Sunday, March 16, 2008

Oh well then!

No need for Liberals to worry. Bob Rae is confident they can win all four byelections.

No point in voting then, right? It's a fait accompli.


* * * *

Monday Update:

Sun - Even a Grit sweep could hurt Dion:

...Even if his party sweeps all four races, Dion will face unusual pressure, warns Kathy Brock, associate professor in the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University. If the Liberals take Toronto Centre, "Dion is going to have to look out, because Bob Rae does not know how to be the Number Two person," Brock says.

"It'll make it very tough for Stephane Dion: He's going to be sitting in the House (of Commons) with Bob Rae on one side of him and Michael Ignatieff on the other and with both of them getting the camera at different times...





21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Catch any?

A few of us have been wondering where all the reports on 'polls' are for the 4 by-elections.We are usually swamped with them.
Is the media ignoring them because they aren't working for the Libs?

bluetech

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Polls, schmolls. They're depending on hubris for their predictions.

Anonymous said...

Bob the champaign socialist needs to win so he can lead the destruction of the LPC. Go team Go! (real conservative)

hunter said...

It's not going to be who wins, it's going to be by how much.

If the Conservatives or NDP make in roads and cut the margins, Liberals are going to get a feel for how the marginal/close ridings will go.

maryT said...

How right were the polls in the US primaries or the AB election. I will be looking at the %age of the wins.

Swift said...

It will be very interesting to hear Bob's post election analysis if my prediction is right. He will win with 47% of the vote. Martha also wins, but with a disappointing 38% of the vote. The gift that keeps on giving gave he Conservatives the victory in Saskatchewan, with a surprising 42% vote total. The real race is for the 2,3 and perhaps 4 positions, and I would not bet the big money on Joan to win that one. I've heard from several sources that Vancouver Quadra is not the easy Liberal victory that seems obvious when you look at the last election results. So I'm calling this a close Conservative win. This is for one reason. Just imagine some peoples reaction when a Liberal campaign worker tries to tell them how very important it is that they get out and vote.

Anonymous said...

I predict a Lib Loss in Sask, very close in Van Quadra and the Ray-Bob to eeek out a victory in Ontario. MarHallFin should win too.
If this takes place then it will be a BIG loose for Da Libs.

If they win all 4 then no big deal really, Dion will want to go to a national vote (good) and Jane Tabor will be squeely. same old same old

Anonymous said...

Good point about the polls Anonymous, I never thought about that! Have any of the non-media groups done polls?

I think Toronto centre is a hail-Marry pass in a snow storm. Willowdale might be possible, Quadra more possible, and I think we will get D-M-C........unless a LARGE BLOCK of natives vote for Mrs. Beatty, not that all would, just postulating.

At the minimum, I hope we get one, NDP another, and the liberals get the T.O. spots with a psychological blow (way less support then previous).

Even if there was a chance for Mr. Meredith (He does have one main focus which is crime, and is not that politically astute) I would really like to see Rae get it. I mean, I think the man is nothing but trouble, I just hope there is enough tension on the strings which tie him with Ignatieff. I think he will do far more damage then Dion could ever do. Dion (who I really like) does seem to have convictions and Ideas, Rae just seems to shout typical liberal mantras, and fashions, and on top of it, I find him to be a like an arrogant broken-record who likes to run filibusters in a patronizing manner. I just think he's slimy, and I don't mean to be an A$$ when I say that, It’s just being honest. So Mr. Rae, if you are reading, if you think I'm slime, I do not care, as long as you are being honest! Good luck Mr. Rae, I hope your dreams come true in running the Liberal party to the ground as long as you are the skipper and crew is saying “I – I – Skip”........that's my dream too!!!

Anonymous said...

From Joanne's link:

""Recognition is obviously pretty good at the door, you get some people who are unhappy, but for the most part it's been a very positive experience," said Rae, who was sworn in as premier in 1990 and served for about five years before being replaced by Conservative Mike Harris."

High unemployment, high taxes, labour strife (with an NDP government, for #$%^& sakes!) ridiculous "employment equity" laws that have since been repealed, these are the legacies of Bob Rae when he ran the Ontario government.

He's a confirmed loser with bad policies, which I guess, now makes him a good Liberal.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

I've heard from several sources that Vancouver Quadra is not the easy Liberal victory that seems obvious when you look at the last election results. So I'm calling this a close Conservative win. This is for one reason. Just imagine some peoples reaction when a Liberal campaign worker tries to tell them how very important it is that they get out and vote.

Swift, hilarious!!! It took a few minutes for that one to sink in, and then I was ROTFL.

maryT said...

How many NDP perons have crossed to the liberals in the past few years.
In AB we had several liberals run as conservatives just to get elected, but we finally got rid of all or most of them. -ralph and dinning-
Do you really think they have changed their lifelong views. Is their real purpose to ruin the liberals, remember the story about the Trojan Horse.
The NDP will never form a federal government, but if they can influence the liberal agenda, they will soon form one party.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

The NDP will never form a federal government, but if they can influence the liberal agenda, they will soon form one party.

I hope not. It would be bad for the CPC.

Anonymous said...

pols,schmolls
exactly .I have my own conspiracy about that but Norm Chomsky's latest article has some very good observations about polls ... I don't know but do you think he might be a conspirator ...katou
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19540.htm

Anonymous said...

