The Dippers Vote

Ballots have arrived to thousands of NDP members, who now have until March 24th to vote for a leader.

Originally, the field reminded me a lot of the 2006 Liberal leadership race, with the role of the establishment front runner lacking elected experience played by Brian Topp, the polished veteran who wore different colours provincially played by Thomas Mulcair, the bushy haired do-gooder with weak French played by Paul Dewar, and the party stalwart and consensus candidate played by Peggy Nash.

Since then, the race has morphed into something completely different, with most indicators suggesting a pack of four candidates are chasing down Thomas Mulcair.

For an NDP member's take on the field, the Jurist profiles the candidates here, and places Brian Topp atop his ballot. For an outsider's take and Liberal perspective, I offer my thoughts below:


The Most Electable Candidate

If the end goal of the NDP is to form government, Thomas Mulcair is likely the Dipper for the job. He stands the best chance of holding Quebec and, more importantly, is the only candidate who has seriously talked about putting the NDP through the kind of New Labour transformation that is needed to squeeze the Liberals out of existence and form government. Mulcair has criticized Topp's "tax the rich" platform, and has vowed to reduce the influence of unions within the NDP. When was the last time you heard an NDP leadership candidate bragging about how he "said no" to unions?

Mulcair also stands out in the debates as the best politician and best communicator in the field. He's far from perfect - he's arrogant, has been known to mispeak, is supposedly disliked by many in the party, and lacks the good natured charm of Layton. Still, if I were an NDP member with my eyes set on 24 Sussex, I'd vote for Mulcair.

Of course, if I wanted power at all costs, I'm not sure why I'd be in the NDP. So putting on my "idealistic NDPer" hat and realizing I don't want my beloved party to "become the Liberals", I'd probably cast my vote for Paul Dewar. His weak French would likely mean defeat for a good chunk of their Quebec caucus, but Dewar strikes me as the candidate most able to connect with voters - he's not as smooth as Mulcair, but maybe that's a good thing.


My Selfish Partisan Endorsement

As a Liberal partisan hoping to see the Liberals pass the NDP next election, I'd wholeheartedly encourage my NDP friends to vote for Peggy Nash. Based on her background and the language she uses, Nash comes across as the candidate most rooted in the traditional NDP mould. That's good news for her when it comes to winning the race, but not when it comes to expanding the NDP base in a general election. I've also found her performance during the debates and on camera to be rather underwhelming.

Equally underwhelming has been Brian Topp, so I wouldn't at all be disappointed to see him win. Despite being heralded as an "unbeatable juggernaut" within minutes of Layton's death, Topp has shown himself to be a political rookie lacking both Mulcair's polish and Dewar's charm. At every opportunity, Topp has staked out traditional NDP turf, promising to tax the rich and attacking Mulcair as a "Blairite" ready to "sell out NDP principles".


The Most Interesting Outcome

As a political junkie, there's always a part of me rooting for the most interesting outcome. Did I want Ted Morton to become the Alberta PC leader? No...but it would have been interesting. Was I glad that George Bush beat John Kerry in 2004? No...but it made the next four years a lot more interesting.

In this race, the most interesting candidate is Nathan Cullen, who has refused to back down from his proposal to work with the Liberals and Greens in some ridings. While this idea originally sounded like a hail Mary from a long shot candidate, Cullen has performed well in the debates and is the only candidate from BC - a province with 30% of all NDP members. So don't write him off yet.

A win by Cullen would put the question of co-operation with the Liberals back on the table for both parties, lobbing a landmine into next year's Liberal leadership race. I'm far from sold on Cullen's idea, but it would sure would spice up the political landscape.

Who will win the race for Stornoway?

Leadership races are tricky beasts to project, due to their insular nature. There are few meaningful polls, the media is being spun in twelve directions, and the air war rarely corresponds to the ground war. Name recognition and a spiffy social media campaign are a lot less important than having organizers who can deliver hundreds of membership forms.

So when some compared Brian Topp's leadership bid to the Paul Martin 2003 juggernaut back in September, it was premature to say the least. It would be equally premature to call Topp's campaign dead after a few weeks of bad press, when we haven't reached the membership deadline yet.

