The election was pushed off the front pages by the crisis surrounding the financial industry in the
First week report card: Conservatives win the week
So, who won the first week? I’d have to go with the Conservatives. It certainly wasn’t a perfect week for them: some overeager election staffers sent them off message and into damage control mode. However, Harper and the party dealt swiftly with pooping puffins and with e-mails about the political motivations of grieivng parents of dead Canadian soldiers. Furthermore, the party also had the most significant policy announcement of the week in the announcement of the 2001 end to Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. I’d give them an A-.
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First week poll numbers: Good news for Conservatives and Greens, BQ is in trouble
All right, a disclaimer before we begin discussing the latest poll numbers from Decima-Harris and Nanos. There’s a lot of trouble with how the media reports polls: they tend to do a horrible job of reporting margins of error on regional poll results, as Melanee Thomas detailed in her recent blog posting. Also, in a country with a heavily regionalized electorate like Canada, the national poll numbers don’t mean a whole lot. If the Conservatives are up nationally because they the remaining 35% of voters in Alberta who haven’t already succumbed to their charms have now decided to join the majority, it won’t mean much for seats because the party can’t win any more seats there. The key battlegrounds are British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario.
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Voter tracking and identification: The Conservative advantage
Michael Valpy has a great article in the Globe and Mail that details the Conservatives’ sopgisticated voter database. It’s something that Harper and the Conservatives have been building for years, as detailed in Tom Flanagan’s interesting book, Harper’s Team. It allows the Conservatives to identify and get out the vote, but also allows them to fundraise between elections. It’s part of the secret why the Conservatives are swimming in cash while the Liberals have to borrow to finance their campaign. It’s a big advantage and something that to my knowledge the other parties are well beyond them in developing.
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Fearless prediction for Alberta: 28 Conservatives will win
I’ve been enjoying reading the profiles of contests from other parts of Canada that my colleagues have posted here on the re:politics (formerly, Maple Leaf Web) election blog. It must be interesting to live in places where elections are actually close contests. So, I’ll chime in from Alberta and fearlessly predict that the Conservatives will win all 28 seats here. Crazy, I know, but that’s just how I see it. Perhaps what I will lack in writing about interesting local contests will be offset by having the best accuracy in predicting election results in my province.
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Defusing an Issue – Ending the Afghanistan Mission in 2011
Besides the news that Elizabeth May would be joining the leaders’ debate, the big news yesterday was Stephen Harper’s announcement that Canada’s current military mission in Afghanistan would not be extended past the 2011 deadline established by Parliament. It is important to note that this does not mean a complete military withdrawal from Afghanistan at that point, but that the Canadian mission will change dramatically at that point.
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