Okay, Conservative supporters online are officially nervous about the NDP. Read the comments at the National Post story showing yet another pollster with the NDP closing on the Conservatives (Forum Research has CPC 34, NDP 31, LPC 22). You’ve got them, particularly ones from western Canada, threatening that the West will separate if the NDP were to force the Conservatives from power, either by non-confidence or (gasp) outright winning the seat count (not so ludicrous sounding anymore),
I didn’t like it back in 2004 or 2006 when some of them got on comment sections and blogs and pulled that whine, threatening they’d start a separatist movement if Canada didn’t vote out what was viewed by them as a scandal-laden Liberal government. I got it though; they were morally outraged voters might vote the Liberals back in.
You can’t really keep use the same threats though if a totally different left-of-centre party happens to be catching the fancy of other voters now. That’s called democracy folks – if your guys and gals don’t win, that’s how the system works. Your guy’s been in power for five years now, and it’s apparent a majority of voters don’t like him.. they’ve just been looking for someone to coalese their vote around.. and apparently Jack and the NDP are it.
If your team had played a bit nicer and hadn’t acted with such contempt towards Parliament in a minority scenario, maybe you wouldn’t be in the suddenly dire situation you’re in. Stop blaming voters for not liking what you like.
UPDATE – PS – Nanos now registers the NDP over 30% in their daily tracking poll this AM, and closing fast on the Conservatives.
What i am reading into this NDP surege are two things. Iggy is not conecting with Canadians. After the Chretien years it appears that the support that the Liberals once held has eroded to a point that obviously lots of Canadians dont trust them anymore..even to give them a minority. Is this the end of the Liberal Party as we know it and will they some how revive themselves to rise again. I myself do not count them as dead..far from it. There is too much arrogance there for them to admit defeat and regroup. Dragging Chretien out of moth balls in the last week shows the desperation of the LPC.
I think a true two party system would be the best thing. No more minorities that tie the hands of the ruling party to complete the mandate they were elected for. That goes for any party eleceted. I think what we are seeing here is a serious shift in the political landscape that is going to be more fact than fiction.
Some commentors on radio shows also point out that what people say in a poll compared to how they vote can be two very different things.
I guess we will find out next week.
God help us if we wake up to find Dipper Jack is going to have a new address.
Ps: It think (from speaking to an NDP candidate friend) that the surge is real, and that it is actually very rural and focused in Quebec and BC.
Only 18% of people actually answer the pollsters calls according to Allan Greg, and those tend to be older, rural, and with lower education levels. I don’t trust polls to tell me anything but “trends”.
As far as the Western Separatist “threat”. Let Alberta whine. It’s really Alberta and a handful of rural Saskatchewanites doing the whining. They will NEVER play nice when they think that they have this one resource that is theirs’ and theirs’ alone. Alberta has been a right-wing, bible-thumping, anti-progressive heartland since Confederation. Because of oil, it is more prone to North/South immigration with US oil-types being the biggest influences.
We can’t convert them – until economic reality hits after peak oil (which is coming very soon).
I knew Ray Bailey – the leader of the Western Canada Concept. They were the most outwardly separatist Prairie-ers (I refuse to accept all Westerners into this dim bunch) who eventually became the roots of the Reform Party. Ray’s brother Roy become a Reform MP (we know him well). These people have been grinding the same axe for years. We don’t need to fear them. They hate French and hate Quebec. Rub it in their faces like Trudeau did. Put them in their place – they’re not going anywhere.
I read recently that the NDP are closer to the CONs than the polls suggest. The surge to the NDP is mainly young voters who are left out of the polls due to the fact that most of them do not have a land line. The posters exclusively us land lines and are not in touch at all with cell phone users.
Actually, from what I hear, Nanos and Ekos are both calling cells.
Ex-pat from Ottawa who now lives in Calgary. I’ll still vote Conservative probably until the day I die, but I for one welcome our new NDP overlords (if briefly) if that should happen. Not that I like any of their policies, but they are certainly shaking things up.
It was inevitable that the Bloc vote would collapse one day. I wrongly assumed that the Libs would get 2/3 of the seats with the rest going to the Conservatives after the reckoning happened. I never believed it would go NDP.
Perhaps it’s best that we just have a 2-party system like in the US. Let the pro-business wing of the Liberal party merge with the Conservatives, and the “true believer” progressives go NDP.
Nice try, so your conservatives can stay in power forever, just as Gerry Nicholls suggested
Heck, they even now have Ontario voting Conservative. What more can they expect? Maybe the West should insist on a less draconian tyrant running their party of choice.
@MarkFrancis Doncha know by now? For Right-winged Westerners, the more draconian the more fun?
You forget that Conservatives don’t like democracy unless it is giving them what they want.