The fact is, there's very little for anyone (especially for those of us outside the NDP) to go on when it comes to handicapping this race - but here are how the candidates stack up on a few metrics:


The "donations" and "donors" columns come from the most recent fundraising numbers, with "media" merely being the number of news stories that pop up on a google news search under each candidate's name. The "poll" column refers to an IVR poll of NDP members released by Paul Dewar's campaign yesterday. If you don't know what Facebook and Twitter are, then get with the times.

With five different candidates leading these seven metrics, it's hard to know what to think. Clearly, this won't be decided on the first ballot, and we shouldn't be surprised by anything short of an Ashton or Singh victory.

Inspired by Pundits Guide's look back at the 2003 NDP leadership race, I've decided to go back and see how useful these different factors have been in predicting first ballot support in past leadership contests. Behold the table of correlation values!


The numbers are all over the place, but that's to be expected when you consider these races all had different rules, fundraising restrictions, and voting systems.

Still, there are a few take-home messages.

1. MP (or MPP/MLA, as the case may be) endorsements and fundraising totals are both moderately useful at giving a sense of the race, but they're hardly perfect. After all, Stephane Dion was sixth in fundraising in 2006, and you could count Christy Clark's caucus support on one amputated hand in 2011.

2. Social media may be an important element of leadership campaigns, but there isn't enough data out there yet to suggest it's a good barometer of a candidate's strength.

3. Polls among party members are likely the most useful predictor, though they remain rare.

It should be noted that polls among the public are worthless (correlations generally between 0.1 and 0.4), but every leadership poll among party members I've found has tended to stack up fairly well. Still, the Dewar poll should be read with caution given the source - after all, the opportunity for massaging the data exists, and we know he wouldn't have released the numbers if they didn't look good for him. I'd be a lot more confident in the numbers had someone leaked a membership list to a polling company instead.

But at this juncture, Mulcair has a 9-point lead in the campaign's only poll, has three times the MP endorsements of anyone else, and has the most donors, if not the most money raised. He might still be too polarizing a figure to win, but at this point I'd put down $20 (or $10,000 if Mitt Romney comes calling) that Mulcair will be ahead of Brian Topp on the first ballot.

The Value of Female Candidates

The NDP may not believe in using financial incentives to encourage environmentally conscious behaviour, but leadership candidate Paul Dewar has come up with a market solution that incentivizes political parties to run female candidates:

OTTAWA—New Democratic leadership candidate Paul Dewar wants to bring back the political subsidy the Conservative government axed after winning a majority this spring — this time with a feminist catch.

[...]

Dewar proposed that any party that nominated 50 per cent or more women candidates would receive the full $2-per-vote subsidy, parties nominating 40 to 49.9 per cent women candidates would receive $1.75 per vote and those who nominated between 30 and 39.9 per cent would receive $1.50 per vote.

Parties that did not manage to nominate 30 per cent women candidates — the threshold the United Nations set as the minimum benchmark for a critical mass of women in parliament — would receive no subsidy.

Many will either embrace or dismiss this idea outright, but it's likely fair to first look at its impact before passing judgment.

To begin with, every party would find a way to hit the 30% threshold - they'd be foolhardy not to. Using the last election as a case study, the Conservatives would stand to receive close to 9 million dollars a year had they run 25 more women. Quite simply, they'd find a way to hit that threshold, even if it meant paying for a few backbencher sex change operations.

Once a party hits the 30% mark, they'd get an extra 25 cents a vote for every additional 31 women they run. Again, basing our math on the last election, that values every additional female candidate at $188,000 for the Tories, $145,000 for the NDP, and $90,000 for the Liberals (over four years). That's a pretty strong incentive, and I have no doubt Dewar's plan would lead to more women running for office.

Of course, as with any incentive scheme, there are unintended consequences. To begin with, the easiest way for a party like the Liberals to cash in on that 90k a candidate would be to run nothing but women across Alberta and in other unwinnable ridings. Luckily for the Liberals, there are plenty of unwinnable ridings to choose from.

