of a successful coalition Canadians' minds will have been transformed from one that believed coalition was impossible to a positive experience.

It would be great for Canadian parliamentary democracy to demonstrate the nation can work together without a majority government. I don't think the Liberals and NDP should merge into one party, but a unified right shouldn't be given rule when they don't represent the election results.

 

[Hydrogen]

Yea, you never know. But one thing I think can happen if the coalition goes ahead as planned, it'll have time to prove that coalition government can work. After a few years of a successful coalition Canadians' minds will have been transformed from one that believed coalition was impossible to a positive experience.

This supposed coalition - if it ever forms a government - will eventually fail internally. As for your predictions about what we Canadians think collectively, allow me to point out to you that the Liberals have done immense damage to themselves by aligning themselves with the NDP and the Bloc. The NDP are irrelevant (the Bloc even more so). The worst thing the NDP could imagine happening to them is to become the government. They'd have to actually perform rather than to just whine. Being in a coalition would allow them to have their cake and eat it, too - they could whine about the Conservatives and then whine about the Liberals once this supposed coalition dissolves. The most the NDP wishes to achieve is official opposition. That actually makes them a threat to the Liberals, and not an ally. There is little chance that the Liberals and the NDP will ever merge as the NDP are essentially socialists and the Liberals are not.

It would be great for Canadian parliamentary democracy to demonstrate the nation can work together without a majority government. I don't think the Liberals and NDP should merge into one party, but a unified right shouldn't be given rule when they don't represent the election results.

The nation has functioned with non-majority governments in the past. It did so most recently with the Conservatives in government. In fact, it ran as long as it did because the opposition refused to bring the government down. Now suddenly, after the throne speech, the opposition parties are against the conservatives. Why? Because for a brief time, their tax payer-supported party funding was threatened. A poor record of fund-raising was a sad fact of the Liberals particularly, and seeing their primary source of cash slimmed down frightened them. I guess they, the NDP and the Bloc feel entitled to an economic stimulus for their party coffers.

 

[Moonmoth]

This forum and politics is overrun by super annoying right wing neo-cons.

 

[kEiThZ]

This forum and politics is overrun by super annoying right wing neo-cons.

....yes they're all 'right wing neo-cons' (can you even define the terms?) to you when you have no intelligent and well defended arguments to contribute. If you really believe the tripe you're spewing than debate us instead of attacking us with epithets. Otherwise, your comments reflect on your character and intelligence not on the rest of us.