Orange Crush Tuesday : Cons-35, NDP-30, Libs-22

That's all I got. It's a tweet from Robert Fife at CTV on a new Angus Reid poll.
Back with links and graphs when they become available.

Woot!

[updated again below]

Update : OK, a few details in now from the Montreal Gazette, although no data as yet.
An online poll of 2,040 Canadians on April 25&26 : "If a federal election were held tomorrow, which one of the following parties would you be most likely to support in your constituency?"
 
NDP favoured by 30 per cent of Canadians: poll 

"Now the NDP surge has become more solid, with marked increases in Quebec and Ontario, and a higher level of committed voters who say they will not change their mind before election day," the poll said.

The Conservatives were first in every region, except Quebec, but the NDP was polling second in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba/Saskatchewan and Atlantic Canada.

The Liberals were second in Ontario and third in every other region.

The Bloc Quebecois had seven per cent support nationally, down two points. They were at 29 per cent in Quebec, second to the NDP's staggering 38 per cent.

Greens holding at 5%.

Upperdate : From Angus Reid :

The NDP is attracting more than one third of decided voters aged 18 to 34 (37%, +7 since mid-April), while the Tories hold on to a similar proportion of respondents aged 35 to 54 (38%) and those over the age of 55 (also 38%).
 [The Libs hold 22% across all age groups.]

The Grits are holding on to just 64 per cent of their voters in the 2008 election, and one-in-four of these voters who supported the Stéphane Dion-led Liberals in 2008 are now backing the NDP.

The idea of a coalition government featuring the Liberals and the NDP, if these two parties have more combined seats than the Tories, is appealing to 41 per cent of Canadians. Grit and NDP supporters like this scenario, but four-in-five Tories reject it.  
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Orange Crush : Cons-34, NDP-28, Libs-24, Greens-7, Bloc-6

EKOS poll surveyed 3,004 Canadians, including 2,783 decided voters, between April 22 and April 24.
8% were undecided or ineligible.

A poll is only a poll is only a poll. But if it has any basis in reality and holds for the final week, we are now looking at a Con minority of 131 seats, with 100 NDP seats plus 62 Lib seats giving a 31 seat lead over the Cons. [Ed. Seat estimates revised]

Woot!
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For the benefit of Mr. Kent

Today : Kent backtracks over Tory candidate in Tamil Tigers row
“I regret any embarrassment that my remarks may have caused the Prime Minister.”

And so, with apologies for the massacre of The Beatles 'For the Benefit of Mr. Kite' ...

For the benefit of Mr. Kent
A tv spot for his repent - on trampoline!
Coz Mr Steve went quite potty
About Pete's diss of Paranchothy, what a scene
It's a Tamil Tigers sympathist story
But it's okay if you're a Tory  - yeah
In this way Mr. K. bends over for Steve!

The celebrated Mr. Kent.
Performed his feat to circumvent a message split,
While HarperCons did clap and shout
To drown Milewski's questions out - how chicken shit
Yet Mr. Steve assures the public
His majority will be second to none
But of course we don't endorse the buyers' remorse!
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Election 2011 : Steve : Majority rule or bring on the coloured scarves

At the 3:20 minute mark in Don Newman's interview with John Baird in December 2008, Baird explains how the Cons plan to do an end run around being defeated in Parlament by shuttering it.

Baird : "I think what we want to do is basically take a time out and go over the heads of the members of Parliament, go over the heads frankly of the Governor General, go right to the Canadian people.

Newman : "You live in a British parliamentary system and in a British parliamentary system it is only legitimate for the government to be the government if it can sustain support in the House of Commons, and to say now that you're going to go over their heads, brush them aside, they're not even important anymore ..."

After a bit of bluster, Baird repeats his intention about going over the heads of Parliament and the GG "directly to the people".
Newman asks if this is going to be "like Kiev with people wearing different coloured scarves" in the streets.

