Election 2011

[Rifleman62]

OK, compared to the previous Conservative provincial government.

 

[observor 69]

Found in today's TO Star:

John Francis Bolan  |  Visit Guest Book
BOLAN, John Francis - Passed away on Thursday, April 21, 2011 in his 79th year at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre with his family beside him. John, beloved husband of Bernice (nee Hannan) for 49 years. Dear father of Anne and her husband Duncan Bell, John and his wife Pamela, Mary and her husband Chris Bayley and his beloved Patrick. Grandfather of Matthew, Andrew, Brian, Christopher and Charlotte. The family will receive friends at the HUMPHREY FUNERAL HOME - A.W. MILES CHAPEL, 1403 Bayview Avenue (south of Davisville Avenue) on Sunday, April 24 from 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Mass of Christian Burial will be conducted at ST. ANSELM'S CHURCH, 1 MacNaughton Road, Toronto on Monday, April 25 at 11:00 a.m. In lieu of flowers, please vote LIBERAL. If desired, donations to Sunnybrook Cardiac ICU, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4N 3M5 would be appreciated by the family. Condolences and memories may be forwarded through www.humphreymiles.com

 

[armyvern]

My condolances on the loss of their loved one, but how absolutely crass can you get?

 

[Dissident]

Why do I feel like sending flowers with a card:"Sorry, I vote Conservative."

 

[REDinstaller]

Wow, How can you stoop that low to push politics with the death of a loved one.

 

[Haletown]

Probably foreshadowing for the Liberal Party of Canada.

 

[PuckChaser]

Why do I feel like sending flowers with a card:"Sorry, I vote Conservative."

I'd pitch in for this.

 

[REDinstaller]

Probably foreshadowing for the Liberal Party of Canada.

Now wouldn't that be the kick in the butt that Iggy deserves.

 

[57Chevy]

It's a good point - Layton is appealing, directly, to the QC nationalist sector and that may help explain why his popularity is growing in QC but is stagnant in ON.

Poll: NDP moves ahead of Liberals in 'astonishing shift'
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Poll+moves+ahead+Liberals+astonishing+shift/4672517/story.html#ixzz1KaBXIHd8

The NDP has steamrollered over the Liberal party to land in second place nationally behind the front-running Conservatives, results of a new poll suggest.

The EKOS-iPolitics.ca survey of more than 3,000 Canadians finds 28 per cent of decided voters now support the NDP, compared with 23.7 per cent who plan to vote Liberal. The Conservatives hold less than a six-point lead, sitting with 33.7 per cent support, with just one week to go before election day.

Pollster Frank Graves calls it an unprecedented turn and "astonishing shift" for the NDP, which has traditionally trailed the two other main federal parties. Leader Jack Layton's popularity is climbing most dramatically in Quebec, but building momentum in all regions of the country, according to the poll's results.

More at link...

 

[Brad Sallows]

For its own fiscal and governmental well-being, Canada needs the Liberals to be soundly beaten and the Conservatives to win a majority.  The pressing reason for a majority is to render the Bloc ineffectual and unimportant so that Quebeckers are encouraged to resume voting for candidates of truly national parties if they want a voice in Parliament; realistically at this time, that can only be a Conservative majority.  The pressing reason for a heavy defeat of the Liberals is so that they stop wasting time chasing a weak minority diluted by the NDP and focus on crafting a platform that will be worthy of their own majority when the Conservatives have had a fair run.

People enamoured of the "ABC" notion are, except for the separatists and sh!t-disturbers, shooting their own feet and reloading.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

It's a good point - Layton is appealing, directly, to the QC nationalist sector and that may help explain why his popularity is growing in QC but is stagnant in ON.

Good point.  Except for a couple of articles in the National Post, I don't think anyone else (media/CPC/Liberals) has commented on the possibility.

 

[Edward Campbell]

And speaking of unsupported assumptions as discussed in the Media Bias thread, see this report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/terra-incognita-poll-projects-100-seats-for-surging-ndp/article1998361/

EKOS SURVEY
‘Terra incognita’: Poll projects 100 seats for surging NDP

PATRICK BRETHOUR
VANCOUVER— Globe and Mail Update

Posted on Monday, April 25, 2011

The NDP is rapidly outdistancing the Liberals and has whittled the Conservative lead to single digits – a level of support that would see Jack Layton win 100 seats on May 2, says the latest poll from EKOS Research.

