Evening Star

There are a lot of other areas where I do agree with them, to be clear.

As I said, I was involved with the party as a member and volunteer in 2011 and followed their campaign this time. In terms of the bulk of the platform's content, I really don't think that much has changed. Layton-era platforms were all built around balanced budgets too. They may have even been more left this time when it comes to pharma care and the TPP. I do think the messaging was different and they were really trying to emphasize more moderate 'responsible' policies from the platform. However, if the problem really is that the NDP was not left-wing enough, why are voters supporting parties that are to the right of them? If people were flocking to the Greens and Communists instead, I could believe that this was the problem. It might just be the case that, in the end, Canadians' ideological leanings have not changed that much and it was a fluke that the NDP did as well as they did in 2011? I did have to recognise the number of areas where I disagree with NDP policy, ultimately: the Senate, MMP, opting out with full compensation, gender-based quotas for corporate boards. Edit: One way in which they are definitely terrible is in endlessly harrassing their supporters for money and support. I was getting multiple emails a day at times during the campaign.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying but it was a fairly big news story when the NDP modified their constitution to drop the word "socialism". A quick Google search shows the same story was covered in most major news outlets. [Edited to add links]

They did this two years ago.

I mean, the election isn't over yet, but it's not looking good for them.

I'm still trying to get my head around what happened to the NDP over this campaign. Anyone wonder how things would have played out if we'd voted for Cullen in 2011? (I had a membership then, although I never renewed it.)

Ha, I honestly forgot that he was ever LPC leader!

I'll freely admit that I don't have a clear memory of his 06 or 08 endorsements. The thing is, regardless of his endorsements, I just don't think Andrew Coyne is any sort of partisan. He has clear ideological principles and he has no problem praising or criticizing any party or any leader on the basis of his principles.

In an election, specifically, or in general? Because he criticizes them all the time otherwise. And, before I search high and low for decade-old election endorsements, do you actually remember him endorsing the LPC in previous elections or are you just basing this on 2011?

Citation requested. He endorsed them, quite grudgingly, in 2011, but I thought he was a supporter of Harper and the Conservatives prior to that. If anything, he started going off the Tories because they weren't conservative enough for him. Edit: I'm fairly certain that he endorsed the Ontario PCs in the last Ontario election. Edit: Found his 2011 Liberal 'endorsement', where he still stated that he preferred the Tories on economic issues.

Cybercoma, I'm almost the opposite of you: I voted for Paul Dewar despite the NDP campaign.

Paula Simons of the Edmonton Journal has been strongly implying that the endorsements by Postmedia papers were made by the owners/publishers, not the editorial staff themselves. Edit: in this case, the editors might have intentionally given the most backhanded endorsement they could give.

I posted this elsewhere: their position seems to be "the Conservatives were so good on the economy that the other parties are basically adopting their economic policies. But the Tories are terrible in other ways: mean, secretive, hyper-centralized, obsessed with wedge issues and stupid culture wars, all because of Harper's controlling nature." By their own logic, you could get the good without the bad if you voted for one of the other parties.

Justin Trudeau himself has said that Gagnier's letter was inappropriate and Gagnier has resigned. Why would he do this if he had done nothing wrong? Mulcair and the NDP don't owe anything to the Liberal Party, other than a fair competition. (And I don't see him doing anything dishonest here.) If the Conservatives are re-elected and you want to blame someone, I think it would be much more fair to blame the people who vote Conservative instead of the leader of another opposition party. Mulcair isn't making anyone vote Conservative.

Is this question even addressed to me? It's perfectly legitimate to do the reverse. I have never said otherwise.

Have they been surging lately? This is by far the biggest number I have seen anyone give for them.

She is the Queen of Canada tbf.

Tbf, the Empire did pretty well for almost another century. xp

I'm generally not an 'anyone but' voter but I think the basic premise is that one option is so bad that any of the others would be less bad, even if they don't quite make you happy. Even if you end up voting out your 'anyone' in four years, you have avoided something that you consider terrible.

Even as someone with no marketing experience, that seemed like a spectacularly poorly thought-out attack strategy.

I was a DRO for the 2011 election. A kid, probably 18 or 19, asked me if the Green Party was the party that favoured legalization of marijuana. He was incredulous when I told him I couldn't provide that kind of information. Sadly, he might have been the only person under 25 who showed up to my polling station at all.

The methodology sounds a little sketchy to be tbh. Unless the organization has commissioned or researched updated riding-level polls, I'd take the info with a grain of salt. I find their numbers hard to believe.

I am not usually a fan of strategic voting but this Tory campaign has become so toxic that I appreciate why it seems like a necessity at this point, for those in swing ridings.

I mailed in a vote for my NDP candidate earlier this afternoon. He will likely keep his seat but it's starting to look like the NDP is out of the running. Ah well, they made errors early on, and I wasn't sure how I'd vote, but I think they've been doing great more recently and were about as good of an Opposition in the last Parliament as a party could have been. If the niqab was what sank them, I'm glad they went down fighting that one.

But I mean, Smallc is a moderately conservative person and he just told you he backed some NDP ideas on taxation.