Pundits' Guide

Poll-by-Poll Metrics Now Added

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 04:58:00 +0000

Riding-level results are nice to have so far as they go, but serious strategists want to know how the parties did in various parts of a riding: where they grew, where they fell back, who they switched to and whose switchers they picked up, how well they pulled their supporters out to the Advanced Polls, and so forth.

Ideally we'd like to see that mapped, but there are some key interim steps, some of which are very time-consuming. Obviously an essential one is assembling a complete set of the poll-by-poll results, which is what I'm reporting on tonight.

I now have a complete set of poll-by-poll result tables in the Pundits' Guide relational database from 1997 forward (including the 2000 Transposition), which are fully cross-referenced against all the other riding result tables, parties, elections, and candidates already in it. There are 395,371 polls and 2,174,723 individual candidate poll results, and between the size of the tables themselves and their associated database indexes (what makes the pages run reasonably quickly), this new dataset is taking up just over 700 Megabytes of space in the database.

It was assembled from the raw data provided by Elections Canada for each general election plus the transposition, and hand-typed in many cases from the PDFs they supplied for by-elections. Thanks to the Chief Electoral Officer for responding favourably to my plea for raw by-election data on their website as well, which certainly made the job easier towards the end. Thanks also to my long-suffering housemate, who read those printed by-election results out loud to me while I typed them. The whole thing was a herculean task, not least because the raw data was supplied in at least 3 different formats over that period of time, and candidates were sorted alpha by family name, rather than consistently by party. The latest Elections Canada format for poll-by-poll results, however, represents a marked improvement, and I could certainly live with it going forward. I also had to cross-check and double-check my data entry to make sure everything added up properly in every direction, in the process of which I discovered a few errors with the 1997 raw data in 4 Quebec ridings, which Elections Canada is now fixing up.

A "poll" here means a "polling station". Polls in the mapping context are "polling divisions". You'd think there would be a one-to-one relationship between them, but in fact sometimes polling divisions get too large population-wise and have to be split. If they're split geographically before an election is called, you get poll numbers like "195", "195-1", "195-2", which represent different polling divisions. On the other hand, if they're not split until after the campaign has started, it's done alphabetically by family name, and the polls are called "195A" and "195B" for example. In such a case they are considered to be 2 polling stations for the same polling division (195). You can even see examples of poll numbers such as "195", "195-1A", "195-1B", "195-2". Here the original polling division was geographically split into 3 polling divisions before the election, but the second part was still found to have too many electors and thus was split alphabetically into 2 polling stations after the writ was issued.

Polling divisions can also get too small. s.538(1) of the Elections Act says that they should have a minimum of 250 electors, and so sometimes a polling division can get merged into another one, or combined with another one (a new development it appears since 2004, and I'm not sure I understand the difference between the two at the moment), or be declared "void" or "no poll held".

There are several different kinds of polling stations:

Regular polls, pretty much what you'd expect, they are numbered sequentially starting from the number 1, and they represent the votes of people who voted on Election Day.
Apartment polls, which are a subset of the regular polls, but are numbered in the 400s; also for Election Day voters.
Mobile polls, which are designed for residents of long-term care facilities and the disabled, further to various provisions of the Elections Act. They are numbered in the 500s. The polling station is brought to their room, and/or remains in a central lobby area for a defined period of time on Election Day.
Advance polls, which are numbered in the 600s. They include votes cast on the defined Advance voting days, but not special ballots nor people who voted in the returning office as I understand it.
Special Voting Rules Group I (SVR1), which is not really either a polling division or a polling station, but is reported in a separate line. The official definition is "Includes Canadian citizens temporarily residing outside Canada, members of the Canadian Forces (except members of the Canadian Forces who voted at the polling station established for the polling division of their place of ordinary residence) and incarcerated electors", so not exactly a strategically homogenous group!
Special Voting Rules Group II (SVR1), again neither a polling division nor station, but reported on its own line in the official voting results. The official definition is "Includes Canadian citizens residing in Canada who voted by special ballot in or outside their electoral districts"; in other words here are the special ballot voters and folks who voted in the Returning Office.

Neither Advance polls nor the SVR2 group has a defined count of electors, obviously. So we can calculated a candidate's share of the vote in those polls, but not their share of the electorate in that poll-type (I suppose you could express the result as a percent of the whole electorate for the riding, but I haven't done that here). Merged polls have a defined number of electors, but no results, so I had to precalculate the "merged electors" of the polls they got merged into, for database performance reasons.

You've probably also noticed the "Number of Polls" measure for each election on the riding profile page here, which is also found at the bottom of any poll-by-poll report from Elections Canada. Here's how they come up with that number:

Take the highest regular poll number from the bottom of the printed poll-by-polls results report
Add the number of geographically split polling divisions, eg 190-1
Add the number of non-geographically split polling stations, eg 70A, 70B
Add the number of 400-series apartment polls
Add the number of 500-series Mobile polls
Add the number of 600-series Advance polls
Subtract the number of polls merged or combined into others
Subtract the number of void or "no poll held" polls
This gives you the stated # of polling stations by Elections Canada
It doesn't include the Special Voting Rules Groups I and II for each riding

The next step of course is to assemble, model and import all the polling division boundary geospatial data, so the polling station results can be linked to their polling divisions, and the whole kit and caboodle can be mapped. Not an overnight project.

However, so that we can make use of the poll-by-poll data that's available now, I've provided a 5th tab on each riding profile page called "Poll-by-Poll". It shows the number of polls won + tied by each candidate, broken down by each type of poll (Regular, Mobile, Advance, SVR1 and SVR2), along with their share of the vote, and their percent of the electorate in the cases where that's measurable (i.e., not for Advance or SVR2, as explained above).

This allows us to see whether a certain party was more effective in pulling its support to the Advance Polls, is overrepresented in the Mobile Polls, or whether the vote shifted in a certain riding between the Advance Polls and Election Day itself.

For example, let's look at the riding of Brampton – Springdale, ON: the Conservatives won the Advance Polls by 50.3% to 37.2% over the Liberals, but by Election Day the Liberals won the Regular Polls 41.6% to 36.5%. The Conservatives won 17 Advance Polls outright (there were no ties) to the Liberals' 5, but on Election Day they won 77 of the Regular Polls outright to the Liberals' 145, plus they were tied in a further 6.

Finally, I've supplied handy links to the original poll-by-poll result reports for each electoral event at Elections Canada from 2004 forward (the earlier data is not linkable). Just click on the little Elections Canada icon next to the election of interest on any riding profile page's "Poll-by-Poll" tab to go directly to the Official Voting Results (OVR) Poll-by-Poll Results report.

OK, with that job out of the way, I'd say it's high time we got caught up on the nomination news around here, don't you.

Fifth MP Announces Retirement

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:00:00 +0000

A fifth Member of Parliament has announced he won't be running in the next election. Jim Abbott from Kootenay – Columbia, BC was one of 10 remaining MPs first elected from the then-new Reform Party in 1993, when he defeated NDP M.P. Sid Parker.

The B.C. Member of Parliament is the fourth Conservative incumbent to announce his retirement. Bloc Québécois M.P. Jean-Yves Roy is the fifth retiring incumbent. A complete list can be found on the "Search the Database" page under "Nominations Progress in Ridings with Retiring Incumbents". I don't know what we should read into the fact that Abbott and New Brunswick Southwest M.P. Greg Thompson have both decided to announce their retirements just before the Commons returns from this break.

Abbott is the second-oldest of the 10 remaining Class of 1993 Reformers, but the Conservative caucus includes a further three MPs their senior. [UPDATE: He is the 10th remaining member *of the Conservative caucus* first elected as a Reformer in 1993. Of course Keith Martin was also elected then, but crossed the floor to the Liberal Party in 2004. Sorry for the confusion.] You can find a full list of MPs by age at the Library of Parliament's ParlINFO website. I also compiled a list of MPs in the 40th Parliament by year of first election.

Looking at its Google Map*, the riding straddles the lower part of the BC-Alberta border: from Yoho National Park outside Banff, it reaches through Golden and Glacier National Park as far west as the railway town of Revelstoke and then down to Nakusp in the north; and also south along skiing country through Invermere to the sister cities of Kimberley and Cranbrook (the focal point of some of the province's worst forest fires earlier this decade; coincidentally the very week my partner and I had scheduled a two-week driving trip through the area). To their east are the mining communities of Fernie and Sparwood; while the farming community of Creston, the Mormon community of Bountiful, and most of Kootenay Lake lies to the west. It includes territory claimed by the Ktunaxa-Kinbasket Tribal Council in their treaty negotiations, and the former residential school outside the St. Mary's Indian Reserve near Cranbrook has been converted into a conference centre and resort hotel with golf course and casino.

Before Abbott's six-term tenure began, the seat swang back and forth between Parker for the NDP and Stan Graham for the Progressive Conservatives. A former well-known local broadcaster, Abbott took the seat in 1993 with 48% of the vote, and in subsequent years collected as much as 68% before tapering back to a vote share in the mid-50s in the last 3 elections. The NDP has fallen from its earlier mid-40s vote shares of 20 years ago but is still the strongest contender in this seat, the Liberals having fallen to fourth behind the Green Party there in 2008.

I've suspected for some time that Abbott might be ready to retire soon, given that the Prime Minister has made some high-profile trips to the riding, and it ranked very high in several recent compilations of stimulus funding by riding. It was also targetted with a lot of federal and provincial radio advertising about the introduction of the provincial carbon tax and the proposal for a federal carbon tax in the summer before the last election, which I noticed on another driving trip through the area with my partner's daughter.

In any event a similar suspicion may also have led the NDP to delay nominating here until it was clear whether they would be recruiting for an open seat or one occupied by a strong incumbent. The party holds 3 of the 4 provincial seats in the Kootenays (which federally comprise this seat and neighbouring BC Southern Interior). But it doesn't currently hold Kootenay East which includes Cranbrook, where they ran Ktunaxa treaty negotiator Troy Sebastien. Sebastien, BC Treaty Commissioner Sophie Pierre, and retired former MLA Corky Evans from Nelson-Creston would probably appear on their ideal candidate search list, were 2008 candidate Leon Pendleton not to run again. I'll have to catch up on my reading to see who the likely Conservative candidates would be, although BC Conservative Party leader Wilf Hanni also ran provincially in the Cranbrook seat as well. The Green Party has already nominated new candidate Bryan Hunt, and I haven't seen any Liberal names surface as yet.

I've deleted Abbott's entry from the list of nominated candidates, and added his seat to the list of retiring incumbents. One thing's for sure: he'll be retiring to one of the most beautiful parts of the country, lucky guy! Thanks to commenter "Shadow" for drawing the clipping to our attention.

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* To the commenter who wrote the other week to say not enough detail appears in the rural maps, please note that these maps are fully interactive, which means that you can click on the + sign to zoom in, or else just double-click on the spot you want to zoom in to. You can also click and hold down your mouse to pan map right or left, up or down.

A New Way To Analyze Riding Results

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:09:00 +0000

So long as I've been involved in politics, we've always measured performance by "percent of the vote", aka "vote share", which is the candidate's or party's number of votes expressed as a percentage of the valid ballots cast.

We say that a party's vote share went up or down, or that party X lost a certain percent of the vote to party Y; and define the gap between first and second place (the "percent margin") as a percentage of the valid ballots cast as well.

The unspoken assumptions behind this analytic shorthand were two-fold: that turnout was reasonably constant, and that in any event the party leanings of those who didn't vote for whatever reason in a certain election were insignificantly different from those who did.

I'm no expert in turnout, although André Blais and Peter Loewen who are have just published a working paper estimating it, available through the Elections Canada website if you missed the citation at Aaron Wherry's blog the other day; they are also the same two who've written about youth engagement for Elections Canada here.

