04.24.2011 07:14 AM

KCCCC Day 30: GOTV, and a couple other things


 

 

41 Comments

  1. Paul R Martin says:

    Enjoy the country air Warren. It will be good for you. The latest Nanos poll indicates that the Conservatives are very close to a majority. They will pick up a lot of seats in Ontario and Atlantic Canada. To win a majority, they have to hold on to most of their Quebec seats and to benefit from the Liberals and NDP splitting the vote in several riding’s. Here in Brampton, it looks as if Liberal MP’s Dhalla and Kania are toast. I wouldn’t be surprised if Malhi and Bains are also in tight races. Harper no longer sees a need to visit Brampton although Kenny did make a visit last week.

    • James Curran says:

      What are you talking about. Kenney has been living there in Brampton for months. He hasn’t been near his own ridinig this entire campaign. The sikhs are starting to think he’s a candidate.

      • Paul R Martin says:

        It just seems that way. He is also working hard in Mississauga. A couple of my Chinese friends have met him at a fundraiser in Mississauga. One has posted the photographs on her facebook page.

    • MississaugaLibPeter says:

      Malhi is good. Dhalla is toast (by someone who should never be an MP), Kania is probably toast (but hope not), Bains is in the fight of his life (unfortunately he has has had cakewalks up until now so he lost some of his touch). BUT ALL THIS COULD CHANGE IF WE HAVE A GOOD/BAD WEEK OF CAMPAIGNING.

  2. Swervin' Merv says:

    Layton may be using his cane on the other parties, but Warren’s link to David Taras’ book also reminds us that the most interesting laps of the race have yet to come. As with the clash of political pundits, so too with the performance of party leaders: “people tune in to watch in the same way that people go to stock car races: not to see who wins but to see who crashes.”

  3. James says:

    Hey Warren, although I’m not voting NDP, Layton’s surge in Quebec is a positive sign for federalism and national unity. Sovereignty for Quebec now seems so 1970s/1980s; all the sovereigntist warhorses and stalwarts like Parizeau and Marois can’t seem to capture the imagination of the young generation of francophones, and Layton’s popularity is a reflection of this. Duceppe’s cozy embrace of Marois during her leadership confidence vote the other weekend had very bad optics for the BQ and sent voters fleeing to the NDP. BQ MPs are tired political lifers who actually enjoy being on Parliament Hill and don’t want anything to change. I think we’re in for a big “Quebec shocker” next week!

  4. Re Getting Out The Vote, a visit to your local Advance Poll may provide some clues as to why voters under 30 are not showing up. The technology used at the Advance Polls this weekend, and I assume on May 2, is straight out of the 1940’s. Pens, pencils and reams of paper. Not a smart card, computer, or bar code scanner to be seen. Lots of Election Canada contract workers recording data by hand. Hand writing! The most current piece of modern office technology I saw was a Post It Note. So….this means the voting process is outrageously slow. If there are more than 40 people in front of you, plan on spending an hour at least to vote. Could this be one reason, among many, why young voters are giving the polls a pass? And why over 40% of the population across all ages did not vote in 2008? Yes, I know about hanging chads and all, but surely someone, somewhere has developed a more user-friendly way to run a national election?

    • Chris says:

      I am only a few years past 30 and I voted early, and as I was doing so I noticed the same thing you did – my reaction was quite the opposite though – I was happy to see hard copies and human control over every step of the process.

      Many reasonably tech-savvy under 30’s are well aware of the countless problems and questionable results produced by some of the american electronic voting systems. The computer systems take a lot of trust out of the process, in my opinion (and others)

      • Derek Pearce says:

        Totally agree. I voted early too– and was reassured that once my ballot was marked, it was impossible to manipulate. We’re between a rock and hard place with the youth vote– sure they’d participate if it could be done electronically, but wow the potential for abuse there is frightening. Anybody remember the TV show version of “Max Headroom”? The TV network was the government in that show, and all voting was done electronically and was twisted. That was fiction, but fiction with a message.

    • Gary says:

      I’m a software developer and under 30 and certainly will be voting. I’m quite happy with the process as it is. I can think of all sorts of ways to potentially screw up voting with complicated computerized schemes — both intentional and malicious as well as accidental. I love technology and work on creating new technology every day… but simpler is better a lot of the time. Especially on something as important as voting.

  5. Steve T says:

    Excellent comments, Gord. In particular, the naivitee and/or anti-corporate sentiment possessed by many NDP voters – as well as the relatively unchallenged manner in which they’ve been able to promote their simplistic Disney-esque platform during this election. Their policies are all about 2 inches deep, with lots of nice-sounding platitudes, but nothing fiscally-realistic to support them.

