I won’t be blogging much in the next few weeks. However, I highly recommend this Toronto Star article on Harper’s long-term vision. Author Sean Gordon argues that Harper and his team are smart and have a long term goal of moving Canada to the right.
For example he notes: Lost in all the sturm und drang surrounding Harper's cabinet choices — and in particular those of Liberal turncoat David Emerson and the unelected Michael Fortier — was the appointment of five ministers in key portfolios, all of whom have impeccable right-wing credentials.
However, the one thing most likely to undermine them is not discussed. This government was elected at the height of a recovery. The impact of recession on them politically, hard enough on any government, would be devastating.
And this outfit still has the illusion that Mike Harris and his tax-cutting, privatization and deregulation agenda produced prosperity for Ontario in the late nineties. They are wilfully oblivious to the impact of American growth, in part because it came about under Bill Clinton, and followed a tax hiking budget on his part in 1993, which, if it did not create the recovery (there is debate about this), at least did not prevent it. At the time the Republicans predicted economic disaster as a consequence of tax increases.
The one lasting impact of the Harris agenda is a tax regime in Canada that makes it difficult to fund social programs. Thus we have infrastructure, education and other social deficits, that it will be difficult for an ideologically hamstrung government like Harper’s to do anything about.
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Sunday, February 19, 2006
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Saturday Night Live comes to Ottawa
Consider this CBC story about newly minted Conservative cabinet minister Michael Fortier, and this blog post about former MP John Reynolds, and you have to conclude that this new bunch are really the not-ready-for-prime-time-players of 2006.
The Reynolds connection has further down the road significance. His former riding of West Vancouver elected a Liberal but by a narrow margin over the Conservative candidate. My bet: this is where David Emerson will run next time, since he can say goodbye to Vancouver Kingsway.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Liberal leadership and Quebec
Chantal Hebert’s column today raises an issue of fundamental significance. It starts as a discussion of the Liberal leadership race, and the impact of the withdrawal of Frank McKenna. (I happen to think that McKenna would have been a disastrous choice but that is now moot.) But it moves on to broader issues.
The key point in her column is this one:
If the Liberals are to quickly grow out of opposition, they too will have to avoid sticking their heads in the sand of wishful thinking. They will, for instance, have to ask themselves whether they can continue to promote a vision of Canada that has no traction in francophone Quebec and in the West and is losing ground even in their Ontario heartland.
Trudeau gave the party, among other things, a commitment to the idea of strong central government and this, along with his constitutional deal in 1981, has arguably cost the Liberals the support of francophone Quebec. The Liberals dominated Quebec from 1917 to 1984, with the single exception of 1958, but have performed poorly there ever since (in 2000 the party won a plurality of the Quebec popular vote but finished second by a substantial margin among francophones). Liberals have not yet squarely faced this fact. Now that they have a federalist opponent that has achieved a taste of success on the ground in Quebec, they continue to ignore the problem at their peril.
Even if, as I suspect, many Liberals do not wish to question their devotion to a strong central government, present circumstances suggest that they can no longer ignore the issue. It ought to be a central feature of the party’s debate in the coming year.
The issue deserves to be debated and thought through as well by the NDP, which has traditionally supported, with some exceptions, a strong central government. (Some western party members have been more sympathetic to a provincial autonomist perspective.) This would be a good year for the party to debate these issues, given that its annual meeting will be held in Quebec City in September.
The Liberal Party made the idea of bilingualism a core Canadian political value. The Conservatives, after resisting bilingualism for years (indeed the Conservative Scott Reid was reprimanded during the 2004 election on the issue), have now accepted it and integrated it into their world view. However, Quebec since the 1950’s has aspired to greater provincial autonomy. The Conservatives are now gaining ground in Quebec by promoting a devolutionist view of the federation. The Liberals under Pearson accepted in part Quebec’s aspirations for greater autonomy. (The deal that led to the creation of the Canada Pension Plan is an example of this.) But they strongly reversed themselves under Trudeau. If Harper can be successful in Quebec, and in particular, if he can reduce support for Quebec independence with his agenda, the Liberal Party may have to take a hard look at one of its articles of faith.
The key point in her column is this one:
If the Liberals are to quickly grow out of opposition, they too will have to avoid sticking their heads in the sand of wishful thinking. They will, for instance, have to ask themselves whether they can continue to promote a vision of Canada that has no traction in francophone Quebec and in the West and is losing ground even in their Ontario heartland.
Trudeau gave the party, among other things, a commitment to the idea of strong central government and this, along with his constitutional deal in 1981, has arguably cost the Liberals the support of francophone Quebec. The Liberals dominated Quebec from 1917 to 1984, with the single exception of 1958, but have performed poorly there ever since (in 2000 the party won a plurality of the Quebec popular vote but finished second by a substantial margin among francophones). Liberals have not yet squarely faced this fact. Now that they have a federalist opponent that has achieved a taste of success on the ground in Quebec, they continue to ignore the problem at their peril.