But I think anyone who's active in politics these days can agree that turnout levels are dropping, and there's good reason to suspect that voters and non-voters are now diverging in a number of ways. We would probably also draw a distinction between long-term non-voters and temporarily discouraged voters, in order to round out the picture.

Karl Rove originated the strategy in the United States of finding wedge issues to motivate targeted groups of hitherto unlikely voters to support his candidate, while employing other (primarily "air-war") tactics to discourage the supporters of his candidate's opponents in the hopes that they'd "stay home" (i.e., not go out to vote). As I've written before, there are two paths to winning: one by increasing your own share of the vote, whether from non-voters or former supporters of your opponent; and one by causing your opponents to stay home. In response to the Rove-ian approach, David Plouffe and David Axelrod advocated a different strategy for their candidate's campaign, where they sought to increase vote-share from long-term non-voters by promoting voter registration and running fully-funded ground campaigns in all 50 states, rather than just targetted efforts in swing states as had been the usual practice in the past.

As you've no doubt figured out by now, the usual metric of "vote share" is just not up to the task of measuring or properly describing these movements. In a situation where no other votes change, but party A's votes stay home, using percentage of the vote as the indicator can make it look as though party A's supporters switched to party B and C, when they did no such thing.

This is why I've added "percent of the electorate" (aka "% Elec") to the riding profile pages here, and will be slowly adding it elsewhere in the database as well. For greater clarity: a candidate's or party's "percent of the electorate" is their number of votes expressed as a percentage of the eligible voters, rather than the valid ballots cast. Then the number of non-voters (NV) can also expressed as a percentage (plus it also works out to 100% - the turnout rate), and added to the bottom of the list. In a typical riding profile these days, the NVs are winning, but their numbers do vary from election to election. I show all the % Elec calculations in an italic font, so it's easier on the eyes to distinguish them from the "percent of the vote" column.

So, with this new metric available, what new insights can we get into some of the pivotal strategic questions of the next campaign? Let's take a second look at some of the seats that changed hands in earlier campaigns, and see if we can find out why:

Welland, ON and Sudbury, ON - These two seats switched from the Liberals to the NDP last time. If you take a look at the results expressed as a percent of the electorate: the Conservative vote stayed constant, the NDP vote (surprisingly) declined very slightly by a single point in both case, but the Liberal vote dropped substantially (by 7 and 10 points respectively), ALL of it switching to the non-voting (NV) camp. Suddenly it becomes very clear that the NDP strategy to keep the seats must involve increasing their vote from longer-term non-voters, while the Liberal strategy will be focused on re-motivating their earlier supporters to return to the polls in the hopes of regaining their former seats. Going back one more election in both ridings, the NDP vote did increase in 2006 from the ranks of previous non-voters, but it did not increase further between 2006 and 2008.
Kitchener Centre, ON - In this case, the NDP and Green vote stayed constant from 2004 to 2008, while the Conservative vote increased between 2004 and 2006, but stayed put in 2008. The difference in 2008 is that the Liberal vote dropped by 7.5 points, all of it switching to the non-voting camp. This was enough to cause the seat to change hands by 339 votes, just 1.6 per poll. That's 0.8 percent of the vote, and 0.4% of the electorate. So, turnout dropped from 64.7% to 57.0%, all at the expense of the Liberal incumbent.
Toronto – Danforth, ON in 2004, and Trinity – Spadina, ON in 2006 - In both these races, the NDP won the seats away from the Liberals in a different way than the first case: Jack Layton won in 2004 by picking up votes from previous non-voters, a feat not achieved by his wife Olivia Chow until 2006 in her riding. A similar pattern can be seen in Timmins – James Bay, ON in 2004. Here the other parties' votes held constant, or else the Liberals declined slightly, while the NDP posted big gains as turnout fell. In subsequent elections, with the incumbency tables turned, the Liberal vote continued to fall, with some of it switching to the Conservatives and Greens as well as staying home, leaving Layton and Chow with increased margins, and a more divided opposition, even as their own vote abated somewhat.
Saint Boniface, MB - Of course, not every riding that changed hands fit one of the above patterns, as in this case where turnout did not change too much and it appears that votes actually moved from the Liberals to the Conservatives.

I think it's important to examine turnout and the parties' shares of the electorate much more so than vote-share when trying to explain how votes shift between elections.

It's *particularly* important when various schemes are multiplying in the commentariat and blogosphere about how parties could or should combine their efforts or step aside in favour of others, whether from my old Carleton poli sci prof Reg Whitaker and his colleague Philip Resnick, writing in TheTyee.ca about how to defeat the government, or L. Ian MacDonald writing in the weekend's Montreal Gazette about how to block the Bloc in Quebec.

What I hope I've demonstrated is that just looking at changes in a party's vote-share from one election to the next, and comparing it to changes in another party's share, can lead to some erroneous conclusions, and cause you to miss other movements which actually occurred ... with potentially serious strategic consequences.

Most of the examples above come from Ontario, because I've been working on Ontario ridings for another reason the past few days, but the same reasoning when applied to seats in British Columbia will allow you to see more clearly how votes shifted over the past few elections.

Next time: a new tool to examine regional party vote swings in comparison with one another.

More Political Party News

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:32:00 +0000

Time to pass along a few accumulated developments in party apparatus news from here and there:

Liberal Party - As a result of their posting which ended on January 6, the Liberal Party has hired a new National Director, Ian McKay from B.C., who will be starting in early March, when he's to "continue the modernization of our Party's communication and technological infrastructure and give him the tools to drive our membership engagement process," according to party president Alf Apps' letter to the membership. A financial services consultant, McKay ran in the 2000 general election in West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast, BC. Next on their agenda is the hiring of a new President for the National Liberal Fund: in effect the party's new chief fundraiser.
Conservative Party - A re-organization of the party's Quebec office was first reported by Le Devoir at the end of January, and followed up on by L. Ian MacDonald's weekend column for the Montreal Gazette. The changes appear to have been set in motion when director-general Claude Durand decided late in the year to step down and take care of her son's health concerns. Her resignation took effect at the end of January, by which point she had reportedly identified some 60 candidates in the 75 Quebec ridings (not all of whom have been nominated or announced, apparently). It was revealed this past weekend that in fact the party is now closing its Montreal office, and opening one in Québec City instead, to be run by one of the successful organizers in the recent by-election in Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, Ghislain Maltais, who is also a former provincial Liberal MNA. Maltais will be backed up by Joseph Soares, based out of party headquarters in Ottawa, who was also a part of the by-election campaign team, MacDonald reports.

Meanwhile, new party president John Walsh had the recent task of taking control of the Calgary West, AB Conservative riding association (aka EDA or electoral district association), which had been planning to conduct a referendum requesting an open nomination meeting at its upcoming annual general meeting, even though incumbent M.P. Rob Anders was already renominated last May along with the rest of his caucus. Kevin Libin ran down the inside story in a blogpost for the National Post's online "Full Comment" website, which reports a lot of perspective I had not read before.
Green Party - There have simply not been enough hours in the day to keep on top of every twist and turn in the on-going debate about when and how to elect, re-elect, review or reconstitute the leadership of the Green Party and repair its finances, although party activists have been pouring themselves into debating the issues at great length in the comment sections of a number of different Green blogs, including DaveBagler.ca, Not an Official Green Party Canada Site (NAOGPCS), the democraticSpace.com blog, and of course Report on Greens. I'm unaware whether there has been any final resolution on the leadership convention question. In addition, the party's Revenue Sharing Agreement, whereby the national party distributes a third of its quarterly public subsidy to the EDAs, is also being questioned in light of its current debt situation.

The big news, at least to me, is that there is a third potential leadership candidate on the horizon -- a woman -- who has been meeting people at private dinners, but has not yet announced her campaign. I've made several attempts to find out who it is, but no luck as yet. Apparently a communications plan is in place regarding the timing of the announcement, and the trigger may yet not be pulled. However, she appears to be supported by the BlueGreenBlogger at NAOGPCS, who teased her candidacy at the end of a recent blogpost. The woman, whoever she is, would be joining former federal and Ontario party leader Frank de Jong, and presumably Elizabeth May herself. As the party's constitution is currently written, May's fixed four-year term ends at some point in 2010.
Bloc Québécois - In a reply to a recent blogpost on the partes' quarterly contributions by Chantal Hébert at l'Actualité, the directeur-general of the Bloc Québécois confirmed that their party's approach to fundraising is to favour the constituency associations as well. Gilbert Gardner pointed to 2008 numbers showing that the Bloc raised over $800K through its constituency associations, as compared with some $700K by the party headquarters, and suggested that the 2009 reports from their EDAs which are due this May would show a similar pattern.
New Democrats - The first initiative springing from the NDP's recent Federal Council meeting to plan its strategy leading up to the next election has emerged, and it's focussed on riding fundraising as well. A Facebook group has just popped up for the "Local Victories Challenge", which according to NDP blogger The Jurist at Accidental Deliberations, is designed to make a central investment into riding associations, to help them build their local fundraising infrastructure. We've reported before that party national director Brad Lavigne and leader Jack Layton have been citing statistics about the performance of their candidates who are able to spend close to the spending limit, so it appears this initiative stems from that analysis. After the party's decision in the last election to put in place the financing necessary to spend the national limit (they wound up spending around 84% of the limit in the end), this time according to the promotional material for the Local Victories Challenge they're hoping to finally raise candidate spending up from the 20-25% or so of the limit across the board where it's stayed for the past 5 elections. You'll recall that Professor Bill Stanbury and I studied candidate spending in a two-part series last spring, in which we found that this 20-25% was in fact concentrated into a number of ridings that the party had targetted, and was highly correlated with the percent of the vote NDP candidates obtained.

Tomorrow: some new functionality for the Pundits' Guide database, and the importance of examining candidates' share of the electorate in order to understand vote switching.

Some Recent Nomination News

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:18:00 +0000

OK, who's up for a bit of nomination news? There are a few items that have piled up, and some of them are quite interesting; starting with:

St. John's South – Mount Pearl, NL - A Memorial University prof reports in his blog, Tickling Bight, this week that well-known Conservative television pundit Tim Powers is "rumoured to be sizing up a run" in this riding, currently held by first-term Liberal M.P. Siobhan Coady. Although based in Ottawa, Powers has also maintained good relations with the Newfoundland & Labrador government, even serving as an unofficial spokesperson for Premier Danny Williams when questions were first raised about his seeking medical treatment outside the country. In the wake of the "ABC (Anyone but Conservative) Campaign" run by the Premier during the last federal election campaign, a thawing of relations between the two conservative parties would be a precondition for federal Conservatives to become electorally competitive in the province again, and Powers undoubtedly played a backroom role recently in smoothing the way for the Prime Minister to visit the Premier in St. John's just days before Williams left for his surgery. As the blogger also notes, his entry could also open up the very close two-way race (2.8% of the vote, or 5.1 votes per poll) this riding saw in 2008 between Liberal victor Coady, and the NDP's Ryan Cleary, who has already been renominated for a second run at the seat. Taking a closer look at the riding map, I see that the boundaries have changed from the way I remember the St. John's West of old: it now takes in the part of downtown around the harbour (including Water and Duckworth streets) up to and including Quidi Vidi village, and has lost much of the southern part of the Avalon peninsula (basically everything south of Petty Harbour) to neighbouring Avalon riding. So, will he run? @powerstim himself is telling his tweeps entertainingly that "no moving boxes will be required", but of course that could still mean pretty much anything.
St. John's East, NL - Staying in St. John's, the same blogger passes along news apparently originating with the CBC's Dave Cochrane (no link available) that former provincial Cancer Society director Peter Dawe "is considering" a run for the Liberals against the NDP's Jack Harris in this riding. Dawe headed the Cancer Society as the case of the inaccurate breast cancer tests became known and was being investigated, but he stepped down in the middle of last September to "seek other work". The timing of Mr. Dawe's resignation, not long after Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's announcement in Sudbury last September that he would try to bring the government down, leads the blogger to believe that Dawe has been considering the run for some time. Harris commanded a 74.6% share of the vote last time, with Liberal candidate Walter Noel placing a distant second at 12.6%.
Saskatoon – Humboldt, SK - Further west, a former M.P. today announced another run as an Independent candidate to try and regain his old riding. Jim Pankiw was elected as a Reform M.P. in 1997, serving two terms, and finally losing his seat while running as an independent in 2004. Three-term Conservative M.P. Brad Trost won the resulting four-way race in 2004 with just 26.7% of the vote, but has since increased his vote share to 49.1% in 2006 and 53.8% in 2008, with the Liberal vote declining, and the NDP moving firmly into second place. New Democrats are already revising the riding's priority upwards in light of Pankiw's return, a reader writes to confirm, and have had their candidate, health policy consultant Denise Kouri, in place since early last fall. The riding is home to the University of Saskatchewan, and encompasses the northeast part of Saskatoon and the rural areas further northeast, including Humboldt, Domremy, some farmland and a number of first nations' reserve communities.

