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CKA Super Elite
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:08 pm
 


Seeing as electoral reform is a long ways off, but the next election isn't, an idea ocurred to me of a way to work within the system we have. Take two ridings, preferrably close together, one in which the NDP has done well but not won in the past and has a strong candidate, and one in which the Liberals have done well but not won in the past and have a strong candidate. The NDP and Liberals agree not to field candidates against each other in those ridings.

For example: In Edmonton Centre in the last election, McLellan lost, but would have won if all the NDP votes went to her. In Edmonton Strathcona, Linda Duncan lost but would have won if all the Liberal votes went for her.

So: NDP don't run in Ed Centre, and Lib don't run in Ed Strathcona.

It'd be win-win, and we could bring some colour to this monochrome province.

Thoughts?


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:19 pm
 


sounds like a great idea on paper, but not sure if it could work in the real world.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:57 pm
 


It won't work. The Liberals would have to vitually give up their presence in Manitoba and Saskatchewan outside of a couple of ridings because it's the Liberals who split the vote there...mostly by taking the first nations vote.

While that would turn Saskatchewan NDP orange and gain some NDP seats in Manitoba (that could happen anyway, the way Harper is going on the CWB and equalization), it would be political suicide for the Liberals because of the influence that prairie first nations have elsewhere in the country...in and out of the native community.


That same basic dynamic can be argued for practically every region in the country.

That's without getting into the fact that the Liberals have yet to prove they have the ability to be progressive after the Turner/Chretien/Martin (and arguably Trudeau) years.

What would be a far better tact would be to educate voters to look at their ridings. The NDP loses seats to an anti-Conservative vote going to the Liberals in every election. Most of those seats end up going Conservative. The thing is that the people voting against the Conservatives are reading national poll numbers and haven't got a clue that the Liberals finish a distant third in their ridings.

Short of that we could actually teach people to evaluate parties by their policies and records. Then we'd have an NDP government.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:14 pm
 


Rev_Blair Rev_Blair:
It won't work. The Liberals would have to vitually give up their presence in Manitoba and Saskatchewan outside of a couple of ridings because it's the Liberals who split the vote there...mostly by taking the first nations vote.

While that would turn Saskatchewan NDP orange and gain some NDP seats in Manitoba (that could happen anyway, the way Harper is going on the CWB and equalization), it would be political suicide for the Liberals because of the influence that prairie first nations have elsewhere in the country...in and out of the native community.


Sure, but if Dion is interested in democracy over power, he might go for it. And nothing you've said makes it any less attractive to us! =]


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:34 pm
 


It's a great idea. Personally, I could definitely live with this kind of strategic cooperation between the two parties - if only this could have been done in the '88 election the country would have been spared a lot of pain.

I imagine the leadership of both parties might be afraid to incur the wrath of members in ridings that were sacrificed, i.e. NDP members living in Ed Centre and Liberal members in Ed Strath might resent having been "sold out".


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:02 am
 


I'm not an NDP'er, but if nobody minds me offering my two cents I'd love to add something to this chat.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:18 am
 


ReliableIntelligence ReliableIntelligence:
I'm not an NDP'er, but if nobody minds me offering my two cents I'd love to add something to this chat.


I think, given that such a plan would require the involvement of the Liberal party to actually work, Liberal input ought to be allowed.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:39 pm
 


While such a plan would ultimately benefit the Liberals, I very much doubt the NDP would ever go for it. I don't think they have very much to gain.

Take a riding like Edmonton-Strathcona.

I'm guessing that at least half of those who cast their votes for the Liberals in the last election would vote for the Conservatives before the NDP, meaning that the NDP might not only fail to win the riding, but they may in fact lose by a greater margin than they had previously.

On the other hand, it's much harder to believe that those who voted NDP would be willing to go Conservative as their second choice. Liberals would likely make up the bulk of the NDP votes. Some ridings would probably see significant bleed to Green party candidates as well (as the Greens are, somewhat wrongly, seen as a left wing party).

So the NDP would be making a deal in which the Liberals stand to gain much more than them, further undercutting their credibility as a party with National appeal. What's more, they'd be allowing yet another party to fill the space they'd traditionally occupied.

This is an especially bad idea for the NDP given the way political financing works in this country - where the amount party's recieve is directly tied in to the number of votes they get in elections. Not only because they are likely to lose more money than they gain, but because the green party is likely to gain the most (if not monetarily speaking, at least as far as percentage of their current earnings.)

So strategically speaking, this would be dangerous for the NDP. However, if the survival of the NDP is less important than ensuring Conservatives don't hold power because the splitting of the left...

well, in that case I'd just ask you all to consider voting Liberal.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:13 pm
 


ReliableIntelligence ReliableIntelligence:
While such a plan would ultimately benefit the Liberals, I very much doubt the NDP would ever go for it. I don't think they have very much to gain.

Take a riding like Edmonton-Strathcona.

I'm guessing that at least half of those who cast their votes for the Liberals in the last election would vote for the Conservatives before the NDP, meaning that the NDP might not only fail to win the riding, but they may in fact lose by a greater margin than they had previously.

On the other hand, it's much harder to believe that those who voted NDP would be willing to go Conservative as their second choice. Liberals would likely make up the bulk of the NDP votes. Some ridings would probably see significant bleed to Green party candidates as well (as the Greens are, somewhat wrongly, seen as a left wing party).

