Not So Super Weekend Leadership News
1. Joan Bryden reports on the massive recount in Quebec which, one imagines, will trim a few delegates off the totals of the three front runners in that province.
More alarmingly, the story claims that only 10% of Liberal Party members voted at their delegate meetings. With 37000 card carrying Liberals in Quebec, that means there were only around 3700 votes cast last weekend. By comparison, in Alberta there were 3299 votes (plus the aboriginal ballot). Given that Alberta has 37% of the ridings and 0% of the MPs Quebec has, I'd say there's a lot of work which needs to be done rebuilding the Liberal Party in Quebec. On a more partisan nature, I'd also say that it shows none of the candidates were overly successful at winning the hearts and minds of Quebecers over during this leadership race and that there will be big challenges for whomever wins. While Kennedy may have bombed in Quebec, the truth of the matter is, so did everyone.
2. Despite winning BC, Bob Rae's campaign manager from that province, Mason Loh, has resigned after it was revealed that 37 signatures had been forged on delegate forms. While the Rae team will be allowed to run alternates in most of those ridings, it may still cost them a handful of delegates in Montreal.
3. Gerard Kennedy gave a great interview on The Current which everyone can listen to here. Seriously - check it out if you're a delegate for this convention.
4. This is really interesting. Infoscape is tracking what bloggers are saying about the Liberal leadership race. Among the things they're tracking is the tone of coverage on the frontrunnes - as you can see, it's been a good week for Iggy:
They've also got graphs on the amount of volume of coverage candidates are getting on the blogs and in the media. For comparison's sake, I'll include the blog/media percent of coverage for all eight candidates here:
Ignatieff 25% blog, 24% media
Rae 20% / 28%
Dion 15% / 24%
Kennedy 13% / 6%
Volpe 9% / 5%
Dryden 8% / 5%
Brison 6% / 4%
Findlay 4% / 4%
I generally don't like to complain about media biases and all that, but given that Kennedy and Dion came out of last weekend neck and neck for the number of delegates, does it strike anyone as odd that Dion has gotten four times as much mainstream media coverage as Kennedy?
More alarmingly, the story claims that only 10% of Liberal Party members voted at their delegate meetings. With 37000 card carrying Liberals in Quebec, that means there were only around 3700 votes cast last weekend. By comparison, in Alberta there were 3299 votes (plus the aboriginal ballot). Given that Alberta has 37% of the ridings and 0% of the MPs Quebec has, I'd say there's a lot of work which needs to be done rebuilding the Liberal Party in Quebec. On a more partisan nature, I'd also say that it shows none of the candidates were overly successful at winning the hearts and minds of Quebecers over during this leadership race and that there will be big challenges for whomever wins. While Kennedy may have bombed in Quebec, the truth of the matter is, so did everyone.
2. Despite winning BC, Bob Rae's campaign manager from that province, Mason Loh, has resigned after it was revealed that 37 signatures had been forged on delegate forms. While the Rae team will be allowed to run alternates in most of those ridings, it may still cost them a handful of delegates in Montreal.
3. Gerard Kennedy gave a great interview on The Current which everyone can listen to here. Seriously - check it out if you're a delegate for this convention.
4. This is really interesting. Infoscape is tracking what bloggers are saying about the Liberal leadership race. Among the things they're tracking is the tone of coverage on the frontrunnes - as you can see, it's been a good week for Iggy:
They've also got graphs on the amount of volume of coverage candidates are getting on the blogs and in the media. For comparison's sake, I'll include the blog/media percent of coverage for all eight candidates here:
Ignatieff 25% blog, 24% media
Rae 20% / 28%
Dion 15% / 24%
Kennedy 13% / 6%
Volpe 9% / 5%
Dryden 8% / 5%
Brison 6% / 4%
Findlay 4% / 4%
I generally don't like to complain about media biases and all that, but given that Kennedy and Dion came out of last weekend neck and neck for the number of delegates, does it strike anyone as odd that Dion has gotten four times as much mainstream media coverage as Kennedy?
posted by calgarygrit at
11:39 p.m.