Next time, some updates from B.C., and a round-up of a few more candidates who have stepped down.

Needed To Be Said

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:18:00 +0000

In my likely nomination for best blogpost of the year in 2010, Daveberta tries to help those eastern pundits *not* to spin in the dark.

Latest on 2006 Liberal Leadership Debts

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:21:00 +0000

Thanks to Glen McGregor from this morning's Ottawa Citizen, we learn that a judge in the Ontario Superior Court has, as expected, granted an extension in fundraising time to the remaining 2006 Liberal leadership candidates having outstanding loans on the books.

The candidates will have a further two years to raise the funds necessary to pay off their debts, and must file reports with Elections Canada every six months, as of March. This puts the new deadline at the end of 2011, presumably December 31.

The latest figures for their outstanding loan amounts were reported in the story as follows:

$395,890 [amount from June 3, 2008; his latest amount outstanding is not listed, as the story says he has been given until next year to pay it off] - Ken DRYDEN - June 30, 2010 deadline, but apparently already deferred to next year by the Chief Electoral Officer
$193,133 - Maurizio BEVILACQUA
$152,800 - Joe VOLPE
$131,361 - Gerard KENNEDY
$130,260 - Martha HALL FINDLEY
$78,500 - Hedy FRY
$40,000 - Stéphane DION
$0 - Carolyn BENNETT
$0 - Scott BRISON
$0 - Michael IGNATIEFF
$0 - Bob RAE

To put this in perspective, Mr. Bevilacqua will have to raise an average of just over $8,000 per month between now and the end of 2011 in order to meet that requirement, while Mr. Dion will have to raise just under $1,700 monthly to do the same.

Put another way, the campaign spending limit in Mr. Bevilacqua's Ontario riding of Vaughan was $103,581 in the last election. His outstanding debt is 1.86 times that amount.

Further to the rules, which were amended for retroactive application to the 2006 Liberal leadership race, these funds must be raised from individuals who have not already donated their one-time maximum contribution of $1,100 to that particular leadership race.

To those unfamiliar with the background of this issue, the reason leadership candidates are given a deadline to repay loans they take out to run their campaigns, is that an unrepaid loan would otherwise constitute a campaign contribution, and there are limits on the size of campaign contributions to leadership campaigns under the Elections Act. Indeed this issue was flagged during the introduction of those Elections Act changes, but never resolved legislatively. Subsequent legislation intended to address the issue of loans, their size, and who they could be taken from, has died on the order paper.

2009 Contributions By Week and Annual Contribution Size

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:50:00 +0000

It's time to update two more analyses of the four quarters' worth of party fundraising. First, the contributions over $200 by week.

We read in Jane Taber's blogpost at the beginning of January about Liberal Party president Alf Apps' fundraising letter in which he claimed the Liberals had raised $100K in the last three days of 2009 alone. Indeed, they appear to have raised $319,696 in the last week from large contributors. The NDP raised $218,699 the same week from their large donors, while the Conservatives raised $355,828 from the same group. (We can't tell how much was raised from small donors by week, since those contributions are aggregated by the quarter and not dated.)

[Click on the chart to open an enlarged version.]

The one other week that was notable in the third quarter was the week starting September 27. The Liberal raised $289,387 that week, the NDP's weekly fundraising also spiked somewhat to $87,472, while the Conservatives' dropped to $85,334. You'll recall that this was the week the issue of the opposition's confidence in the government came to a head. The following week the two opposition parties' fundraising dropped off to almost nothing, while the Conservatives' rose slightly.

Next, let's take a look at the distribution of donations by total contribution size over the year. This analysis is an estimate, conducted across the four quarterly reports. It may miss some contributors whose donations did not meet the reporting threshold in any of the quarters, but the sum of whose donations would meet the end-of-year reporting threshold. The value of their donations would still be counted here in the <= $200 category, but would not be properly categorized by total contribution size.

The Liberals continue to rely most heavily on their largest donors of any of the three main parties, obtaining 36.1% of their fundraising from donors at the limit, and 46.1% from donors giving $800 or more annually. This compares with 5.9% and 9.2% for the NDP, and 7.1% and 14.3% for the Conservatives.

While the parties apparently all showed increases in the number of donors over 2007 and 2008, it is not safe to compare sums of quarterly contributors to the annual reports of contributor numbers, due to the high likelihood of double-counting. It's much safer to compare annuals over annuals, which we'll be able to do when the annual reports come out at the end of June.

Safer are comparisons based on amount, so long as the correct base year is used. 2008 was an election year, and thus an unusually high benchmark to try to meet in non-election years. Nevertheless the Liberals bested their 2008 fundraising total, while the NDP and Conservatives topped their 2007 totals, but fell off as expected from their 2008 levels.

Cumulative distribution of donations and contributors by total donation, by party, First, Second, Third & Fourth Quarters 2009

$ Amt of donations # of contributors	Lib		NDP		Cons
$ Amt of donations # of contributors	$ Amt	Num	$ Amt	Num	$ Amt	Num
TOTAL	$9,564,677 (100.0%)	69,840 (100.0%)	$4,036,237 (100.0%)	51,342 (100.0%)	$17,707,846 (100.0%)	152,141 (100.0%)
(% of 2008)	(164.6%)	(226.2%)	(74.6%)	(172.9%)	(83.6%)	(136.0%)
(% of 2007)	(213.9%)	(298.1%)	(101.9%)	(220.5%)	(104.3%)	(141.9%)
<=$200*	3,160,203 (33.0%)	60,877 (87.2%)	2,707,373 (67.1%)	48,492 (94.4%)	12,008,855 (67.8%)	141,620 (93.1%)
<=$400	861,744 (9.0%)	2,800 (4.0%)	595,830 (14.8%)	1,872 (3.6%)	1,838,884 (10.4%)	5,783 (3.8%)
<=$600	867,739 (9.1%)	1,695 (2.4%)	232,833 (5.8%)	453 (0.9%)	838,820 (4.7%)	1,622 (1.1%)
<=$800	263,596 (2.8%)	369 (0.5%)	127,770 (3.2%)	176 (0.3%)	488,534 (2.8%)	666 (0.4%)
<=$1000	961,512 (10.1%)	1018 (1.5%)	136,173 (3.4%)	146 (0.3%)	1,279,157 (7.2%)	1,315 (0.9%)
<=$1100	3,050,489 (31.9%)	2,788 (4.0%)	202,907 (5.0%)	186 (0.4%)	1,227,751 (6.9%)	1,120 (0.7%)
>$1100	399,394 (4.2%)	293 (0.4%)	33,352 (0.8%)	17 (0.0%)	25,845 (0.1%)	15 (0.0%)

* <=$200 count includes counts reported to Elections Canada for both the categories "<=$200" and "<=$20" in each of the first three quarters; other counts calculated by totalling contributions for each donor (i.e., for each unique combination of firstname + middlename + lastname), and then counting by total contribution size for each donor.

Fourth Quarter Financial Results: What They Mean

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:39:00 +0000

[Welcome National Newswatch readers!]

Both the Conservative and Liberal parties experienced a pullback in fundraising in the fourth quarter of 2009, with each party showing a decline from 2007 levels. Meanwhile the smaller parties had mixed results, with the Bloc Québécois posting a decline from 2007 levels, but the NDP and Greens posting their best ever non-election year Q4 results.

2008 was an election year, which historically shows higher fundraising results for every party. Thus while year over year comparisons are interesting, they are less valid for assessing the strength of a party's fundraising apparatus.

[You can examine all the results in detail, and do your own analyses, by using the Browse Finance$ module here at the Pundits' Guide, and selecting "Quarterly Data".]

Now, to put things in perspective, the Conservatives did raise $4.87M from just over 40,000 donors. It might be their worst fourth quarter since 2004, but it's nothing to sneeze at in a recession, and nearly meets the amount raised in 2007. The party's overall take for the year rings in at $17.7M, down from a record $21.2M in 2008, but it still represents a small increase over 2007 as well.

Similarly, for the Liberals, they posted below average fourth quarter numbers (at $1.91M, they were lower than in 2007 when they raised $1.94M under former leader Mr. Dion), but those results nevertheless sit on top of record second and third quarters earlier this year for an annual take that exceeded even the election year of 2008, and nearly beat the last election year of the new financial regime, 2006. Remember, however, that an overwhelming number of the second quarter contributions were in fact delegate fees to the party's Vancouver convention in May.

The party has also slightly improved its take from the small donor category over the course of 2009 (donations <= $200), and significantly increased their numbers, a positive development given its previous dependence on large donors. This was compensation for the slight reduction in contributions they experienced in the large donor category this quarter, although that was perhaps to be expected, given the number of large donors who were already tapped out from earlier in the year.

We've already reported on the Bloc Québécois' fourth quarter report when it was released 10 days ago, but by way of recap, they appear to have replaced their former pattern of raising most of their money in the fourth quarter from small contributors, with a program to raise money from sustaining contributions spread out over the year. The change appeared to occur in Q4 of 2008.

The NDP would have to be classified as the "comeback kid" of fundraising in 2009. From a brutal, but apparently planned, first half of the year, the party made up the difference in spades over the third and fourth quarters, posting their best ever non-election year Q4 in 2009, and in fact their best ever non-election year, period, with a quarterly take of $1.65M in Q4 for an annual total that broke $4M for the first time ever outside of an election year.

And, in spite of recent stories about the financial situation of the Green Party, it's worth pointing out that they also managed to post a slight increase over 2007, based notably on a large increase in the number of small donors (from 2,893 in 2007 to 4,239 in 2009). The difficulty for that party is that it's still carrying an estimated debt of between $1M and $1.3M from the last election, and is raising just $1.12M annually on top of the $1.86M it receives in party public subsidies each year.

Next, I'll take a closer look at the parties' annual takes by total contribution size, and also by date. This will of course be an estimate until the complete annual reports are available at the end of June.

Hill Times Article on Internet Voting

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:25:00 +0000

The following article from this morning's edition is reprinted with the kind permission of the Hill Times.

Online voting won’t hike youth turnout, but "it grows on you," forum told

Electronic voter registration will be the first step in Canada, although Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand is authorized to explore "alternative voting methods".

By ALICE FUNKE

MPs and party officials joined a group of academics and election administrators at Carleton University last Tuesday, to learn from Canadian municipalities and other countries who have already implemented internet voting (i-voting).

The symposium brought together experts from Estonia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, California, and officials from three Canadian municipalities, all of whom have included some form of online voting in their recent elections.

Elections Canada participated in the event as part of its mandate to study voting technologies and encourage youth voter participation. Ironically, researchers addressing the forum all reported that i-voting did not on balance increase turnout among younger voters, but rather was especially high in 40 to 50 year-olds.