Under that scenario, the NDP would still come in second in seat count to the Conservatives, but the support of the third-place Liberals would give Mr. Layton a working majority in the House of Commons.

“We’re in terra incognita here,” EKOS president Frank Graves said.
The EKOS poll, conducted from April 22 to April 24, gave the Conservatives 33.7-per-cent support nationally among decided and leaning voters; the NDP had 28-per-cent support; the Liberals, 23.7 per cent; the Green Party, 7.2 per cent; and the Bloc Québécois, 6.2 per cent.

If those numbers held true on election day, it would be the worst showing in the history of the Liberal Party, and the best result by far for the NDP. A seat projection using the EKOS poll indicated the Conservatives would lose seats, dropping to 131, while the NDP would garner 100 seats, more than double its previous best result; more than half of those seats would come from Quebec. The Liberal caucus would be much reduced, falling to 62 seats. And the Bloc would be a shadow of itself, with a caucus of just 14 MPs.

The EKOS poll is showing stronger levels of support for the NDP in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces than other polls, but the trend of sharply rising poll numbers for the party is consistent with other surveys. The level of support for the Conservatives is lower than other recent surveys – and the size of the Tory lead is about half of other polls.

In Quebec, the New Democrats lead with 38.7 per cent of the vote, with the Bloc far back at 25.2 per cent, while the Conservative support pegged at 14.7 per cent and the Liberals in fourth place with 13.1 per cent.

The poll of 2,783 voters is considered to be accurate within 1.8 percentage points. As with other polls, the margin of error for regional breakdowns is much higher.

Now, it's a big poll but it is not clear to me that it is not extrapolating QC support and a general feeling of “love” for Jack Layton into number that cannot and will not materialize on 2 May 11.

 

[ModlrMike]

Anyone who truly believes that the NDP will rise to 100 while the Bloc falls to 14 is on glue!

 

[Rifleman62]

Don't forget, Jack and his Olivia live on a million of tax payers dollars a year.

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/04/25/terence-corcoran-just-a-smiling-jack-in-the-box/

Just a smiling Jack-in-the-box

Terence Corcoran - Apr 25, 2011

What an election! Full of surprises. Two days ago the Tories were said to be heading for a majority. Now everyone’s going gaga over the “surge” in support for Jack Layton. Michael Ignatieff, as a result, has become the Liberal doormat in Mr. Layton’s entry into the halls of power in Ottawa.

The New Democrats’ spin machine, which can usually convince a flock of media types to jump into the wash cycle, has scrubbed up Mr. Layton as a smiling, fun-loving optimistic political good guy, a bright alternative to the deadwood in the other parties, possibly even prime-ministerial. The election, said NDP strategist Brian Topp, is “a choice between three angry, threatened men and a relaxed, smiling, positive national leader — in some ways, the only real national leader running in this election.”

Whatever that means, the Layton makeover as a solid policy optimist is temporarily one of the accepted realities in the election campaign — a notional reality that flies in direct contradiction of Mr. Layton’s actual role in Canadian politics as a policy Jack-in-the-box who has lent his support to a succession of questionable policy balloons.

The latest Layton jump-up is to throw the NDP behind some kind of constitutional fix for Quebec so as to improve Quebec’s standing within Confederation. Whatever that means, Mr. Layton appears to be trolling for separatist support, a leadership gambit that should come as no surprise to those of us who have tracked Mr. Layton over the years.

Exactly how many Canadians actually want to turn over a major power role in Ottawa to one of the most off-the-wall grandstanding left-wingnuts of our time — an opportunistic word machine who couldn’t get himself elected mayor of Toronto when he tried two decades ago?

Mr. Layton is said to be unswervingly positive and optimistic, which may a personal tic that is easy to pull off when your basic political approach is to endorse impractical and economically loopy policies as if they were perfectly logical and doable. Can credit-card interest rates be controlled at 5 percentage points above prime? Big smile: You bet. Can Ottawa rake in $7-billion in revenue from a carbon cap-and-trade scheme by 2014? Big smile: No problem.