Other parties trying to cash in may not be quite so lucky. To reach these quotas, many parties (especially the Conservatives) would likely resort to appointing dozens of female candidates in unheld ridings. Sure, having more women in politics is an admirable goal, but is it worth overruling the will of local riding associations? And what about the lack of aboriginals, visible minorities, and youth in politics? This proposal does little for them.

I think there's some merit in an incentive structure that encourages women to participate in politics, but simply setting a threshold on the number of female candidates a party runs is the wrong way to go about it.

A more modest, but more effective, solution might be increasing the rebate female candidates get on election expenses. Right now, any candidate who gets 10% of the vote, gets 15% of their expenses paid back to them. Why not double or triple the refund for women (and other under represented groups)? That would remove some of the financial barriers women face, encouraging quality female candidates to seek the nomination in winnable ridings.

On the other side, Dewar's plan would lead to nothing more than a slew of women appointed in unwinnable ridings.

The Race for Stornoway

The NDP leadership race appears to have solidified, with nine candidates vying for the keys to Stornoway.

While I doubt any of the contenders are causing Stephen Harper sleepless nights, it's a diverse field which is good news for the Dippers. Every true-orange New Democrat will be able to find a candidate to their liking, and a lot of membership forms will get sold. Nearly every imaginable demographic is represented...all that's missing is Pat Martin to provide comic relief.

It's too early to seriously handicap the field, but a nine candidate field and a 5-month race means it would be incredibly premature to declare this a Topp-Mulcair showdown. Someone will emerge from the pack to challenge the frontrunners, and it's likely to come down to second and third choices.

Pundits Guide appears to be the place to be for NDP leadership news, while Far and Wide puts the candidates under a Liberal lens.

Here, I present a brief overview of the field:


Topp of the Pack

Brian Topp: The media crowned him as the race's frontrunner within hours of Jack Layton's death, though that may have simply been a case of journalists unable to resist a good pun. Topp has the most establishment support, but as Alison Redford and Christy Clark recently showed, that may not necessarily be an asset.

Topp has released a "tax the rich" proposal which should be popular with NDP members, but it's not without risks. I can guarantee eight other leadership camps will be whispering about the Tory advertising onslaught this would bring about, in an effort to brand Topp as unelectable.


The Challenger

Thomas Mulcair: The longtime NDP Dauphin has had a rocky start to the campaign, spending more time complaining about the rules than giving Dippers a reason to vote for him. Still, Mulcair is experienced and is the party's best bet at holding Quebec (at least according to Thomas Mulcair).

Unlike Topp, Mulcair's pitch has been directed more at the general public than the NDP faithful, promising to ween the NDP off their union dependence. He's clearly trying to portray himself as the candidate most likely to lead the NDP to the promised land. That's not a bad pitch - even though federal NDP members might be less concerned with power than most, it's a message that should resonate with provincial Dippers in BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia who have tasted power. Hell, who am I kidding - everyone wants to be in power.


Dark Horses

Paul Dewar: Dewar would probably be my choice at this point if I had a bit more orange in my veins but I'm always a sucker for an underdog. He's a good communicator, though some questions remain about his french.

His urban strategy is smart politics, since that's where the votes are in a one-member-one-vote leadership race.


Peggy Nash: She's relatively well know and relatively well liked, and I imagine she has a good network of NDP, union, and activist contacts to solicit for support. I can't imagine anyone is overly excited by her, but she's the highest profile woman in the race and might have some appeal as a consensus candidate.


Nathan Cullen: His proposal to work with the Liberals in some ridings will help him stand out, but it might make him too polarizing a figure to get the second a third ballot support he'd need to win. He has a strong social media presence so far, and all indications are he'll get his fair share of media coverage.

Cullen also has geography working in his favour. He's the lone BC candidate, and one-third of all current NDP members are from that province.


Long Shots

Robert Chisolm: On paper, Chisolm is a strong candidate - he's a former union leader and former leader of the Nova Scotia NDP. He has the ability to clean up in Nova Scotia, but lack of name recognition will be an obstacle elsewhere. He's going to need to find an issue to call his own, to distinguish himself from the crowded field.