Estonia, dubbed "E-stonia" by one presenter because internet access there is a legislated social right, is the only country where remote i-voting is in place on a national scale. It works because of the country's widespread adoption of secure digital government ID cards for every citizen. The country is also trying to make smart card readers standard equipment on all new computers. The cards enable a wide range of government services from library cards to health care, and also permit a much more secure electronic voting process.

Electronic voter registration will be the first step in Canada, said Elections Canada spokesperson John Enright, although Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand is authorized by a series of amendments to the Elections Act in 2000 to explore "alternative voting methods" down the road, with the prior approval of Parliament.

Members of Parliament are readying themselves now to contribute to that study through the Procedures and House Affairs Committee, said Bloc Québécois MP Claude DeBellefeuille (Beauharnois-Salaberry, Que.). The Bloc is still researching the issue, she added, and has yet to take a position as a party.

Conservative MP Scott Reid (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, Ont.) was also in fact-finding mode for his caucus, as much for internal party processes as for elections, he said. Their next leadership convention must be held by postal ballot, he noted, but there might be some opportunities for test-runs of i-voting since their party constitution also provides for internal referenda to decide certain questions.

Theresa Kavanagh, who works in the NDP Whip's Office, wondered about the new role of scrutineers in an electronic voting process. All the electronic systems to date have instituted a full auditing process, but Ms. Kavanagh said she still has some questions about how it would work.

Municipal officials from Markham, Halifax, and Peterborough said they've all found very high user acceptance and satisfaction in post-election surveys, and that voter acceptance and adoption of internet voting grows over time.

“The municipalities are perhaps naive about the amount of risk they're assuming,” warned internet voting security expert Richard Akerman of the PaperVoteCanada.ca blog, though. “Very closely contested elections like Al Franken's recent race for the U.S. Senate were only settled because people could actually see the ballots,” he said. Had it been conducted over the internet, “the expense of defending the integrity of that system in the courts would have been huge,” he claimed.

More participants were comfortable with the idea of using i-voting during an advanced voting period for snowbirds, overseas voters, students and the disabled, noting that the current mail-in ballot procedures for such voters are no more secure than any internet solution. For visually impaired voters, the recent municipal i-voting pilots were the first time they had ever been able to cast a secret ballot. These four target audiences will be the focus of any trial run of electronic voting in a future byelection, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Rennie Molnar told the conference.

Alice Funke is the publisher of the Pundits’ Guide to Canadian Federal Elections (punditsguide.ca).

Riding Google Maps come to the Pundits' Guide

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:42:00 +0000

It's been awhile in the making, but I've finally been able to add Google Maps to the riding profile pages for each riding here at the Pundits' Guide. If you look at the tabstrip of menu options above the riding's electoral results, you'll notice that a 4th option has been added after "Riding Results", "Financial Metrics" and "Census Data", namely "Google Maps".

Selecting that menu item brings up a fully interactive Google Map of the riding, colour-coded to the party which last won that seat. The menu item is titled "Google MapS", because I expect (one day, hopefully soon) to be adding other maps to it, such as maps showing earlier elections and maps showing poll-by-poll results. That's where all the action will be, in other words.

I also think this map can be improved by adding neighbouring riding boundaries, etc., etc. If you have other ideas to improve it, or encounter any difficulties otherwise, please leave a comment below.

For the technical readers among you, the full URL to link to a riding profile page showing the map appends a "pane=3" parameter to the query string (financial metrics are pane=1, census data is pane=2). So, for example, here is the URL that brings up the map for New Brunswick Southwest:

http://www.punditsguide.ca/riding_e.php?riding=976&pane=3

As always, you can generate the correct URL for linking to by using the "Permalink" feature at the top right-hand corner of any database-generated (i.e., non-blogpost) page.

For the really technical readers among you, I'm using the Google Maps API v.2 and feeding it with a GGeoXml object which is populated by a PHP script that dynamically returns KML generated on the fly out of my database. Setting up this whole technical infrastructure is what's taken some time. The poll-by-poll version is still in the works.

Of course, this feature would not be possible without the commitment of the Geography Division at Elections Canada to make their data available publicly and for free, and I hope you'll join me in thanking them for that undertaking.

Anyway, this website has needed maps for a good long while, so I'm very happy everything could finally get pulled together. Stay tuned for more developments ... and if you really want to see more of them, you can always invite my beau golfing for another week or so down south ... I'll miss him terribly, of course, but will just get a whole lot more done that way. Welcome home, dear!

Internet Voting: What Do You Think?

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:51:00 +0000

I'm attending the all-day Symposium at Carleton University today on "Internet Voting: What Can Canada Learn". We'll be getting presentations from folks in Europe and several Canadian municipalities about their experiences, and I'll be filing on it later in the day.

In the meantime, as I asked on Twitter last night, what are your concerns and/or interests when it comes to Internet voting? What questions would you have if you were here?

I'll keep an eye on the comments here, and on Twitter, and see what I can glean from the presentations.

Two Toronto NDP Nominations Settled

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:39:00 +0000

The NDP nominations in two lakefront Liberal-held Toronto ridings were settled one way or the other over the past few days. Both have been Liberal-NDP contests for sometime: in the first case since 1988 (it switched between NDP-PC and NDP-Liberal before that), and in the second case only since 1997 (it was Liberal-Reform in 1993, and Liberal-PC before that).

Beaches – East York, ON - The three-term riding president, Matthew Kellway, who works as a staff rep for the Society of Energy Professionals and is a founder and co-chair of the Toronto Energy Coalition, scored a reportedly strong victory this afternoon over street-front lawyer and environmental activist Barbara Warner. Kellway will now join returning Green Party candidate Zoran Markowski, and face six-term Liberal M.P. Maria Minna. Minna has held the riding since 1993, when she defeated three-term NDP M.P. Neil Young, who took over the riding, after a brief period between 1979 and 1980, from NDP M.P. Andrew Brewin (father of mid-1990's Victoria NDP M.P. John Brewin). Although the demographics of the riding have changed, the long NDP history in this riding along with the fact that they hold it provincially as well, have made it a perennial target seat for that party; with such high profile candidates as economist Mel Watkins running in 1997 and 2000, now Ontario MPP and recent provincial leadership candidate Peter Tabuns in 2004, and then former MPP and provincial cabinet minister Marilyn Churley running in both 2006 and 2008. Minna has held them all off, however. A geographer has assembled poll-by-poll maps of this riding across the 2004, 2006 and 2008 federal, and 2007 provincial elections and posted links to them at Babble (see post #25), if you're interested.
Parkdale – High Park, ON - Although the meeting is not actually scheduled until this coming Thursday, the deadline for candidates to announce has past, and no-one else has stepped forward to challenge former one-term NDP M.P. Peggy Nash for her party's nomination. So she will be acclaimed Thursday for a rematch with first-time Liberal M.P. (and former Ontario MPP for the same riding) Gerard Kennedy, alongside new Green Party candidate Sarah Newton. In 2006, Nash defeated three-term Liberal M.P. Sarmite ("Sam") Bulte, who had replaced four-term Liberal M.P. Jesse Flis (although Progressive Conservative M.P. Andrew Witer held the riding for a term from 1984-88). In a 2006 provincial by-election held to replace Kennedy on his resignation to run federally, the riding elected an NDP MPP who was returned again in the 2007 provincial general election. Also, as noted by NDP blogger the Jurist, Nash's raw vote total in 2006 (20,790) is still the highest scored by any recent victor in that riding. Thus, that party believes it has enough incentive to continue to target the riding. Nash was also elected Federal Party President at the NDP's August convention in Halifax. The same geographer has also posted poll-by-poll result maps for this riding at Babble (see post #23), by the way, for both the provincial and federal general elections.

Thanks to several readers for getting in touch almost immediately with Sunday's news from the Beaches. If you have nomination news to share, please do get in touch by email. And then follow along on Twitter.

Bloc Québécois Rounds Out Strong 2009

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:08:00 +0000

The 4th Quarter Financial Return of the Bloc Québécois has now been posted at Elections Canada and entered into the database here; and it shows a very strong performance in 2009 for them, but one that saw contributions spread out much more evenly over the year than has been the case for that party before.

The party raised $208,455.07 in the last three months of 2009 from 1,936 contributors, for an average donation size of $107.67. This yielded an annual take of some $621.5K, the Bloc's best ever non-election year since quarterly numbers were first reported in 2005, and the new party finance regime took effect.

Notably they showed a slight increase in the number and amount of small donations over Q4 in 2008, as well as another slight increase in both numbers and amounts for the large donor category.

However those figures for Q4 are low when compared to earlier non-election Q4's for the Bloc, leading to the conclusion that the party is trying to spread its fundraising more evenly over the year, probably by trying to increase its number of sustaining monthly contributors. We've already noticed this trend before.

The other parties' Q4 returns have yet to appear on the Elections Canada site, either because they haven't been submitted, haven't been received, or haven't been uploaded by EC officials yet. The deadline to submit the 4th quarter returns is the end of January.

Status of Liberal Incumbent Nominations

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:23:00 +0000

I would like to thank the legal counsel for the Liberal Party for spending some time with me the other day to clarify the situation with Liberal incumbent nominations. Up until now I'd been unable to understand the process, and specifically why it was that if incumbents were supposedly automatically renominated, they were still having nomination meetings (albeit uncontested ones). The situation was even more confusing in light of information I'd been given that members still *had* to have such meetings, but not, according to another source, in every province.

The most common answer I was getting was that "it's complicated", but never with the paperwork or background to explain why. Until this week. Hip hip hooray. This means I can add the incumbent Liberal M.P.s to the database with an effective date of June 1, 2009, except for those who proceed(ed) to a meeting, whose nomination dates will be changed to/kept as the date of the meeting. Which means the red bar is headed up!

Here are the relevant sections of the document called "National Rules for the Selection of Candidates for the Liberal Party of Canada" (warning: PDF). It was adopted on May 8, 2009 at the party's Vancouver convention, although there have since been some other amendments that are not relevant to this purpose, which is why the cover page says it's dated August 20, 2009. [Emphasis below is mine]

Excerpts from Liberal Party Nomination Rules, adopted May 8, 2009
2.1 Subject to Rule 11.4 and/or any ruling of the Permanent Appeal Committee, the Candidate for an Electoral District shall be the Qualified Nomination Contestant who is acclaimed or chosen from the Qualified Nomination Contestants for that Electoral District by a vote of Eligible Voting Members of the Electoral District Association at a Meeting held in accordance with these Rules and with the applicable Provincial or Territorial Rules, provided, however, that, if the Leader declares in writing that it will not be his or her intention to endorse such person pursuant to sections 67(4)(c) and 68 of the Act, such person ceases, forthwith, to be the Candidate.

2.2 No Meeting shall be called in any province or territory until consent thereto is given to the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair by the National Campaign Chair.

2.3 No Meeting shall be held in any Electoral District except in accordance with the Call of such meeting (substantially in Form 7), as provided to the president of an Electoral District Association by the relevant Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair.

2.4 No Call of a Meeting shall be issued under Rule 2.3 until:
the Electoral District Association criteria set out in Rule 3 have been met;
the Nomination Contestant search criteria set out in Rule 4 have been met; and
one or more Qualified Nomination Contestant(s) have been determined through the Green Light Process to have met the Nomination Contestant approval criteria set out in Rule 5; except where the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair has waived or varied any of the foregoing in respect of any one or more Electoral District Associations.
2.5 In the event that a Meeting is to be held between the date that a draft representation order under the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act is proclaimed and the date upon which it comes into force, the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair shall determine whether the Meeting is to be conducted using the previously-existing boundaries or the new boundaries. Where an Electoral District Association has been founded based upon the new boundaries, and a by-election is to be held, the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair may make any necessary or appropriate directions, in order to ensure equitable treatment of persons who were members of the former Electoral District Association but who are not members of the new Electoral District Association.