After listening to Steve's creepy interview with Mansbridge, I think the Cons have decided - as a defeated government this time round - that it's time for the coloured scarves.

Harper questions right of opposition parties to form government

Stephen Harper is challenging a key element of Canada’s parliamentary democracy, saying the ability of the opposition parties to defeat his minority government and be asked to govern themselves is open to “debate.”

In an interview with CBC News on Thursday, Harper refused to concede that the opposition parties have the constitutional right to form government after the May 2 vote if they can win backing of most MPs in the House of Commons.

At first, he dismissed the question as a “constitutional theoretical discussion.”

But asked whether the opposition parties would have the “right” to form government, Harper said “that’s a question, a debate of constitutional law.

If the other guys win, they get a shot at government and I don’t think you challenge that unless you are prepared to go back to the people,” he said.

“We’ll be into another election before too long. That’s why I think need a majority mandate. I think this has gone on long enough.”

Wow. Just wow.

Parliamentary expert Ned Franks dismissed Harper’s comments as “constitutional nonsense.”

“What he’s trying to do is elevate expediency into a constitutional principle.”

What he's threatening to do is provoke a constitutional crisis over his inability to share power, to play according to the rules in the sandbox, to not be king.

He was not always so pathological about it.

In Our Benign Dictatorship, a paper he wrote with Tom Flanagan 15 years ago and to which I've referred before, Steve makes the case for functioning coalition governments supported by proportional representation in Canada :

"Among major democracies, only Great Britain so ruthlessly concentrates power.
In the United States, President Clinton cannot govern without making concessions to the Republicans in Congress. In Germany, Chancellor Kohl needs to keep the support not only of the CSU but of the Free Democrats. In France, the presidency and the national assembly are often controlled by different party coalitions. In most of the rest of Europe, proportional representation ensures that coalition governments routinely form cabinets. In Australia, the Liberal prime minister needs the National Party for a majority in the House of Representatives and, often, the support of additional parties to get legislation through the Senate.

In New Zealand, which used to have a Canadian-style system of concentrated power, the voters rebelled against alternating Labour party and National party dictatorships: electoral reform now ensures coalition cabinets."

Ten days ago in the leaders debate, Jack Layton turned to Harper and said : "You’ve become what you used to oppose. You’ve changed in some way. What's happened to you?"
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Election 2011 : Two polls walk into a bar ...

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EKOS and Ipsos Reid polls - just a snapshot in time of what a few thousand Canadians think today .

EKOS seat projections : Cons - 134 seats, down from 143, so no majority

Libs - 82 seats, up from 77

NDP - 60 seats, up from 36

Bloc - 32 seats, down from 47

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Ipsos Reid poll puts the NDP ahead of the Libs nationally

and in Quebec : NDP : 28% ; Bloc : 27% ; Cons : 24% ; Libs : 20%

House Effect : Surprise. Ipsos Reid notable for usually massively overestimating Cons and underestimating NDP compared to other polling companies, rather like every political pundit and talking head in the country to date.

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40 - 40 - 20 revisited

Con MP and anti-abortion crusader Brad Trost, who lists being a member of the cross-party Pro-Life Caucus as one of his duties as an MP on his website, addressed the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association’s annual convention on Saturday and thanked its members for their help in killing off federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

“Let me just tell you, and I cannot tell you specifically how we used it, but those petitions were very, very useful and they were part of what we used to defund Planned Parenthood because it has been absolute disgrace that that organization and several others like it have been receiving one penny of Canadian taxpayers dollars."

Planned Parenthood has been waiting over a year to find out whether the Con's official program defunder, Bev Oda, would renew PP's decades old funding and now Trost has let the cat out of the bag.
Harper spokesy Dimitri Soudas hastily convened a 1am presser to distance Harper from Trost, blowing Trost off as a mere uninformed "backbencher", but as Cathie points out : Trost has been right before.
 
