Pundits' Guide

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Several weeks into the new year, and the battle-lines that have been percolating under the surface in the NDP Leadership Race seem set to emerge – if anyone will let them.

Playing against his Dudley-do-right image, Paul Dewar has revisited a storyline first planted by friends of the Charest government during the 2008 federal election against perceived front-runner Thomas Mulcair, challenging him to clarify his current position on the bulk export of fresh water. This follows an earlier charge by establishment favourite Brian Topp that Mulcair is a "centrist", which Topp continued to poke at during the Montreal debate with attacks on the record of the Charest government, subtly focusing on the time during which his fellow leadership contestant had been a member of cabinet provincially.

Meanwhile, Peggy Nash's campaign has now situated itself squarely within the activist framework of movement politics, industrial and public sector labour, and identity politics – a characterization they seem quite comfortable with, but which connotes an apparent unwillingness to extend the dialogue to non-traditional NDP voters, at least to party members in other corners of the spectrum.

The major problem for the leadership race itself, is that the structure so far has inhibited the candidates from engaging on the issues where they do differ, and while the membership has been reluctant to see them turn the contest into a brawl (for example, not one leadership contestant raised the issue of Lise St-Denis' defection or attempted to lay blame for it anywhere else, last Wednesday in Toronto), by the same token the lack of opportunity to engage genuine areas of policy and strategic difference is doing the members a disservice.

Last Wednesday's debate in Toronto, organized by the NDP Toronto Area Council, highlighted the problem and its potential solution very well. Ask a motherhood question, and give the candidates 60 seconds to answer it? Of course you're going to get pap and talking points, what did you expect! Give them another 30 seconds to reply. More platitudes and banalities. Open it up for a 5-minute back-and-forth between a subset of candidates – now you're talking, but not if you don't include the candidates who actually differ on that particular issue.

For the mainstream media who are having trouble finding anything to cover in this race, well first of all you have to show up. You can't cover the NDP Leadership Race from Hy's, nor from Twitter. I'm sorry you have two decades' worth of Liberal sources you've cultivated over the years, but they can't help you cover this either (not that they wouldn't be willing to give it the old college try). But you're not going to develop any new NDP sources if you don't go to the places where you can meet actual New Democrats. Outside Ottawa. Only Scott Stinson from the Post and Aaron Wherry from Macleans bothered to attend the Toronto debate in person from the print side, while a few other hardy souls braved the awful audio of the Bloor Collegiate sound board to tune it in over RabbleTV's livestream, and then Linda McCuaig was seen at one of the after-parties. Coverage of the Montreal debate, by contrast, was much more widespread, especially on the french side.

In the hopes that this Sunday's outing in Halifax (organized by the party itself, and therefore hopefully with much better production values than the last two local efforts) will be more productive for all concerned, here is my list of issues on which I believe the leadership candidates can be reasonably expected to disagree. Most of them revolve around how a social democratic party should negotiate the parameters of its first national government.

• The relative contributions of tax policy versus industrial policy in charting a social democratic government's economic direction. More than one person has noted that monetary policy has been completely absent from the public leadership debate as well (though it might have been buried in some of the policy papers, not all of which I've been through comprehensively yet; if so, sorry).
• In light of the first point, what are the acceptable parameters of state engagement with the private sector to achieve national objectives? If public support for revamped and better regulated labour-sponsored venture capital funds is acceptable to redress shortfalls in small business financing options, or targeted support by industrial sector to encourage innovation is welcomed, what kind of public-private equity partnerships would be acceptable – if any – to close the gap in infrastructure remediation quickly enough? This matters for the P-P-Pont Champlain issue, for example.
• Does the Sherbrooke Declaration mean no national standards, or opting out with compensation? And if the former, how does that differ from the Conservative government's current view of fiscal federalism?
• Is the party going to start promoting policies that offer optional top-ups on social programs for the middle class, as an alternative to the right-wing's focus on privatization, or the traditional social democratic focus on universality coupled with a progressive tax system to promote solidarity amongst the 99%? Pensions and retirement income are the program most obviously implicated here. Tom Mulcair so far has the only detailed pension proposal, though after reading all the documentation, I still don't understand the details of it, but then he wasn't included in the pension section of the Toronto debate, so how could I learn more.
• Should private delivery of publicly-funded social programs be reversed, its growth halted, or does anyone now in the leadership race actually support its extension?
• How will a federal NDP government face what will almost certainly be its first constitutional crisis, namely a showdown with the Senate? What priority should be placed on electoral reform, should the two issues be dovetailed, and how does this affect the choice of a "joint nominations" versus "next 70" electoral strategy for the party between now and then?

This weekend's debate is to focus on family policy, so hopefully at least some of these issues should find their way into the mix.

Another real gap in what limited punditry has surfaced about the race to date is the question of what qualities the party's membership should look for in a potential leader. I refuse to believe the only criterion for running a competent or even visionary government is who will give the media the best tape from Question Period and the resulting scrums, or who has the longest list of endorsements. In my mind a decision about whom to support ought to take at the least the following into account:

• Does the candidate have the necessary experience to lead the party, command respect in all quarters, and run a national government with all its complexities in the modern world?
• What are the different candidates' campaigns for the leadership showing the members about how they would try to unseat the Conservatives and install the first ever federal social democratic government in Canada?
• Does the candidate's style favour decisiveness or consultation; and to the extent those are opposites, which is preferable?
• How well will the candidate understand, communicate with and advocate for various parts of the country (Quebec, rural areas and the hinterland, major urban centres, etc.), or the electorate (women, younger voters, the poor, the suburbs, aboriginal citizens, and the increasingly diverse ethnic make-up of the population, the house of labour, the various wings of the environmental movement, professionals, academics, etc.)?
• If the leader is the party's chief strategist, how canny are the strategic options they're proposing in their leadership campaign platforms?
• How well does the candidate get along with his or her colleagues?
• Do the candidates take risks? And if so, are they well-calculated, well-executed ones?
• Who is thinking about the overall interests of the party and country, rather than just their own campaign?
• How well do they parry attacks from their colleagues, and/or the other parties. And, can their campaigns land an effective attack against an opponent?
• Who is the "helluva guy/gal" that can connect with people both in person and across the media, in both official languages?

Some of these factors imply traits that are more immutable, while others can be improved with time and work. Discerning the difference between the two categories will also be important, as will an assessment of the candidates' growth potential in the latter regard.

As to the state of the contest itself, here's my latest take on the campaigns, and in particular the demographics they seem to have had success in attracting.

Peggy Nash – As mentioned above, her campaign has taken shape in the traditions of the party's base, especially on the CAW-CUPE side of the Ontario labour spectrum, and with a strong presence in the large urban centres of Toronto and Vancouver, smaller industrialized (or de-industrialized) centres in southern Ontario, and amongst youth, especially young LGBTT activists and a large swatch of activists and Hill staff. Tuesday she added a string of top-flight labour federation endorsements to her camp, along with noted left-wing pundit Bill Tieleman of Vancouver. Her support is much thinner across the prairies (notably not even Edmonton could assemble a feminist-pot-luck-for-Peggy event in Alberta the other weekend), and in the more rural parts of Ontario. Nash is strongly identified with the fight against wage and benefit rollbacks in the London, Ontario EMD lock-out, having delivered a barn-burner at their day of solidarity events over the weekend, and never fails to urge sympathizers to join the party in every speech to date in the campaign. She is also politely received in Montreal, where she has a definite following. I'll get a better sense of the ground game value of Alexa McDonough's endorsement during this weekend's trip to Nova Scotia, but overall Nash's tour effort has been more focused than comprehensive I guess is the best way to say it.

Thomas Mulcair – His support is often older, and more professional, skews male, and is coming from parts of the membership who have been less involved in active party politics lately or who receive most of their information through the mainstream media. His campaign seems to favour events organized for him, rather than existing party confabs (as seen again recently, for example, in their decision to attend a recently organized event in La Pointe de l'Île tomorrow night, rather than the longstanding debate organized by 5 west-central riding associations on the Concordia campus the same evening). Easily the most polished performer in formal debate and broadcast media settings, Mulcair is challenging the membership to aspire to a broader coalition in order to achieve government, without in my view anyway articulating exactly who would be included or downplayed in that new compact, or many details of what that government would try to accomplish. On the other hand, his mastery of the environmental file is unparalleled on a policy basis, though he has focused more on identifying with the thinkers in the field rather than the activists. Clearly he is also a powerful presence on the Quebec scene for the party, though the defection of one of the 59 did open a tiny chink in the argument of who is best to hold on to the NDP's 59 Quebec seats, a matter that was not aided when he singled out and praised former NDP candidate and Quebec environmentalist Daniel Breton from the audience at the Montreal debate, mere days before Breton crossed to run provincially for the Parti Québécois. Obviously, his campaign is following a Quebec strategy in terms of membership sign-ups, having set an ambitious goal of 10,000. That Quebec base notwithstanding, Mulcair was the first candidate to visit all 10 provinces (no-one has yet visited any of the territories), and he had by far the best attended of all the Toronto post-debate parties I made it to (though I ran out of steam before Nash's which was said to be packed, and couldn't find either Saganash's or Ashton's in time). If I thought the dual citizenship issue bore any relevance to who would make the best leader, I would surely have mentioned it before now, but Mulcair did seem to put it to rest nicely on This Hour Has 22 Minutes tonight.