Even if, as I suspect, many Liberals do not wish to question their devotion to a strong central government, present circumstances suggest that they can no longer ignore the issue. It ought to be a central feature of the party’s debate in the coming year.
The issue deserves to be debated and thought through as well by the NDP, which has traditionally supported, with some exceptions, a strong central government. (Some western party members have been more sympathetic to a provincial autonomist perspective.) This would be a good year for the party to debate these issues, given that its annual meeting will be held in Quebec City in September.
The Liberal Party made the idea of bilingualism a core Canadian political value. The Conservatives, after resisting bilingualism for years (indeed the Conservative Scott Reid was reprimanded during the 2004 election on the issue), have now accepted it and integrated it into their world view. However, Quebec since the 1950’s has aspired to greater provincial autonomy. The Conservatives are now gaining ground in Quebec by promoting a devolutionist view of the federation. The Liberals under Pearson accepted in part Quebec’s aspirations for greater autonomy. (The deal that led to the creation of the Canada Pension Plan is an example of this.) But they strongly reversed themselves under Trudeau. If Harper can be successful in Quebec, and in particular, if he can reduce support for Quebec independence with his agenda, the Liberal Party may have to take a hard look at one of its articles of faith.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Forecast Model Errors
Every election I test the accuracy of my forecasting model by using the actual vote shares as inputs. In other words this exercise treats the provincial vote shares as if they were the perfect opinion poll. This isolates the model’s error from any polling errors. I don’t use the vote shares for each province. I group the Atlantic Provinces into one region and make Manitoba/Saskatchewan as another region, exactly as most national opinion polls do.
The results I measure in detail in two ways. First, did it accurately predict which party would win individual constituencies? Out of the 308 ridings the model accurately predicts the outcome in 279 ridings, and incorrectly in the remaining 29 for 90.6% accuracy.
Secondly I also compare each party’s predicted share with its actual result, turning the pluses and minuses into absolute numbers, and then I average the errors.
The average error by party was:
Liberal – 3.4%
Conservative – 3.2%
NDP – 2.2%
BQ – 2.6%
Green – 0.8%
Other – 1.4%
On the whole this compares favourably with earlier elections. The average error per seat in 2004 was slightly higher. With the two elections closer together this is perhaps not surprising. However, before the election I had thought seat predictions might be less accurate. I was wrong about that.
The results I measure in detail in two ways. First, did it accurately predict which party would win individual constituencies? Out of the 308 ridings the model accurately predicts the outcome in 279 ridings, and incorrectly in the remaining 29 for 90.6% accuracy.
Secondly I also compare each party’s predicted share with its actual result, turning the pluses and minuses into absolute numbers, and then I average the errors.
The average error by party was:
Liberal – 3.4%
Conservative – 3.2%
NDP – 2.2%
BQ – 2.6%
Green – 0.8%
Other – 1.4%
On the whole this compares favourably with earlier elections. The average error per seat in 2004 was slightly higher. With the two elections closer together this is perhaps not surprising. However, before the election I had thought seat predictions might be less accurate. I was wrong about that.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
It's the economy, stupid...
The economy recently has been booming along so well that this past election was an argument about how to spend the fiscal surplus. Stephen Harper comes to power at a bad time in the sense that, even though the unemployment rate is at a thirty year low and the stock market is hitting new records, he has to hope it is sustained over the next eighteen months since slippage will be blamed fairly or otherwise on him.
So could a recent dramatic slowdown in U.S. GDP growth mean that we are on the verge of a slowing economy, which will pull down both Stephen and George?
So could a recent dramatic slowdown in U.S. GDP growth mean that we are on the verge of a slowing economy, which will pull down both Stephen and George?
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Effect of election on same sex marriage
Not surprisingly, there are not enough votes out of Monday's election to overturn same sex marriage legislation. Bouquetsofgray has the details. This is actually good news for Stephen Harper.
Not so this story in today's Globe that Harper ducked his obligation to meet with the ethics commissioner about his role in the Grewal affair. Didn't take long.
Not so this story in today's Globe that Harper ducked his obligation to meet with the ethics commissioner about his role in the Grewal affair. Didn't take long.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
A close election
Various observations I would make are:
1. The election did end up being closer than I anticipated. So close indeed that if the Liberals had been two points higher in Ontario and one in B.C. while the Conservatives were correspondingly lower, the outcome would have been reversed even if all other provinces had voted exactly the same way. Overall, had this been the case, the Liberals would have been four points down in the popular vote but ahead (barely) in seats. I was able to do this exercise because I have already built my model for the next election, courtesy of some preliminary data files on the Elections Canada web site. I simply varied the outcome from yesterday just enough to produce a Liberal win.
