Can't buy me love

I've been traveling like a madblogger, so forgive me if I missed something, but I've looked around a little, and it looks like no one has commented on this astonishing quote from Paul Wells from a couple of weeks back:

I have long been a (fairly quiet) advocate of private, for-profit, two-tier, American-style, dance-on-Tommy-Douglas'-grave-style health care, on the simple principle that if something is important you should be allowed to buy it.

If something is important, you should be allowed to buy it. Think about that. This means that if Wells had his way, the wealthiest among us would all be purchasing air, specific mountain ranges, human relationships, children, and success. Not to mention elections. Oh, wait a minute.

I adore Wells' writing, so it pains me to have to class him with Lyle Oberg, but come on, that one's right up there with "No one should have the ability to make anyone do anything against their will."

Waterloo blogstravaganza, take two

I'm currently on my yearly work-related trip to Waterloo, Ontario, and have therefore decreed that there must be a reprise of last year's Waterloo-area blogger herding event at the Huether Hotel. Sinister Greg, James Bow, and Greg Staples have been herded--so perhaps the Canadian Cynic and his co-blogger the Pretty Shaved Ape could have their arms twisted as well? Here's hoping!

They call it a hotel, but the Huether is actually a great little microbrewery in the heart of Waterloo's "uptown" with excellent brews (though there's plenty to offer the non-beer-drinkers as well). There's even a patio if the weather plays along. All are welcome to join us at 2PM on Saturday, June 23: bloggers and blog readers alike, of all political stripes. Last year's event was great, laid-back fun--and none of us bite. I promise!

[Update: Could there be a better forecast for tomorrow? I think not! It's patio time!]

You mean I shoulda been looking for a female blogger with a Ph.D. in linguistics?

Tory blogger Stephen Taylor is theorizing that a) while Stephen Harper and his wife are "ordinary Canadians," Stéphane Dion and his wife are not, and b) that stressing this will lead to more votes for Harper's Conservatives. The reason being that ordinary Canadians vote for candidates who are ordinary like them, not for people who are "less ordinary" or "extraordinary."

Leaving aside for a moment whether or not these two party leaders are actually all that different in their "ordinariness" (I'm doubtful), I'd like to ask a somewhat different question--do Canadians really vote for candidates based on whether or not they seem to resemble themselves? I mean, this is clearly the case in the United States, where billions of dollars are spent on image consultants that try to make multi-millionaires seem more like the guy next door. But assuming that just because Americans vote this way, Canadians must as well, seems like it could very easily end up being dead wrong. It's certainly not the case in a lot of European countries--I can't count the number of times Germans have told me that they expect their politicians to be more educated, more knowledgeable, and more willing to pay attention than they are, for example.

Is there actually any data that suggests that Canadians look for themselves in their politicians? Do you? (I sure don't!)

Calgary-Elbow byelection redux

Something really interesting happened in Alberta last night: the long-reigning Alberta Tories lost Ralph Klein's old seat to a Liberal. My heartiest congratulations to my fellow Alberta bloggers Calgary Grit and daveberta, who have worked very hard over the last few weeks.

I have a couple of things to say about the result, but I admit that I spend a lot more time thinking about federal politics than I do about provincial politics. This means that my take on this is only somewhat informed, so take it with a grain of salt. Basically, though, what I see is that the Liberals didn't win this byelection so much as the Tories lost it. Ed Stelmach, the Tories' replacement for the Alberta institution of Ralph Klein, is terrifically unpopular these days, and it showed. However, this says less about Stelmach in particular than you might think, because the real culprit is a slow disintegration of the lumbering Alberta Tory beast, and that has been lurking in the shadows for a long time.

For years, I have suspected that the Alberta Tories were made up of several very, very different kinds of conservatives--groups which, in a more normal jurisdicion, would end up in two or even three competing parties. Their leadership race only brought this into sharper focus, with the three top-tier candidates representing very separate constituencies: "the Calgary business conservative" (Jim Dinning), "the rural southern Alberta conservative" (Ted Morton), and "the rural northern Alberta conservative" (Ed Stelmach).[*] This isn't a traditional left-right split; it's a rural-urban split, and to a somewhat lesser extent, a north-south split. But it's also no illusion--they may all be old, right-wing white guys, but the things these constituencies care about are still completely different, and it was only Ralph Klein's personal brand of populism that kept them unified for as long as they were.