Brian Topp – I can't tell from the peck on the cheek I got in Montreal whether he is that good a kisser, but his campaign has clearly been working hard since Christmas to redress some of their earlier perceived challenges. For one thing, Topp released a series of policy papers in advance of the first string of debates, playing to his strength on a series of issues close to the membership's heart. Next his campaign sent him on a bit of a media tour, which has now been followed up with a few townhalls across the country. The night of the Toronto debate also saw the release of a set of videos by prominent Canadian performers, easily topped by perhaps the most daring and self-deprecating political ad we've seen in Canada, featuring actor Peter Keleghan ("Brian Topp is a good kisser"). Some more videos of Brian telling his story and discussing his vision have tried to soften his still less than fully animated speaking style with some warmer music. Topp's support predominates amongst decision-makers in the party at the national, regional and local level (joined in January by the former Saskatchewan Premier (Lorne Calvert) and Deputy Premier (Clay Serby)), or many of those most closely affected by the decisions that have been or will be taken. They rely on their personal connections across the country for news and information, and are usually more discerning consumers of news from the mainstream outlets. Of course every campaign has its quota of annoying fanboys on Twitter as well, and the Topp campaign is no exception there. But while much of his support across the country has been quieter (further to the meme often heard before Christmas that no-one knew anyone who knew anyone who was supporting him), Topp's decision to write a letter to the membership in the wake of the Lise St-Denis claim that "They voted for Jack Layton. Jack Layton is dead" proved he did have a finger on where the party's sentiment was at, and for the first time elicited a number of open declarations of support for his candidacy in a variety of circles. Also, he has clearly benefited from a lot of practice and likely a fair bit of performance and voice training. The campaign vigourously disputes the spin they say was planted over the holidays about his fourth place standing, but do sound relieved that for now the tide appears to have turned somewhat, leading into the debate season part of the campaign that's now underway.

Paul Dewar – Here is a campaign that is doing everything right, even if the candidate's delivery can be inconsistent in more formal settings, or occasionally the spin can get ahead of itself. Satisfied to hold back on big-name endorsements until the new year (and apparently with more in their back pocket), the Dewar camp had planned a big push out of the gate in January, with a show of strength from their ground game, the first campaign video advertisement, a couple of very respectable caucus endorsements, and the promise of an improvement in his french-language skills. What they got instead was a decent early Friday morning event in the shadow of the Liberal convention that did not quite live up to the "game-changer" status someone attached to it (the campaign disputes exactly who), but still represented a very popular addition to the Dewar team; followed by a mini-controversy over whether a deputy leader should hail from the same province as the leader ("there are more announcements to come", replied the campaign), and a strained performance at the Montreal debate that demonstrated Dewar had perhaps acquired more french over the holidays, but had not yet fully absorbed it, thus making it difficult for any prominent Quebec supporters to endorse him as yet. Undaunted, his team continued a busy campaign on the tour, media, policy, and organization fronts, with Dewar being the first to attend the London EMD picket-line, and launching his new theme and strategic focus ("the real majority", to be achieved with "the next 70"), turning in an awkward performance on CTV's Power Play, followed by a much more polished and comfortable one on Sun TV's The Daily Brief, and last night launching a pre-debate salvo in Tom Mulcair's direction. The net effect is to beg the half-empty-half-full question: is the uneven nature of Dewar's performances evidence that he is not ready for prime-time, or is the scope and ambition of his campaign evidence of his growth potential, and that he is ready for prime time with a little bit more time and work. Certainly he is unmatched amongst the top four in the ability to connect with people one-on-one and in small groups (even before and after the Montreal debate, malgré le français, more than one person pointed out). And where Topp's strength is in strategic messaging, Dewar engenders more loyal and active support on the ground, with reach into the rural areas less drawn to a Peggy Nash. His support is still concentrated in Eastern and Northern Ontario and Manitoba, but is evident in Toronto, across the prairies and in BC, plus they claim to have a team in Montreal, and I guess we'll see what there is for him down east this week. It skews female, young, internationalist in orientation, and policy-oriented in approach, and includes many in the party who would not be comfortable with either Mulcair or Nash at the helm, but have been offside with Topp in the past. People either think he will break-out, or should drop-out, and otherwise aren't sure how to rate his chances.

Those are the four candidates I still see as having a path to win. Of the remaining candidates, I don't believe any has established the organization required to pull themselves over the finish line in first place, but most or all of them should be able to exert some kind of influence over the outcome.

Certainly Nathan Cullen has demonstrated considerable skill in debate settings (most notably in Montreal, where in spite of his french, he connected with the crowd and brought down the house more than once), and his campaign's video targeted at getting young people to join the party is a charming reflection of the energy he's engendered amongst many young people, especially in the west (although kids: please note that public healthcare is not "free"). But the media's fascination with his joint nomination scheme ran headlong last Wednesday into the reality of the party membership in Toronto, a group that has spent the last four elections battling against and finally coming out on top of Liberal pleas for "strategic voting", and was in no mood to hear about a proposal that seemed to them most likely to assist in the Liberal Party's revival. Cullen had a lively post-debate party, with a lot of younger quasi-professional men in attendance. His campaign has been particularly strong in BC, including both Vancouver and the Interior (which he has now toured twice), attracting the very important and influential endorsements of former provincial cabinet minister Corky Evans, and former organization director Ron Stipp (neither of whom seem to rate in the very rote counting schemes dreamed up by party outsiders), and he has skillfully benefitted from having the Enbridge pipeline debate situated right in the heart of his riding.

Romeo Saganash's campaign is following a different path from the others, whether speeches to high schools, skating parties, or a series of speaking engagements at benefits for Attawapiskat (where he apparently owned the room in Toronto). I don't have any good metrics for assessing the campaign's likely performance, but we will get a glimpse with the first financial reports what else might be going on behind the scenes. Certainly in their shoes I would be emphasizing sign-ups as much as the existing membership.

Similarly Martin Singh's campaign tour has taken him to gurdwaras across the country (Sikh temple congregations), as well as party events. His campaign has three offices, the BC one having opened more regularly now, and they are doing personal phone canvassing of the exissting membership, encouraging them to visit Singh's website. Mulcair's campaign has some reason to believe they might be the beneficiary of Singh's support, given relationships between the two campaigns. It will be interesting to see how many new members Singh's campaign can bring into the fold.

Niki Ashton's campaign has released a number of policy papers, notably a very good one on healthcare, and she has been touring small-town Quebec, necessitating a pretty hair-raising trip back to Toronto through bad weather in order to attend last week's debate. Her debate performances since the first outing in Ottawa have not significantly advanced her position in the race, but she is finding her audience, and retains substantial strength in Saskatchewan and a significant minority of support across her home province of Manitoba.

The race is finding differing levels of interest across the country, but is certainly running second to pre-election preparations in Alberta and to a lesser extent BC, and to leadership and rebuilding issues in post-election Saskatchewan. Where support is going in Nova Scotia is an open question, but one I hope to form better impressions on after this weekend's events. Several of the campaigns have strong ties into the Nova Scotia government, but as yet there has been no indication I've seen as to which way the wind will blow.

UPDATE: For another grassroots media take on the race, Ish Theilheimer of StraightGoods.ca asked prominent endorsers of five of the candidates why they had made their choices.

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For the latest on the NDP Leadership Race, don't forget to follow the half-hourly news updates, and social media tickers at the Pundits' Guide NDPLdr portal page:  http://ndpldr.punditsguide.ca

The "Leadership Primary" – currently in the news as a proposal before next week's Liberal Party convention – has been tried before as a method of increasing media coverage of the succession in smaller parties, the most notable recent example being the Federal NDP in 1995, after their brutal rout in the 1993 general election.

The party organized a series of regional and labour primaries in advance of the convention, designed to give regional candidates a base from which to build, and as a way of screening out candidates who could not win at least one of the primaries from consideration at the party convention in October.

Four candidates entered the race, and all but author Herschel Hardin passed the one-primary or 25% overall vote threshold (Hardin penned a very interesting personal history of his journey in the race afterwards, excerpts of which can be found on his website here).

Long-time activist M.P. Svend Robinson won the Québec, Ontario, and BC/Northern primaries, while veteran M.P. (indeed veteran leadership candidate) Lorne Nystrom won the Prairie and Labour primaries, and former Nova Scotia NDP leader Alexa McDonough won the Atlantic primary. Given the preponderance of the NDP membership on the prairies at that time, Nystrom looked like the prohibitive front-runner at the end of that process.

But, the total primary vote bore no outcome to the result at the October 1995 convention. McDonough had won 18.5% of the vote or so during the primaries, and was considered to be out of the race.  However, she went on to command a sufficiently strong 32.5% vote amongst convention delegates (remembering that the convention was held in Ontario), leaving the first-place Robinson scrambling to beat Nystrom to the stage to claim credit for the inevitable outcome, once third-place Nystrom was dropped after the first ballot.

So, Nystrom won the primaries, Robinson won the first ballot, and McDonough won the leadership. And Herschel Hardin got a very interesting book out of it all.

Here are the detailed results:

1995 Federal NDP Leadership Primary Vote vs Convention Vote

Thanks to a friendly archivist for digging up the raw figures and sending them along. We'll review the other NDP leadership contest history in another post.

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For the latest on the NDP Leadership Race, don't forget to follow the half-hourly news updates, and social media tickers at the Pundits' Guide NDPLdr portal page:  http://ndpldr.punditsguide.ca

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

Brian Topp's campaign is entering the middle stretch of the NDP Leadership Race with some of the best strategic intelligence available to any of the candidates, screenshots from an online survey they conducted before Christmas, and obtained exclusively by PunditsGuide.ca, show.

In the middle of November, shortly after the conclusion of the Saskatchewan provincial election, the Topp campaign retained the Logit Group to conduct an online survey of NDP members, in order to assess the various candidates' strengths and weaknesses, test arguments, gauge the regional, demographic and attitudinal bases of each candidate in the early going of the race, and measure the likely influence of various big-name endorsers.

