| rendo said: There's also a great chance Harper won't either. This was his ONLY chance to win a majority. You think people want to vote for a party that calls an election a year early, predicts a minority, GETS the minority and accomplishes what? Draining the public coffers a few hundred million? Yay! NDP made great progress. My constituent STEAMROLLED the Liberal incumbent. I'm excited for the future of the NDP. Socialism ftw. |
I wouldn't say this was his only chance to win a majority ...
Canadians (in general) are fairly moderate in the political spectrum, and as long as the conservatives stick with the center-right politics Stephen Harper has been following (and the Liberals, NDP, and Green Party stay on the left side of the political spectrum) vote splitting will ensure that the Conservatives will have a very good opportunity to form the government.
With this in mind, whether the Conservatives can win a minority or a majority will depend on two things; whether the Liberals run on a center-left or a true-left platform, and whether the Bloc can be effective at preventing a breakthrough in Qubec. If the Liberals choose a leader who makes a move to the left (Bob Rae) the Conservatives only have to follow a true centerist platform to caputre the more moderate Liberals and Red-Tories and gain a majority; the risk here is they can't alienate their base in Alberta for fear of a grassroots movement which can split the vote on the right. At the same time, if the Conservatives can weaken the Bloc's hold on Qubec (through returning power to the provinces) even fairly small gains in the province will push them to a majority.
Edit: On top of this, from my understanding the only time that a political party formed the government in Canada that didn't go into the election with the most money was right after radio was initially used in political campaigns. With the way the Liberals changed campaign finance they (effective) ensured that once the Conservatives formed the government they would always have (much) more money than the other political parties.