Now, with the king gone, that faux unity is crumbling. From the point of view of the Calgary business conservatives, the province is now being run by a rural northerner, which means that anytime the Stelmach government doesn't handle that city's issues well, it must be because he doesn't care about them.[**] It's tempting to say that they picked the wrong guy, but the other candidates would have had the same kinds of issues, in other directions. Dinning would have had the rural northerners revolting; Morton would have had everybody who didn't want to resemble the U.S. Republican Party blanching and heading for the hills. If anything, in Stelmach they ended up with the one choice that had a slight chance of keeping the thing they call a party together--the safest candidate. But as we saw last night, even the safest candidate is by no means a sure thing these days.

Some Alberta Liberals are predicting a sea change in the next election (next spring sometime, most likely), but while that would certainly be interesting, I'm still pretty doubtful. If the Alberta Tories had chosen Morton and thus branded the entire party with a hard-right southern rural flair, I could see that happening. But the fact is, it's going to take an awful lot of urban business conservatives holding their noses and voting Liberal for there to be a change of government, and I just don't think that group finds Stelmach's northern rural sensibilities quite that scary. If the Alberta Tories really did split into two parties, of course, that would be another story, but I don't really see that happening either. Instead, I'm with Kuri from Thought Interrupted by Typos in predicting that the "Calgary business conservative" constituency will now form Alberta's equivalent of Ontario's "905" region:

What the demographics of the city--in particular the suburban bedroom communities in this sprawling city--point to is a Tory-Liberal swing, similar to those equally sprawling, SUV-loving cities that ring Toronto. These areas shifted massively in favour of hardline conservatism with the election of Mike Harris in 1995, only to shift equally dramatically in favour of the Liberals in 2003. These people will not be loyal. They will go to whoever will bribe them with the best goodies like tax cuts, more roadwork to support their unsustainable lifestyle, and other things that mean getting more and paying less.

In sum, then: The Alberta Tories probably aren't going to lose the next election, but they're going to have to work a lot harder to win it than they have in a long time. This will involve saying very different things to different constituencies, something that Stelmach hasn't yet learned to do as well as Klein did--and if he bungles it even a little, there could be an awful lot of fascinating fireworks for us political junkies to watch (and, possibly, a minority government). And if you're part of the "Calgary business conservative" constituency, expect to be courted but hard by both Stelmach and Liberal leader Kevin Taft in the next election.

---
[*] There was also an "Edmonton business conservative" candidate, Dave Hancock, but truth be told, that's just never been big enough a constituency to field a candidate who could win. Edmonton tends to divide up its provincial seats between the Liberals and the NDP, with the occasional Tory adding a hint of spice. Reason #574 why I'm glad I live here and not somewhere else in this province!

[**] This may, in fact, be the case, for all I know. However, I can't help but notice that the same allegations weren't lobbed at Klein, who did just as crappy a job handling issues like skyrocketing rents and potholes.

Public service announcement

Mike from Rational Reasons, who argued vociferously against the NDP's position of taking combat troops out of Afghanistan only six months ago, has now changed his mind. But if this is a so-called "flip-flop," then it's an exceedingly well-argued one.

(I'm still on the fence, for the record.)

Where our Mr. Welsh went

The term 'blogfather' has mostly fallen out of disuse these days, probably because most of today's bloggers don't have a single person to point to and say: "that guy, he's the one who got me to start blogging." This blog has only one father, though, and it's Ian Welsh (formerly of Tilting at Windmills, occasionally of the pogge collective). Back in 2004, it was our skirmishes in his comments section about everything from proportional representation to polygamy that convinced me I needed to get my own soapbox.

These days he's mostly writing for an American audience over at the Agonist, which is of course the Canadian blogosphere's loss. But once I got over my annoyance with him for abandoning us (SOB!!!), I started actually reading what he was writing, and it blew me away. He's simply a better blogger for them than he ever was for us. Overall, his mission seems to be to provide a kind of no-holds-barred but always impeccably well-grounded critique of the U.S.'s role in the world, which, like a slap in the face to a bully, is sometimes exactly what is needed. And interestingly, I almost never disagree with him about American issues, which is a whole new experience for me.