[Best watched in full-screen; best quality available]

The influence of the survey, whose sponsorship I've just been able to confirm, can be seen in many of the themes being developed (and avoided) by the Topp campaign since December's first debate in Ottawa.

After asking a series of questions to determine language, eligibility, various categories of respondents, and interest in the race, the survey then goes on to ask respondents about:

• their views on the party's prospects to gain or lose seats in the next election, and the extent to which a new leader is considered pivotal to that outcome
• where they believe they themselves stand within the spectrum of the party's membership, where they stand on the question of who should take the primary role in policy development (the membership or the leadership candidates), what their views are of the party "establishment", and interestingly whether they view themselves as being a member of that establishment (one of the more creative questions in the survey, I thought)
• their position on a number of issues thought to be likely to emerge during the race:
  • the possibility of a merger with the Liberal Party (you can see that the respondent here forgot to do the screen capture until after answering "no" to the question)
  • the position already floated by Topp in his first sit-down with the Canadian Press bureau in Ottawa about raising taxes on the wealthy, and
  • whether the NDP ought to propose the introduction of a carbon tax (to date no-one has, and such a proposal doesn't appear to be forthcoming from any of the four leading camps according to their websites and what I've been able to surmise through contacts with their campaigns)

Next comes a series of panels listing a number of traits and qualities that members might be looking for in an ideal leadership candidate, trying to identify which are thought most important, such as:

• being able to put together the best campaign team
• being "impeccably bilingual"
• appeal to Québec; support of unions; support of the establishment; broad caucus support; experience in government; able to provide a new direction; able to beat Stephen Harper in a debate; understand the concerns of your province, etc., etc.; and of particular interest …
• someone who will provide the party with much the same direction as Jack Layton
• some who runs a positive leadership campaign, and avoids attacking other leadership candidates

It then asks for favourability ratings on each of the then-nine leadership contestants, an assessment of where each of the nine stand in relation to the party's internal political spectrum, and asks which of five candidates (Cullen, Dewar, Mulcair, Nash, and Topp) would be best at the traits identified above, along with which one the respondents considered to be "ideologically closest to" the respondent.

Next the survey moves onto first choices, and firmness of intention in the first choice, followed by second and third choices, listing all nine candidates at the time (but misspelling the name of Niki Ashton, who had just entered the race four days earlier), and then onto the standard question on which if any of the candidates would the respondent NEVER consider voting for.

Finally, this group of questions posed the rather interesting query as to which candidate the respondents thought Jack Layton might have wanted to succeed him, and then asked about the difference it might make to them personally to see a candidate endorsed by any one of nine names (some of whom had already endorsed various candidates by that stage, and some of whom still have not).

The next-to-last section asked for respondents' views on certain questions about how the party should position itself strategically, such as:

• "Some people say that the next NDP leader must continue with a positive approach to politics in order to motivate progressive voters to defeat Conservatives. Others say that the next NDP leader must take a more confrontational approach to Stephen Harper because he needs to be faced down in order to be defeated in the next election. Which of these statements is closest to your own point of view?"
• "Some people say that the federal NDP has been basically on the right track since Jack Layton was elected leader and it should continue with this proven approach under a new leader. Others say that the NDP has been on the wrong track and won't win government unless the new leader makes fundamental changes to the workings of the party. Which of these statements is closest to your own point of view?"

… and then tests respondents reactions to nine different factors that might drive their decision, including:

[Click on image to open full-sized version]

• "The NDP needs to move closer to the political centre in order to be elected to government"
• "The NDP can win government without becoming Liberals by running as responsible, principled New Democrats"
• "I would never vote for a leadership candidate who was not perfectly bilingual"
• "I would never vote for a leadership candidate who has close ties to the labour movement"
• "It is important that the next NDP leader be a woman"
• "Given how well the NDP did in Quebec in the past election, the next leader of the NDP should be from Quebec"
• etc. 

Then the survey wraps up with a few more demographics (marital status, employment in the private vs public sector, union membership, status as a full-time student, residence in an urban/suburban/rural community, ethnic background, and before-tax household income).

Candidates conduct a baseline survey like this in order to assess the field, test issues they hope to raise, or that they believe might be raised by others, to find the different bases of support of their opponents, and to try and identify some "ballot question" issues that they believe will distinguish them from their main rivals.

It seems clear that Topp's campaign was testing those final strategic positioning questions as possible ballot questions, and/or hoping that one of the other quality/trait questions would yield some other material from which to craft some vote-determining points of distinction, not to mention the composition of the support base of other competitors who might later on become allies in the preferential ballot dance.

Now, having strategic intelligence and knowing what to do with it are two different issues, and both of those are different again from having the political skill to do so well. I would suggest the survey demonstrated a pretty deep understanding of the party's culture and the kinds of variables that would play into members' early decision-making processes in different wings of the NDP.

 At least one other campaign has conducted a brute-force IVR (robo-call) telephone poll asking purely for first- and second-choice ballot intentions, and the Dewar campaign told the Hill Times the other day that they had already called through 12,000 of the party's current members as part of their phone canvassing, while other campaigns are variously phoning, robo-calling, and conducting telephone townhalls.

As we move into the January-February beehive of debate activity that I discussed with Don Martin on Tuesday's CTV Power Play episode, it will be interesting to watch what other distinctions and ballot questions the various candidates try to develop.

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For the latest on the NDP Leadership Race, don't forget to follow the half-hourly news updates, and social media tickers at the Pundits' Guide NDPLdr portal page:  http://ndpldr.punditsguide.ca

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

Four-term Skeena M.P. Nathan Cullen launched a bit of a hand grenade into the NDP Leadership race not long after he entered it, with his proposal to allow local riding associations to endorse joint nomination meetings in Conservative-held ridings.

Citing the absence of majority support for the Conservative Party's majority government, his campaign's news release quoted him as follows:

Cullen said he does not a support a full merger. But also said that he senses a moment where people from across party lines are open to new approaches to defeat Harper, and asked people who feel that way for their support. He also said his own experiences and those of Parliaments that featured co-operation convince him that working with others achieves more.

“I am convinced that there is a hunger in Canada, far removed from Ottawa, among people who pitch in every day to make things better—and wonder why the political establishment can’t,” he said. “I think we can, and that Quebec’s new openness to progressive federalism makes now the time.”

Cullen asked for a mandate to negotiate an arrangement whereby local riding associations of "progressive federalist parties" (i.e., the Liberals and Greens) could be given the option of deciding to hold joint nomination meetings for the purpose of unseating a local Conservative M.P.

As further explained in this FAQ posted to his website a month later, each riding association would duly nominate a candidate, and then the three parties' candidates would enter a run-off amongst the membership of all three riding associations. The winning candidate would run under the banner and platform of their own party, and the others would stand down.

The idea is based on the assumption that if you could take the last election's results as a starting point, it should be possible by reducing competition between the NDP, Liberals and Greens to scrape together enough votes to defeat the Conservative incumbent. Do it in enough ridings and you could defeat the Conservative government. On several of the occasions where I've seen Cullen discuss it further, he has suggested that the arrangement would only be required for one election, in order to achieve a referendum asking Canadians which form of electoral reform they wanted, after which new arrangements would apply in any event.

Cullen has not received the backing of any other leadership candidate for his proposal, and for many in the NDP it was an instant deal-breaker, although he received the blessing of national press gallery for raising the idea, notably a favourable profile from Maclean's columnist Paul Wells. It also received the endorsement of Project Democracy (why am I not surprised).

Given that I've become the designated hitter against strategic voting, however, I've been asked more than once recently to assess the merits or demerits of the idea. Well, here goes. But, first some background.

How are candidates currently selected?

The provisions governing the selection of candidates are laid out in Part 6 (ss. 66 to 92.6) of the Elections Act. Basically, anyone who is not an electoral officer, prisoner, provincial or territorial elected representative, is not ineligible to vote, and, if they had ever run federally before, did not fall behind on their election filings, can be nominated as a candidate, so long as they file the proper nomination forms, have an official agent, enough signatures from eligible electors in that riding, and can cover the deposit.

Candidates who want to be endorsed by a registered political party, and have that party's name next to theirs on the ballot, also have to present a letter signed by that party's leader or their designate along with their nomination papers (s.67(4)(c) of the Act). And a political party can only endorse one candidate at a time in each riding during an election writ period (s.68).

In order to gain the right to have that endorsement, candidates must follow the rules set out by the party to obtain the endorsement, which typically include a vetting process, perhaps some other eligibility requirements, and then either winning a contested nomination amongst the membership in good standing of that party's riding association who live in the riding, or else being acclaimed by that body, or else receiving an appointment by the party leader.

If there is a nomination meeting, the riding association has to file a report of its results to Elections Canada (the reports are available in a searchable database on their website), and the candidates have to file a financial return for their nomination campaign, and keep their spending under a defined expense ceiling.

Candidates who are duly nominated by their parties, as with independents, all have to be formally nominated under the Elections Act with the local Returning Officer in that riding as well, with all requirements met and the nomination accepted before 2:00 PM local time, on the Monday three weeks before voting day. A candidate can withdraw by 5:00 PM on nomination, but may not be replaced by another candidate from that party after 2:00 o'clock. Any candidate who withdraws after 5:00 PM remains on the ballot, regardless of whether they are campaigning or not.