    If they become the Official Opposition during this election, get ready for a much-deserved critical analysis of the Dippers by the Libs and CPC – one which, I assume, will potentially bring to light the reasons why socialism has been discarded in much of the world. WK’s strategy of trying to outflank the NDP on the left may have worked during this election, but I’m guessing it won’t next time around.

    • nic coivert says:

      “critical analysis of the Dippers by the Libs and CPC – one which, I assume, will potentially bring to light the reasons why socialism has been discarded in much of the world.”

      I call bullshit on that. What sort of real critical analysis will Harper’s Conservatives bring to bear on socialism and the idea that good economic policy is sound social policy? None. They are incapable of unbiased unpartisan studies that question their intent, if they weren’t they’d have already realized their mistakes.

      The reason ideas of economic equality are out of fad is because the (Global, American)l Market is coming after the money. Canada is the last land of opportunity, America has been done used up. Big money has been spent convincing a portion of the population to support the imposter.

  6. jack says:

    One thing is clear. The con vote is not moving. 37%. Still, 63% want someone else. And harper must be pleased. The vote splitting could give him a large majority. That’s the question right now.

    • Pete says:

      Don’t count the votes just yet!!!
      I know of at least 5 seats the Harpercrites will lose in Ontario even as they pick up a few Lib seats. The Libs are motivated in close ridings and have their best ground game going in many many other ridings. For instance I see Oakville reverting back to the Libs because the Tory Terence Young is sputtering and getting all sorts of bad press with lies and stupid stuff he has said, while the Lib Max Khan has a veritable army of volunteers going door to door. Khan has put out absolutely excellent material on policies and local needs while successfully cultivating his ward constinuency where the Libs lost the last few times time out. He is becoming very popular overall and is a potential Liberal star.

      Two Kitchener ridings are probably coming back to the Libs. I won’t mention others here because I don’t want to wake up the tories. I also don’t see the cons taking all the 905 seats they have targetted. Even Vaughn could be a problem for them as the private hospital funding is playing big up there.
      The overall election results in Ontario are far from settled PARTICULARLY if the Libs are effficient at getting their vote out and it appears they are from my vantage.

      • James Curran says:

        I agree. And, oh, the NDP is zero factor in any of the ridings you mention. Sorry Jack. In Ontario you dippers have zero traction outside of Hamilton and Winsdsor.

      • Paul R Martin says:

        Etobicoke Lakeshore could be interesting. The sitting member does not live in the riding and has been spending very little time there. This is my long shot bet for a big upset.

    • paul b says:

      Nor is the Liberal number moving either. Ignatieff must be pleased as he can still become PM without ever winning an election. Oh, and by the way, Chretien won a majority with 38%. Don’t remember anyone lamenting the fact 62% never voted for him. I guess whatever you think justifies making your point.

  7. Marie B. says:

    No – they skipped Friday. This morning’s poll includes Saturday.

  8. John says:

    Nanos Did Not Poll on Good Friday. No calling as per Nic’s tweet.

  9. reformatory says:

    The subtitle in the SUN article is incorrect. Of course this election will change many things… even if the seat counts remains the same—

    1. It could mean a new leader at the helm of CPC- since the hounds will be out for Harper if he does not deliver his majority.

    2. It could mean that the NDP and the Liberals might merge– thus finishing off the realignment in Canadian Political Parties. At the very least the idea will be front and centre and a spirited debate on the merits and drawback of the idea will be on the table.

    3. It has already proven that the once iron clad strangle hold by the BLOC on Quebec is in fact loosening and the seats in that province are potentially at play.

    these 3 things alone– are HUGE

    The cost of any election is never unnecessary. Harper spent way more of our taxpayers money on negative ads at Ignatieff, and the fake lake fiasco at the Toronto SHINDIG Summit.

    Election time is the only real opportunity for citizens to listen and contemplate directions of their country. It takes all but 30 minutes to show up at a polling station to cast one’s ballot. It takes longer sometimes for some to wait in line for a coffee at a Tim Horton’s drive through.

    Heck.. we should have elections every year– it would certainly keep our politicians honest and on their toes. It’s a matter of time before we can vote online- hopefully then we can go to the E-POLLS once a year.

    As for the inside baseball that WK was mentioning about with regards to his bud Patrick Muttard- I’m sure the Liberals have equally smart people plotting for their cause. The conservatives spent 10 years in the wilderness prior to their comeback —of course they had lots of time to plot. A party in gov’t rarely has that luxury.

