If I were a rich man...

I wonder if this scene from the musical Fiddler On The Roof is what Dion had in mind when he announced on Tuesday that he's not a rich man.

It does make me wonder: did the Liberals not see this campaign coming? First, they were forced to scramble to secure a campaign plane (and ended up with a real gas guzzler). Now, they've suddenly realized that Dion's image needs a makeover and are trying to recast him as just a regular guy -- why didn't they do that a year ago?

Some other thoughts and observations on the campaign thus far:

• You have to wonder about Ontario Liberal Premier McGuinty's decision not to endorse his federal counterparts. Apparently, he doesn't want to worsen his already abysmally poor relationship with feds. If that doesn't tell us how far ahead the Tories are in this campaign and how unlikely the Liberals are to win, I don't know what does.
  
  
• The puffin poop Tory ad that was all over the new today blew up in the Tories' faces, as it well should have. Have they forgotten how their ad making fun of Chretien's paralysis backfired several years ago? Perhaps the Tories' punishment should fit the crime -- straight to bed with no dessert, plus grounding for one week.
  
  
• I was somewhat surprised that May was barred from the televised debates given that the criteria for entry has always been to have a minimum of one MP, which the Greens have now met. Ironically, the Liberals, who pushed for May's inclusion, would likely have the most to fear from May's participation, as polls show it's them bleeding the most to the Greens, particularly in Ontario (confirming some comments I made previously).
  
  
• One new EKOS poll puts the Liberals at the historically low level of 24%, only narrowly ahead of the NDP, at 19%. Similarly, a second poll (by pollster Segma Unimarketing, which I've never heard of until now) put them at 25% to the Conservatives' whopping 43%. The federal Liberals, one of the most successful political parties in the western world, have only received that low a share of vote once -- in 1867! In 1984, their next worst performance, the Liberals converted 28% of the popular vote into just 40 seats.
  
  
• The NDP might be the only party to run a full slate of 308 candidates in this election. The Tories have bowed out of Portneuf-Jacques-Cartier to help Independent MP André Arthur in Quebec, while the Liberals are of course not running against Elizabeth May in Central Nova, whose party isn't fielding candidates against either Stephane Dion in Saint-Laurent-Cartierville or former Conservative Bill Casey in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley.
  
  
• On Monday, Young Liberals heckled Jack Layton for borrowing Liberal votes in the last election instead of focusing on Harper. They claim that attacking the Liberals in 2006 split the anti-Harper vote and helped elect him. Now, if they really believed that, would they not be busy heckling at Tory rallies instead?
  
  
• With PQ leader Pauline Marois undergoing surgery, the Bloc loses an important campaign ally (Marois had planned to stump for Duceppe). That party is desperately struggling to stop the loss of support to the Conservatives and, to a lesser extent, the NDP (a just-posted Globe article suggests the Bloc may have slowed the Tory momentum in Quebec).
  
  
• New Stephane Dion website: http://www.thisisdion.ca/. I wonder how many fans looking for this website will accidentally wind up at the Liberal leader's site.
  
  
• Finally, there are some great online resources for political junkies who just can't get enough. Pundit's Guide is an amazing database of candidates, contests and results. Paulitics and niXtuff provide regular tracking of polls. The Globe's, Canwest's and the CBC's sites provide additional articles, polls, and punditry. Independent sites nodice.ca, Election Prediction Project are also great resources. Democratic Space will launch its election coverage on Sept. 14.
  
  
  

And the race is on...

Lots of posting today!

Tories fail to run full slate of candidates

There are sure to be some red faces in the Tory backrooms today. Nominations have closed and, after falling short in Flin Flon, the party was unable to field a full slate of candidates in the election.

Rightly or wrongly, the ability to run a full slate of candidates is almost always taken as a key indicator of whether a party is organized and serious about winning or whether it's a fringe party. Even the struggling Liberal Party, which was unable to run a full slate in 1999, was able to secure a name on the ballot in all 57 constituencies this time around. This is a big blow to Tories, indeed.

The race in Flin Flon will now be fought between NDP incumbent Gerrard Jennissen and Liberal challenger Garry Zamzow. That's if you can really call it a race: Jennissen took 73% of the vote in the last election.

The failure to run a full slate will be especially hard for the Tories' reputation in northern Manitoba. In some election campaigns, the Tory leader doesn't even visit the north. Now, long accused of neglecting and ignoring the north, the Tories won't even be offering residents of part of that region the chance to to vote for them.

Adieu, Monsieur Rocan

Longtime former Tory MLA Denis Rocan didn't follow through with his threat to run in the provincial election. He had suggested possibly running as an independent against Hugh McFadyen in Fort Whyte. The other obvious option for him would have been to run as an independent in Carman, where he was challenged and defeated for the Tory nomination. Frankly, running in Carman (where the Conservatives got 52% of the vote in 2003) would've been his best shot at winning.

