Monday, November 29, 2010

Jack Layton The Biggest Loser

Well, the Tories pulled off an improbable upset in the Liberal stronghold of Vaughan in Monday byelections, but the day's biggest loser was NDP leader Jack Layton. The Liberals pulled off an even more significant upset in Winnipeg North. The Dippers beat the Liberals by 54% in that riding in 2008, and despite Layton's "home heating tax" commercial blitz suffered a devastating defeat.

That being said, the Liberals can hardly claim any significant victory. The Tories won 2 of 3 byelections and were clearly the big winners on Monday. Considering that roughly half of the Liberal caucus hold seats in the Greater Toronto Area, they have to be concerned that the city is shifting the right. Some voices on the left tried to argue that the election of Rob Ford was an "anti-establishment" vote and therefore bad news for the federal Tories. Well Vaughan just voted for the establishment in a Liberal stronghold. That disproves the "good news for Rob Ford is bad news for Stephen Harper" Theory and suggests that Toronto is shifting right.

With the bad news of losing Vaughan, the unexpected win in Winnipeg North might just save Iggy's job. The Liberals aren't the big winners, but certainly are not the biggest losers. Jack Layton just took a hard shot on the chin. They spent all that money on a national ad blitz with Jack having a one on one with Canadians about their home heating bills with "send Stephen Harper a message" as the money shot. Instead, voters sent Jack Layton a message.

10 comments:

  1. The Liberals can slice and spin it any way that they want. The Liberals losing Vaughan hurt more than it helped them to win Winnipeg North. Elections (and majorites) are often due to a large part won in Southern Ontario. Upset that it was to the NDP, all the Liberals won in Manitoba was a seat. In Southern Ontario, there was a lot more to lose. After the results of the Toronto municipal election, and now Vaughn, there is MUCH more in play than there was before. Toronto Liberals are likely to be ****ing their beds tommorrow morning.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Where was the NDP vote in Vaughn? One point seven??? Did the entire left go to Genco?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love it when Jack gets his knuckles rapped.

    With these results, and a majority in the Senate maybe we'll see some good things coming out of Parliament in the next six months or so.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I just saw the dead-tree Toronto Star. I knew immediately that the Libs had got slammed in Vaughan. Why? Because in the pivotal region of Vaughan, the Libs lost. Was that above the fold on page one? Nope. Was it even mentioned on page one? Nope again. Not until page 4 did I see that Fantino had won "by a whisker". Okay, 49% to 46% is not a landslide. Nor is it a whisker. (Whiskers, as the bard might have said, should be made of sterner stuff.) As Anon said, the NDP vote went strategic. It was a stunning 1.7%. The scared leftards bolted to the Libs!

    Who, if anyone, was manning the good ship Liberal in Vaughan? Why did they let Justin - who if his last name were anything else - would still be teaching school in BC, waltz in and declare that Fantino was a charter of rights destroyer? Did he not get the memo that Iggy had personally asked Fantino to run for the Liberals?

    ReplyDelete
  5. The results:
    Tories win one seat, hold on to another.
    Liberals lose one, take one from the NDP.
    NDP lose.
    The Bloc still irrelevant.

    Regionally taking a look at the results.
    A left leaning riding in Winnipeg dumps one leftwing MP for another. A liberal riding goes to the conservatives in the Ontario liberal stronghold around the GTA.
    The left lost ground and traded shots.

    The big picture:

    The Conservatives gained a seat in the House.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "Did the entire left go to Genco"

    I believe the Coalition was alive and well in Vaughn last night....vote for the most winnable candidate against a Conservative.

    Watch for this to happen in many, many races in the next election.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I think we have to figure out what the definition of 'establishment' is. Rob Ford's win was certainly a vote against the establishment in power, the socialist left represented by David Miller. And though George Smitherman also ran against that establishment, ironically as being from downtown he still represented that establishment. I'm betting many people saw Smitherman as a continuation of Miller and voted for Ford because of that.

    As for Vaughan, who indeed voted for the 'establishment', if you consider the incumbent government as the establishment. But what if you consider the establishment as the entity that held the area politically for two decades? In this case, that was the Liberals. The Liberals were defending home turf they had walked away with in every election since before I came to Canada, so I would argue that in Vaughan the Liberals were the establishment to beat. The difference between last night and previous elections is the Tories took this one seriously, and that's why they got and ran Fantino.

    ReplyDelete
  8. As Ibbitson suggested in his column election outcomes are not determined in Manitoba. Ontario is the big prize and the Libs are under assault in the 905 with the 416 starting to collapse around them. I hope Mark Holland loses. He is one of the most obnoxious MPs in the House. The Conservatives have a good candidate, Chris Alexander, running against him and given the latter's Afghanistan credentials he should beat Holland. Lets hope.

    ReplyDelete
  9. The NDP loses one to the Libs.
    The Libs lose one to the Conservatives.
    And the Conservatives easily hold their seat.

    These results make it easy to tell which way the winds blowing.

    ReplyDelete
  10. So what is the 'die-hard liberal socialist media plan to do now. They can't attact Layton because he has a hold on them through 'coalition', so the only person the media plan to attack is Fantino.

    Gimbol, The bloc may be irrelevant but not in this case since they are part of the coalition which they expect to get their fair share of the prize package.
    .

    ReplyDelete