Pundits' Guide

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The strategic vote bump the Liberals are currently enjoying from the one daily tracking pollster of the campaign belies the undeniable weakening of the party's organization outside their traditional and dwindling number of strongholds in the Atlantic provinces, anglophone Quebec, and metropolitan Ontario.

In the lead-up to the March 25 non-confidence vote in the Commons, the Liberals lost more candidates than any other party except the Greens (who themselves set a new record for slate churn), with supposedly key swing ridings losing strong candidates, including high-profile business-woman Deborah Gillis in Halton, Margaret Black in Newmarket-Aurora, ON, the former mayor of Telkwa, BC Sharon Hartwell, Québec city nutritionist Anne Gagné, credit-union manager Louis Bérubé in Richmond-Arthabaska, QC, and France Beaulieu in Saint-Maurice-Champlain amongst others, all of which had to be backfilled with newcomers in the final weeks before nominations close on Monday.

In all, 39 duly nominated Liberal candidates have stepped down for one reason or another in this pre-election cycle, as compared with 22 New Democrats, 20 Conservatives, 1 Bloquiste, and at least 123 Greens (and those were just the Greens I was able to document).

Even in the weeks leading up to the campaign, the Liberals still had no candidates in major Ontario battleground ridings around Toronto, such as Burlington, Cambridge, Durham, Halton, Newmarket-Aurora, or Oshawa, nor in Simcoe-Grey. And the party had numerous holes in its western slate.

While no party is strong everywhere in the country, the once "natural governing party" has been left to beg for a local candidate in the Red Deer paper, a slot it has still not filled at time of writing. The Bloc was the first party to field a full slate (at least for them), several days into the campaign. The NDP followed with the first full national slate last Monday, the same day the Conservatives completed the 307 slots they probably intend to fill (no candidate is yet named to run against Independent M.P. André Arthur). However, the Liberals were still scrambling for 5 candidates in BC, 4 in Alberta, and 1 in Nunavut, as of last Monday.

They've since filled all but Red Deer, and in the case of Nunavut with a very strong candidate indeed: territorial speaker and former premier Paul Okalik who says he made up his mind to run the previous weekend after listening to Conservative Leader Stephen Harper. Okalik will now be running against his former Finance Minister, first-term Conservative M.P. Leona Aglukkaq.

But after losing a candidate in Manicouagan to a successful hit from the NDP's researchers, it took them three days to find replacement candidate Simon Bérubé, while the NDP replaced Ryan Dolby in Elgin-Middlesex-London with CAW local activist within 24 hours. Fortunately for the Liberals, disgraced "association for the rights of whites" founder André Forbes' signs didn't need to be taken down in Manicouagan, as they had never gone up except for one in the main intersection of Baie Comeau. Jack Layton went on to fill a room in a boisterous rally for his new candidate outside London, but meanwhile it's not Michael Ignatieff who's been to Baie Comeau, but Gilles Duceppe to defend his Bloc incumbent from the sudden growth in NDP support.

The Liberal Party also has more incumbents in serious trouble than other opposition parties. At least 17 incumbents are facing uphill battles or unusually strong challenges across the country, with another open seat likely out of contention, and four other open seats seeing open competition. Should the polls deteriorate further for the Liberals, obviously, more of the seats around Toronto would be in play, as they are more party brand seats than local MP ones, being in a large metropolitan area.