I have to say I think Denis Rocan is a pretty decent guy, having met him once in the 90s. I could probably never vote for him myself, but I've heard he was a solid representative and hard worker in Carman. It didn't seem to do him much good within the Tory ranks, however -- he was booted out first as the candidate when he lost the nomination race and then from the caucus after he broke ranks and supported the NDP's budget.

Wellington recap

The race in Wellington continues to attract a lot of media attention, especially now that former New Democrats Conrad Santos and Joe Chan are running as independents against their old party. Flor Marcelino, the NDP's candidate and editor of the Philippine Times, looks like a great candidate. She'll do well.

The little parties

In addition to the three most established parties, the Green Party and the Communist Party are running candidates. The Greens will be on the ballot in 15 constituencies, while the Communists will be an option in six. The voters in Fort Rouge will have the most choice in this election, with six candidates to choose from: a New Democrat, a Conservative, a Liberal, a Green, a Communist, and an Independent.

The Green Party leader, Andrew Basham, is running directly against Premier Gary Doer in his constituency of Concordia. Andrew Basham's mother, whose basement he apparently still lives in, is running in Wolseley, where the Greens captured about 19% of the vote in 2003. After the infighting that's plagued the Greens since then and the NDP's general dominance of the environment as an issue, there's little hope they'll be able to even come close to repeating their 2003 result.

Manitoba's Communist Party, a perennial competitor and probably the most active such party in Canada, is also running. Most of its candidates are the same names that appear on the ballot election after election.

I once spent a little while chatting with Darrell Rankin, the party's leader, after he happened to knock on my door in one election. As a candidate, he struck me as quite interesting, engaging and intelligent. I wasn't quite as impressed with the party pamphlet -- complete with a headline praising the regime in North Korea -- that he left behind.

A day at the races

I'll be posting some seat-by-seat predictions in the very near future. However, I may wait to see what the next provincial poll numbers are before weighing in on the really close races.

My guess is that, with the relatively sleepy pace of the campaign so far and the inability of the Tories to land any punches, the next poll will show an increase in NDP support over the last poll, with the Liberals and others down a couple points each, and the Tories holding steady. Then I expect the NDP to come out a few points below those numbers on the night of May 22. My assumption is that there are many fickle and wishy-washy voters who, once alone in the dim light of the polling booth, will vote for change regardless of who's in power or how well they've done.

The last poll before the campaign started showed the NDP and Tories neck-and-neck at 40%, with the Liberals at 15%, and others holding what's left. To compare, the NDP received 49% in the last election, with the Tories getting 36%, the Liberals 13%, and others 1%. If the poll numbers stay as they are when people vote, it's likely the NDP would be re-elected with a majority by winning a pile of Winnipeg seats by a small margin, while the Tories stack up giant majorites in places like Steinbach, Emerson, and Pembina.

In the next poll, the Liberal numbers will be the ones to watch: provincially, the Liberals almost always fall during the campaign, which tends to benefit the NDP. The Tories usually have the best chance of winning when centre-left voters are split between the NDP and the Liberals. If the Liberals buck the trend and creep upward, it may cut into NDP votes in southern Winnipeg and toss those seats to the Tories. In contrast, if the Liberals sink below the 13% they got in the past two elections, the NDP may be able to pick up Inkster from the Liberals as well as Southdale and Kirkfield Park from the Tories.

To compare with 2003, the pre-campaign polls then put the NDP ahead at 44%, with the Conservatives at just 30% and the Liberals at 21%. Mid-campaign polls showed the NDP surge to 51% and 55%, while the Liberal numbers dropped off and the Tory numbers stayed static. On election day, the Tories "pulled" their vote well and ended up with 36%, still well behind the NDP's 49%.

A second thing to watch in the next poll will be the Winnipeg/non-Winnipeg split in the numbers. The last study showed the NDP down 8 points in Winnipeg and down 15 points outside of Winnipeg compared to the last election. If the party picks up, will it be in one region or both?

Astonishing facts

Emerson and Springfield, now both staunchly Tory seats, were once NDP seats.

In 1973, Steve Derewianchuk, the NDP candidate in Emerson, took 2,374 votes, beating out the Tory with 1,937 votes and the Liberal with 1,768 votes. The victory was relatively short-lived, however: Albert Driedger regained the seat for the Tories in 1977. Driedger later went on to represent Steinbach in the legislature. In Emerson in 2003, the Tories took 59% of the vote to 21% for the Liberals and 19% for the NDP.

Rene Toupin won Springfield for the NDP in 1969 and 1973, but lost it in 1977. Andy Anstett narrowly regained the seat for the NDP in 1981, only to lose it to Tory Gilles Roch by 55 votes in 1986. Almost immediately after being re-elected as a Tory in 1988 (and being subsequently denied a cabinet post), Roch crossed the floor to join Sharon Carstairs's Liberals, which had just become the Official Opposition. The Tories easily regained the seat in 1990 and have held it ever since with ever-increasing majorities, which come largely due to an influx of wealthy Tory voters into new subdivisions in places like Oakbank. In 2003, the Tories won the seat with 61% of the vote, to the NDP's 31%.