Issues with the Cullen Plan

a) Party Governance – Cullen stresses that it would be up to the discretion of the local riding associations of the various parties to agree to this proposal. That might be true, but it would also require the consent of the parties' national offices – and more than one party has a convention resolution or even constitutional provision on the books, stating that it will run a full slate of candidates. Also, don't forget that s.366(2)(j) of the Elections Act states that, in order to be eligible for registration as a party under the Act:

… one of the party's fundamental purposes is to participate in public affairs by endorsing one or more of its members as candidates and supporting their election

Suppose a local riding association decides not to field a candidate, or to endorse a candidate from another party. That decision could be overruled by headquarters, by having the leader appoint another candidate there instead. The party could even deregister the riding association (under s.403.2(2), though not during an election writ period), and then set up a new one to replace it.

Here's another problem: we often use the term "riding association" to mean two different things. Sometimes we mean all the party members who live in that riding and/or are members of that riding association (only members actually living in the riding may vote on who that riding's candidate should be). Other times we mean the members of the riding association executive or board of directors.

But which body should have the right to enter into such an agreement with other parties and/or their riding associations? The riding board, or the riding membership? That would be governed by the riding association's constitution and by-laws, and presumably those of the party as well.

What if all the parties and all their governing bodies agreed on the general principle, but disagreed as to whether the tactic would work in a given riding?

b) Due Process During the Run-off Contest – OK, suppose you have the riding association members, executives/boards, and the party headquarters all on board to run a two-step joint nomination process, and suppose everyone trusts everyone else not to game the system, and to gracefully accept the outcome.

Now, how do you ensure it's a fair contest? Let's say we accept that each party's run-off candidate will have already passed that party's vetting and eligibility requirements, a membership eligibility cut-off date for that party's nomination process would have been set, the membership list was agreed upon, the various candidates for the nomination within each party gained access to that list, they conducted a campaign, identified their supporters, and got them out to the first meeting to vote.

Now you have three duly-selected candidates, one from each of the 3 so-called progressive federalist parties, entering into a new race. Who sets the rules for that race? Who governs it? Do each of the riding associations give their membership lists to the other parties' candidates so that they can conduct a proper campaign? (ding, ding, ding: big privacy bells should be going off here) Were their membership eligibility cut-off dates co-ordinated with one another? Or would new membership sales be allowed? If a person was a member of two different parties, could he or she vote twice? Would it be fair if the membership fee in each party was different? Is there a spending limit? What about a requirement to file a meeting report, or candidate financial returns with Elections Canada?

Here's still another problem: given that we will have a redistribution between now and the next election, and that the boundaries won't be known until 12-18 months before the next election, many riding associations will have to be re-organized along the new boundaries, and thus will be undergoing a lot of governance changes themselves during the same period nominations are to take place. This adds an extra layer of uncertainly to the whole biznak.

c) Acceptance of the Outcome of a Joint Nomination – The problems aren't over, because people who say they will accept the outcome, often don't afterwards. Now you have to trust that all the following conditions will hold true:

• that none of the candidates who had already waged nomination contests to win their own party's entry into the joint nomination race decide after losing the joint nomination to either (i) appeal to the party to appoint them as a candidate regardless, (ii) run for another party that was not part of the joint nomination process (hello Canadian Action Party, Unity Party, Progressive Canadian Party, etc., etc.), or (iii) run as a serious independent
• that none of the party leaderships decide they can't live with the outcome, and appoint another candidate instead
• that the party whose candidate won the joint nomination can properly fund that campaign, because under s.404.2(2.2) of the Elections Act only that party's riding association or headquarters could transfer funds into that candidate's campaign, not other parties or riding associations. And no riding association may incur advertising expenses during the writ period, only candidates or national parties. Presumably in the pre-writ period, other participating parties' riding associations could spend some money advertising their support of the outcome.

Now, certain local kamikaze candidates could go rogue, I suppose, by accepting their party's endorsement and getting duly nominated with the Returning Office, but then withdrawing from the ballot after the deadline for the party to replace them, if they really wanted to support a common candidate but couldn't get their own party headquarter's buy-in. I can't imagine that kind of tactic would be well-received by the electorate, but I suppose anything's possible, given the right set of circumstances.

d) Public Acceptance of the Process – The parties would also have to assure themselves that the local electorate would be accepting of such a proposal. Electors have the right to vote, but it's political parties who decide on who the available choices will be. It's a big leap to assume that the public will be accepting of a process run by a tiny proportion of the whole riding population to conspire to eliminate certain choices from the ballot in the hopes of torquing the election outcome. It's another big leap to assume that this would be done in a vacuum, given that the Conservative Party would be following along closely, and reserving all their strategic and tactical options.

Of course, for the NDP and the other parties, there are other strategic and tactical considerations, such as:

• would it actually even work, or would enough orphaned voters switch to the Conservatives or stay home if their preferred choice was not on the ballot?
• is it democratic or politically wise to be advocating the elimination of political choice for the public by a small group of political activists
• in particular could the NDP then run as effectively as one of the two main choices in the "consideration set" of the general election (a term coined by Innovative Research's Greg Lyle to describe the process by which consumer choice is whittled down to two viable choices, and drawing parallels to voting behaviour), if it was at the same time enabling the election of one of its non-"consideration set" competitors.
• tactically, what criteria would be applied for deciding whether a joint nomination would achieve the intended result or not in a riding with newly formed boundaries
• what is the cost-benefit analysis of foregoing the opportunity to build in that riding next time, foregoing the room under the national spending ceiling (which is affected by how many candidates a party runs in an election), and foregoing the rebate, organizational opportunities and other team-building in a riding association that result from waging a local campaign, even if it doesn't win, as against the probability of being able to defeat the incumbent in a riding

Conclusion

I believe there is already so much evidence that these tactics don't work. We had four either purposeful or accidental cases of ridings without full slates of candidates in the 2008 election (Central Nova, Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, Portneuf-Jacques Cartier, and Saanich-Gulf Islands), to no effect whatsoever. Meanwhile Elizabeth May, for example, was finally able to win a seat, in a situation without the massive "Shun Lunn" push for joint nominations in that same riding the time before.

At the best of times, party votes from the previous election are not additive if one party decides not to contest a riding in the next one. But that would be doubly so in the case of the Liberal vote in a riding where one of their longstanding incumbents got defeated in 2011. The experience with incumbents being defeated in 2008 and the later impact on party vote in 2011 was that the vote-share obtained in defeat was often a ceiling for next time, rather than a floor vote.

But anyway I just find the whole thing unnecessarily undemocratic. We already have a process by which each party selects a candidate and then those candidates engage in a run-off. It's called an election. Why would parties want to expend so much energy on an elite-driven process (yes, riding association executives and memberships are a small elite, relative to the entire electorate in that ridinng), when they could be talking about the issues they think are important to take to Ottawa, instead.

To the extent that there are any points in its favour, I can think of one situation in the U.K. where it did work. After the "Cash-for-questions" scandal, one of the implicated Conservative M.P.s (Neil Hamilton) was renominated over the howls of even part of the constituency association, and former BBC foreign correspondent Martin Bell decided to run as an Independent "anti-sleaze" candidate. Tony Blair's legendary aide Alisdair Campbell managed to get the Liberals on board with the Labour Party in a decision not to run against Hamiton and Bell, giving the latter a free run at the race. Hamilton's earlier 16,000 margin was massively turned around on election day, and Bell was elected for a term as M.P. But this was against an unpopular incumbent, and with both other parties agreeing to support an independent candidate, rather than one of their competitors'.

The other possibly good thing about the proposal from the NDP's perspective, is that it puts the party's nearer competitors on the defensive rhetorically, for a change. Now they have to justify why they wouldn't co-operate with the proposal or with other political parties, while the NDP benefits from the fact that they extended the olive branch in the first place.

To me the few cases in which the proposal would work, and the less-than-democratic way that it would have to function, weaken the otherwise conciliatory aspect of this approach. It will be interesting to see if this one proposal continues to be a lightning rod for Mr. Cullen's campaign.

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Slow news days will lead to the committing of punditry. It's a fact.

But I'll part company with the punditry committed yesterday insofar as what the optimum strategy is for an NDP leadership candidate, given the party's rules for their one-member-one-vote (OMOV) system in effect for March's leadership convention.

First, a note on the origins of the system. At the same time as the New Politics Initiative was trying to influence the direction of the NDP further left, a second initiative was formed by a group of New Democrats who believed the party could not be modernized without allowing members a way to to counterbalance the influence of party elites. This group was called "NDProgress", and its main demand was the establishment of a one-member-one-vote system for party leader, and in general they wanted the party to specifically aspire to forming government one day, rather than being the pure but less influential conscience of Parliament.

The OMOV system was generally credited with allowing Jack Layton to win the 2003 leadership race, and he did so in the end with the majority of support from nearly every region of the country, the house of labour, and the general membership.

One of the founders of NDProgress was now-New Brunswick NDP leader Dominic Cardy, by the way, who spoke for Thomas Mulcair at his campaign launch, intoning the virtues of one-member-one-vote in the face of a by-then slew of big-name endorsements for Brian Topp.

While each member of the party has a vote for leader, there are two different methods of exercising that franchise:

1. By preferential ballot, in advance. This method is available either online, or on a printed ballot that is mailed back. It's expected that many ballots will be cast this way, perhaps even the large majority of them, but who knows.
2. One ballot at a time on the day of the convention. This method is available online, either by terminals at the convention site, or online from home across the country, or at regional watch parties that might be organized.

The membership eligibility cut-off date is February 18. Advanced voting will commence at some point before voting day itself.

Now, it has been suggested that it might be found in the interest of a leadership contestant seeking to influence the outcome, to drop out of the race now.  But this makes no sense to me.