• In Newfoundland, Avalon M.P. Scott Andrews and St. John's South-Mount Pearl M.P. Siobhan Coady are facing challenges from a former provincial cabinet minister and a former Senator running for the Conservatives, with the NDP's returning candidate Ryan Cleary playing an unknown role in the likely three-way split in the latter case, given his second place finished in 2008, and the whipped gun registry vote playing spoiler in the former.
• In Prince Edward Island, class of 1988 Liberal M.P. Lawrence MacAuley is facing an unexpectedly strong threat from sharp-elbowed former provincial cabinet minister Mike Currie, with fellow Liberal M.P. Wayne Easter long since targeted by veterinarian Tim Ogilvie, also for the Conservatives. The open seat of Charlottetown may be the Liberals' strongest on the Island now.
• In Nova Scotia, Dartmouth-Cole Harbour M.P. Mike Savage is facing a very strong challenge from former provincial NDP leader Robert Chisholm, as evidenced by the visits of both party leaders to that riding early in the campaign.
• In New Brunswick, where their provincial cousins were decimated in last fall's provincial election, and reduced to a rump on the francophone east shore, the Liberals lost candidates in the months leading up to the non-confidence vote, both in Fredericton (Pamela Campbell) and Fundy Royal (Dave Delaney), and former Ignatieff chief of staff Paul Zed bowed out of running in Saint John at the last minute. The party has since refilled those slots, and in Saint John finally installed the former deputy mayor Stephen Chase last Tuesday, but as of yesterday there were still no Liberal signs up in their former stronghold of Saint John [UPDATE: another reader says more like the day before yesterday], while the Conservatives were out of the gate early, and even the NDP who had moved their top-performing 2008 candidate UNB economist Rob Moir over from Fundy Royal to Saint John last month, had their signs up within two days of the writ being issued. On the bright side for the Liberals, Bernard Lord declined to enter the race for the Conservatives in Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe leaving Liberal M.P. Brian Murphy on much safer ground, but meanwhile Liberal Jean-Claude d'Amours is now facing his strongest possible Conservative opponent in former Mulroney-era cabinet minister Bernard Valcourt, whose sister was elected provincially last fall alongside three other provincial Conservatives in his federal riding of Madawaska-Restigouche, in another rural Liberal seat likely to fall victim to the gun registry three-line whip.
• In Québec, future leadership hopeful Justin Trudeau is in a hard-fought contest to hold off the Bloc Québécois M.P. he defeated in 2008, Vivian Barbot, in the riding of Papineau (one of the eight ridings that has come within 5% in each of the last three elections), as is south shore M.P. Alexandra Mendès in Brossard-La Prairie. And in Hull-Aylmer, Liberal whip Marcel Proulx is facing a stiff challenge from former PSAC president and Gatineau ombudsman Nycole Turmel for the NDP, whom Proulx accused of having played footsie with the separatists (a jab timed to coincide with Jack Layton's visit to campaign with her last weekend), apparently forgetting that he had also subsequently tried to recruit her as a Liberal candidate himself. The now-open Liberal seat of Laval-les-Îles meanwhile features a young (and very pregnant!) new Liberal candidate of Haitian background, Karine Joizil, but who was appointed on the heels of much backroom biting, to run against returning Bloc candidate Mohadeli Jetha, who hails from Burundi, along with the former president of the Order of Engineers of Quebec, Zaki Ghavitian for the Conservatives, and trade unionist François Pilon for the NDP. Its prospects are still unclear, but are expected to hinge on the national question in Quebec.
• In Ontario, the Conservative assault on Mark Holland in Ajax-Pickering suffered a setback this week, when star candidate Chris Alexander's inelegant handling of questions about poverty in Canada exposed his inexperience as a politician. But with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper making repeated visits to Mississauga and Brampton, Liberal MPs Ruby Dhalla, Andrew Kania are in very stiff fights; with their neighbouring caucus members unable to coast to their formerly easy victories anymore either. In the north of Toronto class of 1988 M.P.'s Joe Volpe's campaign skills will be severely put to the test by returning Conservative candidate Joe Oliver; while to the south, NDP party president and former MP Peggy Nash appears to have landed a punch on Gerard Kennedy in Parkdale-High Park with the accusation that he had missed a third of the votes in the Commons. Some Liberals privately worried in January that more seats would be on the chopping block, but so far the jury is out. It is also an open question what the state of the race will look like in the open seats of Scarborough-Rouge River and Mississauga East-Cooksville, but I don't have anything really to report in those either, while Kingston and the Islands so far looks to be an open race as well. The Conservatives also seem very interested in Guelph riding, given the Conservative leaders tour visit, though Liberal Frank Valeriote is said to have been working hard locally, and the riding has dashed the Conservatives' hopes before.
• Fortunately for the Liberals, the Conservative Party's own candidate troubles in several western ridings mean that the heat is off Anita Neville in Winnipeg South Centre for now (though the Conservatives have nominated a former Liberal Joyce Bateman to replace their former candidate Ray Hall). But in the north end, the party's new by-election M.P. Kevin Lamoureux, who was elected with the admitted support of nearly half the party's national infrastructure last November (the other half going to Vaughan), will now have to face the NDP's entire Manitoba machine on his own, and with his party's recent dalliance with "white rights" advocates looking to have exactly the opposite effect on turnout amongst aboriginal voters as the snowstorm had last winter.
• On the west coast, Ujjal Dosanjh and Joyce Murray are facing very well funded and stiff challenges from Wei Young and Deborah Meredith in Vancouver, while in Newton-North Delta Sukh Dhaliwal has another three-way fight on his hands, with strong Indo-Canadian women challengers from both the NDP and Conservatives this time (former BC Teachers' Federation president Jimmy Sims for the NDP, and Mani Fallon for the Conservatives who will benefit from the party's ability to divert attention and resources away from Fleetwood-Port Kells), and with both their leaders making visits to the riding, but as yet no visit from Michael Ignatieff. Keith Martin's open seat is now viewed by veteran local observers as returning to its Conservative-NDP roots, the Liberals not having won the seat on their own without Keith Martin on the ballot since 1968.
• And north of 60, Larry Bagnell will face his toughest reelection in years, on the wrong side of the gun registry issue in Yukon, as well.