There were telephone polls done in 3 of the ridings by the Green Party, with results posted on their website. Martha was at 36%, with the conservative next at about 18, Saskatchewan was the Tory at 26% with the Greens second at 18, and Quadra had the Liberal at 24%, the Green at 19 and the Tory at 18.

Full results on the Green Party website.

maryT said...

One reason I am hoping for a decreased majority for Rae/Hall and in BC is -there are another 24 liberals who are not running, and it might send a message those seats are not very safe for new candidates.
And, it is St Patrick's Day, will that encourage voters to vote green.

Lord Kitchener's Own said...

I love all the Tory pre-spin over the by-elections! Bob Rae expresses confidence in his own party's prospects and it's spun as "the Liberals probably don't think we should bother voting!". It's suggested that the Liberals might win all 4 elections, so I'm confident that if they win 3 out of 4 it will be painted as an unmitigated DISASTER. And if they do win all 4, then it's not about the results, it's all about the "margins". And besides, even if they win all four in a historic landslide then THAT's a problem for Dion too. And besides all of that, they're by-elections, not "real" elections anyway. And on and on and on...

I swear, if God Almighty came down from Heaven with a choir of angels to personally endorse the Liberals, Tory blogs would be filled with articles about the "awakening of the atheist vote" and the impropriety of God interfering in the mortal plane, and social conservatives would declare that despite their long affiliation with the church, they never really did trust that hippie Jesus.

We all know the song, it's been playing since Paul Martin was PM. Everything the Liberals say or do is wrong. Everything they touch turns to mud. At this point, I'm tempted to vote Conservative just to give them a majority so everyone will shut the Hell up about how terrible the Liberals are (except in those circumstances where the Liberals having done something bad in the past is used to rationalize the Tories continuing the tradition in the present).

We get it. The Liberals are bad, and they're incompetent, and Dion is a geek, and spineless, and they all smell.

Next chapter please.

molarmauler said...

Joanne, I hope the Liberals win all four or we'll never have an election.
If Dion loses 2 out the 4, Harper could introduce a confidence motion into the House instructing John Baird to go to Stornaway and beat Dion's dog to death with the bumper of a Hummer and Dion's only response before abstaining would be to politely ask them not to get the carpet bloody.

Anonymous said...

Plus, when in Ottawa, Bob Rae works best as an opposition federal MP. Who knows? maybe he'll bring that quality to the new look libs. The never forming government quality that is.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Molar - I see Kate at SDA like that one! ;)

maryT said...

We have to burst the bubble of the liberals and the media as they will just mention the percentage win by Rae and Hall. With a little more than 20% turnout, and around 20,000 votes cast in Rae's riding, that 59% is not a lot of votes.
Same with Hall.
Seems lots of liberals followed their leader and abstained.
Maybe Toronto isn't as liberal as the media spins. About 80% did not vote for either liberal.
Does anyone have the vote count from 2006 in those 2 ridings, or in Quandra. And, we are winning in Sask. The media has just not declared the winner.

Lord Kitchener's Own said...

maryT,

Doesn't spinning so fast make you dizzy???

Mr. Rae's 14,187 votes may not be "a lot" compared to the number of votes generally cast in his riding General Election (Bill Graham got over 30,00 in 2006) but we don't compare candidates to how well the last person did in the district by pure vote totals (btw, Graham had 52.2% of the vote in 2006 to Rae's 59.2% while Jim Peterson won 55.2% in 2006 to Findlay's 59.3% last night).

Say what you will about Bob Rae's 14,187 votes, but it's just a bit better than the second place candidate's 3,299 (or the Conservatives 2,982). Plus, if your supposition is right, and a lot of Liberal voters stayed home, then I guess the reality is actually that Rae could have done even BETTER than he did. If Mr. Rae's margin of victory was a result of Liberal voters abstaining, then I'd say Toronto is actually WAY more Liberal than even I had thought. If he wins almost 5 to 1 under those circumstances, imagine how he'd do if Liberal voters were fired up! (Another interesting stat... even though there were well over twice as many votes cast in Toronto Centre in 2006 than there were last night, Mr. Rae's 14,187 votes from last night STILL would have been enough to win in 2006, as the second place candidate for the NDP won 14,036 votes in the 2006 General Election).

If you want to "burst the bubble" of the "liberals and the media" I'd focus on Saskatchewan. 'Cause Martha Hall Findlay and Bob Rae BOTH increased the Liberals share of the vote in their ridings, even though that share was at 55% in Findlay's riding and 52% is Rae's in 2006.

The Tories did very well in Saskatchewan, moving from 41% of the vote in a loss to 47% of the vote in a win. Why not focus on that? Your argument over turnout in Toronto is equivalent to me pointing out that Rae and Findlay each individually received more votes than were cast for ALL CANDIDATES COMBINED in Saskatchewan's byelection (total votes cast in Desnethé--Missinippi--Churchill River: 10,462). It SOUNDS like I'm making an interesting point about how well Findlay and Rae did, but it's irrelevant (Well, not IRRELEVANT. I'm still not thrilled with the idea that a Toronto riding gets one MP to represent 93,000 voters and a Saskatchewan riding gets one MP to represent 42,000 voters, but I've long since come to accept the underrepresentation of urban voters in our system).

I don't see the point of trying to downplay the Toronto wins given the nature of the night. After all, wasn't 3 out of 4 for the Liberals supposed to be a horrible defeat?