Oh and to me personally, not very much. This election my top issues are environment, electoral reform, the economy and the military (in that order).
That graphic doesn’t work for me. I can access the raw text, but there are no reference points.
Is that 36% concerned about the economy? If so, at least I can make sense of the numbers.
Yes. Overall, 2% for foreign policy.
Excellent; thanks for the help.
Just to keep track as the election goes along, here’s CBC’s polls conglomerate the day after the writ dropped:
CON 34.0% up +0.2
LIB 33.7% down -0.1
NDP 12.6% down -0.3
GRN 10.8% up+0.1
BQ 4.4% Data unavailable0.0
PPC 3.2% down -0.1
OTH 1.3%
42% Probability of the Liberals winning a majority
25% Probability of the Liberals winning the most seats but not a majority
23% Probability of the Conservatives winning the most seats but not a majority
9% Probability of the Conservatives winning a majority
I’ll update it from time to time.
Why? as mentioned up-thread, proposals for electoral reform have never done very well in the referendums, and most recently was rejected in Ontario, BC and PEI. The best showing has been when a government is really pushing for electoral reform, as in BC 10 years ago. When the government’s not pushing it, the response at the polls is “meh”.
That suggests it’s not high on anyone’s agenda.
For me? It’s huge. I’ve spent a good chunk of my time working for the feds, and I know that Canada, as a country, really needs friends. In danger of being facile, well, we need people to buy our stuff, we’d like it if other countries played nice, because then they might like to buy our stuff. I may also be a bit of an idealist and hope we can resolve more problems through a good word or two and the occasional trade deal than by brandishing weapons of (financial) war.
I’m curious if a country or two can shake off the cobwebs of populism without hitting a crushing recession first, and I hope they don’t drag us down with them.
For the electorate in general? Well, I want to be nice, and my mother always told me to either say something nice or nothing at all. So, mmmm, I expect it doesn’t signify greatly for them, because I suppose domestic issues are much more important.
I’m pleasantly surprised that law and order is so low on the list of priorities. It’s not to say I’m opposed to a little policing, but it is to say it’s a major plank of the “lock 'em all up!” sorts with whom I’ve had… spirited disagreements with.
Not at all surprised about the lack of electoral reform either. After the commission ran its course, it felt like a cynical ploy to attract youth votes. I’m only expecting it to come back out if we have a minority Liberal government (or, in a violation of every known law of reality, an NDP or Green government at all).
Provincially, it was sprung on us in Ontario with very little warning or fanfare. There was a general, “What is this business?” vibe from other voters in my neighbourhood, so I think it was met with a mixture of suspicion and dubiousness because they had little to no idea what it really meant.
Finally, Euphonius? Why would you do that to yourself? I’ve read comment sites when I felt like getting a dose of schadenfreude, but the high wears off quickly and the resulting crash lasts a lot longer than I’d like.
That’s my take-away from almost all the complaints I’ve heard about Trudeau. The problems he’s been having are problems any Canadian government would have had. It’s a simple fact that Canada just isn’t a big enough player to impose our will on other countries, so we of necessity much deal with them as they are. Sometimes that means they’ll do things we don’t like, no matter what we say or do. Scheer can talk tough all he likes, but if he wins the election, he’ll face exactly the same limits, and probably exactly the same criticisms.
If I have one foreign policy issue that would sway my vote, it’s the hope that Canada would stand against the trend towards authoritarianism you’ve mentioned. We might not be able to stop or reverse this trend in other countries, but it would be nice if we could stand as an example to others that you can resist this slide.
I suspect the top-down approach to electoral reform is misguided to begin with. As mentioned, such major changes at a Federal or Provincial level are often met with suspicion that someone is pulling a fast one, and confusion by people who don’t like change. I think those who want reform should start at lower levels, like city councils and such. If a few major cities used some kind of instant run off voting or PR for a few years, we’d have real-world examples of how it works, and people could get used to the idea. Then try it at higher levels.
One amusing thing I’ll note about this: the last Conservative leadership race did just this, using a ranked ballot to determine the winner. So let’s do more of that, so people get used to the idea.
Why is that “amusing”? 
Most parties use some sort of ranked ballots now for leadership elections, rather than old-school conventions.
I just find it amusing that the Cons, who generally seem to be opposed to any sort of electoral reform, use ranked ballots in their own election.
While I understand the sentiment, it’s not a huge change from their prior rules, which were successive rounds of runoff voting. The ranked ballots just allow you to do the runoff voting all in one go. This isn’t no change at all, of course, as it doesn’t allow voters to change their mind about their lower rankings as the rounds progress, but it’s not nearly as big a change to their voting scheme as it would be to the general election rules.
I don’t think the comparison to the process the Conservatives or Liberals use to select their leaders are very helpful, especially since the voting is not based on “one person, one vote”. Both parties tie the vote to the constituency structures. It’s a different type of election entirely.
So far, the only campaigning I’ve noticed is we got a door-knocker for the NDP handing out material, and the outgoing CCF member took down his “Thank you Regina” signs, probably to avoid election expense violations since he’s not running.
The latest Mainstreet poll has the Liberals winning a majority if the election were held today, due mainly to the collapse of the NDP, which now only has 8.4% national support - below the green party.
But the real danger of this election is also shown in the poll: The liberals are favorites in the East, but the Conservatives are the overwhelming favorites in the west, even in very liberal BC.