Realistic pickup opportunities are more sparse for them, one veteran Ontario observer only being able to name two seats on budget night, though I'm sure they would add a few more to the list by now.

• They'll be trying to hold what they have in the Atlantic.
• In eastern Québec, their two best prospects are Nancy Charest in Haute Gaspésie-La Mitis-Matane-Matapédia and Denis Paradis in Brome-Missisquoi, the former running in a seat where the outgoing Bloc MP's performance remains a lingering campaign issue, and the latter in a seat with a weak Conservative candidate less likely to benefit from that party's apparent overtaking of the Liberals as the federalist option in that part of the province.
• In Montréal, hope remains for Noushig Eloyan in Ahuntsic against the Bloc's Maria Mourani and Marc Bruneau against the Bloc's Thierry St-Cyr (a race that also features strong entries from the NDP and Conservatives), but was dashed for former Justice Minister Martin Cauchon in this morning's CROP poll of Outremont, showing NDP lieutenant Tom Mulcair with a 20-point lead (though also sealing a reprieve for Francis Scarpaleggia from the accident-prone candidacy of Conservative Larry Smith).
• In western Québec, they still hold out hope for Steve MacKinnon in Gatineau, based on a pre-writ Segma poll showing the Liberals in second place behind the Bloc. But that poll used party names rather than candidate names and predated the subsequent CROP poll showing the Liberals in fourth place province-wide. Locally, the race is believed to be between incumbent Bloc M.P. Richard Nadeau and Françoise Boivin for the NDP. Lawrence Cannon does not seem to be in serious danger so far from his Liberal opponent in Pontiac this time either, though notably the Conservatives had a bit of trouble recruiting candidates to run in both Gatineau and Hull-Aylmer.
• In eastern Ontario, the Liberals' best hopes, however distant, lie with candidates in more francophone ridings, such as Julie Bourgeois in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, Bernadette Clement in Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry, and David Bertschi in Ottawa-Orleans, though recently-nominated former Toronto Board of Trade COO Grant Humes seems set to make Bev Oda work very hard for her return to Ottawa in Durham riding in the 905 East.
• In Toronto, Omar Alghabra in Conservative-held Mississauga-Erindale is a sentimental favourite for Liberals wanting to see his return to the Commons, while NDPer Olivia Chow's seat of Trinity-Spadina is the unsentimental demographic target and the NDP seat they'd next-most like to nab with Outremont being out of play. UPDATE: north of Toronto, they believe they have a much stronger candidate in Mario Ferri, in order to retake Vaughan from Conservative Julian Fantino.
• Moving around the horseshoe, the party is counting on being able to win a two-way fight against Conservatives in Oakville with candidate Max Khan, and counting on Maria Bountrogianni's previous record against NDP M.P. Chris Charlton in Hamilton Mountain, where the two have crossed swords provincially in the past. They also have a strong challenger to Conservative M.P. Ed Holder in former party national president Doug Ferguson in London West.
• Moving a bit northwest of Toronto, Liberals would desperately like to win back their Kitchener seats, particularly Kitchener Centre, where former caucus whip Karen Redmond is running for reelection, and they're holding a candle for a win on the split in Simcoe-Grey where Helena Guergis is running for reelection as an Independent Conservative (though the Simcoe politics blog reports Guergis as winning the sign war to date). They also have a surprisingly strong local candidate Kimberley Love in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, a riding that's been perennial hope of the Green Party which seems to have picked a smart young candidate with little local draw this time and is thus unlikely to maintain its second place finish from 2008. But here again, popular Conservative incumbent Larry Miller is considered the easy favourite.
• Another Liberal hoped-for pickup in Sudbury seems to be fading away as multiple observers report it's the Conservative candidate Fred Slade now running the strongest challenge against first-time NDP incumbent Glenn Thibeault.
• Terry Duguid in Winnipeg South is the best hope for a Liberal pickup in Manitoba against Conservative M.P. Rod Bruinooge, though the party can't give up on its former francophone base in Saint-Boniface, currently held by Conservative Shelly Glover, where the Liberal M.P. she defeated Ray Simard is running to regain his seat.
• After that, they got nothing until you get to the waterfront in Vancouver, where they'd like to win back Richmond from Alice Wong with candidate and former Canadian Alliance-turned-Liberal M.P. Joe Peschisolido, and take back West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea-to-Sky Country from John Weston with Dan Veniez, but probably have the better chance winning back North Vancouver from Andrew Saxton with newcomer Taleeb Noormohamed. John Ivison reports from the west coast that their try for Vancouver-Kingsway, currently held by the NDP's Don Davies, looks unlikely to succeed at this point for candidate Wendy Yuan.
• Two bright spots for the Liberals might be north of 60, where they've recruited two former territorial leaders to run, Joe Handley quite some time ago in Western Arctic, and Paul Okalik just this past week in Nunavut. However, remote ridings are incredibly difficult to out-organize an incumbent in, giving Handley the better chance than Okalik given his earlier start and the cabinet status of Conservative M.P. Leona Aglukkaq. The Conservatives in Western Arctic may also have outsmarted themselves by appointing recent Liberal and territorial health minister Sandy Lee to be their candidate the other week, virtually guaranteeing her no local campaign backup from what's said to be a very grumpy riding association that was last heard to be appealing the appointment to headquarters. Still Handley will be running on his party's position favouring the long gun registry, and against a New Democrat who did not switch his vote, two-term MP Dennis Bevington.