3.1 Except where the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair, in consultation with the National Campaign Chair, has waived or varied any of the criteria set out below, in respect of any Electoral District Association, no Call of a Meeting shall be issued under Rule 2.3 until the following criteria respecting the Electoral District Association have been met:
the Electoral District Association has been registered by the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada in accordance with the Act, or, in the event that the Electoral District Association has been or becomes deregistered, appropriate measures have been taken so as to permit the proper conduct of the Meeting in accordance with the Act, in the absence of a registered Electoral District Association;
where boundaries of an Electoral District have been altered by redistribution between Elections, all assets, liabilities and other matters pertaining to the Electoral District Associations of the relevant pre-existing Electoral Districts must be settled to the satisfaction of the relevant Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair;
the Electoral District Association has met the Minimum Membership Threshold;
the Electoral District Association has met any requirement for fundraising or organizing as required by the Provincial or Territorial Rules.
3.2 Notwithstanding Rule 3.1, where the Electoral District is represented in the House of Commons by a member of the National Liberal Caucus, the National Campaign Co-Chairs may, if the “Incumbent Requirements” set out below have been met prior to June 1, 2009, either deem the Meeting for that EDA to have been held and declare the Liberal Caucus member to be the Candidate, or direct that a Meeting be held in respect of which the Liberal Caucus member is the only Qualified Nomination Contestant. In such cases, Rule 4 shall not apply. The Incumbent Requirements are as follows:
The Electoral District Association must, at minimum, have the lesser of:
400 EDA members; or
a number of EDA members equivalent to two per cent of the Liberal vote in the last federal Election.
The Electoral District Association must, further, have a number of Victory Fund members equivalent to ten per cent of the number of EDA members required pursuant to subparagraph 3.2(a). In calculating the number of Victory Fund members for this purpose, a Laurier Club member shall be counted as equal to 5 Victory Fund members.
The Liberal Caucus member shall have complied, and shall continue to comply with Rule 5 (Nomination Contestant Approval Criteria) in all applicable respects.
4.1 Except where the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair has waived or varied any of the criteria set out below in respect of any Electoral District Association, no Call of a Meeting shall be issued under Rule 2.3 until one of the following criteria respecting Nomination Contestant Search has been met:
the Electoral District Association can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair that the association has conducted an acceptable search for Nomination Contestants, including careful consideration of potential candidates who are female and who are reflective of the demographic makeup of the local electorate; or
the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Committee has either conducted such a search on its own behalf, or has determined that no such search is necessary under all of the circumstances. Such circumstances may include, but are not limited to the fact that the Electoral District is presently represented by a Liberal incumbent who has indicated an intention to seek re-election.

So, the rules offer a choice: the co-chairs can *either* deem the meeting to have been held *or* direct that it be held uncontested. The process was designed so that the M.P.s would have locked up the nomination through the adoption of the rule, and yet have the ability to hold a nomination event that was genuine if they so chose, as it was explained to me. For more details on the rules and process, consult the full document as linked to above.

There's one caveat: as June 1, 2009 approached, two M.P.s had not met the requirements in 3.2(a). My information is that one of those two may have even met them in the final hours. Regardless, both have since been nominated at meetings, so it's moot. Historians can take it up with party officials down the road if they need to know who they were, but no-one's talking for now. For my part, I'm satisfied that I now have the correct nomination type and date for each M.P. and that's good enough for our purposes here.

So, the 64 remaining incumbent Liberal M.P.s have now been added as confirmed candidates for the 41st General Election, for a new total of 192 (or 62% of a full slate). This also drops their count of nominated women candidates from 35.2% to 32.3%, since just 25% of their current caucus is female.

Again, thanks to the official in question for helping me ensure I've recorded things properly. It's quite a relief for me to have this all straightened out.

Party Web Watch - Michael Ignatieff's Online Townhall

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:09:00 +0000

For those who were at work this afternoon behind firewalls, and couldn't reach the Liberal Leader's Facebook page to join in the online townhall meeting, the transcript is still up and available through an archived CoverItLive.com session here.

The Facebook posts that linked to the CoverItLive.com session can be found here (english version) and here (french version); they have some unmoderated comments as well.

Mr. Ignatieff took submitted questions for an hour on such topics as the prorogation (and various other spellings thereof, ahem), electoral reform, energy and education policy, the economy and so forth. Here's a photo showing the setup in his office. The session was moderated by recently-appointed Communications Director Mario Lagüe (seen seated to Mr. Ignatieff's right with the beard, if I'm recognizing him properly, and sorry if I'm not, Mr. Lagüe; it also looks like it might be newly-appointed Chief of Staff Peter Donolo leaning over their shoulders but the picture is not big enough for my middle-aged eyes).

Elections Canada to Co-Host Event on Internet Voting

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:18:00 +0000

Viewing it as a possible tool to reverse the dropping turnout levels amongst young voters, Elections Canada has been studying the issues around introducing Internet voting ("I-voting") in Canadian federal elections.

At an all-day panel discussion slated for next Tuesday in Carleton University's Senate Chambers, speakers from Markham, Halifax and Peterborough in Canada, and California, Italy, Estonia, Switzerland, Sweden and the UK overseas, will discuss their experiences and the associated technical issues with implementing voting over the Internet.

The event is co-sponsored by the Canada-Europe Transatlantic Dialogue group at Ottawa's Carleton University. Space is limited, so reserve your spot early.

Two Significant Court Rulings in Elections Law

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:48:00 +0000

Two significant rulings have been handed down in the last month relating to elections law, and particularly the provisions regarding election expenses.

For complete coverage of today's ruling on the so-called "in-and-out" case, consult Kady O'Malley's post for cbc.ca/politics (h/t for the link to the ruling), Glen McGregor's story for the Ottawa Citizen (which includes a fantastic graphic by Robert Cross), and Tim Naumetz who covered the political reaction in greatest detail for Canadian Press. Commentary from the blogosphere has been light so far, but includes Stephen Taylor and Steve Janke from the Conservative side of the spectrum, and the Jurist at Accidental Deliberations for a more NDP orientation. Typically Impolitical blogs on election law cases from the Liberal corner, but she hasn't written on this one as yet, although I'm told to stay tuned (ah, here we are now).

I still haven't had the time to read the ruling in sufficient detail to absorb all the important legal, political and strategic points it raises, but here are two versions of the ruling (HTML and PDF), and my preliminary take on it from the comments on an earlier blogpost:

Campbell v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer) (2010 FC 43) T-838-07, Date: January 18, 2010

L.G. (Gerry) Callaghan et al. v. the Chief Electoral Officer (PDF version; and, no, I don't know why the case is titled differently here than in the above citation; Campbell was the candidate and Callaghan was his official agent)

My superquick reading of the court ruling says that in-and-out transfers of funds per se are fine, as they always were, and that the content of a candidate's ads can promote the candidate OR the party OR the leader, as always used to be the case. The Chief Electoral Officer was trying to argue that the ads *had* to promote the candidate in order to count as a candidate's election expense.

On the other hand, the court ruled that there has to be a reasonable basis for allocating costs of regional ad buys between the local campaigns, based on their market value to the campaign (not on the basis of how much room they have left under their spending limit); and that the difference between what the candidate's campaign paid and the market value of those ads to the candidate's campaign is to be considered a contribution in kind (and thus counts towards the candidate's spending limit; note that only paid expenses are rebatable under the Elections Act).

Judge Martineau asserts that if a candidate's official agent paid the expense, that in and of itself is sufficient evidence that the candidate's campaign approved of the expenditure.

Also, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) is not forced to issue a certificate pro forma. But the differing statuatory roles of the CEO on the one hand, and the Commissioner on the other, are discussed. It's also clear that the Commissioner's investigation is on-going, and there may be other developments to come in this story.

Overall, I think the points were worth litigating, and the ruling will provide a lot better guidance to both the CEO as well as to all the political parties. I have no idea whether it will be appealed. However, I would like to see a bit more clarification as to what the courts believe the difference is between a national party's election expense and a candidate's expense, as I think there must be some (less restrictive) way of deciding which category an expenditure fits into. Otherwise why would we have separate national and candidate spending limits?

Parties and candidates can currently transfer funds to each other at will as often as they like, and riding associations can transfer funds back and forth with either parties or their own local candidates. The only kinds of transfers that aren't permitted are from one candidate to another. Yet, the regime apparently enabled by provisions of this ruling would seem to allow *election expenses* to be transferred from one entity to another, rather than just funds. Although, this might be the subject of the investigation by the Commissioner of Elections, so I guess we'll just have to be patient.

The other ruling which we discussed before, relating to whether GST rebates on their 2004 and 2006 campaign election expenses, which were received by the Conservative Party by virtue of being a non-profit organization, ought to reduce their reported election spending for those campaigns, has now been published here:

Conservative Fund Canada v. Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, 2009 CanLII 72340 (ON S.C.), Date: December 31, 2009.

Happy reading, all you legal beagles.

Political Party News From Across the Spectrum

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:42:00 +0000

A few items of political party news have accumulated that might be of interest to readers.

The Liberal Party Rocco Rossi is irreplaceable, it turns out; at least by one person. After the Liberal national director's resignation to pursue the Toronto mayoralty, the party split up his previous functions and posted two separate jobs with a January 6 deadline: a new national director, and a new president of the National Liberal Fund who will serve as a chief fundraiser for the party. No word yet on when the results of the competitions will be announced. The Opposition Leader's Office (OLO) party liaison officer Heather Chiasson and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's new chief of staff Peter Donolo are both said to favour more of an NGO-style of management for the party, according to a Hill Times story from last week. Harris Maclead also reported that the new staffers can expect to earn a lot less than Rossi, and won't be able to expense weekly round trips to Toronto either.
The Conservative Party New table officers were elected in early December, headed by both a new party president, John Walsh (fun fact: he's a constituent of NDP Leader Jack Layton's in Toronto – Danforth), and a new vice-president, Kara Johnson. The party's executive director is Dan Hilton. They are undoubtedly celebrating two recent court decisions that went in whole or in part in their favour. More on that in a subsequent post. (h/t Dr. Roy's Thoughts)
The Green Party As we noted in a blogpost at the top of the year, the Green Party has been deliberating on what to do about part of its Bylaw #2, which mandates a leadership convention every four years. The problem they're grappling with is that the four years since their last leadership convention (where Elizabeth May beat David Chernushenko and Jim Fannon) is nearly up, but we're in a permanent election scare, and meantime the party has taken a strategic decision to focus their resources on getting their leader elected in Saanich – Gulf Islands, BC. The party's federal council debated a resolution last night that, if approved by the delegates to their August Biannual General Meeting (BGM), would replace the current bylaw s.2.1.4.5 "The Leader shall be elected in 2006 and every four (4) years thereafter" with a new version reading "The Leader shall be elected by the membership at a meeting of members constituted as a leadership convention, and a vote of confidence in the leader shall be held following a federal general election". Apparently the council has tabled the resolution with directions to consult with the membership, then rewrite the proposed by-law change, and submit it to the August BGM. Should it not be adopted, the resolution provides for a leadership convention before the end of 2010. There is a lot of discussion and debate going on, mainly at the blog of some critical Green party members, and on the party's internal email group. More background from last fall can be found at the democraticSpace blog.

Meanwhile, having recruited some 200 candidates (I'm missing a few names, but thanks to a reader for sending me a list to cross-check against), the party recently laid off 4 three of its 7 regional organizers [UPDATE: and cut a 4th vacant organizer position], which has set off another round of internal debate in the comments section of another Green party member's blog.

