while i oppose conscription in most scenarios, israel is a special case; if a country is to have conscription, it should be applied to everybody equally. in principle. so, the israeli court ruling that orthodox jews are to be conscripted is the correct one.

however, i would suspect the idf would find itself extremely disappointed in the quality of orthodox conscripts, which is what happened in vietnam, and the reason the united states abandoned conscription.

i also want to point out that biden's team should look at these results closely, as well, as i've been pointing out for months that his politically-driven attempt to interfere in and police the conflict is going to badly backfire, as he is going to lose 10x as many votes for abandoning the jews in their fight against fascism as he would gain for siding with a terrorist group, due to some kind of feeling that they're being treated unfairly.

i'm not one to get preachy about morality, but the moral position here is abundantly clear, and it is siding with the israelis in their struggle against fascism. most people have very little difficulty figuring that out and realize very intuitively and very quickly that there is something very rotten about somebody that can't figure it out.

i would hope that the liberal party apparatchiks have a better analysis than this.

recent conservative results in the riding v liberal results:

2024: 15555 v 14965

2021: 13587 v 26429

2019: 12933 v 32494

2015: 15936 v 31481

2011: 17864 v 22409

2008: 13948 v 26286

2006: 15021 v 29295

2004: 11226 v 32171

before 2004, there were two right wing parties in canada and you have to add the two totals, but that should be done with some apprehension because a substantive number of red tories in ridings like this one would have become liberals after 2004. i'm going to do it anyways, with a caveat. it's also worth pointing out that the liberal swing to the right after martin lost them some votes to the ndp for a while, although they came back after the ndp committed suicide by electing tom mulcair.

2000: (10099+5457=15556) v 25358

1997: (11520+3564 = 15084) v 26389

1993: (12499 + 5727 = 18266) v 27775

in 1988, there was only one conservative party in ontario, and it won the riding, but the liberals still got over 20,000 votes in a riding with a much smaller population. it should be pointed out that 1984 and 1988 were massive landslides for the conservatives in canada and 1984 was a very bad year for liberals.

1988: 25206 v 21655

1984: 20914 v 16659

the liberals won in 1980 but, due to population growth, citing raw numbers is no longer helpful.

the claim in the article that her vote total of 14965 would usually be enough to win is pretty dubious. the average conservative turnout since 1993, not including yesterday, in actual real elections, was:

(13587 + 12933 + 15936 + 17864 + 13948 + 15021 + 11226 + 15556 + 15084 + 18266)/10 = 14942.

this is supposed to be a liberal stronghold, so winning by 20 votes is not "enough to win". indeed, the average liberal turnout over the same time period was:

(26429 + 32494 + 31481 + 22409 + 26286 + 29295 + 32171 + 25358 + 26389 + 27775)/10 = 28008.

don stewart's total was about the average turnout since 1993, give or take a reasonable margin. conversely, leslie church's total was roughly half of the average turnout since 1993, and over 10,000 votes less than any other liberal candidate since 1993.

it is abundantly clear that liberal voters decided not to vote in the byelection and i hope the liberals figure that out and adjust to allow for more democracy. leslie church has claimed she doesn't want to give up. this is not helpful, she should get the message and move on, or at least stand back and have an open nomination that lets the people in the riding choose their representatives.

i'm not a liberal, i'm a libertarian socialist. the bourgeois positions of the soft capitalist class constantly frustrate and annoy me. i'd rather vote ndp, but they're a bunch of phonies; every time the ndp actually gets elected, it results in budget cuts at the provincial level. the ndp can say what they want, but their record is clear: ndp governments are austerity governments, always. even olivia chow is pushing through austerity as the mayor of toronto. they're complete frauds, and i say that as a hard leftist.

it is because i am a hard leftist that i won't have anything to do with fascistic right-wing organization like hamas, and would utterly consternate anybody identifying as a leftist that expresses any remote level of sympathy for any level of arabic supremacist islamic fascism. that position is untenable. netanyahu is unquestionably the lesser evil.

as terrible as they are, the liberals are by far the least terrible party, and the conservatives are by far the most terrible party. they need to learn the actual lesson here, which is that there's a lack of democracy in this country, and that they need to increase grassroots participation. as a bourgeois party, the liberals have a longstanding problem understanding this, and it costs them elections every ten-fifteen years as a result of it. the conservatives are far better at getting grassroots voters involved, even as they constantly turn on them after they get elected.

canadians won't like pierre polievre and will dispose of him relatively quickly, if he accidentally wins. the liberal party should not let that happen by making the mistake of continuing to enforce candidates on voters.

and leslie church should absolutely move on.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/veteran-liberal-toronto-st-pauls

the results in the toronto byelection this morning are certainly notable. a parade of pollsters are going to react by claiming the liberals are headed for a massive defeat, and trudeau should resign.

i've been calling on trudeau to resign for years, but my analysis of the situation is rather different. i do have a math degree, and i have worked in polling. i tend to provide alternate analyses of the mainstream polling media.

if you look at the raw numbers, the conservatives were actually relatively flat, but the liberal numbers completely caved in. turnout was down 20%. these two things, together, indicate that what happened was more along the lines of that the liberals couldn't get their vote out rather than that there was some kind of massive swing right.

this is certainly cause for alarm, if you're a liberal (and i'm not), but there are a lot of reasonable explanations. it was game 7 in the stanley cup finals and with a canadian team, and perhaps the conservative base was a little more devoted to their cause than the liberal base. there were some concerns about trudeau's hamas sympathizing messaging (including repeating hamas blood libel propaganda, probably from facebook) in a very jewish riding, and that may have kept a lot of voters home. it's also worth pointing out that the liberal candidate was parachuted in, and replaced somebody with deep ties in the community, who was also rather clearly pushed out to make way for one of trudeau's friends. trudeau and his parachuted-in candidate may have been punished for kicking a popular elder out and replacing her with a backroom party operative that nobody knew anything about.

the liberals are certainly in trouble, but the national polling in canada is very difficult to distribute correctly, which is a point i've tried to help with and had some impressive results with. the liberals could conceivably win a majority and lose the popular vote. for that reason, they shouldn't freak out too much from bad national polling. yet, that is why this byelection was supposed to be helpful. unfortunately, the actual reality is that the byelection has too many anomalies to expect it to be representative, and i would advise avoiding using it to predict much of anything.

the lesson the liberals should learn is to stop parachuting in these backroom party hacks like this. the candidate lost because she was unknown in the riding and rejected by the voters for it. an mp's job is to represent their constituents. if they allow for a nomination in the riding, they should probably win the seat back in the general next year.