19 Comments:
It might be better for Kennedy if he doesn't get mainstream coverage. Margaret Wente revealed in the Globe that Kennedy arranged new contracts with Ontario teachers, but didn't give the school boards the money to pay, handing Kennedy's successor a ticking time bomb.
By
nuna d. above, at 12:23 a.m.
3cad3What story has had the most impact on you recently?
Amish school shooting 49%
Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan 19%
N. Korea threatens to test nuclear weapons 9%
Montreal college shooting 8%
U.S. sex scandal over congressional pages 2%
*Liberal leadership race 1%
Montreal viaduct collapse 6%
Britain foils airline bombing 5%
Total Votes for this Question: 1108
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/polls/poll_result.html
By
wilson, at 1:14 a.m.
The rise in Kennedy's negative coverage seems to co-relate with superweekend. I read this as a testament to how well Kennedy did.
By
Steve V, at 8:53 a.m.
The Quebec numbers are all the more disappointing considering the party didn't have enough people to man the polls, so many used mail-in ballots instead. Imagine if people actually had to show up.
By
Steve V, at 9:02 a.m.
When the final Quebec numbers come out, it will tend to show the need for new blood in Quebec and the failure of the current organizers (who have chosen not to support Kennedy).
Ridings where noone voted, ridings which elect 14 delegates with 6 votes. 3,700 votes in total, and most of them in a few ridings.
If Dion and Ignatieff want to say this shows they have support in Quebec, let them.
By
Stephen Jenuth, at 9:29 a.m.
Kennedy's media challenge seems to be that he has kept his Ontario cabinet job media people and bolstered them with other Ontario political media folk. Unlike every other candidate in the race - save perhaps Hall Findlay - this means his team does not have relationships with the press who are reporting on this and doesn't know how best to push buttons and grease wheels of the Ottawa press corps.
It is a real shame and has been a huge strategic error on the part of the GK campaign. If there is one area where national experience is most important it is media relations. They should at the very have media people based in Ottawa.
By
nbpolitico, at 10:56 a.m.
peter; I'm still a little uneasy about 1 member, 1 vote since it would really shift the focus to Toronto and the mass sign-ups which go on there. Maybe there should be some sort of rule that you need at least X votes in a riding per delegate (so you don't get the 2 votes for 14 delegates we saw in some Quebec ridings).
By
calgarygrit, at 1:27 p.m.
"given that Kennedy and Dion came out of last weekend neck and neck for the number of delegates, does it strike anyone as odd that Dion has gotten four times as much mainstream media coverage as Kennedy?"
Not really.
Dion has served in multiple federal cabinet positions for years and was THE guy for post-referendum issues. Whereas Kennedy, though very experienced in a lot of ways, has only been a provincial cabinet minister for less than a term.
That the media would focus on Dion prior to having hard numbers on the relative support of candidates is not surprising at all.
If, now knowing the extent of Kennedy's support, the national media continues to ignore him, that would be unfair.
By
Matthew, at 1:54 p.m.
Wow, interesting numbers.
I'm inclined to agree with you, man - it does look like everyone bombed out in Quebec.
And - pardon my English, but just what the fuck is going on with Alberta getting so royally screwed on say/votes yet again?
Honestly, I'm amazed (and grateful) Alberta sticks it through with us - their charitable spirit to Canada knows, it seems, no bounds.
(I say that based vastly more on the House of Commons than this leadership race, of course)
By
Jacques Beau Vert, at 3:09 p.m.
There is a lesson to be learned from the leadership selection.
Its not that we should move to one member, one vote; or that we should abandon weighting by constituency.
Weighting is a valid exercise. In a general election, you have to get votes from everywhere and elections are effectively weighted. So our leadership should be also.
On the other hand, the rotten boroughs of Quebec ought not to rule either.