In other political party news, it seems a new political party is starting to get organized. A regular correspondent writes to say:

I just wanted to let you know that there could be a new force soon on the political scene. I and many of us have left the Progressive Canadian Party to join with the United Party of Canada. The UCP was started by ... a long time Liberal strategist who left them to come to the PC's. His good ideas to grow the party were spurned so he and others like myself are working to make a party that takes the best ideas of the PC's Liberals, Greens and even the CAP Party. We are looking to gain from all parties but we are also looking for growth from Canadians who are disenfranchised from our current political system. We are especially looking to reengage Canada's youth in the our party and the system .... [M]any of the policies ... [from the Progressive Canadian Party] ... will find their way to the UCP .... [W]e are on the web (the page is rough but will improve).

Last summer we covered three other groups who were trying to register themselves as political parties with Elections Canada: the National Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (whose domain-name registration seems to have expired), along with the Pirate Party of Canada and the True North Party of Canada. To date, it does not appear as though the latter two been successful in meeting the registration requirements.

We also reported last summer that the recently-elected leader of the Canadian Action Party (CAP), Andrew Moulton, quit to join the Christian Heritage Party. Moulton had been elected to replace long-time CAP leader Connie Fogel. Melissa Lee Brade is now the Interim CAP Leader, taking over after the resignation of previous Interim Leader Dave Wilkinson. Brade intends to run again in Yellowhead, AB.

Greg Thompson To Retire From Politics Next Election, Resigns From Cabinet

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:51:00 +0000

A fourth M.P. has announced his retirement from politics at the next federal election. The Saint John Telegraph-Journal is reporting that New Brunswick Southwest M.P. Greg Thompson is retiring from cabinet effective immediately, and has decided not to re-offer in the next election.

The story concentrates more on Thompson's reasoning and history, and the implications for New Brunswick at the cabinet table, and contains no speculation on who might be in the wings to run in his stead, although we can assume that story is coming next.

The former executive director of the John Howard Society in that area, Kelly Wilson, was acclaimed to represent the Liberals in this riding this past October, and she has not been joined by any NDP or Green candidates thus far.

The riding has been a PC or Conservative bastion since the first Trudeau election of 1968, although funnily enough it had been a Liberal seat before that. Thompson himself has represented the riding since 1988, with only one break from 1993-1997 when it returned Liberal Harold Culbert for a single term.

I've deleted Thompson's entry for the 41st General Election from the database, and have added his riding to the list of Ridings with Retiring Incumbents on the "Search the Database" page.

Nominations Catchup - Conservatives

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:08:00 +0000

Conservatives must have been in a good mood on September 4, because they celebrated the 25th anniversary of their 1984 majority government by nominating 7 non-incumbent candidates in Québec, followed by another 2 candidates there three days later.

Continuing our catchup of party nominations for the forthcoming election, I've done the best job I could to scour publicly available sources, and assemble reader tips and news clips to generate this list of new Conservative candidates: some of them appearing here for the first time, hence the look back all the way to September.

Sep 2, 2009 - Willowdale, ON - Chungsen Leung - acclaimed - Willowdale businessman Chungsen Leung (known as "CS" to his friends, his website points out) is making his third run for public office, after running for the PCs in Willowdale in 2000, and then for the Conservatives in nearby Richmond Hill in 2008. He will now face two-term Liberal M.P. Martha Hall Findlay, along with first-time candidates Mehdi Mollahasani who owns a design and advertising company, for the NDP, and geo-analyst and IT consultant Yama Niwand for the Green Party (fun fact: the two are Facebook friends).
Sep 4, 2009 - Gaspésie – Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC - Régent Bastien - other - This teacher and former mayor of Paspébiac was one of 7 Québec candidates nominated on the 25th anniversary of Brian Mulroney's decisive victory in that province, ironically taking over the candidacy from 2008 candidate Darryl Gray who had won the seat for the Progressive Conservatives back in 1984. Bastien will now face three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Raynald Blais and Green Party candidate Julien Leblanc who works for Télé-Québec. No NDP or Liberal candidates have been announced as yet. The Liberals and Conservatives have swapped second place between them over the past few elections.
Sep 4, 2009 - Laurier – Sainte-Marie, QC - Charles K. Langford - other - UQAM management prof Charles Langford is returning for another try against Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, joining first-time candidates Philippe Allard for the Liberals and Olivier Adam for the Greens. The NDP has not selected its candidate yet, but claimed this riding as its only 2nd place finish in 2006, falling behind the Liberals here in 2008.
Sep 4, 2009 - Outremont, QC - Rodolphe (Rudy) Husny - other - I'm pretty sure we covered Mr. Husny's nomination before. He works in an accounting firm and maintains a french-language blog, and will be right in the thick of the battle between former Liberal MNA Thomas Mulcair, who is currently the two-term NDP MP for this riding, and former Liberal MP for the riding Martin Cauchon. No Bloc candidate has been identified as yet, and Mulcair is one of 4 NDP incumbents yet to be officially renominated.
Sep 4, 2009 - Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert, QC - Nicole Charbonneau Barron - other - Back for another run in this south shore riding is a city councillor and former spokesperson for the Opus Dei movement in Québec. Charbonneau Barron will be facing three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Carol Lavallée, alongside Liberal candidate Michel Picard, a specialist on economic crime and fraud, who was nominated last June, and has been helping develop his party's policy on responding to the situation of investors with Earl Jones and others.
Sep 4, 2009 - Saint-Lambert, QC - Qais Hamidi - other - Hamidi, of Afghani background, and runs a professional services firm that works with overseas governments, has moved from Laval – Les Îles where he ran in ~~2008~~ 2006, to this south shore riding currently held by first-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Josée Beaudin. They will be joined on the campaign trail by 2008 Liberal candidate Roxane Stanners, while the NDP and Green Party have yet to select their standard-bearers.
Sep 4, 2009 - Brossard – La Prairie, QC - Maurice Brossard - other - Retired educational administrator Maurice Brossard was renominated in this riding that has become a perennial squeaker as it's moved back and forth between the Bloc Québécois and Liberals since 2004, but also earned a spot on the list of 3-way and 4-way races in the last election thanks to Brossard, along with the NDP's Hoang Mai, a notary and the treasurer of the federal party's Québec section. Returning for the Bloc will probably be former M.P. Marcel Lussier, who has declared his intention to run again but is not yet nominated, while the Greens will have a new candidate in Kevin Murphy. All will be gunning for first-time Liberal M.P. Alexandra Mendès who won the seat last time in a surprise upset, by just 69 votes, the 4th closest race in the country last time around.
Sep 4, 2009 - Vaudreuil – Soulanges, QC - Claude-Marc Boudreau - other - A lawyer in private practice for 25 years and the co-chair of last fall's Québec Conservative fundraiser with the Prime Minister, Claude-Marc Boudreau, is taking over as the new candidate in this riding commuter distance from Montréal, replacing Michel Fortier. He'll be joining new Liberal candidate, businesswoman Lyne Pelchat who nominated 10 days later, and returning Green candidate Jean-Yves Massenet, a business consultant. Three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Meilli Faille has yet to be renominated, while the NDP has yet to name a candidate either.
Sep 7, 2009 - Bas-Richelieu – Nicolet – Bécancour, QC - Réjean Bériault - other - This has the potential to be a very interesting riding, given that long-long-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Louis Plamondon, the Dean of the House of Commons, who was elected as a Conservative 25 years ago in that 1984 sweep before crossing the floor, could very well retire before the next election. Plamondon is not renominated as yet, but Bériault, who has a 20-year career in real estate is the first challenger out of the gate. He placed a distant second to Plamondon in 2008, but this south shore riding borders on other areas of recent Conservative strength in the province, and could return to its bleu roots without a strong incumbent.
Sep 7, 2009 - Berthier – Maskinongé, QC - Marie-Claude Godue - other - Just across the St. Lawrence Seaway on the north shore, businesswoman and former Conservative political aide, Marie-Claude Godue is back for a third try against three-term Bloc Québécois, Guy André. Godue obtained 31.4% of the vote against André in 2006, falling back to a 22.2% share in 2008, as the Liberals regained most of their earlier vote share and the NDP also inched up. Still André's vote share has trended downward from nearly 60% of the vote in 2004 to just 45.8% last time out. Also looking to make a dent in his support is new Liberal candidate, Francine Gaudet, a former Liberal MNA for the area, who was nominated in late August. No NDP or Green candidates have surfaced in my research as yet.
Sep 9, 2009 - York South – Weston, ON - Jilian Saweczko - acclaimed - Long-time party and community activist businesswoman Jilian Saweczko has switched to this west-end Toronto riding after two earlier runs in Parkdale-High Park. She joins returning NDP candidate Mike Sullivan, who founded the Weston Community Coalition to fight the Blue22, a PPP rail line proposal that would divide the community of Weston with no local stops (hope I have that right), and a new Green candidate Sonny Day, an IT analyst at York University. They will be facing four-term Liberal M.P. Alan Tonks, who ousted former Liberal-turned-Independent M.P. John Nunziata in 2000. The riding ranks in the top 5 poorest ridings in Ontario (depending which census measure you use for income), and reported over 50% of its population as belonging to a visible minority in the 2006 census.
Sep 9, 2009 - Etobicoke North, ON - Priti Lamba - acclaimed - A teacher at Humber and Seneca Community Colleges, Lamba was nominated as the new Conservative candidate in this riding, which also ranks in the top 5 poorest ridings but reports over 70% visible minority population. She'll be joined on the campaign trail by returning Green party candidate teacher Nigel Barriffe, where they'll face first-time Liberal M.P. Kirsty Duncan. The NDP has yet to select its candidate.
Sep 11, 2009 - Vancouver Centre, BC - Rachel Greenfeld - acclaimed - Meanwhile on the west coast, Conservatives in this 4-way race have picked a dazzling new candidate whose line of business until now promised to teach people about "living a lavish lifestyle and working only three days a week as your own boss" by starting a social club, which sure makes a "chicken in every pot" sound so last century, doesn't it! She joins Green Party Deputy Leader Adriane Carr, who was renominated here in mid-April, and long-time Liberal M.P. Hedy Fry, with an NDP candidate to be named later. UBC Professor Michael Byers, who ran for that party in 2008, had said on election night that he wanted to run again, but has since moved to Saanich-Gulf Islands, and I haven't heard any further news on that score.
Sep 17, 2009 - Welland, ON - Leanna Villella - contested - The owner of a travel agency and daughter of a long-time Catholic school board trustee in the area, Villella won a contested nomination in mid-September over 2008 candidate Alfred Kiers and municipal councillor Bruce Timms, and will now face former Liberal M.P. John Maloney, and the man who defeated him in the last election, first-time NDP M.P. Malcolm Allen. No Green Party candidate has been selected to date. The riding, which occupies the most southeastern tip of the province, has been amongst the closest 3-way races in each of the last three elections, and the closest 2-way races in the last two, Allen having won by just 300 votes (or 1.1 vote per poll) over Maloney in 2008.
Sep 28, 2009 - Guelph, ON - Marty Burke - acclaimed - Airline pilot and 23-year member of the Canadian Armed Forces, Marty Burke, was acclaimed the new Conservative candidate in this western Ontario riding. He joins new Green Party candidate Bob Bell, who won a contested nomination over Russell Ott in late October, after 2008 candidate Mike Nagy announced he would not run again. They'll be facing first-time Liberal M.P. Frank Valeriote, and an NDP candidate yet to be named.
Sep 29, 2009 - Ajax – Pickering, ON - Christopher A. Alexander - acclaimed - A big catch for the Conservatives, this former Canadian Ambassador and UN representative to Afghanistan announced his intention to seek the Conservative nomination in mid-September, after apparently being approached by the Liberals to run for them and meeting with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. He was acclaimed the Conservative candidate in this riding east of Toronto ten days later, and will now face three-term Liberal M.P. Mark Holland, returning Green candidate music video production and farmer Mike Harilaid, and an NDP candidate to be named later.
Sep 29, 2009 - Mississauga – Brampton South, ON - Salma S. Ataullahjan - acclaimed - Realtor Salma Ataullahjan, President of the Canadian Pashtun Cultural Association, will be returning as the Conservative candidate in this riding west of Toronto, currently held by three-term Liberal M.P. Navdeep Bains. Joining her is a new Green candidate naturopathic counsellor Benjamine Stone, while the NDP has yet to name its candidate here.
Oct 3, 2009 - Burnaby – New Westminster, BC - Paul E. Forseth - acclaimed - This former four-term Conservative M.P. missed the deadline to run for the nomination in last fall's New Westminster--Coquitlam by-election due to a business trip abroad, but secured his party's nod in this neighbouring riding on his return. He'll be joining returning Green candidate Carrie-Ann McLaren, and facing three-term NDP M.P. Peter Julian. The Liberals have yet to set a nomination date here.
Oct 14, 2009 - Ottawa – Vanier, ON - Rem Westland - acclaimed - We wrote earlier about this former Director General of Specific Claims at the Department of Indian Affairs, who is taking a run against long-time Liberal M.P. Mauril Bélanger. They'll be joined on the campaign trail by Caroline Rioux, who won a contested nomination to represent the Green Party, and an NDP candidate yet to be chosen.
Oct 15, 2009 - Hamilton East – Stoney Creek, ON - Robert A. Silenzi - acclaimed - This restaurant manager and rehab specialist for people with brain injuries was acclaimed in mid-October, and will join returning Green candidate Dave Hart Dyke and a Liberal still to be decided upon. The riding is currently held by two-term NDP M.P. Wayne Marston.
Oct 17, 2009 - Vancouver Kingsway, BC - Trang Nguyen - contested - Ms. Nguyen won a contested nomination over Irene Yacto, the editor of the Philippine Journal. (2008 candidate Soloman Reyak, the BC Chair of B'nai Brith Canada, was also in the race early on but withdrew before voting day). Nguyen will now face returning Liberal nominee Wei (Wendy) Yuan, and first-term NDP M.P. Don Davies.
Oct 17, 2009 - Vancouver Quadra, BC - Deborah J. Meredith - contested - UBC lecturer and 2008 candidate Deborah Meredith, bested lawyer Tony Fogarassy in another contested nomination held the same evening. Meredith narrowly lost the riding to Liberal M.P. Joyce Murray in a surprisingly close by-election race in March of 2008, and doubled her vote as turnout went up in the 2008 general election, but still fell short in the end. This will make her third matchup against Murray, in which she'll be joined by new Green candidate Laura-Leah Shaw, and an NDP candidate to be named later.
Oct 20, 2009 - Hamilton Centre, ON - James W. Byron - acclaimed - The acclamation of retired public servant James Byron in this riding in mid-October rounded out the Conservative slate in steeltown (where the Greens are also fully nominated, and the NDP holds the three seats). The Liberals have yet to fill any of their slots although apparently Bob Bratina has not ruled out a run here against three-term NDP M.P. Dave Christopherson.
Oct 20, 2009 - London North Centre, ON - Susan Truppe - acclaimed - This former political aide who now works in conference centre management rounded out the Conservative slate in London the same evening, and is currently the only nominated opponent to two-term Liberal M.P. Glen Pearson.
Oct 31, 2009 - Bramalea – Gore – Malton, ON - Singh Parvinder - contested - The winner of a vigourous four-way nomination contest, Homelife United Realty owner Singh Parvinder, is hoping to improve on the 37% vote-share of 2008 candidate Stella Ambler (who has moved and may be set to switch over to Mississauga South, according to one Blogging Tory forum member). The riding is currently held by six-term Liberal M.P. Gurbax Singh Malhi.
Nov 8, 2009 - Victoria, BC - Patrick Hunt - contested - A former Nova Scotia MLA and retired navy-man, Patrick Hunt, defeated the chair of Camosun College Christopher Gillespie, and writer Hugh Kruzel in early November, for the right to face off against former Oak Bay mayor Chris Causton running for the Liberals, new candidate Jared Giesbrecht for the Greens, and three-term NDP M.P. Denise Savoie.
Nov 11, 2009 - British Columbia Southern Interior, BC - Stephen Hill - contested - Another contested nomination three days later saw business-owner Hill defeat 2008 candidate Robert Zandee for the right to take on three-term NDP M.P. Alex Atamanenko. To date no other party's candidates have been selected.
Nov 15, 2009 - Mississauga East – Cooksville, ON - Wladyslaw Lizon - acclaimed - The President of the Polish National Congress, mining engineer Wladyslaw Lizon, was acclaimed his party's new candidate in this riding west of Toronto, where he'll be joined by Jaymini Bhikha for the Green Party and Waseem Ahmed of the NDP. The riding is currently represented by long-time Liberal M.P. Albina Guarnieri, who was first elected in 1988.
Nov 23, 2009 - Malpeque, PE - Tim Ogilvie - acclaimed - We earlier wrote about the acclamation of this former president of the Atlantic Veterinary College, who will now be running against six-term Liberal M.P. Wayne Easter, and returning Green candidate Peter Bevan-Baker.
Nov 27, 2009 - Charlottetown, PE - Donna Profit - contested - Later that week, educator Donna Profit defeated retired RCMP officer Robert Campbell, as we wrote earlier, and will now join new Green candidate Corin McFadden in facing off against four-term Liberal M.P. Shawn Murphy.
Dec 9, 2009 - Louis-Hébert, QC - Pierre Paul-Hus - acclaimed - Finally, in early December two Québec City area candidates were nominated, the first a former infantry officer and currently the co-editor of french-language military magazine, Prestige. Pierre Paul-Hus will be challenging first-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Pascal-Pierre Paillé (whose uncle was also just elected in the Hochelaga by-election), alongside new Green candidate Claude Guimond.
Dec 10, 2009 - Québec, QC - Pierre Morasse - acclaimed - Next door, a communications manager got the nod to run against long-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Christiane Gagnon (who is not renominated yet, but is running again). Also running so far are nutritionist Anne Gagné for the Liberals, and Denis Poisson for the Greens.

