The writ has been dropped. Not that is matters as the parties have been campaigning for months.
The election will probably follow the usual course.
The parties will stump for the next three weeks or so. Not much will change in the outlook for each party in the public polls. Part of that will be because public opinion is like the Titanic. It does not turn that quickly. Another part of that is the media needs a horse race in order to keep people interested. If they start publishing polls and stories indicating one party is taking a substantial lead all of the money they will be spending on the election will not be recouped. Incidentally, this is why the media is speculating so hard about a minority government. They did the same thing in 2015 but when I watched the election night coverage I did not see any media commentators showing surprise at the Liberals winning a majority government. Journalist are generally dishonest, they are totally lacking in scruples and they do not know the meaning of the phrase "intellectual consistency" but they are not stupid so I suspect more than a few who are pushing "this is a very close race" narrative know that this is not really true.
Then we will have the debates. That is when more of the electorate will become engaged. The various news outlets will make all sorts of claims about who "won" the debates in order to influence the election outcome and to continue to keep people interested but all of that will generally be meaningless because the election from that point forward will come down to one question.
Do Canadians want a change in government or not?
In the days between the debates and election day Canadians will begin to make that decision and they will answer it definitively when they mark their ballots on October 21.
My guess is the answer to that question is "No.". The Opposition Parties and many in the media will be trying to convince Canadian otherwise but Canadians have demonstrated again and again that they can think for themselves.
I have stated in this space before that the Liberals are the prohibitive favourite to win the election and that the most likely outcome is a Liberal majority government. I have not seen anything over the last four years, including the last eight months, to change that assessment.
It is politics so there is alot of room for surprises over the coming weeks and/or I could be completely wrong in my assessment. If that is the case then sobeit. It is not like have not been wrong before
However, if there are no surprises I suspect the Liberals will be celebrating another majority victory on October 21.
1 comment:
And if it does turn out to be a Liberal majority, the "obsessive progressives" will continue stamping their feet about "muh electoral reform". Reform, huh, that's an interesting word -- Harper knew how to unite the right when he authorized the wholesale lobotomy of the former PCs. Why don't the useless NDP and Greens quit their whining, fold the small tents and just join the Liberals to become Canada's equivalent of the AOC wing of the Democrats? Or just be nonpartisan activist groups, since that's basically all they are anyway.
Heck, the Greens are closer to the PCs than the Liberals. Instead of targeting disaffected progressives, they should offer themselves as the main alternative for small-c conservatives who prefer stronger fiscal constraints and market-oriented policies, but believe in climate change and don't hate minorities or believe in conspiracy theories.
Then again, in terms of conspiracy theories, the Greens have their own share of "natural living" kooks promoting nonsense about water fluoridation, anti-vaxer hysteria, and wireless Internet causing cancer. The main difference being that when the compost conservatives say such-and-such is making the frogs turn gay, they don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. So might as well infiltrate or splinter the Conservatives into one camp of fiscal belt-tighteners that outright distrusts science and hates gay frogs, and another camp of fiscal belt-tighteners that's more wishy-washy on science than they might otherwise appear, but thinks gay frogs are cool. The CPC will keep the chocolate milk vote while the Greens take the vegans.
In any event, change comes from within, not banging on the windows or otherwise throwing a petulant tantrum. Circular firing squads only benefit the lockstep fascists. I'm so sick of the "PropRep or bust" meme and wish they'd shut up about it. All or nothing usually leads to nothing. There are more important priorities than owning the (neo)libs.
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