Anyway, in part this post is meant to tell everyone who's not already reading Ian at his new home at the Agonist to give it a shot. But mostly I want to pimp his guest post over at firedoglake, "A Mile In My Enemy's Shoes." Here's the thesis:

What is so infuriating about America, to outsiders, is the inability of Americans to look at the world through other people's eyes. Michael Scheur, the ex-CIA analyst who wrote “Imperial Hubris” first wrote a book called “Through Our Enemies' Eyes”. Interesting that a (good) analyst would first seek to understand how his enemies saw the world, don't you think? It's not because Scheur is some pansy leftist, either, in his books Scheur has suggested that winning against Islam may require killing many many millions of Muslims and he doesn't have much of a problem with that. It's because if you don't understand your enemies it is much harder to either defeat them, or make peace with them.

...and here's the money quote:

When America stops doing the Muslim=bad short circuit, peace may be possible. When America stops saying one thing (we believe in democracy) and then doing another (but not when you vote for the wrong people), foreigners may stop hating America. In the meantime, if the US insists that every Islamic militia is its enemy – then every Islamic militia will be its enemy.

Yes, it's All About the U.S., which is probably irritating to those of you who think there's already plenty of political commentary out there about the U.S., thankyouverymuch. But it's viewed with a Canadian eye, and besides, this thing may be the best blog post I've ever read. So seriously, what are you still reading this one for?

What do YOU think when you hear 'Blue Grit'?

So, I read a couple of American blogs, right? And today, it turns out that a bunch of them are talking about a new political book called Blue Grit. "Huh," I thought to myself. "Why on earth would U.S. bloggers be talking about a book about the Liberal Party's conservative streak?" So I clicked.

It turns out to be a book about the U.S. Democratic Party. How freaking confusing! Perhaps it's time to revive the SNARC?

Big tent caterpillars, take three

Another link post, because I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere (Though I promise, this hasn't turned into a "links-only" blog! There will be actual content again eventually.).

Posted without comment: Disgruntled Tories consider refounding Reform Party.

Okay, maybe the title counts as a comment.

Two electoral reform pieces you should read

I'm still pretty checked-out from politics for the moment, but these pieces are worth reading:

Greg Morrow explains what Ontarians can expect from electoral reform by systematically recounting what happened in New Zealand after they switched in 1996 to the very same system that Ontario has on the table now. I actually meant to write some version of this post myself some time ago, but never got around to it. This one's great, though--and certainly much more concise than mine would have been.

Over at the Tyee, Mitchell Anderson argues pretty convincingly that Dion could win an awful lot of votes to the Liberals by making some bold statements and some bold promises about electoral reform. As a New Democrat, I cringe at the prospect, because I think it would work. But as an electoral reformer, I can't help but say yes, yes, YES!

In absentia

I seem to have entered one of my longer fallow periods. My apologies. (By now you know I always come back from those, though, right?)

While I recharge my batteries, I suggest you have a look at James Bow's post about why the polls are all over the place. I've been thinking similar thoughts lately. (Which probably accounts for the fallow period, come to think of it.)

Anyway, catch you all sooner or later, and be sure to get out and enjoy the springtime!

Comparing like with like in Ontario

I'm not going to point to anyone in particular, but I've been noticing one major tendency among informed opponents to Ontario's proposed new Mixed-Member proportional electoral system (as opposed to the ill-informed ones like Ian Urquhart of the Toronto Star, who aren't even basing their arguments on accurate information): they all seem to be using a faulty thought process to reach their conclusions. Specifically, they seem to be looking at the possible negatives of the proposed system (coalition governments might be unstable, closed lists could end up meaning party hacks negotiating their way into the provincial parliament through backroom deals) and comparing those possibilities with the way the current system actually functions in practice. They then conclude that these possible downsides are too great a risk and decide to vote for the status quo.

Why is this thought process faulty? Because it's not comparing like with like. If Ontarians really want to make an informed decision about this, they have to either compare Mixed-Member Proportional's possible negatives with First Past the Post's possible negatives (whether or not it tends to work that way in practice), or compare the way First Past the Post currently works in practice in Ontario with the way Mixed-Member Proportional actually works in practice in jurisdictions like Germany where it is currently in place.

So, for example, one possible downside to the current way of electing MPPs in Ontario would be that the 905 region could produce a new party (let's call it the "905 party") that would exist for the sole purpose of demanding that the region be given a special status, extra government money, and additional clout. Given the way First Past the Post magnifies the vote of minor region-specific parties, this hypothetical 905 party could very easily take Ontario's provincial parliament by storm and seriously disrupt the regional balance of that body, sowing even more resentment among already disparate groups of MPPs and their constituents.