I predict that if the Liberals win another majority, you will see the strongest separatist movement in the west since, well, the last Trudeau. You are also going to see huge blowback against the equalization system.
After SNC-Lavalin and all the other scandals, gaffes, and broken campaign promises, I don’t know how Trudeau can possibly be this popular down east. Oh, wait… Billions of dollars of vote buying might have something to do with it. He brings home the bacon for his peeps, at the expense of everyone else. Hence the heavy geographic polarization.
It’s not just buying votes. It’s also sincere antipathy towards the conservative message - and this is in no small part due to a couple of prominent conservative politicians that are absolute dumpster fires (Ford and, yes, that American president guy). Also, I really have very little idea of what Scheer actually stands for. I have a pretty good idea of what he stands against, but that’s not very helpful in persuading voters who aren’t already inclined to dislike Trudeau.
And that’s evidenced by there being a whole lot of people like me, who used to vote Conservative, in one of their variations or the other, but who have left the party in recent years because we don’t like the path they’ve chosen. No one “bought” my vote, the Conservatives threw it away.
Ontario, and much of Canada, has a lot of Red Tories and people like me who are socially liberal (and even libertarian) but economically conservative. Canada is less partisan than the US, and the two major parties have far more similarities than differences. One would hope for a return to fiscal prudence and a more sensible balance between provinces, programs and stakeholders. I haven’t yet seen this from any of the contenders.
The Liberals have little chance of winning Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. But this is nothing new or unexpected. Their policies have favoured their traditional areas of support. Their popularity in Ontario is in part due to the current opinion of Ford. While it is surprising that the Conservatives have a slight lead in BC, this is partly due to the fact both the Greens and NDP are doing better there than in other regions.
Sam Stone I’m not sure claiming vote buying is a clever thing to use to denigrate Ontario voters when the Federal government spent 4.5 billion dollars to buy a pipeline to move Alberta bitumin. Glass houses and all.
The real question is not “why do votes want to vote for the Liberals”. The real question is "why are Conservatives unable to gain votes. Heck in Ontario they’ve lost ground, as have the Liberals.
Very interesting Polling Aggregator at the CBC.
Let’s look at the “Since 2015” view for Canada, BC, Alberta, Praire Provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada.
Canada
Big story is the NDP (~15% to ~12%) and the rise of the Green Party (~5% to 10%)
Conservatives/Liberals swap places back and forth but Conservative have failed to capitalize on Liberal misfortunes.
BC
Almost identical to Canada overall - NDP/Green are neck and neck, but Conservatives have allowed the Liberals to creep back up to almost parity
Alberta
Looks like Liberal voters have moved to either the NDP/Green parties or into the Conservative groups. Oddly the PPC rise (though small) doesn’t look like it’s impact the Conservatives.
Oddly Liberal vote buying in the form of pipelines hasn’t seen any benefits . :rolleyes:
Prairies
Liberal support looks like it mainly went to Conservatives with some going Green/NDP but a recent spike in Green support seems to tie to NDP loses.
Ontario
Liberal/Conservative are neck and neck with some Liberal uptick recently but the story is the rise of the Greens from ~5% to 10% eating into the NDP. Remember the NDP leader was a provincial MP and should carry some popular weight here.
Quebec
NDP collapse and Green rise with steady Conservative growth but the Liberals remain in the lead - quelle suprise
Atlantic Canada
NDP and Greens now basically tied. The Conservatives saw steady growth from ~20% to 35% but have faded away recent giving votes (and the lead) back to the Liberals.
To be fair, I’m annoyed that the Conservatives are doing so badly here. I’ve stated why the Liberals wont be getting my vote but claiming voters west of Manitoba have been “bought” is disgusting and obviously untrue on review. They appear to not see anything vote worthy in Andrew Sheer and his party. They obviously want to, given the positioning of both Conservative & Liberal polling results (they’re close). Basically it’s not the people’s fault the Conservative can’t capitalize on Liberal mistakes.
See, that’s part of the problem. I used to describe myself the same way, but lately I’ve preferred “economically responsible”, because the current conservative economic plan is anything but responsible. They’re stuck on tax cuts and trickle down theory, which has been shown not to work*.
Hell, Doug Ford had to be dragged kicking and screaming into presenting anything that even looked like a proposed budget during the Ontario election. If any other party had ever tried to pull that, the Conservatives would have cried foul without hesitation, but now, the party that used to pride itself on being “the one that can do math” just flat out refused to do any math at all.
Add in the obvious trends towards pandering to the religious right and the racists, the major anti-scientific shift, and pandering to conspiracy theorists and crazies, and there’s just nothing left in this party for a Red Tory.
*I had an epiphany a while back: Trickle down is to the right wing what communism used to be to the left wing. A nice sounding theory, that utterly failed in reality, because it turns out real people don’t actually act the way the theory assumes they will act. The left wing has largely moved past outright communism, but the right wing is still stuck on trickle down.
I don’t disagree. When I say “economically conservative”, I am referring to a classic description which seems to no longer exist in practice.
The irony is that plenty of voters respect fiscal restraint. It worked very well for Chrétien and Martin, although times were different and there were some skeletons in the closet. It got Ford elected — although he has largely been profligate. Best not to mention Ontario Hydro, buck-a-beer or school curricula. It is understood tough decisions have to be made, but they have not. These distractions have accomplished little. And one can’t but help feel both provincial and federal Tories could do better.