and leading her majesty's loyal opposition ... the NDP?

"Meanwhile, a Nanos Research poll conducted for The Globe and Mail suggests that Mr. Layton’s New Democrats are closing in on the Liberals for second place in popular support across the country."

Wow. What a prospect.

All my life, the NDP have basically been the "third place" party, on the federal level. This country has been governed by Conservatives and Liberals since the day it began (in 1867), and while there have been some tweaks here and there (between 1942 and their merger with the Canadian Alliance in 2003, the Conservatives went by the name "Progressive Conservative"), it has generally been assumed that if one of these parties was leading the country, the other party would be leading the Official Opposition.

But of course, the last two decades have seen at least one sustained exception to this, namely the period between 1993 and 2003 when the Conservatives were so diminished that it was *other* parties -- first the Bloc, and then the Reform a.k.a. Canadian Alliance -- which led the Official Opposition. If the way things were expected to work could change then, it could certainly change again, couldn't it?

Indeed, when the Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance merged on the right in 2003, there were some people who argued that the Liberals and the NDP should merge on the left, too. At the time, the NDP had never come even *close* to running the Official Opposition -- the best they've ever done was in the election of 1988, when they won 43 seats out of 295 -- so nobody took this idea seriously. But now...?

If there is, indeed, a chance that the NDP could garner the second-most seats, both within Quebec and outside of it, then, well, that would change everything.

Incidentally, in my neighbourhood at least, it is fairly common to see campaign signs by the side of the road that tout the NDP leader, but not necessarily the local NDP candidate.  Meanwhile, the campaign signs for the Conservative and Liberal candidates don't even *mention* their parties' leaders.

- - -

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/for-layton-quebec-success-shows-voters-they-really-do-have-a-choice/article1994374/

For Layton, Quebec success shows voters they ‘really do have a choice’

GLORIA GALLOWAY, OTTAWA
Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Thursday, April 21, 2011 11:07AM EDT

Jack Layton is riding high after a pair of polls show the NDP overtaking the Bloc Québécois – a change that would mark a huge transformation of the political landscape if it carried through to election day and was transformed into seats in the House of Commons.

A CROP survey published Thursday in the Montreal newspaper La Presse suggests the NDP is the preferred choice for 36 per cent of Quebeckers, compared to 31 per cent for the Bloc. The Tories were at 17 per cent in that poll and the Liberals were at 13 per cent. 

And an EKOS Research survey conducted for the internet news outlet iPolitics suggests that the New Democrats have jumped 10 percentage points since just before last weeks’ leaders debates to 31.1 per cent while the Bloc has dropped to 23.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, a Nanos Research poll conducted for The Globe and Mail suggests that Mr. Layton’s New Democrats are closing in on the Liberals for second place in popular support across the country.

The NDP currently holds just one seat in Quebec. But Nanos and other polling companies have found Mr. Layton’s popularity is surging in that province – in part because he leads a party that, unlike the Liberals or the Conservatives, has been free from the taint of scandal.

“We’ve been working hard in Quebec to build our message and have people get to know the New Democratic Party,” Mr. Layton told reporters on Thursday. “But I think the key thing is that people felt that Stephen Harper was going to bring change and he didn’t do it.”

Just this week, The Globe and Mail revealed that Mr. Harper’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, had attempted to interfere in an appointment at the Montreal Port authority, a body that is supposed to be autonomous. Mr. Harper characterized the interjection as “normal” which Mr. Layton said it is just one more example of pork-barrel politics.

But Mr. Layton said he believes the increase in support for his party is not just a Quebec phenomenon and he will be travelling from one end of the country to the other to convince voters his platform would work best for Canadians.

“I am feeling a lot of energy and enthusiasm wherever we go as people begin to realize that we really do have a choice here in this election,” he said. “We don’t have to go back to the same old, same old.”

The NDP Leader who, with his wife MP Olivia Chow, spent an hour with the new Sun TV network on Thursday, did not appear overly gleeful at the numbers suggesting he has momentum at a critical juncture of the campaign.

“I’m not just a smiley face,” he quipped, making reference to insults that were lobbed at him in Quebec by Bloc sympathizers who see him as an increasing threat.

At a rally on Wednesday evening, he said “there were some people who came up to me privately who have lost their jobs in the forestry sector and they don’t see a prospect for the future and it just made me all that much more determined to drive this issue home.”

But Mr. Layton faces two challenges between now and election day.

The first is that the increasing strength of the NDP appears to be coming at the expense of the Bloc and the Liberals, which could allow the Conservatives to capitalize on vote splitting and potentially win a majority – something Mr. Layton clearly does not want.

The second is that support for the New Democrats is traditionally not as solid as it is for other parties and in previous years it has slipped away in the final days of the campaign as voters change allegiances to cast ballots strategically. If the NDP is seen as having the same strength as the Liberals, that may be less of a factor in this election.

“Every time there’s an election we’ve increased our support,” Mr. Layton told reporters. “So we hope that will continue and we hope that this will be a major surge this time.”

The CROP survey of 1,000 Quebeckers online took place between April 13 and 20. Due to its non-random character, there is no margin of error.