Does the current system actually work that way in practice? Well, no (although a glimpse at the Bloc Québécois' success on the federal level shows that it's not an entirely farfetched scenario). But Mixed-Member Proportional in Germany doesn't actually produce unstable coalition governments and party hacks negotiating their way into parliament through backroom deals, either.

Further information:

• democraticSPACE brings us a very simple and elegant explanation of how the proposed system would work.
• Columnist Andrew Coyne comes out against his own employer and argues cogently in favour of the reform.
• While the Toronto Star itself has been rabidly anti-reform, when they asked their readers what they thought, apparently they couldn't find anyone to agree with them.
• Sinister Greg points to a fascinating debate on the issues on a show called "The Agenda with Steve Paiken" (click on the 16th). It's well done, and includes a segment on "lessons from New Zealand," a country that underwent a switch a decade ago to a system very similar to the one proposed for Ontario.

I've always liked puns

From the "you can't make this stuff up" file:

The woman who had been planning to run as a Liberal in Central Nova until Dion decided not to run a candidate there at all? Her name is Susan Green.

If this were a novel, I'd roll my eyes at the implausibility.

Riffing on the SES "best prime minister" data

I already linked to Accidental Deliberations' excellent post over at the update on my last post, but I wanted to single one part out for special attention:

[The Greens deciding not to run a candidate against Dion] would be a bizarre choice at the best of times, but it's all the more so given the party's current supporters' actual preference among possible PMs.

That's right: as the lone party leader who already holds the dubious honour of being her own party's supporters' second choice for PM, May is throwing her support to their fourth choice (or sixth if one counts "none of the above" and "unsure") in an attempt to stop their first choice. Which only seems likely to alienate both a good chunk of current Green supporters, and anybody who might otherwise have flipped from supporting the Cons.

More of a visual person? Well, the poll AD points to summarizes Greens' first choice for prime minister as the following:


Harper in first place, May in second, Layton in third, and Dion in fourth. That's a terribly amusing statistic. Kind of hilarious, really.

Let's not stop there, though! While the data sets for the other parties aren't quite so funny, they're still pretty interesting. Here, for example, is the Liberals' chart:



And here's the Conservatives':



And here's the NDP's:



And here's the Bloc's:



And most of interest to all the parties trying to sway new voters, the undecideds:



Some fun facts about the data:

• An awful lot of Canadians are planning to vote for parties other than the party with the leader they'd most like to see as PM.
• The only party leaders to have more than 50% support for PM by their own parties are Harper and Duceppe.
• More than a quarter of Liberal voters prefer Harper to Dion.
• The party least likely to think Harper would make the best prime minister is the NDP. And yet even that number is greater than the number of NDP voters who would pick Dion as their first choice.
• Apart from partisan Greens, the most likely party to name May as best PM is the NDP.
• Of all the parties' supporters, Green voters are most likely to say "none of the above" as their first choice.
• The undecideds' first choice for PM is Harper, even over "unsure."
• A number greater than zero of all of the major parties' voters thinks the best prime minister of Canada would be Gilles Duceppe.

What I'm really curious about is people's second choices for PM. Too bad that question wasn't included.

Strange strategy

From the Globe and Mail, December 23rd, 2006:

The Liberals are planning a "308-seat strategy" for the next federal election in which they will contest all seats in the Commons, including those in regions they have previously written off, such as Alberta.

Now, it wasn't spelled out there exactly how a "308-seat strategy" would differ from campaigns the Liberals have run in the past, but presumably at the bare minimum it would suggest running a candidate in 308 ridings, no?

From the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald, April 12, 2007:

The Liberals can’t decide whether to run a candidate in Central Nova or step out of the way to improve Elizabeth May’s chances of unseating Peter MacKay.

On one side are most Nova Scotia Liberals, who think the party ought to run a candidate in every riding in Canada. On the other side is federal Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, who would prefer not to run a candidate in Central Nova, perhaps because Ms. May often praises his character and environmental credentials, which helps him in the national media.