Mr. Layton is said to have deep experience in municipal government, a technical statement that ignores Mr. Layton’s record. When he ran for mayor of Toronto in 1991, Mr. Layton famously produced 300 election promises with a price tag of $1-billion. His backers attempted to scale down his campaign excesses with claims that, at heart, Mr. Layton remained an all-round good fellow who would maintain racial harmony and uphold environmental standards. He lost.

As a Toronto city councillor, Mr. Layton tracked consistently to the NDP left. A good indicator of Mr. Layton’s political ethics shows up in his role as a creator of Toronto’s notorious Tent City protest. In 1998, Mr. Layton convinced a group of youths who were living in a derelict building in the city’s old port lands to move to a vacant lot next door that was slated for retail development by Home Depot. A few months later, Mr. Layton delivered some donated tents to the site, launching Tent City, a three-year occupation that grew to include hundreds of politically and emotionally distressed people — all to prevent a big-box retail development near Toronto’s waterfront.

Opposition to real estate development is one thing. Using and manipulating lost souls to achieve that objective suggests a dubious willingness to take advantage for political gain. Just flash a smile.

Mr. Layton, from his first days in politics in the 1980s, maintained a classic left-wing anti-corporate and ultra-green political stance and a sterling record as a promoter of the unworkable and impractical. Over the years he has proposed exports taxes on oil to the United States, price controls on gasoline in Canada, using the Canada Pension Plan to fund infrastructure, and pushed for new government spending on day care, drug care, tuition care, windmill care, house care — nothing is outside the scope of government expansion.

The NDP’s flimsy 25-page election platform contains at least 16 pictures of Mr. Layton in a grin bigger than Brian Mulroney’s chin. Few people have looked at the platform, a Laytonian laundry list of plans and schemes that would lock Ottawa into decades of expanding programs. The green initiatives alone number 17, including $50-million for something called “Local Food: From Farm to Market.” Total cost by 2014 is $6.2-billion per year for the green package alone, to be paid for with $7.4-billion in revenue from a fantasy federal cap-and-trade carbon control scheme.

Mr. Layton’s team now admits that there is no chance such a cap-and-trade plan will be brought in soon, for economic and constitutional reasons. Other revenue-grabbing plans — higher corporate taxes and something called a “Tax Haven Crackdown” are expected to be generating another $15-billion for Mr. Layton’s coffers by 2014. Unworkable? Not according to our smiling Jack-in-the-Box.

 

[Kalatzi]

Don't forget, Jack and his Olivia live on a million of tax payers dollars a year.

I assume that you refer to the taxes reqwuired to pay their salaries?

If you don't like it,  perhaps you could do better?

Looks interesting

 

[Old Sweat]

This story from today's National Post, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act, notes differeent accounts by Mister Ignatieff of an incident he was involved in while in the Balkans. The differences may be in the telling, with the earlier account less favourable to the UN and the CF, but that is a matter for interpretation.

Ignatieff gives conflicting reports on time in Serbia

Sarah Boesveld Apr 25, 2011 – 6:11 PM ET | Last Updated: Apr 25, 2011 10:01 PM ET


Michael Ignatieff has given conflicting accounts of an encounter with Serbian paramilitaries in the Balkans during the 1990s; the one recounted during a town-hall meeting on Sunday starkly different from the one in his 1994 book Blood and Belonging.

“I’m not sure I was ever in big deal danger, I don’t want to overdo this, but it is frightening to be shot at,” the former BBC war correspondent said at the Sunday event, before describing how a Canadian soldier bravely rescued him and his documentary film crew from drunk paramilitaries. “That peacekeeper from Moncton, N.B., who maybe saved my life, is my example of how Canada ought to be in the world,” he said.

The story also appears in Blood and Belonging, but with stark differences: The Canadian soldiers are “anxious adolescents” who were “breathing heavily” when they tried to stop one of the Serbians from hijacking Mr. Ignatieff’s car.

A Serbian militaryman arrested them all anyway and Mr. Ignatieff presumed a local Serbian warlord had bailed them out — not the Canadian peacekeepers.

“Mr. Ignatieff is telling the same story about how a Canadian soldier stopped a van from being driven off by Serbian paramilitaries. The retellings have a slightly different emphasis as they are seeking to make a different point,” said Liberal Party spokesman Marc Roy.

