Winnipeg North byelection: What happened? What now?

Ken Burch wrote:

Actually, if he'd written off Dauphin(which was always known to be totally unwinnable)and focused on Winnipeg North, if might well have made the difference, given the closeness of the margin and the low turnout that caused the NDP defeat.  What was the point of his ever going to Dauphin anyway?

We're talking about two different things here - a leader making a visit and the extent to which an entire party apparatus does or does not pour maximum resources into a riding. There is a party organization in Dauphin and the NDP holds a couple of provincial seats in that riding. The NDP also wanted to make it clear that it was not writing off all of rural Canada and that even after the whole gun registry kefuffle - there was still room for growth for the NDP in rural Canada (and given the 10% increase in the popular vote in Dauphin - that turned out to be true). If Layton had never so much as set foot in Dauphin - we never would have heard the end of it from other people on babble about how "Toronto Jack" (sic.) was writing off rural Canada and couldn't be bothered to even set foot in Dauphin when a byelection was taking place. There are a lot of seats in northern Ontario and in northern/remote parts of the west that the NDP either currently holds or has designs on - you have to show the flag in Dauphin as part of that strategy and in fact when layton visited Dauphin it resulted in some good media coverage of the fact that he was talking about the wheat board and agricultural issues etc...

Debater wrote:

Well, electionprediction.org looks like it was reluctant to rush into calling Winnipeg North (or Vaughan), but faced a lot of criticism for waiting it out, and so in the end it predicted WN for the NDP and Vaughan for the Cons.  I noticed on a previous thread that Stockholm was very critical of Milton Chan for waiting a long time to call the ridings.  Of course, in the end the Liberals won in WN and nearly won in Vaughan, so it looks like Milton Chan was right for being cautious in his predictions afterall.

Stockholm also claimed that Milton Chan is Gerard Kennedy's EA, which I find little amusing given that he is an uber Iggy loyalist.  I doubt Iggy has enough control over his caucus to "annoint" EA in rivals' office like Harper does. In fact it is no secret (it is on his facebook status, and he does have a good number of NDPer "friends") that he was the whiz kid that Iggy dispatched to Winnipeg to run the Lamoureux's eday operation. (Though just some perspective, he also ran Adam Giambrone's eday when he first won a few years back.)

It's odd the way the Conservative results ended up, because Harper even took the trouble of personally going out to Winnipeg North during the campaign, which he apparently has not done before.

Yeah, what was the purpose of the Cons having a candidate who refused to attend the debates or be interviewed?

All I know is based on one time that I saw the Tory candidate interviewed on the CBC.  Her ability to communicate in English, and to formulate statements which would explain her policy seemed extremely limited. The interview asked her why she believed she would be better for "law and order." apparently 90% of her platform, and beyond a few mumble words, she had no answer.  Even hating Tories, as I do, it was painful to watch the poor person, struggle to explain herself, and realizing that she was failing.

I suppose she could expain herself in her first language, but iit was easy to understand her reluctance to enter an English debate

Banjo wrote:

All I know is based on one time that I saw the Tory candidate interviewed on the CBC.  Her ability to communicate in English, and to formulate statements which would explain her policy seemed extremely limited. The interview asked her why she believed she would be better for "law and order." apparently 90% of her platform, and beyond a few mumble words, she had no answer.  Even hating Tories, as I do, it was painful to watch the poor person, struggle to explain herself, and realizing that she was failing.

I suppose she could expain herself in her first language, but iit was easy to understand her reluctance to enter an English debate

You wonder why the Conservatives would select a candidate that wasn't really comfortable with the language or with speaking to people.

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

There is an important tactical lesson here and this loss may save the NDP other seats later.

The party failed to recognize allocate the resources needed to win the seat-- that much is obvious as the campaign there was not nearly as strong as the party is capable of and the result close enough that it is obvious this made a difference.

Because years of rightward drift, mixed messaging about the parties political stands, and less than principled governance by the party when it is in power are demolishing the parties base, the base being the activist core that has propelled the party along despite a hostile media environment. The repsonse to the hostile media has been to try and appease it, and in so doing the NDP has adopted the paradigm that the media projects.