I would (and probably will) propose a constitutional amendment which would provide that the maximum number of delegates are 14, but that the number a particular constituency gets is the number of persons who vote divided by 15 and rounded to the next whole number.
Thus a constituency like mine where 253 people actually came out to vote would get the full complement of 14 delegates. A constituency like 2 in Quebec were 0 voted, would get 0; and a constituency where 6 people voted would be treated like it should be and get one delegate.
I expect that such an approach would have trimed the Quebec vote down to about 246 delegates, which is not completely out of line.
It would also have reduced some Alberta constituencies, but that this not wrong IMHO.
By
Stephen Jenuth, at 3:33 p.m.
yyclaw:
That's a really interesting proposal, and would probably sort out the problems with delegates per vote across the country. That said, delegates per vote is not the major problem. It's weighted out of recognition that the leader has to be able to develop support that is spread across ridings, not all focussed in one place. The delegate per vote discrepencies are a trade-off.
What doesn't have any justifying trade-off is the cost of attending. The Liberal Party tries to make this easier, and does a lot, but there's only so much they can do until people can vote for the leader the same way they vote for MP.
The regressive effects of the cost of national conventions is the reason for calling for a weighted one-member one-vote system.
By
Gauntlet, at 5:15 p.m.
re: Alberta getting screwed - That's only compared to Quebec. The numbers in Ontario are probably 20 votes per delegate (just a wild guess on my part).
Matthew; I think those media numbers ARE for the week after DEMs.
By
calgarygrit, at 6:32 p.m.
Interesting.
The other thing I note is that Rae receives much less blog coverage than he does media coverage.
It's not particularly strong evidence, but it's consistent with the view that Rae's campaign is fuelled mainly by the media, not an outpouring of grassroots Liberal support.
By
Winnipeg Liberal, at 1:29 a.m.
bob gets some share of blog coverage ---
chuckercanuck.blogspot.com
By
Tarkwell Robotico, at 7:43 a.m.
One member - one vote is really pretty simple.
308 ridings: each is allocated 100 votes.
Example 1: candidate A receives 100 votes, candidate B receives 50 votes- A is allocated 67, B is allocated 33.
Example 2: less than a hundred ballots cast.
A receives 35, B receives 10
only these ballots are counted.
By
Don, at 11:24 a.m.
Kennedy gets a nice spread in the Toronto star today.
By
Anonymous, at 12:49 p.m.
Amigo, when will you get it straight: THE MAN DON'T SPEAK FRENCH. HE AIN'T GONNA WIN. NO LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA CONVENTION WILL EVER ELECT A MAN WHO CAN'T SPEAK FRENCH. And stop bullshitting yourselves - he isn't 'bilingual'. That's why people who haven't drunk the kool-aid aren't taking him seriously as a contender, and it's probably the main reason that only Ignatieff, Dion and Rae are getting a lot of coverage.
Think long-term. Maybe after Ignatieff retires, and Kennedy has had a few years in federal Parliament, he'll be a serious contender for the leadership in the future -- assuming he does the homework and learns to speak French in the meantime (I think he will).
Though I personally hope it'll be a woman next time, all other things being equal...
By
Jay, at 7:23 p.m.
The interesting thing to me about those numbers is the dichotomy between MSM and bloggers.
Not that we in anyway represent the "grassroots", but we are more insiders than the media so there may be something interesting to note about media created phenomenon vs. grassroots when you think that Rae and Dion have a far higher MSM rating than blogger rating, Iggy ends up even and Kennedy has the reverse.
By
Ted Betts, at 7:55 p.m.
Excellent point CG, I do think everyone bombed in Quebec.
Winnepeg Liberal: I think that's a fair comment in reality. I've noticed it as well that Rae doesn't seem to have very much blog support going for him. But considering how much support he received at the convention, it might be that blogs aren't representative of the 'grassroots'.
By
Eric, at 3:11 p.m.
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