This list of 32 candidates includes 11 women, 7 (or more, depending on the definition) members of visible minority communities, and 7 contested nominations.

I have another list of six nominated candidates for whom I don't have the date or type of nomination, and thus can't be entered into the Pundits' Guide database. But given the length of this post, I guess I have to save something for next time!

If you have nomination news to share, I'm just about all caught up now, so please do send it along and you won't have to wait weeks and weeks to see it posted (apologies to my regular correspondents who've been very patient). You can also follow along @punditsguide on Twitter.

Peggy Nash to Run Again

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:23:00 +0000

[Welcome NationalNewswatch.com readers!]

Party president and former NDP M.P. Peggy Nash announced this morning that she will run again in the next election and try to reclaim her Toronto seat of Parkdale – High Park from Liberal M.P. and former leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy, the Pundits' Guide can exclusively report.

The NDP riding association had recently announced its nomination for Thursday, January 28, but no candidate names were included with that announcement.

Other party members have until Thursday, January 21 to announce their candidacy. Should no-one do so, Nash is expected to be acclaimed on the 28th.

The riding has been a Liberal-NDP contest for the last three elections, being settled by margins of less than 10%. To date, only the Green Party's Sarah Newton has been formally nominated, although Kennedy's nomination is protected as a Liberal incumbent.

Nash has been working for the Canadian Auto Workers' union since her defeat, and was elected Federal NDP Party President at the August convention in Halifax.

Thanks to a reader for sending along this tip. If you have nomination news to share, why not drop us a line, and then follow along on Twitter.

Nominations Catchup - Liberals

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:42:00 +0000

The Liberals have formally nominated 128 candidates including 13 incumbents, with another 64 of their 77 incumbents promised an uncontested nomination assuming they decide to run again.

Here are the latest Liberal candidates added to the Pundits' Guide database in the past quarter:

Oct 1, 2009 - Fredericton, NB - Pamela Campbell - contested - Retired high school principal Pam Campbell, a former president of New Brunswick Teachers' Association, defeated University of New Brunswick English prof Wendy Robbins in a vote of 193 to 97, making Campbell the first woman to run for the Liberals in this riding. She will now face first-time Conservative M.P. Keith Ashfield who won the riding after the resignation of former Liberal M.P. Andy Scott.
Oct 2, 2009 - Dartmouth – Cole Harbour, NS - Michael John Savage - protected incumbent - Three-term M.P. Mike Savage was renominated at his riding association's annual general meeting early this fall, and is so far facing returning Green Party candidate Paul Shreenan. However, rumours are resurfacing that former Cole Harbour-Eastern Passage MLA Kevin Deveaux may be interested in running for the NDP nomination, now that his consulting contract in Vietnam is completed, and indeed Mr. Deveaux's domain-name and former website are still active. No date has been mentioned for any nomination meeting, nor has any Conservative name emerged in my research.
Oct 2, 2009 - Tobique – Mactaquac, NB - Charles Chiasson - acclaimed - First-time candidate "Chuck" Chiasson will be facing two-term Conservative M.P. Mike Allen and a Dipper and Green to be named later (h/t the Liberal Scarf blog).
Oct 3, 2009 - South Shore – St. Margaret's, NS - Derek Wells - contested - Former M.P. Wells (South Shore, 1993-1997) defeated local politician Rick Welsford in a vote of 158 to 20, for the right to take on both former NDP M.P. Gordon Earle (Halifax West, 1997-2000) who also won a contested nomination, and current five-term Conservative M.P. Gerald Keddy in this riding which was the 11th closest 3-way race and the 19th closest 2-way race of the last election. Earle came within 2.3% of the vote of defeating Keddy in 2008, and since then all five provincial ridings elected NDP MLAs in the recent provincial election. This is also the only riding I'm aware of so far that has 3 current or former MPs running against one another.
Oct 3, 2009 - West Nova, NS - Robert Thibault - acclaimed - Former M.P. Robert Thibault was renominated to try and retake his old riding from first-time Conservative M.P. Greg Kerr. A reader has written to pass along that Thibault may have recently moved to conclude his employment with a company in Cape Breton, apparently so he could return to the west coast to campaign more intensively [UPDATE: It seems to have been the Municipality of Richmond in Cape Breton, and indeed Thibault has given notice that he intends to leave his position as chief administrative officer at the end of May, according to the Cape Breton Post Tuesday morning].
Oct 3, 2009 - Miramichi, NB - Keith Vickers - contested - Vickers won the nomination over two other competitors after the former Mayor and provincial MLA John McKay withdrew citing fundraising difficulties, and he will now face first-time Conservative M.P. Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, first time Green candidate electrician Ron Mazarolle, and an NDPer to be named later.
Oct 3, 2009 - New Brunswick Southwest, NB - Kelly Wilson - acclaimed - The former executive director of the Charlotte County John Howard Society was acclaimed and will now face long-time Conservative M.P. Greg Thompson, who obtained some 58% of the vote in 2008.
Oct 3, 2009 - Burlington, ON - Bruce Bowser - acclaimed - After former Liberal M.P. Paddy Torsey bowed out of running, AMJ Campbell Van Lines president Bruce Bowser moved over from Wellington – Halton Hills where he ran in 2008, and will now face two-term Conservative M.P. Mike Wallace.
Oct 4, 2009 - Toronto – Danforth, ON - Andrew Lang - acclaimed - 2008 candidate Andrew Lang is back for another run against NDP Leader Jack Layton in this downtown Toronto riding, along with Green Party candidate Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu and a Conservative to be named later.
Oct 8, 2009 - Timmins – James Bay, ON - Marilyn Wood - acclaimed - The president of the Timmins Chamber of Commerce and owner of a environmental biotechnology company, Marilyn Wood, was acclaimed in early October to face off against three-term NDP M.P. Charlie Angus, alongside returning Green candidate Larry Verner and a Conservative candidate to be named later.
Oct 15, 2009 - Huron – Bruce, ON - Charlie Bagnato - contested - The Mayor of Brockton, Bagnato defeated challengers Maarten Bokhout and Deb Homuth (totals not released from the 410 ballots cast) for the right to take on first-time Conservative M.P. Ben Lobb.
Oct 16, 2009 - Humber – St. Barbe – Baie Verte, NL - Gerry Byrne - acclaimed - Long-time Liberal M.P. Byrne was renominated by acclamation this past October. To date he has no nominated opponents. Byrne won in 2008 with some 68% of the vote.
Oct 24, 2009 - Skeena – Bulkley Valley, BC - Sharon Hartwell - acclaimed - The retiring mayor of Telkwa, BC won her party's nomination by acclamation, and will now face three-term NDP M.P. Nathan Cullen. To date no Green Party or Conservative candidates have emerged.
Oct 26, 2009 - Okanagan – Coquihalla, BC - Ross Rebagliati - acclaimed - Liberals have been actively promoting this star catch for them in the lead-up to the Olympics. A gold medal snowboarder in the Nagano 1998 winter games, Ross Rebagliati's run for the nomination was confirmed a month before the BC Federal Liberals' meeting in Whistler. He will face five-term Conservative M.P. Stockwell Day, returning Green Party candidate Dan Bouchard and a New Democrat yet to be selected.
Nov 12, 2009 - Regina – Lumsden – Lake Centre, SK - Monica Lysack - acclaimed - The former executive director of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, Lysack is returning as the Liberal candidate running against two-term Conservative M.P. Tom Lukiwski. No other candidates have been nominated as yet in this northwest Regina riding.
Nov 14, 2009 - Winnipeg North, MB - Roldan Sevillano, Jr. - acclaimed - A young Filipino who is a long-term care worker and the Prairies head of CFC – Youth for Christ will be running against five-term NDP M.P. Judy Wasylycia-Leis, new Green candidate John Harvie, and an as yet unnamed Conservative.
Nov 22, 2009 - Laval, QC - Eva Nassif - contested - Québec Liberal nominations started to get back on track after l'affaire Coderre in late November, starting with this contested nomination north of Montréal which saw translator and 2008 Liberal candidate in Terrebonne – Blainville, Eva Nassif, defeat the 2008 Liberal candidate in this riding, Alia Haddad, and also Jean Roussel, for the right to carry the party's colours in the riding currently held by three-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Nicole Demers. Also running is insurance broker Eric Madelein for the Green Party. No Conservative or NDP candidates have been announced here as yet.
Nov 24, 2009 - Rivière-du-Nord, QC - Martin Guindon - acclaimed - They followed up by picking a new candidate to run here against long-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Monique Guay, when 32-year old Martin Guindon was acclaimed.
Nov 28, 2009 - Elmwood – Transcona, MB - Ilona Niemczyk - acclaimed - This marketing manager for the International College of Manitoba was formalized as the Liberal candidate at the end of November, and will join new Green candidate James Beddome, first-time NDP M.P. Jim Maloway and a Conservative to be named later.
Nov 29, 2009 - Chambly – Borduas, QC - Bernard Delorme - acclaimed - The next day in this south shore Quebec riding, a professor of veterinary medicine at l'Université de Montréal in Ste-Hyacinthe was acclaimed the Liberal candidate to run against three-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Yves Lessard, joining new Green candidate Nicholas Lescarbeau.
Dec 1, 2009 - Outremont, QC - Martin Cauchon - acclaimed - Two days later, the nomination meeting which acclaimed former Outremont Liberal M.P. Martin Cauchon was almost a denouement, after all the drama of the previous months. Cauchon will try to reclaim his old seat from the NDP's Thomas Mulcair, alongside four-time Green candidate François Pilon, and first-time Conservative candidate Rudy Husny.
Dec 2, 2009 - Calgary Southwest, AB - Marlene LaMontagne - acclaimed - A senator of the University of Calgary is back for her third try to become an M.P. in Ottawa, but she'll have to defeat the current Prime Minister to do it. She'll be joined by returning Green Party candidate Kelly Christie, and a New Democrat yet to be selected.
Dec 8, 2009 - Terrebonne – Blainville, QC - Robert Frégeau - acclaimed - Taking over from Eva Nassif in this riding will be notary Robert Frégeau, who ran last time in Marc-Aurèle-Fortin and the time previous in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles. He'll be facing off against four-time Bloc Québcois M.P. Diane Bourgeois and first-time Green candidate Michel Paulette, with NDP and Conservative candidates yet to be named.
Dec 8, 2009 - Laurentides – Labelle, QC - Jean-Marc Lacoste - acclaimed - Another young first-time candidate is taking the plunge in this riding known for its many ski resorts and getaways such as Mont-Tremblant and Ste-Adèle. Lacoste will be facing four-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Johanne Deschamps and first-time Green Party candidate François Beauchamp. Conservative and NDP candidates are not yet in place.
Dec 9, 2009 - Wellington – Halton Hills, ON - Barry Peters - acclaimed - Taking over from Bruce Bowser in this riding, is another young candidate, Barry Peters, who is presently working as the executive assistant to retiring Toronto city councillor Case Ootes. He'll be facing three-term Conservative Michael Chong, and NDP and Green candidates to be selected later.
Dec 12, 2009 - Dufferin – Caledon, ON - William A. (Bill) Prout - acclaimed - Quite an odyssey to get a Liberal candidate in this riding, starting with the blog documenting Jeff May's journey to get the nomination, his subsequent withdrawal from the race, the advent of a possible Garth Turner return, and subsequent cross-claims about why a nomination meeting was not allowed to be called, leading Turner to resign. Finally, local solar-power generater Bill Prout stepped into the breach, and was formally nominated the middle of last month. He'll be facing three-term Conservative M.P. David Tilson, and returning Green candidate Ard Van Leeuwen, and an NDP candidate to be named later.
Dec 13, 2009 - Simcoe North, ON - Steve Clarke - acclaimed - 2008 candidate, restauranteur Steve Clarke, is back for another run against two-term Conservative M.P. Bruce Stanton, as is Green candidate Valerie Powell. An NDP nomination meeting for last December has now been rescheduled for next Sunday, January 17, where it's expected that 2008 candidate, publisher Richard Banigan, will be acclaimed, meaning that the next election will feature exactly the same slate of candidates as the last one in this riding.
Dec 14, 2009 - Québec, QC - Anne Gagné - acclaimed - A nutritionist will carry the Liberal colours in the centre of Québec's provincial capital, facing long-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Christiane Gagnon (who is not yet nominated, but planning to run again), along with first-time Conservative and ~~Bloc~~ Green candidates, Pierre Morasse and Denis Poisson [thanks to commenter Chris for the typo alert].

If you have nomination news to pass along from your part of the country, please drop me a line. You can also follow along @punditsguide on Twitter. Next time we'll get caught up on the Conservatives.

Casson Calls It Quits: Third MP To Retire

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:50:00 +0000

A second Conservative M.P., Rick Casson from Lethbridge, AB, has announced his retirement from politics at the next election. Casson was first elected in the Class of 1997, and was returned by his constituents four more times to Ottawa. Previously announced retirees are Conservative Inky Mark from Dauphin – Swan River – Marquette, MB and Bloquiste Jean-Yves Roy of Haute-Gaspésie – La Mitis – Matane – Matapédia, QC.

I've deleted Casson's nomination record from the 41st General Election, and have added the riding to our list of Ridings with Retiring Incumbents on the Search the Database page (in addition to removing the four by-election ridings from that list; oops, sorry, should have done that before).

Other nomination updates are on-going, and I hope to have a clear evening to get everything else updated tonight.

Liberal 2006 Leadership Deadline Passes; Quarterly Subsidies Paid

noreply@blogger.com (The Pundits' Guide) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:00:00 +0000

As mentioned at the top of the 2010 Calendar, the year in news really kicked off with a deadline occurring on the last day of 2009: the last day for 2006 Liberal leadership candidates to repay loans taken out to finance their leadership campaigns under extensions legally grantable by the Chief Electoral Officer.

Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen followed up with many of the key figures in a story on this morning's front page. He reports that Scott Brison has now joined Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, and Carolyn Bennett in paying off all outstanding loans, making his last payment in early December. As we mentioned before, Ken Dryden had been given until the end of June, 2010.

This leaves the following leadership candidates (with mostly unknown loan balances) having to seek the permission of a judge to continue raising funds to pay them off, or else the loans become one or more deemed contributions potentially putting the lenders over the legal contribution limit (the amounts shown below are the amounts reported in the candidates' last public filings with Elections Canada on June 3, 2008, as reported in the Hill Times):

$627,860 (loans outstanding on June 3, 2008 filing with Elections Canada) - Stéphane DION - McGregor reports that this balance was down to $80,000 plus 6% interest as of July, 2009
$395,890 - Ken DRYDEN - June 30, 2010
$322,361 - Gerard KENNEDY
$269,378 - Maurizio BEVILACQUA
$184,460 - Martha HALL FINDLEY
$160,290 - Joe VOLPE
$104,000 - Hedy FRY
$0 - Carolyn BENNETT
$0 - Scott BRISON
$0 - Michael IGNATIEFF
$0 - Bob RAE

No-one has ever been down this road legally, since this leadership race was the first to be run under the new legislation. It was explained to me by a senior official on one of the campaigns that the contribution limits were changed from $5,400 to $1,100 in the middle of the campaign as well, leaving many contributors in the situation of being unable to follow through with planned pledges in the later stages of the campaign.

We'll have a list of the final contributions at the end of January, as part of the parties' quarterly contribution filings with Elections Canada.

Meantime, the parties' quarterly allowances ("public subsidies") were paid out yesterday. Here's the history of payments:

Annual Allowances to Registered Parties, by Payment Date

Period	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	Paid
2009 - Q4	$1,815,230	$1,256,701	$468,455	$689,478	$2,602,581	04-Jan-10
2009 - Q3	$1,815,230	$1,256,701	$468,455	$689,478	$2,602,581	01-Oct-09
2009 - Q2	$1,815,230	$1,256,701	$468,455	$689,478	$2,602,581	02-Jul-09
2009 - Q1	$1,773,903	$1,228,089	$457,790	$673,781	$2,543,328	01-Apr-09

2008 - Q4	$2,187,074	$1,264,370	$324,231	$758,350	$2,623,890	05-Jan-09
2008 - Q3	$2,187,074	$1,264,370	$324,231	$758,350	$2,623,890	02-Oct-08
2008 - Q2	$2,187,074	$1,264,370	$324,231	$758,350	$2,623,890	03-Jul-08
2008 - Q1	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	07-Apr-08

2007 - Q4	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	03-Jan-08
2007 - Q3	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	02-Oct-07
2007 - Q2	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	05-Jul-07
2007 - Q1	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	04-Apr-07

2006 - Q4	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	05-Jan-07
2006 - Q3	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	04-Oct-06
2006 - Q2	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	07-Jul-06
2006 - Q1	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	06-Apr-06

2005 - Q4	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	01-Jan-06
2005 - Q3	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	01-Oct-05
2005 - Q2	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	01-Jul-05
2005 - Q1	$2,240,772	$956,692	$261,847	$755,740	$1,807,734	01-Apr-05

2004 - Q4	$0	$956,692	$261,847	$322,846	$0.00	07-Jan-05
2004 - Q3	($49,646)	$12,958	$261,847	$0	($563,630)	07-Oct-04
2004 - All	$9,191,054	$1,914,269		$2,411,022	$8,476,872	01-Jan-04

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