Mr. Ignatieff had a long and distinguished career as a journalist before accepting a job at Harvard University. He worked for the BBC as a war correspondent and later as a general broadcaster for the network, introducing human rights documentaries and other programs. His official biography says he witnessed the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide as a journalist, documented the “chaos” of the former Yugoslavia and “the shadow of tyranny” in Iran.

Mr. Ignatieff was also accused on the campaign trail of giving separate stories to different audiences earlier in his career. At a campaign stop in southeastern Ontario earlier this month, Mr. Ignatieff was asked to clarify whether he voted in the United States or in Britain, a question born from a 2004 quote from Mr. Ignatieff in which he said “I am an American Democrat. I will vote for [John] Kerry in November.” The quote was unearthed by the Conservatives in this election in their efforts to suggest his personal ambitions trump the interests of the country. Mr. Ignatieff insisted he voted in the British election as a Commonwealth citizen, noting that he cannot vote in the U.S.

Mr. Ignatieff’s account on the televised townhall:


I spent the 1990s mostly as a war correspondent working for the BBC and the CBC. I’m not sure I was ever in big deal danger, I don’t want to overdo this, but it is frightening to be shot at. I had one experience also of crossing a checkpoint and just after I came past the checkpoint, this was in the Balkans, a bunch of paramilitaries all liquored up and drunk as skunks grabbed me out of the van, grabbed my crew out of the van, they were going to take us away. And just as they were about to drag us out of the van, a Canadian soldier appeared out of nowhere, he had been at the checkpoint. He rushed up, put his hand through the window of the bus, pulled out the keys and said ‘We’re going to do this my way.’ I’ve never forgotten that and then he clicked his carbine so there’d be no mistake. Paramilitaries let, let us go. But that peacekeeper from Moncton, N.B., who maybe saved my life is my example of how Canada ought to be in the world. We oughta be out there on the front lines making sure people don’t kill each other. It’s a good thing for Canada to do. We’re respected, we’re trusted and we’re darned good soldiers. That’s the kind of vision I have for the country.
.
Mr. Ignatieff’s account from his 1994 book Blood and Belonging:


The UN checkpoint was a sandbagged Portakabin manned by two Canadian infantrymen guarding a road barrier between the Croat-and-Serb-held sections of Pakrac, in central Croatia … the UN had just waved us through into Serb-held territory when fifteen armed Serbian paramilitaries surrounded our van. They had been drinking at a wedding in their village. The drunkest one, with dead eyes and glassy, beaded skin, forced the van door open and clambered in. “We watching you,” he said, making binocular gestures with his hands. “You talk to Ustashe,” and he pointed back at the Croatians hiding in the grass. Then he took the pistol out of his belt. “You fucking spies,” he said. He ordered the driver out at gunpoint, took the wheel, and began revving the engine … The Serb put the van into gear and it was moving off when one of the UN soldiers yanked open the door, grabbed the keys, and shut off the ignition. “We’ll do this my way,” the UN soldier said, breathing heavily, half pulling, half cajoling the Serb out of the driver’s seat. Another young Serb in combat gear pushed his way into the van and shook his head. “I am police. You are under arrest. Follow me.” This was the moment, in my journeys in search of the new nationalism, in which I began to understand what the new world order actually looks like: paramilitaries, drunk on plum brandy and ethnic paranoia, trading shots with each other across a wasteland; a checkpoint between them, placed there by something loftily called “the international community,” but actually manned by just two anxious adolescents; and a film crew wondering, for a second or two, whether they were going to get out alive … The paramilitaries took us to the police station in the village, where the chief spent an hour establishing to his satisfaction that because our translator’s grandfather had been born on the Croatian island of Krk, he must be a Croatian spy. But then a telephone call arrived, instructing the chief to release us. No one would say who had given the orders. It appeared to have been the local Serb warlord.
.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Don't forget, Jack and his Olivia live on a million of tax payers dollars a year.

I assume that you refer to the taxes reqwuired to pay their salaries?

If you don't like it,  perhaps you could do better?

Looks interesting

Kalatzi,

Once more, you can't expect people to discuss your points, if they can't figure out what your question is.

