The Politics of Depression

I was listening yesterday to a panel of Ottawa pundits yakking about the current situation and getting themselves in a tizzy about whether Michael Ignatieff had handled his Newfoundland MPs astutely when he authorized them to vote against the budget.  They really don't get it.

We are in a severe economic downturn (see this employment chart originally from U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi).  The economic crisis will soon begin to dictate political outcomes.  Incumbent governments of all political stripes face defeat.  Polls in Canada since the election suggest that the public remains in these early days in a "wait and see" frame of mind.  This will not last long.  

Historically recessions and depressions cause incumbent governments, particularly at the national level, to lose office:

1.  The Herbert Hoover example is the most obvious but in Canada, Mackenzie King lost in 1930 in part because of the depression just beginning to unfold.  Five years later the same fate befell R. B. Bennett.

2.  The early eighties deep recession contributed to the Mulroney landslide in the 1984 election, when the Liberals were reduced to 40 seats.

3. The early nineties downturn was critical to the PC demolition at the polls in 1993.  The same recession contributed to the defeat of both the Peterson and Rae governments in Ontario in 1990 and '95 and the defeat of the Bourrassa/Johnson government in Quebec in 1994.

It is clear that there will be a series of defeats of incumbent governments in Canada over the next few years.  Gordon Campbell might survive in B.C. as his opponents are the "dreaded socialists", but a national election - likely this fall or perhaps as late as spring 2010 - will make Michael Ignatieff the Prime Minister and the vote on the budget by Liberal Newfoundland MPs will be long forgotten.

The situation in the U.S. is quite different from Canada.  More on that in a future post.

The Grand Coalition

TC is slowly being persuaded that the grand coalition of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc may indeed come to pass.

Seeking to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the arrangement, Harper declared on Friday that the effort was a "backroom deal to overturn the results of the last election". But it is equally valid to see the votes cast for the opposition parties as votes for this accord.

If one adds together just the votes of the NDP and the Liberals from the last election one gets the following outcome:

Coalition: 153

Conservative: 112

BQ: 41

Other: 2

Add in the Greens who have voiced support, and this becomes:

Coalition: 176

Conservative: 89

BQ: 41

Other: 2

Go all the way and throw in the Bloc, and it becomes:

Coalition: 225

Conservative: 82

Other: 1

Seems legitimate enough.

However, the whole enterprise is fraught with peril, not the least being the danger that the Coalition will be blamed for the worst effects of the coming downturn.  Still, it was worth it just to see the look on Stephen Harper's face today in QP.

Obama Wins

One of my favourite moments watching ABC's Monday Night Football back in the seventies would come when Dandy Don Meredith decided the losing team had no chance of winning and he would burst into a chorus of Willie Nelson's "The Party's Over".

Well, it is Willie Nelson time in the U.S. election for John McCain. Chris Bowers, who I regard as cautious about these things, made the case in the blog Open Left today:

Here is why this is over:

1. In order to win the election, all Barack Obama needs are the Kerry states, plus Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico. That adds up to 273 electoral votes.
2. Obama leads by at least 9.5% in every Kerry state and Iowa, according to both Pollster.com and Real Clear Politics. Also, my own numbers concur with those calculations.
3. This means that in order to win the election, all Obama has to do is hold onto states where he leads by 9.5% or more, and win both Colorado and New Mexico. These are both states where more than half of all voters will cast their ballots before Election Day (source). In other words, the elections in Colorado and New Mexico are already almost over, not just beginning. And these are the only two states he needs to win, other than the ones where he leads by double-digits.
4. In Colorado, about 60% of the vote is already in. According to the crosstabs of the three most recent polls in the state, Obama leads early voters by 15% (Rasmussen), 18% (Marist) and 17% (PPP). Even in the best case scenario for McCain, where he only trails by 15% among those who have already voted and only 55% of the vote is in, he still needs to win the remaining voters by 18.4% in order to eek out the state. And that is the best-case scenario. The worst case scenario for McCain--65% of the vote in and an 18% deficit among early voters--is that he needs to win the remaining voters by 33.5% in order to win the election.
   
5. That leaves New Mexico. In 2004, New Mexico had an even higher rate of early voting than Colorado (50.6% to 47.9%). Further, all polling aggregation sites show Obama's lead to be larger in New Mexico than in Colorado. While the recent dearth of polling in the Land of Enchantment means there are no early voting crosstabs, those two facts suggest the situation is even worse for McCain in New Mexico than in Colorado. At the very least, it isn't much better. Update: A new poll from PPP in New Mexico indicates that 56% of the vote is in, and Obama leads 64%-36% among those voters. If that is accurate, McCain would have to win the remaining voters by 35.7%.