So the NDP would be making a deal in which the Liberals stand to gain much more than them, further undercutting their credibility as a party with National appeal. What's more, they'd be allowing yet another party to fill the space they'd traditionally occupied.

This is an especially bad idea for the NDP given the way political financing works in this country - where the amount party's recieve is directly tied in to the number of votes they get in elections. Not only because they are likely to lose more money than they gain, but because the green party is likely to gain the most (if not monetarily speaking, at least as far as percentage of their current earnings.)

So strategically speaking, this would be dangerous for the NDP. However, if the survival of the NDP is less important than ensuring Conservatives don't hold power because the splitting of the left...

well, in that case I'd just ask you all to consider voting Liberal.


You may be right, but I would hope that the Liberals of Edmonton Strathcona would see that while they wouldn't get a Liberal in their riding, by playing along they would be ensuring at least one Liberal candidate would be elected from AB instead of 0, and that has to be a good thing, right?

But I guess if people understood the prisoner's dilemma better, then perhaps the issue wouldn't exist.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 4:58 pm
 


$1:
Sure, but if Dion is interested in democracy over power, he might go for it. And nothing you've said makes it any less attractive to us!


If Dion was interested in democracy over power, he'd be pushing some form of proportional representation. He isn't.

$1:
On the other hand, it's much harder to believe that those who voted NDP would be willing to go Conservative as their second choice. Liberals would likely make up the bulk of the NDP votes. Some ridings would probably see significant bleed to Green party candidates as well (as the Greens are, somewhat wrongly, seen as a left wing party).


That gets a lot harder to call in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and BC though. In those provinces, many people switch regularly between NDP and Conservative candidates. An NDP with momentum could (likely would) draw votes to the NDP from the Conservatives.

$1:
This is an especially bad idea for the NDP given the way political financing works in this country - where the amount party's recieve is directly tied in to the number of votes they get in elections. Not only because they are likely to lose more money than they gain, but because the green party is likely to gain the most (if not monetarily speaking, at least as far as percentage of their current earnings.)


I agree with you there. It would hurt the NDP money-wise. You have to remember that it takes about twice as many votes nationally to elect an NDP MP than it does to elect a Liberal or Conservative MP. The NDP are very much under-represented in the House as a result.

$1:
So strategically speaking, this would be dangerous for the NDP. However, if the survival of the NDP is less important than ensuring Conservatives don't hold power because the splitting of the left...

well, in that case I'd just ask you all to consider voting Liberal.


I'll stick with the NDP, thanks. It's funny, when I was watching the Liberal convention and they were listing all of their achievements, most of those achievements were NDP initiatives and none would have happened without the NDP.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:58 am
 


Rev Blair Wrote:
$1:
If Dion was interested in democracy over power, he'd be pushing some form of proportional representation. He isn't.


How many times are we going to hear this tired old refrain from the NDP? "We can't win according to the rules of the game, so we want to change the rules."

Sorry Rev. If you want to achieve power the solution is become a little less radical and come up with a platform Canadians support. Not change the rules to accomodate yourself.

$1:
I'll stick with the NDP, thanks. It's funny, when I was watching the Liberal convention and they were listing all of their achievements, most of those achievements were NDP initiatives and none would have happened without the NDP.


Yeah, like balancing the budget. Oh no wait, Alexa Mcdonough moaned and whined about every trivial government cut that made that achievment possible. I believe the sound bite used at the time was "You don't pay down the mortgage when the roof needs to be fixed."

If the NDP had been running things federally in the 90's, we'd have ended up with a third world credit rating like Ontario did under NDP Premier Bob Rae!


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:47 am
 


Motorcycleboy Motorcycleboy:
How many times are we going to hear this tired old refrain from the NDP? "We can't win according to the rules of the game, so we want to change the rules."

Sorry Rev. If you want to achieve power the solution is become a little less radical and come up with a platform Canadians support. Not change the rules to accomodate yourself.


$1:
This is a NDP Party forum meant for like-minded discussion, if you want to flame or debate in open, please use the main Canadian Politics forum.


So get out, motorcycletwerp. The fact of the matter remains, FPTP is designed to punish parties with low, widespread levels of support.

The NDP in the last election got 167% as many votes as the Bloc, but 57% as many seats. That's not democracy.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:58 am
 


hurley_108 hurley_108:
So get out, motorcycletwerp. The fact of the matter remains, FPTP is designed to punish parties with low, widespread levels of support.

The NDP in the last election got 167% as many votes as the Bloc, but 57% as many seats. That's not democracy.


FPTP also has the advantage of providing strong governments with a clear mandate more frequently than proportional systems. That's important in a wide ranging, disparate federation of often bickering regions like Canada. If we'd had proportional rep over the last few decades here, we'd have an electoral system that looks like Italy, with new government's every year.

Proportional rep also has the disadvantage of allowing one issue nutjob groups to concentrate all their resources on a single riding, allowing them to send representatives to government who are narrowly focused and don't represent the views of most voters.

In Australia, which has FPTP we see it in the success of groups like "The Australians Against Further Immigration Party" or the "Shooter's Party."

Would you be eager to see groups like that represented in Ottawa?


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:31 am
 


Read the rules for the party forums, Sheriff Motorcycle Cowboy Jumper Boy.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:38 am
 


$1:
FPTP also has the advantage of providing strong governments with a clear mandate more frequently than proportional systems.


Do you mean like Harper's weak minority or Martin's?


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