2. The closeness makes me think that if the campaign accidents such as the income trust affair, and certain stumbles, such as the military ad, had not occurred, this campaign could easily have had a different outcome. Certainly, the Liberal campaign planners made copious errors, while having to cope with an unfriendly media. As one example of the latter, I couldn’t believe the blatant shilling for the Conservatives I sometimes saw on the Mike Duffy show. As one friend noted, at least he wasn’t subtle about it.
3. My forecast model worked reasonably well, but not as well as in 2004 (as I anticipated here). I test the model’s accuracy by using actual vote shares (which are the perfect opinion poll). The results generated were:
C – 124
L – 94
NDP – 31
BQ – 59
The Liberal number, as you can see, did run ahead of the trend and demonstrated great vote efficiency. And Quebec contributed disproportionately to the number of errors.
But I have more work ahead to complete a full evaluation. I also want to do a full evaluation of poll accuracy. As many have noted, SES appears to have been the most accurate. Once again the Quebec pollsters were ahead of their national counterparts in getting Quebec public opinion right, although SES was also close here.
When I apply the average of closing polls to my new forecast model based on yesterday’s results, I get the following:
C – 132
L – 91
NDP – 36
BQ – 48
The largest difference, as it was last time, was in Ontario.
4. In some ways the Liberals will benefit from being out of office, but not far removed from power. This defeat will serve as punishment for the scandal and should end its political impact. Although this may be delayed until the trials are over in the spring.
5. The key for the Liberals is the party leadership. And here it is not at all clear who among all the potential candidates would be the best choice.
6. This election also completes the NDP’s full resurrection from the political graveyard they hung around throughout the nineties. They have picked up some interesting new talent, and have an energetic leader who is becoming progressively better in the role.
9. All elections do generate some clichés in the post-election analysis. One, here on the CBC internet site, discusses an urban-rural divide. While the Conservatives did very poorly in the three biggest cities of Toronto, Montreal & Vancouver, they finished first in all the prairie cities including Winnipeg, as well as Ottawa, Quebec City and St. John’s (see Major Centres results here), so I think some qualifiers are in order.
1. The election did end up being closer than I anticipated. So close indeed that if the Liberals had been two points higher in Ontario and one in B.C. while the Conservatives were correspondingly lower, the outcome would have been reversed even if all other provinces had voted exactly the same way. Overall, had this been the case, the Liberals would have been four points down in the popular vote but ahead (barely) in seats. I was able to do this exercise because I have already built my model for the next election, courtesy of some preliminary data files on the Elections Canada web site. I simply varied the outcome from yesterday just enough to produce a Liberal win.
2. The closeness makes me think that if the campaign accidents such as the income trust affair, and certain stumbles, such as the military ad, had not occurred, this campaign could easily have had a different outcome. Certainly, the Liberal campaign planners made copious errors, while having to cope with an unfriendly media. As one example of the latter, I couldn’t believe the blatant shilling for the Conservatives I sometimes saw on the Mike Duffy show. As one friend noted, at least he wasn’t subtle about it.
3. My forecast model worked reasonably well, but not as well as in 2004 (as I anticipated here). I test the model’s accuracy by using actual vote shares (which are the perfect opinion poll). The results generated were:
C – 124
L – 94
NDP – 31
BQ – 59
The Liberal number, as you can see, did run ahead of the trend and demonstrated great vote efficiency. And Quebec contributed disproportionately to the number of errors.
But I have more work ahead to complete a full evaluation. I also want to do a full evaluation of poll accuracy. As many have noted, SES appears to have been the most accurate. Once again the Quebec pollsters were ahead of their national counterparts in getting Quebec public opinion right, although SES was also close here.
When I apply the average of closing polls to my new forecast model based on yesterday’s results, I get the following:
C – 132
L – 91
NDP – 36
BQ – 48
The largest difference, as it was last time, was in Ontario.
4. In some ways the Liberals will benefit from being out of office, but not far removed from power. This defeat will serve as punishment for the scandal and should end its political impact. Although this may be delayed until the trials are over in the spring.
5. The key for the Liberals is the party leadership. And here it is not at all clear who among all the potential candidates would be the best choice.
6. This election also completes the NDP’s full resurrection from the political graveyard they hung around throughout the nineties. They have picked up some interesting new talent, and have an energetic leader who is becoming progressively better in the role.
9. All elections do generate some clichés in the post-election analysis. One, here on the CBC internet site, discusses an urban-rural divide. While the Conservatives did very poorly in the three biggest cities of Toronto, Montreal & Vancouver, they finished first in all the prairie cities including Winnipeg, as well as Ottawa, Quebec City and St. John’s (see Major Centres results here), so I think some qualifiers are in order.
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