    In the last 5 years the liberals while in opposition have done good work. They still have a ways to go– they certainly are ready to take charge of the government if they were ever called upon. Some would even say– the liberal MP’s on paper are way more impressive than the current CON lot. Some of their brightest stars ( Prentice ) have even walked away from MEGLOMANIAC STEVE.

    In the future the Liberal bench strength only promises to get better with the likes of WK entering the fold.

    The tide will turn- anything can happen. I’m sure we will be writing an article about a “Patrick Muttard” type in the liberal party…. in due time.

    Don’t take anything for granted liberals. Get out the vote on May 2nd. We need to take Canada back and of course we will always seek to streghthen and renew the great LPC.

  10. dave says:

    In the past I was an NDP member, so let me give a partisan reply to your casual disdain toward NDP finance management.

    From 1993 to 2001 BC was governed by the BC NDP. During that time, BC was hit by two phenomena: the federal government (Chretien lead Liberals – trying to recover from the Mulroney Conservative deficits and debt, and under Reform Party pressure) cut transfer Payments to the provinces.
    As well, a slow down in Asia dropped demand for BC commodities.
    Through this, the BC NDP decided to try to maintain education and health funding, – to the dismay, and anger of the business sector and their media outlets.
    (Contrast this with the decision of the Ontario Conservative Government response to the transfer payment cuts. They decided to cut education and health care, and to fund ‘incentives’ to the business sector. It is delightful irony to see the once Ontario Conservative ministers, – Baird, Clement, Flaherty,- now wagging their fingers in the House of Commons as they blame the federal Liberals for cutting education and health funding in !990’s Ontario.)

    Of course, we all had to watch closely our BC NDP in government. there were deficit years, but in 2001, the NDP passed on a surplus to the BC LIberal government. (The BC Libs immediately squandered it all by passing it out to the already profitable business sector.)

    The BC Libs’ (a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives)propaganda repeats that the 1990’s were a ‘dark decade’ in BC. but I live in Northeast BC; the oil and gas patch is here. All through the 1990’s, our local economy seemed to jump up markedly every six months – in spite of our having an NDP government.

    Repeated slogans and ‘everybody knows’ mantras, especially those reinforced with bumper stickers and attack ads, work well. For example:
    Conseravtives = sound fiscal management
    Liberals = tax and spend
    Socialist = financial naivity

    More often, though, experience, evidence and a bit of thinking belies what those slogans and casual opinions say.
    I would ask people to double check what I claim here, and put it together with what they can find out about other NDP governments, including the one that governed Ontario during the resession there in the early 1990’s.

    • reformatory says:

      the only problem with the slogan “conservatives= sound fiscal manager” is well it’s FALSE and a joke to even think it. The conservatives never balance budgets. The Liberal Party was the one who balanced the budget. Consider Mulroney, Harris in Ontario, or Reagon in the US- what did they ever balance? They always left the fiscal sutuation in worse shape. The Liberals are much better fiscal managers – FULL STOP

      • smelter rat says:

        Because they have to be,when they inevitably take over from the Cons.

      • lance says:

        “They always left the fiscal sutuation in worse shape.”

        That’s crap.
        There’s a reason the Libs lied about the GST.
        There’s a reason Clinton was able to afford his mis-adventure into health-care.

  11. But Gord, the Conservative message is NOT positive for the majority of voters. Huge chunks of the populace (60+%) are cringing at the likelihood of Harper running the country for 4 years. If the polls are to be trusted (if), over 60% of the popular vote on May 2 will not be for your positive messengers. So can we agree on a re-wording? For voters such as yourself who endorse the Conservative platform, the message has indeed been positive. For the rest of us, Harper’s platform is a tsunami of negativity. Let us count the ways….job loses, gutting of public institutions, gutting of public finances, gutting of oversight for Crown corporations, silencing of whistleblowers, an abandonment of diplomacy in our foreign policy, more fossil awards for our trashing of the environment….ad infinitum. Bluster away and call me deluded and partisan, but on this one fact you cannot fault me: May 2 the majority of Canadians will not be voting Conservative. Ergo for them, the Con message will have not been positive.

    • Jerome Bastien says:

      60+% did not vote for Chretien and we had more than a decade of him. that’s the thing with our system. and that’s why the existence of the ndp is in itself a strategic error for those who want to pursue left-wing policies.

  12. Derek Pearce says:

    Layton has always struck me as a used-car salesman of the left. And he’s my MP god help me! In the end, if he helps reduce Harp’s minority then I’ll love him for it in spite of my opinion of him. If he and the Libs split the vote and let Harp increase his seat count, I’ll finally give in to your push for a united left-ish party. And I’ll damn Layton and Iggy to hell! So far looks like the former, so I’m not angry. At the moment.