• Why would leadership candidates drop out before February 18, given the opportunity to sign up new members?
• If they were seeking to influence the outcome, they lose influence once they are no longer their supporters' first choice, especially when at a distance geographically and unable to then influence their second choices.
• Instead, they ought to be trying to lock in as many early ballots as possible, by mail or online. Indeed, as someone who worked on Jack Layton's leadership campaign explained to me, they believed that any ballot that ranked Layton ahead of his competitor Bill Blaikie was worth getting locked in, even if someone else was the voter's first choice.

There is an interesting online tool that allows you to create a preferential ballot system, cast a preferential vote, and then see how that vote gets counted through each subsequent round, and how the votes of candidates who drop off get applied to their competitors. The blogger Skinny Dipper created one for the NDP Leadership Race, and lord knows it's been freeped around in waves by each candidate's supporters, but it's the exercise itself that is interesting to undertake. Here it is, in case you're interested, and here are the latest results.

The exercise taught me two things:

• It is worthwhile being able to win the second choice support of members supporting the candidates most likely to drop off the ballot first, in order to create a sense of momentum at the top.
• A leadership candidate may not have control over the direction of second choice support for his or her supporters, but there is one thing he or she can control after the first ballot – and that's when to drop out. If candidates have a good handle on the amount of second choice support they themselves have elsewhere, and also know where their own supporters are likely to go next, they can optimally time when to withdraw from the race, so as not to forego second choice support that might come their way soon, but also to free up second choice support they might be able to send elsewhere (or prevent it from being counted by staying in).

None of this is true before the first ballot is cast though. Which is why any suggestion that a candidate might drop out for strategic reasons now to "stop" someone, would have to be taken with a grain of salt, unless they could also deliver some other benefit, such as campaign organization, information, or something else.

INSTANT UPDATE: Cross-posted with Greg Fingas at Accidental Deliberations, who gives a slightly different interpretation of why it's not in the party's interest either.

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For the latest on the NDP Leadership Race, don't forget to follow the half-hourly news updates, and social media tickers at the Pundits' Guide NDPLdr portal page:  http://ndpldr.punditsguide.ca.

I've recently updated the site with a list of debates, and links to the raw video of them (though the BC NDP has taken down the video of the townhall from their convention, unfortunately, though I'm writing to ask them to restore it for the duration of the leadership contest).

Seasons greetings to all Pundits' Guide readers. We'll be back in the new year once the full datasets from the May election (poll-by-poll results, maps, candidate financial returns, etc.) get entered into the database.

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You can learn as much about the shape of the federal NDP leadership race from what the various campaigns say about each other, as from their own performance.

With two leadership debates out of the way now, the party's first bilingual one in Ottawa last Sunday (available from CPAC in full bilingual floor sound here, followed by the news conferences here), and the townhall meeting organized by the BC provincial section at their Vancouver convention yesterday (available for the time-being from the BC NDP's Livestream channel here), the contest and the spin wars are starting to be tentatively engaged, and they have a few interesting tells.

Some of the engagement has been at the level of the candidates themselves, while some has been left to their greek choruses on Twitter, Facebook, the Babble boards and assorted blogs.

Brian Topp

Presumed front-runner Brian Topp has been a magnet for jabs from an assortment of directions, whether based on people's past encounters with him, their discomfort with the perceived too-early and too-muscular promotion of his candidacy in the media, followed by a series of heavyweight endorsements. That his opponents would pay the compliment of such attention to a retail-political neophyte is a testament to the near-universal acknowledgement of his strategic acumen and policy depth.

But politics is as much art as science, and the realization that learning presentation skills as a candidate is harder than it looks could be humbling for any long-time backroomer. For all that Topp has learned about himself to this point on the campaign trail — and for all his ability to strategically assess the best allocation of time resources in a debate, or the imperative to try and delicately land a hit on an opponent, or to touch gloves by way of setting up a clear distinction, or to play to the crowd in an area of supposed strength — he has not as yet fully mastered the art of retail politics. Some of his shots land with a bit of a thud, or seem ill-timed (trying to debate tax policy with Paul Dewar in answer to an audience question on the environment), or too calculated (inserting a drive-by reference to Buzz Hargrove in his question to Peggy Nash), or a little tone deaf.

And of course he has a lot less experience knowing how long a 30-second intro should feel like, regardless of whether one could see the clock, hear the moderator, or whatever else the problem was in BC Saturday afternoon. Moreover, earlier efforts by some members of his campaign team to corral support by dismissing potential competitors may have reinforced other peoples' resolve to enter the race regardless.

But where Topp excels is in the long-form socratic environments, as reports from OISE in Toronto, restaurants in Nanaimo, BC, or labour centre pubs in Winnipeg repeatedly confirm. His avuncular letters to the membership and the two policy papers he penned, coupled with the body of work in his blog in the Globe and Mail "Second Reading" online section, are ample testament to the man's depth and heart, and his commitment to building a social democratic party capable of governing in Canada.

I suspect Topp has the best strategic intelligence of anyone at this stage of the race, as his campaign is the likeliest author of the online poll of members two weeks ago, and indeed he confirmed to last weekend's post-debate scrum that he thinks he has a pretty good idea of the current ranking of the candidates. His first obvious path to win – inevitability – now looks a little less than inevitable, so his Plan B will necessarily entail making alliances with other candidates. It's not obvious to me at this stage of the game which alliances those might be, however.

Thomas Mulcair

Leading candidate and deputy leader Thomas Mulcair is looking much less like a stranger in a strange land as he travels throughout the "rest of Canada", meeting fellow travellers in his adopted party. The accelerated launch of the race left Mulcair's incipient campaign scrambling to catch up, and it's only been in the last number of weeks that his campaign manager has come on full-strength: a development that's now beginning to bear fruit in a leadership campaign more worthy of the calibre of its candidate.

If the first commandment of NDP leadership contests is to "go where the Dippers are", the early stretches of Mulcair's campaign did anything but, as his schedule often put him at the opposite end of the country from large pre-organized gatherings of party members. And he was slow to demonstrate a connection with long-time New Democrats by announcing endorsements from party elders, though this also came with time (notwithstanding that the historic contributions to the party of some of his marquee endorsers like Lorne Nystrom and Ed Schreyer were more, how to say, historical than contemporary). Moreover, Mulcair's itinerary had also seen him miss most of the labour central meetings taking place since the campaign's start: he missed the CUPE national convention in Vancouver, and the provincial conventions of both the Saskatchewan and Ontario Federations of Labour, while his competitors each attended at least one of the three. And he was the only leadership candidate not to campaign in the Saskatchewan provincial election.

Where he seems to be finding much more strength is amongst environmentalists, academics, professionals ("and lawyers; LOTS of lawyers," as one organizer told me). Notably, Mulcair has been endorsed and attended a very well-attended Toronto fundraiser organized by prominent defence attorney for the wrongfully convicted, James Lockyer, along with Peter Zaduk; while in BC he has recently courted Nobel Prize-winning climate scientist Andrew Weaver, joining the UBC's Michael Byers and former Saskatchewan MLA (not MP as I earlier wrote) and public servant Doug McArthur, now at Simon Fraser, along with one of the BC party's vice-presidents, Heather Harrison.

Following the kind of strong debate performance last weekend that long-time political experience permits, the Mulcair organization looked finally to be on a par with that of Topp and Dewar who had been in the field longer, and Nash whose organization emerged almost fully-formed at the time of her somewhat later campaign launch. While he didn't turn any wrong foot at the BC debate Saturday, however, he stood out somewhat less from the field than during last week's match-up, but clearly performed well enough to pick up another slew of endorsements the following day. Predictions of his demise were therefore predictably exaggerated.

I'm fairly sure I was privy to the exchange between Paul Wells and "Mulcair guy" or at least one very similar between "Mulcair guy" and some other opinion leader in the Ottawa press gallery after the first debate.  But the spin I heard there, and from Mulcair operatives since then, leads me to believe they now have a very clear path to victory in mind. Namely: to build up the very clip-able Nathan Cullen in BC as a way of limiting Topp's base there, and energetic Niki Ashton on the prairies to likewise stymie Paul Dewar, and then benefit from both their support on subsequent ballots and/or the preferential ballot in advance. Mulcair's people will tell you that Cullen and Ashton are the only other two who showed any charisma in both languages. Coincidentally or not, the two of them showed up at Mulcair's post-debate party at Brixton's Pub last Sunday, rather than Topp's which was held in the opposite direction, and in Cullen's case in spite of his declared preference for Peggy Nash in the debate question on second choices, whose party was steps from the convention centre where the debate occurred.

Peggy Nash

As a top tier candidate with strong appeal amongst the NDP's activist establishment, Peggy Nash's campaign has been able to chart a course that hasn't put it in direct confrontation with her competitors in the early stages of the contest. Thus her campaign's spin efforts have been almost unanimously positive to date, with only a tiny bit of sniping by some of her younger supporters towards Brian Topp.

She released a series of economic policy papers designed to burnish her credentials in advance of the Ottawa debate, which was followed by a post-debate endorsement by five of the leading progressive economists associated with the party: Andrew Jackson, Jim Stanford, Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Gordon Laxer and Mel Watkins, and then with a series of post-debate provincial telephone town hall meetings early in the week.

Her debate performance has been the most consistent across the two weekends (though the most over-tweeted of any of them yesterday, if you ask this old curmudgeon, who's already had a lifetime's worth of exclamation marks and park-knocking-out-of spinning in her decades of political watching). And Nash has shown a pitch-perfect ear for the right progressive touchstone to invoke with her supporters, without breaking out the full activist's lexicon to a national television audience.

