you're not looking at broad levels of evidence. winning the seat last election by 40% or more doesn't make it a "safe seat". a safe seat is a seat that the conservatives have consistently won. like fort mcmurray. as mentioned previously: if the conservatives had more "safe seats" than the other parties, they wouldn't have spent most of the last century in opposition. 2011 did not represent a fundamental shift in the electorate. in fact, it had very low turnout. and, the numbers (by any polling) have changed dramatically since then, with large movements through both swing demographics.
take bc, for example.
harper won 45.5% of the vote in bc in 2011; the ndp won 32.5%, the liberals won 13.4% and the greens won 7.7%. current polling has harper around 20-25%, the ndp around 40-45%, the liberals around 20-25% and the greens around 10-15%. that's a big difference.
for you to point out the ridings and say "gee. in order for the ndp to win this seat, harper would have to lose 20%. that can't happen" is kind of foolish of you when the polling suggests that harper has in fact lost 20% in the province.
you're ignoring facts out of an inability to come to terms with them.
with numbers like that you would expect a reversal in outcomes. with a 20% swing, you should be looking at seats where harper won by 60% last election as in bounds.
as i pointed out in the article: the idea here is correct. you're just really not being remotely scientific in the way you're approaching it. if you begin with the assumption that people will vote the same way they did in the last election, of course you'll end up with the results of the last election.
a big win here and there does not a "safe seat" make. a "safe seat" has to have a long history in a single party. the margins could fly around all over the place. it's the consistency that is more important. and, yes - the conservatives have a significant number of them. but, it adds up to a minority of the seats in the parliament that is a far cry from declaring them the favourite.
you're half right in explaining the attack ads, but you're not pointing out that they're not working. both the ndp and the liberals are up relative to the previous election, and the biggest shift in voting intention seems to be from the conservatives to the liberals. them's the numbers: despite harper's effort, he's losing votes to trudeau. direct polling has pinpointed c-51 as the dominant factor in the collapse of the liberal vote towards the ndp earlier this year.
but, i would not expect the conservatives to expend much energy on the ndp for the reason that there's almost no swing between the conservatives and the ndp. the swing between the conservatives and liberals is about 5-10%, and mostly in the gta - it could, in theory, win them the election if the liberal vote didn't collapse so badly on the left. the swing between the ndp and liberals is as much as 30% by some estimates, and distributed widely across the country. it's the important part of this election, and has been the dominant factor since paul martin purged the liberal party. and, i would expect this to be the first election where a measurable swing between the ndp and the greens begins to open up.
the only way you'll see harper start to nail mulcair is if the ndp gets so far ahead that the best conservative strategy is to try and swing votes from the ndp to the liberals in order to split the vote. and, that's a long ways away. he'd have to be solidly over 35% nationally.
thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/17/New-Dem-Battlegrounds/
Macb423
But I recall that in 2011 the conservative media, led by the Post and the Globe and Mail, puffed up the NDP and trashed Mr Ignatieff, nicely splitting the votes in Ontario so the Conservatives won their majority. I think we can expect the same as this election unfolds. Maybe in the other direction, as you say. I'm not sure the NDP needs to be above 35% to make this a winning strategy for Mr Harper, since this election, he won't have his 39% but will be running at 35% or less himself.
deathtokoalas
i don't think that the attack ads made much of a difference. i was in that liberal/ndp split category at the time, and i came to my own conclusions on ignatieff by reading some of his writing. he was unelectable on his own merits. the conservatives didn't have to tear him down. and, when i voted for the ndp in that election it was a conscious decision of conscience to not vote for a pro-torture, neo-liberal war monger.
ignatieff was to the right of harper on a slew of issues. you don't have to blame it on anybody. he was a poor candidate. and he didn't appeal to liberal voters because he didn't believe in liberal party values.
by contrast, i voted for dion. and, while it's unlikely that i'll vote for trudeau, it has little to do with the attack ads.
in fact, i voted for paul dewar - who was articulating a more principled foreign policy perspective that i was in greater agreement with.
but, i want to stress this point. because the liberal "intelligentsia" does *not* understand what happened.
michael ignatieff did not lose in spite of his great intellect and brilliant writing. he lost *because* of his poor foresight and the opinions he expressed as an academic.
canadians were not brainwashed into not voting for him because he spent time out of the country. canadians looked at his record, weighed it carefully and rejected it as inconsistent with their value systems.
this does have something to do with the time he spent away. he didn't understand the political movement he attempted to lead.