The EKOS poll was based on telephone interviews, on landlines and cellphones, using Interactive Voice Response technology. It was conducted between April 18-21 with 1,084 respondents and is considered accurate to within 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. 

- - -

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ndp-surge-in-quebec-is-good-news-for-conservatives/article1994006/

NDP surge in Quebec is good news for Conservatives

RHÉAL SÉGUIN
QUEBEC— Globe and Mail Update
Published Thursday, Apr. 21, 2011 3:14AM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Apr. 21, 2011 7:10AM EDT

Two developments in Quebec since last week’s French-language leaders’ debate could have a substantial impact on the outcome of the May 2 federal election – and both of them are good news for the Conservatives.

Last weekend, for the first time in six years, the Parti Québécois held a convention, where 1,700 delegates gave Leader Pauline Marois a mandate to prepare for another referendum on sovereignty should the PQ win the next provincial election. An unprecedented 93 per cent of péquistes voted to express their confidence in Ms. Marois, who quickly urged her party to begin preparing for the next vote by setting up a “powerful election machine.”

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe delivered a speech at the convention in which he said that with the election of an overwhelming number of Bloc candidates, coupled with an eventual PQ government in Quebec, “everything becomes possible again.”

The reaction from the other parties was swift. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper used the apparent renewed threat of sovereignty as another argument in his call for a majority Conservative government, saying it was the best way to defend against the breakup of the country. And in the same breath, he rejected the need to open a new dialogue on the constitutional front to debate Quebec’s demands.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said the Conservatives were “not equipped” to fight sovereigntists because Tory values contradict those of Quebeckers. Then Mr. Ignatieff argued that Quebeckers weren’t interested in fighting another constitutional battle, let alone one on the subject of independence.

For the longest time, the typical naive reaction in the rest of Canada was that if you ignore it long enough, sovereignty would just fall off the political map. The reaction from the federalist camp reinforced that notion and fuelled Mr. Duceppe’s efforts at galvanizing nationalist voters, many of whom stayed home in the last election.

But the Bloc failed to foresee the sudden emergence of the NDP as a political force in Quebec. Two public-opinion polls this week confirmed the rise of the NDP to second place, ahead of the Liberals and the Conservatives.

And it was fascinating to watch right-wing pundits in Quebec suddenly embrace NDP Leader Jack Layton as an interesting alternative, even though New Democratic policies are light years away from anything they’ve been calling for.

The reason for the ostensible about-face is simple: The more the progressive forces that have normally supported the Bloc Québécois turn to the NDP, the greater the chance for Conservatives in the province to hold on to their seats.

By promoting separatism as a campaign issue, Mr. Duceppe may succeed in persuading some disillusioned sovereigntists to support him again at the ballot box. But the potential gain was being jeopardized by progressive nationalists abandoning the Bloc in favour of the NDP.

It won’t likely translate into more seats for Mr. Layton in Quebec, but it will be enough to split the progressive vote and give the edge to Conservative candidates. And that explains the Bloc’s increasingly nervous reaction to the sudden NDP surge – which is now threatening whatever hopes it had in winning more ridings this time than the 47 out of the 75 Quebec seats it held when the election was called.

- - -

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/layton-the-only-leader-whose-performance-helps-party-poll-says/article1993275/

Layton the only leader whose performance helps party

CAMPBELL CLARK
OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 4:34PM EDT

Only NDP Leader Jack Layton has had an election campaign that’s really helping his party, a new poll suggests.

A Nanos Research poll conducted April 14 to 16 asked 1,200 Canadians whether the party leaders would have a positive or negative impact on their party’s local candidate – the same question the pollster asked in February, before the campaign began. 

It found that of the leaders, only Mr. Layton has really added appeal that helps his local candidates.

The April survey showed 45 per cent believe Mr. Layton will have a positive impact on the NDP candidate in the riding, and 17 per cent say he will have a negative impact. Another 28 per cent believed his impact would be neutral; another 10 per cent were unsure.

That translates to a positive 28-point spread for Mr. Layton now, a big boost over the 8-point lift for his candidates that the poll found in February.

It’s still slightly behind Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe’s Quebec-only plus-33 lift for his candidates, but survey respondents in April saw him as less of a boost than they did in February. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s plus-10 score is almost unchanged from February.

And though Liberal Leader fared better than in February, he’s still a drag for the party’s candidates, with a minus-7 score, as 28 per cent say he will have a positive impact on the local Liberal candidate, and 35 per cent say his impact is negative.

Pollster Nik Nanos said the results show that Jack Layton “is the one for whom the election has been significantly positive” on a leadership level.

That means Canadians can expect to see an NDP campaign message and advertising that focuses heavily on Mr. Layton to help boost his party’s fortunes.

Mr. Layton’s ratings in the Nanos Research Leadership Index – a daily snapshot of how 400 Canadians rate each leader on whether they are trustworthy, competent, and have the best vision for Canada – have also been rising, though he remains behind Mr. Harper.

Mr. Nanos noted that Mr. Layton’s leadership ratings have been boosted by good scores in Quebec, where the party has little history of winning seats – and is still unlikely to be able to convert goodwill to more than a handful of seats. For Mr. Layton, it would be more likely to translate to seats if it came in Ontario or B.C, Mr. Nanos said: “It’s the right movement, in the wrong province.”


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