So, best case, 15-18 possible pickups, as against 18 incumbents facing troubles.

That being the case, where is this so-called "squeeze" on the NDP? There would appear to be three aspects to it:

• Liberals will name several NDP seats they believe they can take, some more credibly than others in my view, but often named are: Hamilton Mountain, Trinity-Spadina, London-Fanshawe, Vancouver-Kingsway, St. John's East, Halifax, Ottawa Centre, and the list pretty well trails off after there. No-one is seriously claiming anymore that the Liberals are any threat in northern Ontario ridings, and particularly not in northwestern Ontario where the NDP incumbents voted against the gun registry. If they were, the Liberal leader's tour would have been up there by now. And with the Liberals having fallen to third place in Windsor and the other 2 of the 3 Hamilton seats, regaining those seats seems more of an uphill battle. Regardless, any seats the Liberals win from the NDP or vice versa, are all about enhancing their relative bargaining positions after the election, and not about unseating the Conservative government, contrary to what is being implied by the Liberals' claim they are the only alternative government possible.
• They could also try to execute a "squeeze" by attracting 2008 NDP voters over to the Liberals in seats now held by the Liberals under threat, or which the Liberals would like to win back from the Conservatives in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, or perhaps by appealing to folks in those provinces who voted Green in protest in 2008 and might be tempted to move on over to the NDP, to move on back to the Liberals instead. But in the last election, the Liberals and NDP both lost votes at the same time in 88 of Ontario's 106 ridings, and the NDP only gained at the Liberals' expense in 15 of them. 2008 Green party supporters would appear to be a better prospect, given that they gained at the Liberals' expense in 102 of the 106 ridings, or even previous Non-Voters who increased in numbers where the Liberal vote dropped in 103 of 106 seats.
• Finally, they seem to be trying to carry off a different kind of squeeze by sending Bob Rae out on secondary tour in support of the Liberal campaigns in ridings where the NDP could make gains at the expense of the Conservatives. Rae has been spotted in Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Vancouver Island North, and Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca in the past week. So, perhaps part of the attempted squeeze is to prevent the NDP from increasing its relative seat strength with western gains, even if it means reelecting Conservatives.

Now, organizationally, the Liberals are doing a good job filling halls for leader's tour events. But while the party's tour events are drawing critical acclaim from the national media, no-one seems to be noticing their concentration in traditional areas of Liberal strength. Today, for example, they're in Scarborough, supposedly a bastion of Liberal support. Is it that they're concerned about losing the open seat of Scarborough-Rouge River to some other party, or that they know they can at least fill a hall in Scarborough?

With the nominations data entry all but finished now (and thank goodness for that!), we'll continue our unvarnished look at the various parties' prospects in subsequent posts.

Tags: 41st (2011) General Election, Liberals