and, as bad as harper has been, we are lucky he disappeared. ignatieff would be standing shoulder to shoulder with obama as he blows up half the world - and without any of the good political sense that harper has to keep it at arm's distance.
sorry. one more add.
the media is going to tell you that the race in toronto is between the conservatives and the liberals - even if the numbers are split. the logic is by looking at the past results of the ridings, which often have been liberal-conservative battles with the ndp in distant third.
however, if you follow what i'm saying and you look at the numbers closely, what emerges is a close three-way battle.
the reason is that the conservative rural ridings in ontario are very safe. so, if they're down 10% province wide, they're down more than that in the cities. but, the liberals are still struggling to reach their 2008 levels in ontario. conversely, the ndp are up by well over 10% on their 2008 levels. but, because the ndp are the opposite of the conservatives - more of their votes are in cities than rural areas - that means they're up disproportionately. a 10% bump province wide suggests a 15-20% jump in urban centres.
current polling numbers don't suggest that's enough to put the ndp ahead, comfortably. it suggests a tight three-way race. even if the liberals can get back every single vote that they lost to the conservatives in 2011, they will still lose a lot of votes to the ndp - many more than they will gain back.
and there lies the crux of the problem. taking the conservatives down to 35% doesn't help if neither the liberals nor the ndp can get over 33%. and, while there's clearly been a lot of movement from the liberals to the ndp in these ridings, there's a breaking point - because a lot of these ridings are quite wealthy. compounding the problem is that the liberals' election strategy is itself bounded - appealing to moderate conservatives can only take you so far before party politics prevents you from cutting deeper, and it alienates you from the other side. in the end, the perception that these races are between the conservatives and liberals could allow the ndp to dominate from the margin. and, that has been the general movement of voters over the last decade or so - as a result of the liberals endlessly pursuing this strategy.
this is why i float the 35% number. it's about the breaking point that's necessary. if the ndp are polling 30% over all of ontario, they're probably polling around 35% over much of the urban spaces. if the conservatives are polling 35% in all of ontario, they're probably polling around 30% over those same spaces. if the liberals are polling 30% over all of ontario, it's probably close to a wash. but, these are rough numbers subject to a lot of randomness and a lot of toss-up races - 33 here, 37 there....
if the ndp can get to 35% over all of ontario, it suggests they're polling closer to 40% in the urban cores. and, then the two-way result and urban/rural split is complete and clear.
until or when or if that magic number appears, this race remains exceedingly unpredictable, as the three-way dynamics throws everything around all over the place in key areas. but if it does appear, it's done.
Ken
I would expect this to be the first election where a measurable swing between the ndp and the greens begins to open up~This has been the problem all along the greens propped up by the Liberals and Cns to split the NDP votes! Where else does the greens get money to run all of their candidates and advertise? Mostly from the Conservative as greens are small C cons no where near a leftist party! To limit EM to just one debate and to vilify the other parties is the best advertising for the Greens. GO NDP GO
deathtokoalas
the greens are serious about stopping pipelines and pulling out of free trade agreements. the ndp are not. it's a different kind of left - the ndp have traditionally been a worker's left, whereas the greens are a libertarian left. the economic realities of the present and future indicate that worker's parties are a thing of the past, because we no longer have workers. the result is that the ndp have moved into the center-left, and have become indistinguishable from where moderate liberals used to sit.
the green party is the new left. they're going to have to make some changes, which will include replacing elizabeth may with somebody that's not a pro-life minister. but, that doesn't change the facts of it.
the new left is going to prioritize a transition out of fossil fuels, a greater focus on local economies at the expense of global trade and more political power at the local level. the planks of this new left were developed in the alter-globalization movement of the mid to late 90s, and have been further developed through the occupy movements.
up until this point, this new left has been split between the ndp and the greens, and has also included a lot of non-voters. this swing is going to open up because the ndp are in the process of completely abandoning it. it will mostly be composed of traditional "workers left" types that are stuck between the past and the future.
ken
it's a different kind of left and funded by whom from Harper or who ever pull's the strings of the media to refuse EM joining the debates where May takes a shot or two at Harper but her main thrust is the NDP! She gets many of the sympathy vote from the how dare you crowd not allowing her to debate, when she is not up in the seats in parliament to be invited, If she shut downs everything then what and the NDP is lead by an environmentalist in Tom Mulcair who will go all out green in time and give them a chance to change over from fossil fuels you can't make everyone live in the dark ages by stopping it all over night! now you are telling me that the Occupy movement was all green? I was there and I am NDP does that count to you or are you just fluff & stuffed with spin?