"There’s a widespread sentiment that Dion is off his rocker to be considering this," one prominent Liberal said this week. "There’s increasing division within the party in Nova Scotia. If Dion proceeds with this, he will have done himself big damage in Nova Scotia within the Liberal party."

I'm not sure what kind of strategy trying to help the leader of another party counts as, but it's certainly not a "308-seat" one. The Liberals took a respectable 25% in Central Nova in the last election, and have an established local riding association that will be completely demolished if they do this. And for what? The vote totals in Central Nova in the last election looked like this:

Conservatives 41%
NDP 33%
Liberals 25%
Greens 2%

Which means that even if every single person who voted Liberal in the last election were to vote Green in the next one (a dubious assumption given how upset some of them seem), that would still only move the Greens into third place.

May had better have offered Dion an awfully sweet deal for him to even be considering this one.

[Update: It's official--it's happening. Perhaps predictably, some Liberals are trying to spin this to say that the only reason New Democrats might speak out against this is that they see this "progressive coalition" (sic) as a threat. Well, I won't speak for any New Democrats but myself, but that's not my objection at all. I'm not threatened--I'm well and truly baffled, on two different fronts.

The first front has to do with ideals. Like I said over at Woman at Mile 0's blog, I’m an immigrant American who chose Canada. One of the things I value about this country is that there’s real political diversity--a full spectrum of parties that, unlike my country of birth, allows voters to have genuine choices. And what it comes down to is the question of whether the Greens and the Liberals really are two distinct choices. If the two parties aren't sufficiently different to maintain two separate political identities, then they should merge. If they are sufficiently different to maintain two separate political identities--i.e., if the two parties can articulate concrete reasons why people would want to choose their party and not the other--then they should start acting like they know they're separate parties. It's really that simple.

Now, some will inevitably be thinking here: "but IP, I know you, and you LIKE the idea of coalitions!" Well, to that I can only say that this is quite a different animal from a coalition. A coalition happens in GOVERNMENT, AFTER the election. If, for example, the Liberals were to win a minority of the seats and the Greens were to get a few more, enough to make a majority government together, then they could form a coalition and govern side-by side. I would find nothing wrong with that; indeed, it would be the kind of thing I argue for in every third or fourth post in this blog. If the Liberals and the Greens want to stand up and announce their preference for forming the government together after the next election, I will applaud that. Actively banding together before the election, though, is not a coalition; it’s just a very puzzling strategy that disenfranchises Green voters in Saint-Laurent–Cartierville and (much more debilitatingly) Liberal voters in Central Nova. And as someone who thinks real voter choice is one of the best things about this country’s politics, that’s something I can’t support.

The second front is more about pragmatism--i.e., the real short- and long-term effects of this decision on these two parties. Presumably the two parties think there are concrete gains to be made from this deal, but I'm sorry, I'm just not seeing it. I talk about some of the reasons why above; and Accidental Deliberations outlines the rest of them. This is simply not a good idea, no matter how you slice it. Now, neither of these parties is my own, so it's not my place to get all outraged on their supporters' behalf or anything, but I'm certainly going to be sitting over here shaking my head in that aforementioned bafflement.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't note that something is getting lost in the shuffle, here--i.e., the fact that there's a much better solution to the problems that May and Dion are trying to solve. It's even something that both May and Dion are on the record as favouring. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd sure like to hear a lot more talk about that option and a lot less about ones that are completely antithetical to real, long-term reform.]

[Upperdate: Green blogger Herbinator sums up my issues with this in much fewer words:

It seems I am the only one who thinks it is wrong to sell votes. Nobody has a problem with thinking the buying of votes is incorrect. People vote, THEN politicians live down to their reputation. Politicians usurping an individuals right to vote for a party of choice is unconscientious.]

[Upper-dupper-date: The National Post wins IP brownie points by not incorrectly referring to this as a "coalition." "Non-aggression pact" is a fun term, too! I like it.]

[Upper-dupper-date-date: More from Herbinator here:

I can understand not being able to field candidates. I cannot understand removing a citizen's right to vote for a party of choice simply for self-serving political expediency. It is wrong to buy a vote; it is wrong to sell a vote.

Voting is an opportunity for the voter to be self-serving and capricious. It is not for the politician to presuppose any voter's intension.

I am stepping down my activities in the Green Party of Canada in protest.