So, unless one of the following occurs:

• Obama blows a double-digit lead in either Iowa or one Kerry state
  
• McCain wins the minority of remaining voters in either Colorado or New Mexico by at least 20%

Then the election is over and Obama has won no matter what happens anywhere else.

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The rest is here.

It all makes perfect sense to me.

Blogger tcnorris is still on semi-sabbatical. Can't say when more frequent blogging might resume.

Election 2008 - Is the phony war over?

The first week or two of a Canadian election campaign usually produces much rhetoric and an abundance of polling data. However it is a little like seeing the autumn of 1939 in Europe as representative of World War II - the most important events are yet to come.

The polls do show a big Conservative lead. While one or two have the Harperites over 40%, most have them around 37/38. They have a fairly large lead over the Liberals in second place. For the moment the Conservatives appear to be still shy of a majority but close. There is also wide variation in the position of the parties - Conservative support ranged from 36% to 43%, Liberal from 23% to 32% and the NDP from 13% to 21%. This indicates to TC that preferences in general remain weak. Polls tend to converge toward the end of campaigns when voters really decide how to vote.

Whether it is majority or minority depends on many things. Chrétien had a majority in 1997 with 38% of the vote, while Pearson won 41.5% in 1963 and he wound up with a minority government. The Conservatives may have about 38% but they waste a lot of votes in Alberta and other parts of the rural west. It is too soon to tell if we will see a majority.

The most striking moment of the week came when Canadian opinion galvanized behind admitting the Greens to the tv debates and forced a change. I think what happened is that because the Greens have now acquired a measure of legitimacy in the political universe, the initial act of keeping them out triggered a reflex action in Canadian opinion, which perceived the exclusion as a violation of the underlying Canadian value of equality. It appeared unfair because it seemed to treat the Greens unequally.

Hence, the action produced a tsunami of protest, as canvassing NDP candidates discovered the next day. However, the storm passed quickly because the parties and the consortium reversed themselves. It was not, as Elizabeth May believes, about the environment as an issue per se. It was about equal treatment, and was reminiscent of the reaction in Ontario in 2007 to the John Tory idea of giving aid to private schools. However, it gets her into the debates and therefore potentially changes the dynamics of the election.

The Greens have poor prospects of actually electing any candidates. As a postmodern party, it has wide support (almost 5% in 2006) but it is not deep in any one region. What permitted parties such as the CCF and Reform to get into the House of Commons in the past was concentrated regional support. The Greens do well in a few thinly populated places such as Saltspring Island but it is simply a part of Saanich-Gulf Islands constituency where most voters live in the suburbs of Victoria. Overall the Greens win votes everywhere but not at levels that would let them start winning seats.

Elizabeth May, who talks about doing politics differently, and says nice things about Stephane Dion frequently, could influence her supporters to vote for the Liberals by urging them to cast a strategic ballot near the end of the campaign. One can't tell if it will have any impact because it would be so unprecedented for a party leader to do such a thing in a Canadian election, which is, whether May likes it or not, a zero sum game.

Election observations

1. The Conservatives seem to be extremely confident. They have been carpet bombing Ontario with positive feel-good (if a little icky) ads, while their opponents have had to hold their fire. This appears to have driven up their numbers.
   
   
2. Harper and Layton appeared to have had good launches while Dion and Elizabeth May were ineffective. Dion’s English language skills are still a problem. Didn’t really see Duceppe. Catch what Accidental Deliberations had to say about Harper's election call.
   
   
3. The NDP has an effective attack ad directed at the Conservatives up on the web.
   

Harper's Election Call

The call has just been made for October 14.

Harper denies he can expect a majority but that is exactly what they are looking for. If you cherry pick the latest Environics poll and the most recent Leger in Quebec (not a valid methodology) you can get them to a bare majority of 157.

How it turns out will depend on the campaign although at this moment TC expects a strengthened Conservative minority, perhaps much stronger than last time.

More to come.

Best site for following U.S. election

If you haven't read it check out www.fivethirtyeight.com, a blog by baseball writer Nate Silver. Best analysis of trends in this year's U.S. election that TC has encountered.