  13. Craig Chamberlain says:

    WK –
    Something I am not hearing anyone talk about is, and what would remain to be seen, is how much of a brain drain Canada has experienced under the Harper Cons and how much more of a brain drain we would have if Harper wins a majority. Those who can go else where, will they Will Canada bleed creative professionals?

  14. George says:

    http://stevejanke.com/archives/315184.php
    Ignatieff’s laughs this off. Hurricane Hazel is NOT amused by Iggy.

  15. JStanton says:

    … gord, gord. You continue to look at the world only through your funky kaleidoscope, rather than at what is actually there. Gunter, writing in the Notional Past, does much the same. Both of you consistently self indulge in masturbatory speculation, rather than disciplining yourself with facts that lead to alternative explanations.

    Fact : Mr. Harper has been the most fiscally irresponsible leader in our history. We have never been more poor, and our pensions and children’s future have, as a consequence, never been as compromised as they are now, thanks to Mr. Harper’s mismanagement and ineptitude.

    In light of this, your assertion that we have something worse to fear from “socialists (!)” is laughable.

    But it’s not just Mr. Harper that is to blame for our reduced circumstances – its idiots like you gord, who, despite all evidence to the contrary, continue to support Mr. Harper as the country’s redeemer. You and your ilk remind me of those other fundamentalists, who like to stone young girls to death, after they have been raped by a community leader. Why do you people always side with the rapist, gord?

    .

  16. Namesake says:

    Well, I voted on Friday, and I must say, I was surprised:

    NEITHER of the “only two choices” the too Right and not Honourable enough Stephen Harper keeps claiming we have to choose between —

    a Conservative Majority; or a Reckless, Unstable Coalition

    — actually appears on the ballot.

    Instead, to my shock and dismay, it was just the names of a bunch of individual candidates and their party affiliations (which, as Mr’s Harper and Emerson demonstrated in 2006, can change on a dime).

    And, gosh, I didn’t even see a place where I get to vote for a Prime Minister, or a box to check to ‘deliver him a mandate’.

    Surely he couldn’t have been misleading Canadians all this time about who or what we actually vote for?!

    • Craig Chamberlain says:

      Funny that Mr. Harper wouldn’t have pushed for a referendum question with the ballot — “do you agree that Canada should have a majority Conservative government?” — if he wanted to be assured of his “mandate” 😉

  17. Craig Chamberlain says:

    Re: Cane as religious simple, etc — thanks for that, WK. Now wondering if the NDP would have been as successful to date in this election if it hadn’t coincided with Lent. Also, when they see Mr. Layton with his cane are they reminded of all that Mr. Bouchard stirred in them?!

  18. WDM says:

    While the undecideds, particularly in Quebec, seem to be going NDP, it does seem that Liberals are more enthused about Mr. Ignatieff than they were for M. Dion (for the record, and this is no knock on Ignatieff, Stephane Dion was and is among the most good and decent people I’ve ever seen run for office and I remain proud I voted for him). So, if this is the case, what does this mean in Mississauga, Brampton, Kitchener and N. Ontario? Lots of previously safe Liberal seats that were lost in 2008 not because of a new found love for the Conservatives, but a disenchanted Liberal base stayed home (and this is not just spin, compare the numbers from 2006-2008 in these ridings). This, along with the newfound strength of the NDP makes a CPC majority unlikely in my view.

    • Philip says:

      Well a lot of people have been turning out for the advanced polls. My guess echoes your thoughts, Liberals are coming back out this time. Add to that more first time voters and undecideds making up their minds earlier. None of this is good news for Harper, as he has spent millions trying to supress voter turnout in the past couple of years. As to who the undecideds turn to, we will all find out on May 2nd.
      My personal feeling is that this election has developed a life of it’s own and got out ahead of the media and maybe even the polling companies.

  19. Sezme says:

    Please do run, Warren. I think you’d do good for the country. Just promise to stay positive. Your positive side is much more attractive than your morally outraged attack-dog side.

  20. Granny says:

    It is interesting to see how similar Stephen Harper’s version of conservatism is to the ideological form of Social Credit as practiced by Aberhardt in Alberta. Far closer than he is to true conservatism.
    As a close relative of mine stated in his Calgary newspaper ‘The Rebel’ (1937 or so).
    “The Trick they use is to intermingle truth and error so deceptively as to make the truth serve to give the falsehood the appearance of virtue”.

    An example is when Aberhardt was accused of having a secret $40,000 bank account in Vancouver, BC; his response to his supporters and on the radio was that, no, he did not have a $40,000 bank account in Seattle.

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