And while Liberal blogger Cerberus says a lot of things in this post that I can't agree with, this is the part where we're on the same page:

Now I like Elizabeth May and think she is an awesomely refreshing addition to federal politics. I think Canadian politics will benefit from having a growing and strong environmental movement getting elected. But if you want to see Elizabeth May in Parliament or more Greens in Parliament or more narrow-focused fringe parties in Parliament, then advocate for proportional representation. Don't mess with the democratic system like it is some plaything.]

[I-promise-this-is-the-last-update: pogge's post is hilarious and worth a read. Though it will undoubtedly tar him as a vicious partisan. *grin*]

Old-style politics vs. the citizens of Ontario

The verdict from Andrew Coyne on Ontario electoral reform is identical to mine: the details of the system the citizens' assembly picked aren't the exact same things I would have chosen if I'd designed it myself, but the proposed new system is certainly better than how the province elects its MPPs currently. And anybody taking an honest look at the pros and cons of how the proposed system would work in practice alongside a similarly honest look at the pros and cons of how the current system works in practice should come to the same conclusion.

Just as an aside, it's endlessly fascinating to me that the pundits most consistently in favour of electoral reform initiatives are maverick, non-party-line-toeing conservatives like Coyne and old-style Tories like John Ibbitson. While this may make some lefties uncomfortable, I welcome it. If that finally gets it through people's thick skulls that these reforms are not about promoting particular parties or ideological agendas, but about giving all voters an equal voice in electing their parliaments, then I say bring it on.

Sinister Greg renders me superfluous

Greg has written the best post of his life, completely tearing Ian Urquhart from the Toronto Star to shreds over his latest column on the Ontario Citizens' Assembly for Electoral Reform.

For once I have, quite literally, nothing more to add. Go read Greg.

May's new strategy

Elizabeth May is saying that the Greens may not run candidates in all ridings in the next election, and I'm going to go against the grain and say that it may not be a bad strategy. If it's really about what some bloggers think it is, of course--that she's deliberately undermining her party so as not to harm the Liberals--then yeah, I agree that it's stupid. But if she's admitting that the party has limited resources and consciously deciding to steer those resources into ridings where they can actually have a chance of winning (or at least seriously growing the vote to prepare for next time), then it's at least worth considering.

I mean, I'm coming at this as an immigrant from the U.S., where it's absolutely par for the course for not only the marginal parties, but also the big parties not to run candidates in districts that they'll never be able to win. I'm pretty sure the Republicans haven't run a candidate against fifty-year Congressman John Dingell in my lifetime, for example. So the whole "this party is legitimate because we're running candidates in every riding" thing that the Greens have sometimes touted has always seemed a bit silly to me. If they've done some investigating and figured out that there are a couple of ridings where they have a real chance, and they're saving up so as to make a real push there, then good on them.

The downside to going that route, of course, is that if they don't win any seats next time, then the only thing that's going to raise their profile is a much larger percentage of the vote than they got last time. They can still manage that by sitting out a small handful of ridings, but it really has to be the exception rather than the rule. But if May runs candidates in, say, 300 ridings rather than 308, then it's not going to make a dent.

A little more humility

It will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly that the hardest thing for me about being involved in Canadian politics is the wanton, screechy hyperpartisanship. You know: the thing about our political culture that says that if one of your political opponents has a good idea, you'd damn well better pretend you hate it anyway, and if you can't find anything to dislike about them right now, you'd better look a little harder. I find it terribly disappointing, and it makes it harder than just about anything else in this business does to "resist the pull of cynicism."

Well, after hearing Nathan Cullen speak this weekend, this proponent of interparty cooperation, fair play, and coalition governments has a new hero.

Some quotes:

"We exist in a political forum that says that only one can be right at any given time, and that's just ridiculous when it comes to such a complicated issue. I believe we need to have the Greens at the table, we need to have the Conservatives at the table, and the Liberals--and a little more humility in our governments so that they're forced into situations like [the special committee on the Clean Air Act]."

"I'll tell you this: all the way through the Cold War, we always talked to the Russians. You never stop talking to your opponent. Because the eventual solution will involve your opponent. It must."

Video:


More here.

How not to write poll questions, take two

Remember that cracked-out Angus Reid poll? The one showing the Liberals at 22% and the NDP beating them in Québec? Well, they've drilled down in the data a bit more to determine that "two in five Canadians pick Harper as PM," and normally level-headed conservative blogger Greg Staples is crowing over it.

