As the week of March 7—11 that maybe was or was not in Canadian federal politics closes, two new polls on party standings have thrown some almost abrupt cold water on the more or less enthused speculation about such themes as “can opposition get Harper on abuse of power instead of budget?” – that I […]
The Globe and Mail has just published some fresh but rather desultory seat projections for a next Canadian federal election, if it were held more or less right now. They “are based on a weighted average of three recent polls conducted by Angus-Reid, EKOS Research and Ipsos-Reid between Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, and including […]
SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 2010. 1:15 AM. [UPDATED JUNE 14 BELOW.] A few of us came into the office on a Saturday night, to catch up on some World Cup TV, far from the madding crowds at home. One of us was also catching up on the latest Afghan detainee documents developments in the alleged nations’ […]
British election: I can’t remember a British election that has won so much attention this side of the Atlantic, in both Canada and the United States. The national results show Conservatives with 36.1% of the popular vote and 306 seats, Labour with 29.0% and 258 seats, Liberal Democrats 23.0% and only 57 seats, and Others […]
Some will view today’s EKOS poll on Canadian federal politics, for the CBC, as just further evidence that a snap spring election in the true north remains somewhat less than probable – even if Conservative minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper is still “refusing to cower before the new clout of his parliamentary [majority] opposition.” (In […]
The polling evidence for the impact of the so-called Guergis-Jaffer scandal on party standings in Canadian federal politics is … well, volatile at best, it would seem. For the moment, in any case. Who knows just what the next half-hour may bring? For the deep background note the two counterweights items below: “Misadventures of Miss […]
The theory that consultants of any description will always at least try to give their clients what they want is nicely stiffened by a new “Harris-Decima survey for the [unabashedly right-wing] Manning Centre” (named after Preston and his father, etc, etc). This work of applied social science “conducted through phone interviews with 1,000 adult Canadians […]
So … it could be that minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s late winter 2010 Con game is working at last. The death of the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was tragic. And the failure of the fourth indoor torch arm to rise was vaguely unfortunate. But otherwise the official opening of the Vancouver Winter Olympics was […]
You of course hear nothing about Canadian politics via the ordinary media in Florida, where I spent the counterweights late January prorogue. And I didn’t take a laptop computer with me. On the theory that a week is a long time in politics, one of my first tasks on returning to the northern deep freeze […]
[UPDATED OCTOBER 6, 9]. Does history repeat itself? Well, probably not. Or at least not exactly. But it is still sometimes interesting in any case. Yesterday Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government officially called four Canadian federal by-elections for November 9 – for two ridings in Quebec (Hochelaga and Montmagny—L’Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup), and one each in British Columbia […]
