Newfoundlander

There are rules around how much money you can raise from citizens and it just so hapens the Conservatives are way better then any other party at raising money. They're not doing anything wrong by spending that money, just like the NDP didn't do anything wrong when they launched attack ads against the gun registry last year.

What?

Conservative support went to the NDP in St. John's.

Either that or the Liberals were just very efficient at getting out their vote. Conservative support doesn't necessarily go to the Liberals when their party runs a weak campaign.

You never said anything about giving candidates their budget. According to Pundits Guide Nikki Ashton and Martin Singh likely won't raise even $100,000. Mulcair's in the lead with fundraising so he's probably buying the leadership I guess. http://www.punditsguide.ca/2012/03/money-momentum-and-mudslinging-mark-final-week-of-ndp-leadership-race/

You still have candidates who can't raise even close to that, is that fair? If the NDP wanted to lead by example maybe they should have given all the candidates $500,000 to run with.

Yes but both are left wing ridings where they are not competitive anyway.

Maybe, I'm not really sure?

Well for a party many are saying is dead, particularly Conservatives and Dippers, they were the only party to gain support eventhough they ran a last minute no name candidate in a riding where the odds were completely against them.

The Conservatives basically did the same thing in Winnipeg North. They knew they could not win and put little energy into it, their support dropped off but in the general election they got all their support back plus some.

Discriminates against the other parties that can not afford to continuously run ads? Please tell me you're not serious? There's no limit on how much money a party can raise, if parties want to run ads continuously then they should learn how to raise money. Is it discrimination that Peggy Nash is able to run a better leadership campaign than Nikki Ashton because she raised more money?

The mandate he lied to get?

So he should just go around continuing to lie to everyone? All Rae is doing is trying to screw over his potential competition for the leadership and make himself look good so he doesn't have any competition. Rae is likable but he is only in it for himself.

If he's the best then why won't he come clean and say he's running, publicly? I agree that Rae is just hurting the party by not letting his intentions known.

The Conservatives have more money then they know what to do with. Their attack against Rae is brilliant because it doesn't just hurt him personally but it causes problems for the Liberals internally. I'm willing to bet that the Consrvatives already have research done for attack ads against all the frontrunners in the NDP leadership campaign and that it will only be a matter of getting it filmed once the leader is decided.

The Conservatives could have easily afforded to put a lot of money into this riding and have a strong ground war, but they didn't because they knew it was a waste. I'm sure they would have loved to invest little in the riding and match last year's numbers but they knew that would be unlikely. They don't care about the results of this byelection and there is definitely no reason for them to worry.

The results were pretty much what I would expect for a byelection under these circumstances.

NDP/Bloc coalition government?

Turnout isn't really that low considering it's a by-election. My point is that the Liberals will have roughly the same amount of voters as May while the NDP will be down more than 10,000. The NDPs support has obviously risen a good bit here though seeing they usually only averaged 40 odd percent in the riding.

The Conservatives never really ran a campaign here anyway, and have not been competitive in the riding in decades.

Seems as though the Liberals were very good at getting their voters to the polling station, the only problem is the number of voters for them in Toronto Danforth has dropped of substantially.

Good spelling in that title!

What? You should really finish your points and explain yourself better in posts because you're making no sense.

NDP basically hold their own while a large portion of the Conservative vote moves to the Liberals.

Not true at all.