Newfoundlander

The leadership convention will not be held till 2013 now, I think this is a horrible idea.

I've just started listening to the extraordinary convention, I don't know how long I can handle it though. I'm hoping Jeff Jedras' amendment calling for the leadership convention to be held early next fall passes, the party shouldn't wait till 2013 to elect a new leader. While I think the party has alot more issues then just leadership they need a leader in place to help define them. I'll discuss this more later.

Yes their national results were still very good, I'm getting confused with something though I don't know. Anyway this is't about the Laytonmania.

Around 11% of the NDP's 30% is from Quebec. Last election Quebec account from about 3% of their national vote. So their supported really never went up that much outside Quebec.

There must not have been an online story written on this over the last day but next week the PCs will be having a very interesting nomination race, former Member of Parliament Rex Barnes is challenging PC incumbent Ray Hunter in Grand Falls-Windsor-Green Bay South. For reasons I'm not really sure of Hunter isn't very popular within the party and I've heard that MHAs in neighbouring districts are supporting Barnes. While I'm writing this I realize it does not sound the least bit exciting. Here's an old story on it. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2011/02/16/nl-barnes-hunter-216.html Out of the 34 incumbents that have been nominated over the last few months for the PCs only two have faced competetion, and both have won landslide victories. John Dinn who represents the St. John's district of Kilbride, a former community, took something like 88% of the vote in the nomination, he is the King of Kilbride though. Then Keith Hutchings who represnts a district that takes in part of St. John's and then a huge rural area faced two competitors, the turnout was probably as high as it would be for an election and as expected Hutchings won huge majority. The PCs only have 13 districts left to open nominations in, including the five districts they don't currently hold and the two where the incumbents announced they are not running. I have a feeling these districts were left till now on purpose, it is still rumoured that several of the incumbents that hold these districts will not run for re-election and other incumbents may face tough competition for the PC nomination. So I'd say the known nomination races were left till last.

Selinger's popularity went up a good bit lately, I'd say it will be quite a close race.

Newfoundland and Labrador's next election is going to be held on October 11, 2011, and I'm hoping some people are interested in discussing it. In the last little while there has been a poll released showing that the Progressive Conservatives led by Premier Kathy Dunderdale have dropped to 57% in opinion polls while the NDP has soared to likely historic levels and are statistically tied with the Liberal Party, the NDP are at 20% while the Liberals are at 22%. According to Threehundredeight.com this would lead to the NDP forming the Official Opposition, though without regional results it is hard to know what will happen. The NDP have become the alternative to the PCs in the St. John's Area while in rural Newfoundlan and Labrador the Liberals are for the most part the alternative. At the moment the Progressive Conservatives have 43 of the 48 seats in the House of Assembly, they've been opening nominations in districts currently held by members for the last couple of months and have 34 incumbents nominated. At the moment two members have announced they will not be seeking re-election and there will likely be a few others who call it quits as well. The Liberals currently hold four seats, they've been opening nominations in some districts recently and have eight candidates in place. Only their leader and one other MHA are running for re-election, out of the six other candiates they have in place one is a former MHA and two others have previously ran for the party. NDP leader Lorraine Michael is the party's only MHA. For I believe the first time the party has been opening nominations in districts months before the election, in the past I think they have waited till the election was called and then just basically appointed candidates. The party has only nominated a full slate of candidates once and that was years ago. So far the party has four candidates in place, including the leader, and nominations are closing in another district soon. Two of the candidates seem pretty strong, compared to the ones they normally attract, and there is talk that they are trying to lure a City Councillor in St. John's to run for them who would likely have a good chance of taking out an incumbent Progressive Conservative. There's likely not many, if any, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians here but hopefully people will contribute and I'll do my best to update.

One big issue with the Liberals is that Harper has people convinced that the party would be fiscally irresponsible if they were in power, and the Liberals proved that by barely focusing on the economy in their latest platform and promising lots of spending. The Liberals have proven themselves on the fiscally conservative front in the past and they need to let Canadians know that they can be fiscally responsible. Their last platform was an NDP platform, there was nothing centrist about it. People voted Conservative because they were focused on the economy, people voted NDP because they liked Layton and his social policies. The Liberals need to make Canadians believe that they can handle the economy as well as protect and implement social programs. They need to be a centrist party, which they are not anymore. They need to look at Chretien because I think he mastered centrism.