Soudas :

Asked repeatedly whether allowing access to abortion was part of the government’s funding criteria, Soudas replied: “No, it does not.”
He also repeated the Harper government’s often stated position that it would not re-open the debate on abortion."

Well of course with Harper seeking a majority, he doesn't want to reopen the debate but he doesn't need to, does he? Defunding it, with the repeated help of the Blue Dog Libs, is working just fine as an alternative.

A year ago the Libs tried to smoke out the Cons on contraception and abortion by introducing a Liberal motion in the House to include a broader range of family planning programs in a maternal health initiative for developing countries. It was defeated 144-138 when four Libs voted against it, two abstained, and 12 missed the vote altogether.

So it's a bit much that it's the Liberal party who broke the news about Trost's shenanigans at the annual Pro-Life bunfest, just because the Liberals having 25% 17% anti-abortion MPs is better than the Cons 69%  66%
Let's have another look at the 40 - 40 - 20 support for pro-choice in our current government.
[Update : See corrected chart for the election below this one]

From Choice Joyce, updated December 2010 :



while Sixth Estate has a 2009  list of suspected Pro-life Caucus members, based on their voting records and public statements. Suspected. Because membership in the Pro-Life Caucus is a government secret.

At least they're more upfront about it in the US, where bills to defund Planned Parenthood are currently pending in Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Indiana, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia.

More : Dammit Janet, Dr. Dawg. Dammit Janet again
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Update : Courtesy of Choice Joyce at ARCC : an updated list of anti-choice MPs for this election.

Good news is :  that 40 - 40 - 20 is now updated to all-party totals of 48.5% Prochoice - 36% Antichoice - 16% Unknown,
with 17% of the Libs and 66% of Cons identifying as anti-choice.

Well that's better but 66% is still a horrific percentage for the governing party of Canada.

Joyce reminds the 36% of antichoicers from both parties is a 'conservative' estimate, and her research bears this out.
For instance, voting for some version of fetus rights doesn't automatically get an MP onto the chart because maybe the candidate is pro-choice but it was a whipped vote, or they are anti-choice personally but have stated they would not vote against reproductive rights.

Check out her list of MPs and their voting record before you vote.

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Stephen Harper's "Here For Canada"

In an old science fiction story by Damon Knight, aliens arrive on Earth and provide us with some of the advanced tech and cheap unlimited power they enjoy on their home planet - which we are encouraged to visit as part of a ten year exchange program. As people trundle happily off into the spaceships, the narrator steals an alien book, along with an alien/earth dictionary, and manages to translate the title : "To Serve Man". That sounds pretty nice but further translation reveals it to be a cookbook.

Stephen Harper's "Here For Canada" campaign pitch strikes me very much the same way.
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Does this poll make my bias look fat?

Back in November, Three HundredEight . com published this chart illustrating what he called "the house effect" Note that the chart does not measure accuracy compared to actual election results nor does Éric claim his methodology is immune from its own 'house effects':

"The numbers are the amount of percentage points a particular pollster favours or disfavours that particular party compared to other pollsters over a similar period of time.

This does not necessarily equate to a deliberate bias, but instead is more reflective of the polling methods used - the "house effects".

OK, so bearing all that in mind ... Toronto Star : NDP moves into tie with Liberals: Poll
and are polling second place behind the Bloc in Quebec.

That would be Angus Reid, but if their poll is born out even to a lesser extent by other pollsters - and depending on the kind of skewed media coverage it gets : holy shit, TorStar! - it's certainly going to throw a fuck into the perennial "Vote Liberal so the Cons don't get in" meme, isn't it?

Which, btw, is a silly meme anyhow. We don't vote federally, we vote locally. If you're going to attempt to vote strategically, vote for the party most likely to beat the Cons in your own riding. If you're absolutely sure the second party back has no hope of beating them, vote your heart.