An assessment of some of the candidates' economic platforms by Tom Walkom in the Toronto Star captured some of the nuances between the Topp and Nash philosophies and their approaches towards the market. Dewar is taking a more bite-sized programmatic approach, while Mulcair is focusing on sustainable development for the time being.

A challenge for Nash will be to expand beyond the urban activist base which forms the core of her appeal. Outside Halifax-Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto-Vancouver her support remains largely unproven, though she has picked up key organizers on Vancouver Island and southwest Ontario, and is said to have strong support amongst Hill staff. A Nash-Saganash alliance would complement one another's bases, given the rural focus of his campaign and his status as a Quebec candidate.

Paul Dewar

The best that can be said about Paul Dewar's somewhat stiff performance in the Ottawa debate is that his campaign didn't try to oversell it in the post-debate spin-wars, but wisely chose to lay low for a few days, break some news with his proposal of public subsidy incentives to promote the nomination of women candidates, and then parlay a critical column by Kelly McParland of the National Post into a second day of news — all so he could live to fight another day.

The smiling, confidant, passionate Dewar of his campaign launch showed up again in Vancouver the following weekend, and proved he shouldn't be counted out, as the chippier of his competitors' campaigns were clearly trying to do a week earlier. He should, however, be given a quota of no more than five "right across this country"'s per speech by his campaign team.

Dewar's french showed some improvement over the past in the Ottawa debate, though apparently at a cost to his overall comfort level, but he will need to demonstrate accelerated progress by his next french language outing to stay in serious contention. To that end, he is apparently travelling with his tutor and spending at least an hour a day working on that objective.

Dewar's bases of support include eastern and northern Ontario, the latter a particularly large concentration of party members and the region for which his key organizer was responsible federally. He is the clear choice of the Manitoba NDP establishment (with Niki Ashton claiming the support of northern MLAs and cabinet ministers, and many of the same Winnipeg supporters as her father's provincial leadership bid of a few years ago), and is also said to have a lot of support in Edmonton, along with the backing of regular party vendors such as Viewpoints Research of Winnipeg and Now Communications in B.C. The campaign boasted of city organizational leads in every city weeks ago, and has a well-developed mainstream media strategy, has staged a variety of event types, and put an early focus on practical propositional policies and grassroots Marshall Ganz-style organizing.

Was Topp targeting Dewar in Ottawa because of his perceived organizational strength, the fact that he had released a jobs plan that Topp needed to tee up against in order to make his point about the revenue side, or did he do it to try and marginalize Mulcair? Who knows, but while that set-to created the only early news cycle story out of the debate, it was only really in the Dewar camp's interest to keep it going, and they decided to just stop talking about the debate altogether instead.

The Others

BC's Nathan Cullen has emerged as a media favourite, in part for advocating their pet tactic of forming electoral alliances between the opposition parties. Cullen, a skilled facilitator who is quick on his feet and comfortable in his own skin, argued early on that the leadership wasn't worth seeking if one didn't take some risks with controversial ideas. While, sadly for him, the risk he took in proposing joint nomination meetings instantly put him at the bottom of the list for many New Democrats, he has nevertheless been winning positive reviews for both debate performances, and notably did not mention the joint nomination proposal once during the BC Convention debate.

Niki Ashton, likewise, breezed past the low expectations of casual observers to twice give the kind of spirited performance her five years of electoral experience would make possible for even someone of longer years. What she hasn't rounded that out with as yet is a substantial campaign, though again with a full-time campaign manager just coming on board now, that's expected to change. As would be expected of someone from her generation, she showed very well in a recent study of social media visibility in the leadership race, something BC NDP convention speaker Van Jones from the States reminded delegates not to overlook the power of, if used effectively. Her base is in Saskatchewan, where her campaign manager and co-chair both hail from, and she is also said to be building a team of campus captains across the country.

Romeo Saganash's improved health showed up in improved energy and focus in Vancouver, over his halting english in Ottawa the week before. He is continuing to pick up support in corners across the country, but will have to offer more program specifics to sustain that momentum for another three months. The big unknown is how new membership sign-ups are going for him.

Meanwhile, Kady O'Malley is going to wish she didn't write off Martin Singh's vote potential, I predict. While no other leadership candidate has opened a single campaign office, Singh has opened two of them: storefronts in both Brampton, Ontario and in the Newton-North Delta area of BC. Sign-ups are unlikely to be a problem for him in the very politically active South Asian community, particularly after landing a key organizer in BC (whose boss had already endorsed Topp).

Robert Chisholm picked up the endorsement of long-time friend and former Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton, the highlight of an obviously difficult week for him after the debut of his efforts to date to learn french. In my opinion, if he is determined to stay in the race, as he seems to be, the best contribution he can make to his party is to leverage his evident skills at connecting with people to visit every community in Prince Edward Island, rural Newfoundland, and southern New Brunswick, introduce them to the NDP and sign up as many of them as possible.

The possibilities

Another leadership campaign (at least one presumes that's who it was) conducted a single-question IVR poll Sunday night, asking respondents for their current first ballot choice. So, at least two campaigns have a rough picture of the current standings, one taken prior to the Ottawa debate, the other taken after the BC one.

Suppose Mulcair dominates in Quebec, and shows well in various pockets across the country. Combined with Cullen, Ashton, and perhaps even Singh, that would be a reasonable path for him to win on.

Suppose Topp maintains strength in BC, and benefits from sign-ups and a base of support amongst the private sector unions, from artists, and from his contacts in greater Montreal. That's a base of support that would be well complemented by either Nash's public sector union and activist base or Dewar's regional bases, though many supporters of those other two candidates made their choices after mentally ruling out the supposed top two. If the positions were reversed, on the other hand, Topp could play a decisive role in choosing the final winner as between the two of them. Dewar and Nash could also team up, but would likely need significant support from BC (either themselves or through for example Singh or Cullen) to assemble a winning tally.

Saganash has a lot of sentimental favourite support and will therefore be an attractive ally for whichever campaign builds the successful alliance with his.

For the others, if they can sign up new members and "livrer la marchandise" on voting day they will be able to have a significant influence over the outcome.

At least that's the way I see it this week. Only 12 or so more weeks to go.

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For the latest on the NDP Leadership Race, don't forget to follow the half-hourly news updates, and social media tickers at the Pundits' Guide NDPLdr portal page:  http://ndpldr.punditsguide.ca

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Just-released NDP membership figures show that Ontario is gaining on British Columbia and may soon rival the west coast in influence over the outcome of the March 24, 2012 Federal NDP Leadership race.

The membership in Ontario grew 15.7% in the month between October and November, from 22,225 to 25,722, while the BC membership grew at only a third of that pace – 4.9% from 30,000 to 31,456.

[UPDATE: see below for full numbers]

The boost allows Ontario to retain its approximately 27% share of the national total in the face of a more than doubling in the party's Quebec membership base (from 1,695 to 5,558) and a nearly five-fold increase in Newfoundland and Labrador (from 200 to 1,184), while BC's overall share declined from 36% to 33%.

Overall membership figures have grown 13.3% from 83,824 to 95,006 in the last month, excluding New Brunswick which recently went through a post-election leadership race and has not shared its updated list with the federal party as yet. New Brunswick is thought to have signed up an estimated 1,000 members.

These figures come before most leadership campaigns have put their ground organizations into place, and before the United Steelworkers' campaign to encourage its membership to join the NDP before February 18.

UPDATE: Here is the full table showing membership counts for October and November, along with the percent change since the party's last report.

Note that "Density" is a measure of how pervasive NDP membership is in the province, as measured by the Statistics Canada July 1, 2011 population estimates, divided by the number of members. You can read this measure by saying "there is one NDP member in BC for every 145 British Columbians … one in 112 Saskatchewanians belongs to the NDP", etc., etc. It gives a sense of how much more room to grow there is in a given province, and/or how tapped out that province is.

The Toronto Star is writing that 13% growth represents a "slow start" to the race. Perhaps so, although most investors would kill for that rate of growth in their portfolios these days. Still, even if membership growth increased on a linear rate of 13% monthly from now to March 24, 2012, it would have almost doubled to 137,000 or so by then.

NDP Headquarters has also released its schedule of leadership debates, starting with a bilingual debate on the economy in Ottawa, on Sunday December 4, 2011.

• December 4th, Ottawa – BUILDING AN INCLUSIVE ECONOMY
• January, Halifax – GIVING FAMILIES A BREAK
• February, Quebec City – PROVIDING LEADERSHIP ON THE WORLD STAGE
• February, Winnipeg – BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN URBAN AND RURAL CANADA
• March, Montreal – BUILDING A STRONG UNITED CANADA
• March, Vancouver – CREATING OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUTH AND NEW CANADIANS

For the latest on the NDP Leadership Race, don't forget to follow the half-hourly news updates, and social media tickers at the Pundits' Guide NDPLdr portal page:  http://ndpldr.punditsguide.ca

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The Liberal Party matched Conservative Party spending in last May's election nearly dollar-for-dollar, both coming in at 93% of their respective spending limits.

The Liberals spent $19,507,745.82 nationally, just $12,249.05 less than the $19,519,994.87 spent by the Conservative Party on its national campaign.

The figures are contained in the parties' campaign financial returns for the recent federal general election, now posted on the Elections Canada website.

The New Democratic Party, meanwhile, came closer to reaching the expenditure ceiling of $21,025,793.18, spending $20,372,231.49 or 97%, while the Bloc Québécois came closest to their cap, spending 99% of the $5.3M or so that they were able to spend centrally. For both parties that represented the highest percent of the limit either had ever spent in a general election.

The Liberals also outspent the Conservatives in advertising, $11.9M to $10.6M, when considering both broadcast (TV + radio) and "other" (likely print and/or online). However, the Conservatives concentrated their ad spending on the broadcast side where they outspent the Liberals $10.4M to $8.3M.