 

[CougarKing]

This is a follow up to E.R. Campbell's post projecting 100 seats for the NDP. A scary prospect.

link

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is expected to heighten his attacks on NDP rival Jack Layton on the campaign Tuesday amid polls suggesting Layton's party has surpassed the Liberals nationally with only six days to the election. Speaking at a town hall meeting in Vancouver Monday night, Ignatieff blasted the "fine print" in the NDP platform.

He called the New Democrat's costing plan "a scary sight," saying Layton plans to fund his programs with a $3.7-billion energy tax.
"You see, if you've been in permanent opposition, that's the kind of funny stuff you can do," Ignatieff said.

"If you've been in government you would never dare try that on the Canadian people because it isn't the truth. It isn't honest. It's not telling you where the money comes from, and you can't have an honest election debate unless you tell Canadians exactly where the money's from."

As he hammers home his message Tuesday, Ignatieff starts the morning with a campaign announcement in Vancouver followed by a rally in Winnipeg in the evening.

Layton will start the day with a media appearance in Montreal and wrap the day with a town hall meeting in Toronto.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, meanwhile, will campaign in Asbestos, Que., followed by an evening rally in Ottawa.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May will campaign in her home riding, including an all-candidate's meeting at a high school and a meeting with First Nations students at an adult education centre.

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe will visit the shops of the Maisonneuve market with Hochelaga candidate Daniel Paille, followed by several media interviews. He will wrap the day by watching the Habs game with Bloc candidates.

Conservatives, Liberals target NDP

Both the Conservatives and Liberals have recently unleashed attack ads targeting the NDP.

The latest Liberal ad takes aim at both Layton and Harper, deriding them as two sides of the same coin.

It accuses Layton of teaming up with Harper in 2005 to torpedo a national daycare plan under the previous Liberal government.

The Liberals have also attacked the NDP's claim that it could generate billions of dollars almost immediately from a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gases that has yet to be set up.

Layton fired back Monday, unleashing his own attack plan - vowing to attack health-care wait times, unemployment, seniors poverty and women's inequality.Layton called on voters to replace Harper on May 2.

 

 

[a_majoor]

Surprise, surprise!

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/CanadaVotes/News/2011/04/25/18063366.html?cid=rssnewspolitics

Are taxpayers footing bill to elect Liberals?

By Mark Dunn, QMI Agency
(QMI Agency)

OTTAWA -- Is Michael Ignatieff abusing your hard-earned dollars to fund the Liberal election machine? The answer may lie in a trail of food crumbs to taxpayer-funded offices in downtown Ottawa.

QMI Agency asked the Liberals on Monday to explain why more than 2,000 meals will be delivered to the building that houses its research bureau.

The three squares daily over the 36-day election campaign for 20 employees are in addition to thousands of other meals being catered to the party's nearby election headquarters.

The campaign war room is in the building where the Liberal Party of Canada is located on Metcalfe St.

The research bureau is on Queen St.

Asked if the Liberals are renting space outside the allotment from the House of Commons for parliamentary duties on Queen St. for election purposes, a spokesman said no.

"Skeleton crew there working long hours so meals were provided," Marc Roy said in an e-mail. "Something that is done outside writ period when things are extremely busy."

But everyone knows with Parliament mothballed, Ottawa is so slow one can watch the tulips bloom, and political staffers not working on the election usually have time to learn a new trade.

And anyone who works late knows the routine, and it doesn't involve catered food for a specific period of time. It usually involves ordering a pizza.

In a later telephone interview, Roy said a limited number of staff were working extra long hours in case members of caucus needed legitimate help answering constituents' queries.

"Caucus members still have legitimate caucus functions," he said.

It would be a violation of Elections Canada rules to use House of Commons budgets and political staff still on government payrolls for election purposes.

mark.dunn@sunmedia.ca

 

[Edward Campbell]

A big shift is projected, today, in this report, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from ThreeHundredEight.com, and it's bad news for the Conservatives:

http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/

CANADIAN POLITICS AND ELECTORAL PROJECTIONS

April 26, 2011 Projection - Conservative Minority Government

TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2011
NDP gallops forward
Two new national polls were added to the model this morning, along with three new riding polls conducted in Quebec. All of these polls are responsible for some shift in the projection, but there have also been a few changes made to my weighting system.

I realized that the poll-weighting tests I had run for the 2006 and 2008 elections were done slightly incorrectly. Rather than only include complete polls like I am doing in this election, my tests included each day of a daily tracking poll. What this did was fill the model with only newer polls, whereas the system I am using actually includes more older polls.