deathtokoalas
well, her main target ought to be the ndp at this point. they're shredding their policy conventions in public, and making it clear they're going to govern on the right. that's not what ndp voters are signing up for. the ndp has created this problem themselves by moving to the right and alienating their supporters. if they don't want to lose support on the left, they should stop abandoning it.
i'm not a partisan green party supporter. i'm a libertarian socialist that makes arms-length pragmatic voting decisions based on what's on the actual table. i'd rather see the party system abolished, frankly, and have everybody run as an independent. i'd prefer direct democracy on a wide range of non-specialist issues and technocratic rule under a wide range of specialist ones.
as such, my voting decisions have been partially riding based; i voted for john manley a few times under chretien, then ed broadbent & paul dewar when paul martin took over. i swung back to the liberals to vote for dion, even though i knew dewar would win the riding. i knew at the time it would probably be the last time i ever vote liberal, so i felt it was important to try and give them as much leftist support as they could get before they caved. and i understand that the green vote won harper the election in 2008, which i'm still rather bitter about. this was legitimately stupid. there was absolutely no reasonable reason to vote for a fifth party when the natural governing party had adopted it's platform and the leader of that party had endorsed them. but, we're in a different situation today; muclair is throwing around transparent rationalizations to cement the ndp as another neo-liberal party. dion was different, but i wouldn't expect mulcair to govern differently than harper. i then voted for dewar again in 2011. i've since moved out of ottawa into another safe ndp riding, but the candidate here is a backbencher for life. that said, i would not consider actually voting for a green candidate out of protest until i learn a little more about that person as an individual.
conservative supporters will follow the party wherever it takes them. the rest of the canadian spectrum will not be lead, nor will it follow. it expects to chart the course and for the politicians to listen to them. so long as canadian politicians think they can warp public opinion and ignore their policy conventions, they will continue to be thwarted by a public that demands they start listening.
--
Macb423
Puzzling, though. Polling across Canada shows the Conservatives running about 8 points lower than their 2011 totals, with little chance of improving those numbers because they are almost no one's second choice. Wouldn't that suggest a fair number of seats should be in play, even some the Conservatives won by over 50%? Here in BC the polls show that Conservative support has fallen by even more. This suggests to me that some of their "safe" seats might not be. Can someone tell me what is wrong with this analysis?
And I very much appreciate the explanation of the attack ads against Trudeau. It appears that, as usual, the Conservatives are better at political strategy than the rest of us. Sigh.
adolan
The popular vote numbers are misleading. Moving from those small-sample size results to seats is a tricky process and is based on a lot of assumptions. Hence the margins of error around projected seats based on popular votes are very wide.
Macb423
Yes, I think I understand that piece. But it still seems if the Conservatives are losing 8 points on average throughout Canada, some of their "safer" seats should be in danger. I mean if you drop from 50% to 42%, the seat will be in play. But of course, our so-called opposition parties won't cooperate very well with each other, so maybe I'm dreaming.
Wwallace mud
If many of those who voted Conservative in 2011 in ridings that were already sure wins for the Conservatives are now answering that they won't vote Conservative this time the naatioinal numbers would go down for the conservatives but on a riding by riding basis that type of drop wouldn't effect the seat total outcome.
deathtokoalas
yeah, but that's not how you'd expect to distribute it. the safe seats are safe because they're safe. rather, you'd expect that 8% drop (and it's more like a 10-11% drop) to be disproportionately distributed to seats that have swung in the past. this is why you can see a 20% cut in bc and almost stable numbers in alberta; that balances out to lower national numbers, and should actually indicate a *greater* impact than 8% in bc.
it depends on the riding, obviously. it's tricky to try and do anything uniformly when it comes to this. but, the way this is being interpreted here is not the right way to interpret it, it's flatly backwards. these seats where he got 45% should be expected to fall to between 25-35%, whereas seats that he got 65% in are the ones that should not be expected to move much at all.
we can certainly talk of safe conservative ridings, but when we do so we should talk about seats that have been conservative for decades - not new ridings with mixed populations that have shown wide movement in the past.
it's not at at all unheard of for a riding to swing by up to 20 points in canada from election to election.
the numbers in ontario are fluctuating, but it's looking like he's down about 10%. but, that's misleading. you would expect all of that 10% is in the gta - which makes it more like 15%. rural ontario makes up some of his safest seats. and, that likewise takes that 45% in the 905 down to 30%.
it's just all backwards...