The NDP's spending on advertising fell somewhere in between, coming in at $9.5M for broadcast ads and $10.9M overall.

One journalist likely having some good sources, but evidently strong feelings on the matter as well, has written that the Liberal national campaign had promised to spend close to the limit, but then cut their losses in the final week, turning down a proposal for a $2.9M ad buy; noting in his story that 44 seats were lost by the Liberal in that election.

It's a curious argument, because there is no straight line between spending and election outcomes in all cases. If the assertion is that not spending $2.9M on advertising in the final week was responsible for the loss, how to explain the Conservative majority victory for virtually the same spending as the Liberals, or the massive Bloc Québécois rout for 99% of their ceiling. Clearly a further $2.9M spent on advertising would have put the Liberal Party $1.4M *over* the cap, given that their final campaign spending came in $1.5M under.

The Green Party, for their part, fell back off their 2008 high of 14% of the limit, spending 9% of the limit on their central campaign – roughly $1.9M.

You can see the parties' spending and percent spent on the Parties page for the last election here at Pundits' Guide, and compare with earlier elections one party at a time.

Candidate returns are also being slowly filed and reviewed by Elections Canada officials (though I haven't entered them into this database just yet). Of the 1,587 nominated candidates, by my last count (earlier this week), 1,268 returns were posted on the Elections Canada website. Rather than posting how many have been filed, here's a table showing how many are missing by party and province/territory.

2011 GE Candidate Financial Returns not yet Filed or Posted on Elections Canada website (as of November 6)

Pundits' Guide is on a bit of a blogging hiatus at the moment, due to some other pressing commitments. To get your daily (hourly, minutely) political fix, however, don't forget to regularly check into the NDP Leadership Race Pundits' Guide portal. It's a one-stop shop of the rules, calendar, and a news aggregator and social media aggregator besides.

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

The peekabo, getting-to-know you phase of the NDP leadership campaign is, if not over just yet, at least soon drawing to a close.

With this Sunday's announcement by Darmouth-Cole Harbour M.P. Robert Chisholm, and the entry of Churchill M.P. Niki Ashton all-but-assured within a week or so, the field of candidates will be for all intents and purposes set, and preparations for a round of leadership debates can take place in earnest.

[For best access to all the latest developments in the leadership race, don't forget to regularly visit the Pundits' Guide NDP Leadership Portal at http://ndpldr.punditsguide.ca.]

On the heels of her Friday announcement, Parkdale-High Park M.P. Peggy Nash headed straight for the lion's den: an interview with Sun News Network. From there she was heading to Montreal to visit the Occupy encampment, hold a meet and greet in the Atwater Market and a pub night later on in Mile End. On Wednesday she heads out to Victoria for another couple of events.

The entry of Nash (who, interestingly, is Brian Topp's own M.P.) has recalibrated the handicapping of the race somewhat, vaulting her into the top tier of consideration with all the attendant expectations and eventual scrutiny.

And in a move at least in part designed to maintain his own standing, Ottawa Centre M.P. Paul Dewar's campaign pulled off a well-attended Town Hall meeting in Nash's back yard earlier in the week, highlighting his urban policy in a session at the Metro Toronto YMCA.

Meanwhile, after making an eastward swing last weekend to Nova Scotia, Brian Topp returned to the motherlode of existing party members – British Columbia – and made another long campaign swing through the lower half of the province. He started in Victoria, picking up the endorsement of former leader Carole James and several more Vancouver Island MLAs, followed by meetings in Langley, Kamloops, Merritt, Kelowna, Penticton, Castlegar and on to Nelson Sunday. Coupled with earlier visits to Vancouver and Surrey, Topp has covered nearly all the significant clusters of NDP members in southern BC.

He crossed paths in Victoria with Outremont M.P. Thomas Mulcair, who was hosted at a number of meet and greets in Vancouver and then Victoria by University of British Columbia professor and former NDP candidate Michael Byers. Mulcair has also notably picked up the support of 1980's era Saskatchewan MP, and later BC Cabinet Secretary and now Simon Fraser University professor Doug McArthur. His campaign is emphasizing contact with environmentalists in the province, and indeed earlier in the week he delivered the Peter Lougheed Memorial lecture at the University of Alberta, discussing the Quebec government's sustainable development legislation for which he was responsible as the minister.

Topp and Mulcair have yet to join the provincial election campaign in Saskatchewan, but several of their colleagues have already been in campaigning for their provincial cousins: Niki Ashton in Regina, Paul Dewar in Regina and Moose Jaw, Nathan Cullen in Saskatoon and Regina, and Romeo Saganash spending several days in Saskatoon and the Meadow Lake area, with an emphasis on supporting first nations candidates and visiting first nations communities. Dewar is back east in Kingston on Sunday, while Cullen had a session planned in Winnipeg on Saturday, and a meet and greet in Ottawa this coming Tuesday night.

Last weekend, all the declared leadership candidates attended the party's Quebec section conference in Alma (ironically being held in the same hotel as a smaller assembly of Bloc Québécois members who were meeting their own leadership candidates), as did five of the six the weekend before at the Alberta section's "Breakthrough conference". The surprise performance in Alma, according to a Radio Canada report, was the spirited speech in very good french from Nova Scotia's Martin Singh, who promised to finally emulate the Quebec pharmacare program at the national level in an NDP government. Other reports say Dewar read a well-written speech a little nervously, and that Mulcair clearly had most of the room with him, though all the candidates were warmly received.

The early stage of the campaign has seen candidates visit areas of existing strength, hosted by pre-existing contacts, and giving basically the same introductory interview to one local news outlet after another. They are assembling their campaign teams, ironing out the kinks, setting up their social media outlets, soliciting votes to online media polls, filing their registration reports, and setting up their lines of communication and supply.

Few have crossed swords to any great extent with their competitors, nor have party members settled on any common selection criteria.

But that may all be about to change.

For one thing, while many party members have yet to pick their first choice, some moves by a couple of candidates may have proven controversial enough to make them the *last* choice of one subset of members or another. Topmost in this category I would place the calculated risk by Nathan Cullen to propose an electoral coalition with the Liberal Party and Greens (though notably not the Bloc) as a means of replacing the Harper government. While the proposal certainly won over some supporters, it has a certain defining quality for a candidacy, and more than one NDP supporter on Twitter, Facebook, the NDP-themed blogs and bulletin boards was read to say this proposal ruled him out for them definitively. Cullen has since started a blog on his campaign website, which acknowledges that not all the feedback he received was positive.

Another potentially defining event was the interview Thomas Mulcair gave to the Globe's Daniel Leblanc on Thursday, describing an encounter with Steelworkers National Director Ken Neumann which Mulcair claims may have been the first time a dipper said "no" to Neumann. Some in the party have read unnecessary antagonism between the lines, while others are waiting to hear both sides. Certainly Mulcair told a crowd in Dentry's Irish Grill in Vancouver earlier week that, although the candidates were all brothers and sisters who were supposed to come out on March 25th and give each other a big hug ("and I'm sure we will"), he expected "a rough campaign", because of the "normal institutional behaviour of some people who just don't want things to change". Meanwhile, the evening of the Globe story, Topp happened to be attending a big Steelworkers dinner in Langley with Neumann, international president Léo Gerard and a number of provincial MLAs, telling them in a speech that he says "yes" to working people.

Other candidates have their own significant barriers to overcome, and they need to do so soon. Dewar will need to demonstrate some facility and rapid progress in his french to stay in contention, and he has yet to campaign in BC which has a third of the current membership. Topp has to learn the fine art of stump speech and chicken dinner politics, and according to some needs to remember that not all conversations with him are interviews. Still his BC swing has given him the chance to work on that away from the glare of the national media, and he is said to be improving. He ran into his own rough waters Thursday with comments viewed as treading a fine line on the Commons seat allocation legislation, which the provincial section of the party has opposed.

The leadership campaign as a whole also has to move from who's in and what they bring, to a genuine debate of policy and approach between the candidates, so members can gauge their skills and "kick their tires" as Nash told SunTV. I expect the next phase to kick off with a round of policy announcements, some announcements about the campaign teams and further endorsements, and many of the candidates are expected to attend the BC NDP convention in December.

An early disagreement may be the role of the Occupy movement and how closely the party will embrace their tactics as opposed to their message. Nash included a reference to the Arab Spring that had spread to Wall Street and thence to St. James Park in Toronto (the location of the #occupy encampment there) in her campaign announcement, and was already the clear favourite of many in the activist wings of the party such as Duncan Cameron and Murray Dobbin. Cullen and Dewar have regularly visited #occupy locations on their travels (for example in Edmonton), and put those events on their public schedules. Topp has said he's listening, but uses questions from the media about the occupy movement to segue to the problem of income disparities (noted by "those well-known radicals such as the Conference Board of Canada", he says) and tying it to his campaign theme of equality. Mulcair for his part, is also listening, but is reported to say that politicians would be best advised to not to tie themselves too closely to it until the movement evolves into something more substantive.

Debate formats are going to be a challenge with nine candidates, that's for sure, though NDP members will happily sit still for long-winded policy discussions for hours (certainly far longer than most journalists will be willing and able to cover them).

But the party will have nine emissaries on tour across the country for much of the next five months, garnering local media coverage, and selling memberships and recruiting volunteers, and introducing Canadians to a whole new group of political personalities, quirks and traditions. Something to follow besides hockey over the long Canadian winter months.