Romeo Saganash: Saganash was the first candidate out of the gate, and is intriguing enough to warrant a close look - he's from Quebec, is fluent in English and French, and has been actively involved with the Cree Regional Authority. I'll confess to knowing little about him, but if his political skills are polished, he's likely to get media attention and could be this season's break-out star.


Martin Singh: Singh is likely the least known candidate in the contest and doesn't have the House of Commons platform to raise his profile. I can't see him winning, but his pro-business stance could help him stand out.

Singh is from Nova Scotia, but launched his campaign in Brampton - his support in the Sikh community could make him a formidable threat in a one-member one-vote contest, and I wouldn't at all be surprised to see him in the top 5 or 6 on the first ballot. Growing from there will be more challenging.


Niki Ashton: Ashton is expected to declare shortly, and it's no secret this will be more about raising her profile than about winning. At 29, her support will come predominantly from youth and from her home province of Manitoba. If she does well, she could position herself for a future run in 10 or 20 years.

In leadership news...

...Justin Trudeau won't run, but Thomas Mulcair will.

So this sets us up for a Mulcair-Topp battle for Stornoway. All early indications are that Topp and Mulcair will play nice with each other, while their supporters mercilessly smear each other in the press.

After watching Liberals do this very thing for years, I'd caution against this war-by-proxy. You'd be amazed how many people pick a candidate to support just because someone else's supporters come across as complete assholes. By sending their supporters out to do the dirty work, Mulcair and Topp are opening the door for someone like with Paul Dewar or Nathan Cullen to come "up the middle" and win.

I know it sounds unlikely now given all the media attention on Topp and Mulcair, but this is a long race, and things like this have been known to happen before.

Where do they go from here?

After a week of tributes and mourning, the talk in Ottawa is sure to turn to "what now" this week, as the NDP begins the process of replacing Jack Layton.

Of course, some did not wait that long. Anonymous NDP insiders let it be known that Brian Topp was the "front runner" to replace Layton the day after he died, showing us that anonymous NDP insiders are as reliable and as politically astute as anonymous Liberal insiders. Seriously, it boggles my mind how anyone could think a move like that would help Topp.

Since leadership speculation is now in full swing, here's my run-down of the prospective field. Keep in mind, Layton was elected straight from City Council, so the NDP may very well opt for an outsider again.


Brian Topp

PROS: Played a key role in Layton's revival of the NDP. Very punable name (“Topp spins scandal”, “Topp on top”, “Topp falls to bottom of pack”...the possibilities are limitless for headline writers).

CONS: No elected experience.



Thomas Mulcair

PROS: The party's most respected MP in Quebec. Like Layton and most good socialists, has facial hair.

CONS: Unlike Layton, has never smiled in his life.



Gary Doer

PROS: Accomplished, moderate, well spoken

CONS: Has said he won't run. I believe we have found the NDP's very own Frank McKenna.



Bill Blaikie

PROS: Meets facial hair requirement. Well respected. Experienced.

CONS: Retired.



Paul Dewar

PROS: Comes from deep NDP roots, and has shown himself to be a strong performer in Ottawa.

CONS: Less name recognition than Brian Topp.



Anne McGrath

PROS: Close to Jack Layton. Comes across well on TV.

CONS: Fun fact about Anne McGrath - she once ran for the Communist Party. Didn't know that? Well, you will after the 200th CPC attack ad on the subject airs.



Megan Leslie

PROS: Young, articulate, and seen as a rising star on Parliament Hill

CONS: Fun fact about Megan Leslie - there are no fun facts about Megan Leslie.



Ruth-Ellen Brosseau

PROS: Name recognition, and media enjoy writing about her. Given her complete lack of interest in politics before being elected, odds are she has never been a member of the Bloc Quebecois. Luckiest person on the face of the earth.

CONS: Weak french.



Rocco Rossi

PROS: Described by Rocco Rossi as a star candidate. Will be looking for work come October. A Forum poll shows him as the frontrunner in the NDP race.

CONS: Hasn’t switched to the NDP – yet.



For a more serious look from someone inside the NDP, Greg Fingas has the run-down on 20 possible candidates.