Update : Pundits' Guide : Why the Conservatives Love the “Strategic” Voting Sites

Dr. Dawg : A vote for the Liberals is ...
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Surprise! We Are Voting! No You Aren't!

(updated below)
You really have to wonder what was going through the head of Michael Sona, communications director for Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke, when he barged into the special advance ballot arranged by Elections Canada for students at Guelph University, "making a huge scene stating that this polling station was illegal and tried to grab for the ballot box."

Maybe he thought the two previously successful federal election polls held at U of G were quite enough. Maybe he saw another party's ads too close to the polling station. Maybe, like John Baird, he found all this 'get out the youth vote' flash mob stuff to be "disconcerting".

Or just maybe he realized there was no friggin way there was anything like a majority of Con votes among those 700 sealed votes in those ballot boxes. In which case - interesting he would cop to that.

Guelph was also where the original non-partisan vote mob was held on April 4th in response to Rick Mercer's challenge to young people to "do the unexpected" and get out and vote.

The Cons didn't much care for that one either :

Several students who were participants in the non-partisan "Surprise! Youth are voting!" flash mob outside the Con rally in Guelph were refused entry into the Con rally afterwards by the RCMP despite having registered for it :

"A Conservative Party of Canada official approached them and indicated they were not welcome because of their involvement in an action that was perceived as a protest by party insiders".

Now the Conservative Party of Canada has written to Elections Canada yesterday to disqualify the Guelph students' votes :

"request that none of the votes collected during the U of G session be included in the final tally of votes in the Guelph riding. The letter was sent by lawyer Arthur Hamilton, of Toronto-based law firm, Cassels Brock."

[Say, aren't you the same Con lawyer who dished the dirt on Helena Guergis? ]

"Elections Canada media advisor James Hale said this was the third election during which the university of Guelph held a special ballot on campus. And this is the first time it’s ever been challenged, Hale said."

Well you know the Cons aren't overly fond of Elections Canada either at the moment.

Meanwhile the Vote Mobs : Youth are voting this election! rolls on across the country. Watch their vids. Pretty inspiring stuff.

More : Dr. Dawg.

Friday Night Update : Elections Canada rejects Tory effort to annul votes at University of Guelph 

The Guelph ballot collection was not technically an advance poll but rather a way to collect a batch of 'special' ballots which are put in sealed envelopes and then the students' names will then be checked against the voters list on May 2. So to answer Con lawyer's complaint - proximity of election ads to collection box presumably even not an issue.  Former DRO James Bow explains it at Dr. Dawg's.

Elections Canada News Release via Dammit Janet :

"A special ballot coordinator, appointed by the local returning officer, oversaw the activities at the University of Guelph. All information at our disposal indicates that the votes were cast in a manner that respects the Canada Elections Act and are valid."

So the Guelph campus vote has been validated by Elections Canada, however EC has ruled against future ballot collection sessions on campus instead of at the local EC office.

Score one for the Cons here. Remember this was the third election that such a ballot collection session was held on Guelph campus to enable students in the middle of exams to vote. Con operative makes a grab for the ballot box, Con Party sends off lawyery letter, and now EC has clarified against any other campus doing this for students in future in this election.

They really are the Contempt party, aren't they?
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Saturday Night Update : Elections Canada Senior General Counsel issues what appears to be a mild rebuke of the Con spin :

"In his letter, Mr. Hamilton refers to calls that were placed yesterday to the Public Inquiries unit regarding the situation at Guelph University and the statements made by Mr. Boutet who tried to assist him. I have spoken to Mr. Boutet and he indicated that he had not understood the situation as described in Mr. Hamilton's letter."

Lead Now : Tell Elections Canada: Let Students Vote on Campus 
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Canada's Funny Animals Election 2011

My very first video. Somehow I don't think the gang at A Creative Revolution will be quaking in their boots.

A huge tip o the hat to Martin Clark for doing the voiceovers, and to the BBC who let you rip their clips.
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