That's scary to alot of people - notwithstanding the inane attempts of the Liberals to capitalize on that with marginal ads - people are turning on their strategic voting calculators now.
How do you vote strategically? Part of it depends a lot on your particular riding. The biggest risk of strategic voting is splitting the vote on the wrong side of the equation. Now, given that the right is pretty well owned by the Conservatives, with the liberals dancing over the centre-line sometimes with conservative fiscal policy, we're pretty much talking about two camps here - the anyone-but-the-conservatives faction and conservatives.
Now, in Ottawa-Centre, a case in point. My perception is that the conservative candidate (who just run my phone with a taped message - what an annoying approach) is pretty far back. This riding has been NDP and Liberal for a long while. I perceive a tight 3-way race. If Mr Dewar for the NDP hauls out the "I have the same shoe size as Ed Broadbent" routine one more time, I think he'll lose the lead. Mr. Chernushenko for the the Green party may have a shot at being the first Green in Canada to get a seat. And the Liberal Guy who's name I'm trying to forget, is a weak third I'm guessing. But here, the voters on the centre and left of the spectrum can actually vote with their gut, rather than stategically. Since the conservatives may get about 5000-8000 tops out of 60,000 voters there's not much of an 'up the middle' strategy available for this Fountain character.
(Later... Post election the number turns out to be 66,000 voters!)
Broadbent won the riding last time with about 25k votes. I suspect the winner will be in the 18-20 range this time, but voting will undoubtably be much higher, hence my expectation that there will be in the range of 60k or more votes cast.
CBC Wakes Up
Compared to most media, I'm usually fairly satisfied with the CBC balance. They drift off towards the 23 year old pot smoker sometimes, but by and large they provide balance.
The last few weeks have been abyssmal though. They've let Harper's handlers drive their agenda. I can't beleive they led the news with a Harper story almost every edition. You think they'd say, gee, they're trying a ploy to manipulate us... but they haven't been very sophisticated at the production level. I mean, in the interest of balance, I'm sure they could look at lead-story allignment and make an effort to use something from one of the other campaigns occasionally. They're all doing 'stuff' every day.
At very least become more introspective and make the story "Harper's campaign continues the ploy to drive the nightly news through inane daily announcements" Why not do something like that?
CBC must realize that given a majority Conservative position, a lot of them are out of work. The station will be privatized. I wonder how they like producing telethon segments a la your closest PBS station instead of political coverage. "Operators are standing by. If you enjoy these incessant BBC mystery dramas set in the 70's, call now and donate". And "This hour has 22 Minutes" will sell squat on US Cable. Rick Mercer will just be a weird guy who talks funny, from "New Finland" to American audiences.
Well, anyway this morning on CBC radio Anna Maria Tremonte had a couple of great guests - the publisher of Harper's magazine in the US, Rick MacArthur, and a Conservative pundit, who writes for a variety of US right-leaning papers (and his name escapes me). It was a great bit. You can listen to it here: The Current Stream" Find the stream for Jan 19/06 and listen to the first segment (probably only available on the 20th or later).
A bit confusing that the liberally oriented magazine in the US should be called "Harper's" but whadaya-going to do? The gist of the conversation was that MacArthur lamented a Bush-suck-up leader, albeit probably not as extremist as bush, coming to power in Canada - beacon of sanity in the free world, and model for where Americans wished their country stood (his sentiments.) The conservative pundit next commented that Harper is a good start, but he's still way less conservative than they would like. To his credit, he commented that we have the stronger position on softwood lumber, and so Harper will be able to stand firm there.
MacArthur touched on a point that wasn't pursued - but one which I'm lamenting myself. He said that the merger between Reform and PC's resulted in a softening of the Reform agenda, unless they've just learned to market themselves better. Duh! This was further driven home by comments that Bush came to power as a Centerist "lets clean up those pesky, corrupt Democrats" candidate. This is the same thing all over again! Play moderate on the campaign trail, and disclose your true radical colours when in power.
I'm amazed how thin the veil is. Harper was even talking 'American Style' about our checks and balances in the Juciciary which he claims will still be Liberal for a long time due to appointments. What the hell is that? It sounds like a CNN soundbyte. Does he want to get our Senate to hold hearings for new Supreme Court judges? Man this stuff is scary. Does he think the judiciary is working some evil liberal agenda, rather than applying the laws according to our constitution?
Score One for Mansbridge
I was impressed that during an 'town-hall' style interview with Peter Mansbridge hosting, and talking to Jack Layton, they used some pointed questions. He put Layton on the spot to answer a few questions from audience members around which he was widely skirting. I liked how he particularly button holed him on the "Corruption" thing. There's no evidence of corruption of any of the liberal MP's, he pointed out, so why are you using the word "corruption" in your speeches and ads. Layton didn't have much of an answer, and tried to do the usual non-answer "I think that Turkish Cuisine is a particularly delicate balance of sweet and savory" "Yeah, but the question Mr. Layton"
Good Forecasting Site
So there we have it:
- Conservatives hidden right wing agenda to gut our country and 'erase' the Canada/US border
- Liberals still recovering from the Martin/Chretien coup attempts and unable to run a campaign, and doing a half-assed job of governing
- NDP, wrapped up in political double speak, and ignoring Conservative ridings and criticism
- Greens, a bit of a flakey core to their platform, and no only the slimmest chance of electing a single MP
- Bloc, irrelevant to everyone, including about 60% of Quebecers
So to vote strategically, how do you know which way things are headed, without using the skewed opinion polls? Here's an option. This website gathers riding by riding opinions on which way the area is headed. Who better to estimate the direction than the people voting there. And they've been around long enough to have a track record, which is pretty good.
http://electionprediction.org/
Right now, it looks like a pretty good outcome to my thinking. 97CPC, 77Lib, 17NDP, 55Bloc and 66 too close to call. IF the split sticks that way it would be a minority at least. Althought an unscrupulous deal between Bloc and CPC isn't unlikely. But at least Martin would be dumped, and hopefully some vestiges of the Liberal divide between Martinites and Chretienites might be erased. Then there could be another election shortly after with a better outcome, including the dumping of Harper.
Ideal outcome would be something like 114CPC, 113Lib 32NDP, 3Green, 46Bloc
That would be great, some enviro pressure from Greens, Martin gone, strengthened NDP, and weakened Bloc. Another vote 6 months later, Harper gone.
I think this is one of those devil we don't know wishes.
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