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A good way to pick up a lot of this local coverage is to regularly check in with the automated news aggregation and social media aggregation features I've pulled together at the Pundits' Guide NDP Leadership portal. In the coming weeks, I'll be adding Flickr and YouTube/Vimeo feeds as well. Bookmark it and check back frequently for content in english and french from across the country.

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

One month into the Federal NDP leadership contest, and the contours of the race have yet to really take shape in the eyes of veteran party-watchers.

The national media has tried on various narratives for size, but none to date have really fit all the facts. They've lurched from proclaiming a coronation, to a blood fight between the establishment and the outsiders, to a left-right split, to a Quebec-ROC battle, to who knows what next.

What is clear is that, unaccustomed as the media is to covering the NDP, the party itself is unaccustomed to thinking of its leadership contests as a race for prime minister, and moreover continues to work through the ten stages of grief for its beloved late leader, Jack Layton, gone not even two months now.

And the NDP, which was used to being either ignored or dismissed by the gallery in the past, has not always rushed to meet the media's insatiable demand for an instant story or easily digestible narrative, instead working to its own pace and meeting its own internal process requirements first. In this way, they are not exactly like the Conservative Party, which views its internal processes as largely private, but they're also unlike the Liberals, who after all have given so many leadership race models to follow, but who have traditionally placed a much higher premium on communicating with their members through the mass media.

Along with the numerous provincial elections which the party had a stake in over the past few weeks, this explains in part the early confusion about the second round of constitutional amendments which eliminated the 25% labour carve-out after Layton's selection in 2003, and also the longer decision-making horizons of some of the party's potentially strongest candidacies. Everyone has been taking their own good time, in a race that still has five and a half months to go.

That there was no obvious perfect successor to Layton at this stage was not a function of his lack of awareness of the need for succession planning, but more a result of his untimely passing. Brian Topp had not had a chance to run for office yet, Thomas Mulcair had not had a chance to travel the country and meet the rest of the party members yet, Paul Dewar and Robert Chisholm had not had time to work on their french, nor had some of the younger or newer members the chance to find their feet in the House of Commons, or the party put down some deeper organizational roots in Québec. This was to be the four-year term where all of that could happen, but timing was not the NDP's friend (though admittedly in some ways it could have been worse).

The culture of the NDP is a bit alien to outsiders, but here are a few pointers for newbies to consider:

• The party's membership views everything it's accomplished in rebuilding since 1993 to have come in spite of coverage by the national media, not because of it, and thus they do not feel any special need to cater to them now. This doesn't mean the race will unfold under a cone of silence, but following it will entail building a new set of contacts, and looking in non-traditional sources like the alternate press and social media (particularly Facebook). For most party members the mainstream media will be incidental to the race, not integral to it.
• While they will take note of high-profile endorsements by promiment party members, members do not feel the least bit bound by them, and have on occasion put the boots to choices viewed as being foisted on them. Paul Dewar won the nomination in Ottawa Centre, for example, over Layton's own director of communications at the time, Jamey Heath, who was widely supported by the centre. By the same token, the party centre has a reasonably good track record of gracefully accepting those decisions.
• Although there are certain regional loyalties and other cleavages with the party, its practice of sending organizers from one province or territory to another to gain experience also creates many other bonds of loyalty and friendship, and thus makes it much more difficult to predict which leadership candidate someone might support.
• It will be at least as important to leadership campaigns which organizers they get on board, as which endorsements from elected officials or luminaries.
• Changing fortunes and the political cycle have recently upended some members' relative commitment to their provincial section versus the federal section of the party. Often in western Canada (though less so in Manitoba), members identified more strongly with their provincial parties who were contenders for government, and rued the influence of the Ontario section over the affairs of federal office. The popularity of Jack Layton and the orange wave in Quebec, coupled with BC and Saskatchewan being out of power provincially and Ontario finally emerging from the shadow of Bob Rae, have changed all that now.
• Nevertheless, there are some identifiable camps within the party, with their unofficial leaders and a certain history behind each one.
• Labour is not a monolithic camp within the NDP either; besides which, it is often not found on the left-wing of the party in many if not most cases. The house of labour has its own east-west cleavages, Quebec-ROC cleavages, and internal differences in Ontario that date back to differing electoral strategies in the wake of the Rae government.

The first batch of leadership candidates heading down the orange brick road each have their own strengths: Topp his strategic brain and polyglot of knowledge, Dewar his bridge-building way with people and his mother's heart, and Mulcair his ministerial experience and "dah nerve". Cullen's specific offering is less clear to me at this stage though he has a strong record on the environment, while Saganash has a constituency even less tapped into the mainstream than most but potentially very large and of future strategic importance to the party, particularly in western Canada. Singh is unknown across the country but acquitted himself of a professional entry into the race, though he's been more quiet since.

Brian Topp is the candidate of many who have worked closely with him, and given his senior roles within the party naturally that would include many seen as its "establishment". However, it is hard to see Libby Davies as a member of the establishment of anything, and indeed as the unofficial leader of the party's progressive wing, many were surprised to see her endorsement of someone who – far from being seen as the "left-wing" candidate – had earlier been caricatured as a Romanow, third-way New Democrat. Perhaps he is playing against type, or has made certain strategic judgements about where the majority of the party can be found, but if anything Topp is demonstrating the breadth of his support across the left-right spectrum within the party, in the endorsements he's chosen to highlight in the early stages of his campaign.

And when you think about it, it's a surprise that Topp should be seen as the establishment candidate at all, when Thomas Mulcair would have been assumed to hold that mantle short months ago, both as Layton's Quebec lieutenant and co-Deputy Leader, and indeed the only other caucus member to have been featured in any party's election advertising during the May campaign. Any dispassionate analysis has to excise and dismiss the widely cultivated story spun by other parties that Mulcair had designs on pushing Layton out and assuming his throne – not least because he spent most of his long days working in Quebec and did very little travelling across the rest of Canada, and also given the length of time it took him to assemble a team of sufficient size to counter Topp's pre-emptive move.

Mulcair's selling proposition is that only he can defeat Harper, and while he has likewise attracted supporters from both the party's left and third-way niches, he has also picked up endorsements from the likes of BC environmentalist and former candidate Michael Byers and Toronto-based left-wing academic James Laxer. Clearly his being a former Liberal is not as much of a bugaboo to party members as some in the media have imagined. Moreover, the so-called "little-known provincial leader" who appeared at Mulcair's news conference, Dominic Cardy from New Brunswick, was in fact one of the key movers behind getting the party to adopt the One Member One Vote method of leadership selection prior to 2003. This provision was originally conceived of as a way to limit the influence of labour representatives at delegated leadership conventions, but succeeded in the first instance in electing Jack Layton (then the candidate of the more left-wing New Politics Initiative, but who had since oriented the party more towards its prairie traditions).

Meanwhile, the polish of Paul Dewar's entry into the race, followed right away by a tour of up-and-coming Ontario provincial campaigns, gives a lot of clues about where many of the party's experienced organizers have cast their lots. He can also count on heavyweight support from government insiders in Manitoba where his older brother Bob, who cut his teeth running the cross-partisan Ottawa mayoralty campaigns of their mother Marion, went on to serve as Gary Doer's chief of staff and now works for the Manitoba Federation of Labour. Dewar's watchword is "grassroots", and while that campaign will have caucus endorsements, for now their announcement is being accorded a lower priority than demonstrating Dewar's wider reach to party members. It's been Dewar who has led the early voting in the CBC's online poll – not a scientific measure of overall strength, but certainly an early indicator of organizational readiness and the lack of any enemies. He's evidently still building up to his Quebec introduction though, concentrating on getting his french up to snuff in the meantime.

The Saganash candidacy speaks to the yearning for a role model and focus to a newly and still very tentatively engaged group of young native leaders and other activists within the party. After an uncertain start, it is now showing signs of catching up to the general readiness states of the other campaigns.

Most of the remaining entries I expect to cover off regional and/or issue bases, such as Cullen on the environment, Chisholm as the candidate speaking to the party's gains and future potential in Atlantic Canada and an experienced campaigner from the leader's chair, and Ashton as the candidate of young people and the new west, where she's expected to receive the backing of the very energized digital organization who supported Ryan Meili's insurgent and nearly-successful leadership campaign against Dwayne Lingenfelter in Saskatchewan.

All, that is, with the exception of Finance Critic and former Party President Peggy Nash – who, if she does decide to enter the race as seems increasingly likely to happen between now and Hallowe'en, will help to shape up the race and finally permit many undecided party activists – particularly those looking for a more activist candidate to support like Libby Davies or Peter Julian – to decide where to settle in for the duration of the race.

I suspect that the contours of the race, once the field is established, will revolve around differing approaches to achieving government and what to do once in government, and differing emphases on environmentalism, foreign policy, fiscal prudence and populism. The members will want to see a lot of debates, and put the candidates through their paces, but will also be judging each one – for better or worse – against the standard set by Jack Layton in the last election campaign: namely who can inspire them to recommit to the fight, who can tap into their grief and turn it back into hope.

It is entirely possible – and the probability can only increase with time – that at least one of the two presumed front-runners now won't be in first or second place by the end of the race. And while the story-line of a third candidate coming up the middle against two presumed front-runners is one New Democrats can easily identify with, we shouldn't assume at this point who that might be, nor that the winner in that scenario would inevitably be the weaker for it.

It won't be the party's current membership that decides a One-Member-One-Vote race based on their first choices, this is to say. It will also be the new members, and the second and perhaps third choices of all party members, whether new or old.

A story, in other words, that defies easy description now, but which promises lots of interesting twists and turns along the way.

[For best access to all the latest developments in the leadership race, don't forget to regularly visit the Pundits' Guide NDP Leadership Portal at http://ndpldr.punditsguide.ca.]