Now, putting aside that Angus Reid must have been smoking something really nice the day they gathered the data for that poll, do you really think "two in five Canadians like our current prime minister" is something to smile about? Come on, even George Bush can achieve that.

What that spin on the poll glosses over is the fact that an awfully large chunk of Canadians still don't want either Harper or Dion. So a poll that makes respondents choose between those two options isn't worth the bits and bytes it's written on.

Harper's worst enemy: the Bloc Québécois

The Conservatives have been spending a lot of time bashing the Liberals and the NDP lately because those parties opposed their budget. The Bloc, on the other hand, supported the budget, so they've had to go easier on their old buddy Gilles. But you can bet that Harper knows that far more than the Liberals and the NDP, it's the Bloc he has to crush in the next election--and that's not about ideology, but about seat count. Seriously reducing the number of Bloc seats in Québec and replacing them with Conservatives is not just the Conservatives' best road to a majority--it may be the only realistic road at all.

Why? Well, it's about the way our voting system translates votes into seats. Now, the first-past-the-post electoral system is designed to magnify the seat count for larger parties and understate it for smaller ones. The result, if it works the way it's intended to, is to manufacture "majority" governments for a single party that didn't actually win a majority of the vote. This works well in political arenas that are strongly dominated by two big parties, like the U.S., or Canada before the CCF (the predecessor to the NDP):

As you can see, the actual percentage of the vote was very close in the 1930 federal election--so much so that if this had been a pre-election poll rather than the final result, the parties would likely have been polling within the margin of error of each other. But the First Past the Post electoral system did its job here, raising the percentage of the Tories' seats up past the "majority" mark and giving them 100% of the power all on their own.

However, it also works the way it's supposed to in three-party systems, as long as the smallest party attracts votes across the jurisdiction rather than being concentrated in one place:

In the most recent UK federal election, the vote was very much split three ways between Tony Blair's Labour party, the Conservatives, and the upstart Liberal Democrats. The result under their First Past the Post system is a terribly skewed election, but still one in which that system could do its job and massively manufacture a single-party "majority" government for Tony Blair.

The thing about current-day Canada is that our first-past-the-post system simply isn't working the way it's supposed to. And while part of the reason for that is the strength of the NDP--which, much like the UK's own midsized party, has shown an ability to win a good chunk of seats even with First Past The Post minimizing the impact of smaller parties--most of it is actually because of a party that got a much smaller percentage of the vote: the Bloc Québécois. You can see this easily in the results from the 2006 federal election:

Because the Bloc's vote is entirely concentrated in one region of the country, First Past the Post's artificial disfavouring of smaller parties falls apart, massively favouring what should be the smallest party in the House. This keeps those seats away from all of the national parties, and effectively removes them from the national game board entirely. Without the Bloc, the seat percentages would look a lot more like those in the UK, with a manufactured Conservative majority. But with a large section of Parliament's seats effectively set aside, the rest get split three-ways among two big parties and one medium-sized one, and nobody can manage to get a majority at all.

So Harper can and will attack Dion to keep the Liberal vote down, but there are enough safe Liberal seats across the country that he can't ever manage to squelch them completely. The same goes for the NDP, which can't ever be removed as a threat to their dreams of a majority, particularly in the West. So if Harper wants an artificially manufactured majority of his very own, those additional seats are going to have to come from the ones that the Bloc has taken out of play. And this has to happen without Harper losing any of the seats he already has in the rest of the country.

It's a lot more of a long shot than the conservative bloggers who are crowing over recent polls realize, given everything that has to go in Harper's favour without anything at all going wrong. But if the Québec election result taught us anything, it's that sovereigntist Québecers are willing to shift their votes from a sovereigntist party that's a little too far left for them, to a right-wing party that may not be sovereigntist per se, but is still willing to use some of the vocabulary. Since undermining the Bloc while suppressing the other two national parties just enough is Harper's only real chance, you can bet he's going to try the same tactic.

If I were a Liberal strategist preparing to battle the Tories in Ontario, or an NDP strategist preparing to battle the Tories in the west--or for that matter a certain well-known anglophone journalist who speaks fluent French and cares passionately about holding back the tide of the Québec sovereignty movement--I would be paying very close attention to what Harper says to francophone Québecers in the next election. And seeing to it that every word of it gets repeated in the English-language media.