However, I don't tweak my model arbitrarily or because things "don't look right". I need numbers and evidence to back-up any changes to the model. So, I ran some new tests modeling the 2006 election (which has some similarities with the current election because of the sudden swing in support) and found that the best course of action would be to reduce each passing day's weight by 7% rather than 4%. This ages polls more quickly. I also decided to remove the "correction" that was added to the projection to take into account how the polls had been inaccurate in past elections. In the end, the tests ran better without this correction. The correction was very small, and for the most part the growth that the Green Party has been given today is due to that. The other parties were only marginally effected.

So, while some of the changes in this update are artificially influenced, most change can be attributed to the new polls. Let's get to it!

The Conservatives have dropped 1.1 points to 37.5% and have dropped five seats to 146. The Liberals, meanwhile, are also down 1.1 points (to 26.4%) but are unchanged at 75 seats. The New Democrats are up 1.8 points to 20.9% and six seats to 42.

The Bloc Québécois is down 0.3 points nationally to 7.8% and one seat to 44. The Greens are up 0.6 points to 6.1% but remain seatless. André Arthur is the lone independent projected to be elected.

The combination of increased aging, new polls, and the removal of the small correction has led to some major changes at the regional level.

The Conservatives have dropped a point or so in each region, but they are especially hurt by the drop of 1.3 points in Quebec. They are down to 18.7% there.

The Liberals dropped less out west but a lot in Atlantic Canada. Their drops in Quebec and Ontario are especially problematic.

The New Democrats rose everywhere, most importantly in British Columbia, Atlantic Canada, and Quebec. There, they grew their support by 3.5 points in the projection. They are now at 24.2%, only 8.5 points behind the Bloc Québécois, which has dropped 1.4 points to only 32.7%.

In terms of seats, there have been quite a few changes.

In British Columbia, the NDP candidate Kennedy Stewart is now favoured in Burnaby - Douglas, the seat previously held by retired NDP MP Bill Siksay. The Conservatives had been projected to win it earlier.

In Ontario, the Liberals are projected to once again win Ajax - Pickering (Mark Holland) and Brampton - Springdale (Ruby Dhalla), while New Democratic incumbent Malcolm Allen is the projected winner once again in Welland. These are all pick-ups from the Conservatives.

The Liberals move ahead in the two Toronto-area ridings because the incumbent factor has moved from a penalty (incurred when a party is gaining in a province) to a bonus (added when a party is losing in a province compared to the 2008 election).

But it is in Quebec where the most changes have occurred. The New Democrats have picked up four seats, one each from Bloc and Conservatives and two from the Liberals.

The NDP has picked-up two ridings in the Outaouais: Hull-Aylmer from the Liberals and Pontiac from the Conservatives. Nycole Turmel and Mathieu Ravignat are now the respective projected winners.

On the island of Montreal, the NDP has moved ahead in Jeanne-Le Ber (Tyrone Benskin) and Westmout - Ville-Marie (Joanne Corbeil).

Now, it may be surprising to see the NDP knocking off a star Liberal MP and a Conservative cabinet minister. With the NDP soaring into new territory in Quebec, it is very difficult to predict which ridings will be swept away in the orange tide. 

But Lawrence Cannon has never exactly been a consensus choice in Pontiac, and the NDP is leading in Montreal, according to several polls. A minister that has never sought headlines and an astronaut opposition MP are not immune from sweeping change. Recall that even the Prime Minister was defeated in her riding in the 1993 election. And the six seats now projected to vote NDP in Quebec are divided into two blocks of three adjacent seats. It seems relatively sensible that support would spill over from one riding to the other. But there is no doubt that the NDP's rise in Quebec will make things difficult for seat projectors on May 2nd.

Holy shift, Batman; the Dippers are doing a real number on the Conservatives – who, as I mentioned before – need to hold on to all the 150± seats in which they had a lead last week and take away another half dozen or so from the Liberals and NDP.

But: see Harold Wilson, again.

There is almost a “long time” to go before campaigning ends late next Sunday night.
                                                Former UK Prime Minister
                                                Harold Wilson who said:
                                                "A week is a long time
                                                in politics."