Has the Ignatieff campaign been overestimating its support among ex-officio delegates? True, Iggy has the support of 40 of the 102 Liberal MPs, well ahead of any of his main rivals. However, it is unclear that he is doing as well among the lower echelons of ex-officios like riding presidents. This CTV survey suggests that when you take into account all ex-officios, these delegates are far more evenly spread among the major candidates. CTV gets the following numbers:
Eighty-three ex-officios have endorsed Ignatieff, 81 for Dion, 73 for Kennedy and 54 for Rae. That amounts to roughly 21 per cent for Ignatieff and Dion so far, 19 per cent for Kennedy and 15 per cent for Rae.
Even the bottom tier of candidates, who each scored less than a five per cent share of elected delegates, can claim a more respectable share of ex-officios. Hockey legend Ken Dryden, for instance, has been endorsed by 40 ex-officios (about 10 per cent), lone Atlantic candidate Scott Brison by 35.
So if these numbers hold up across the board, Iggy's total support comes in at significantly less than 30 per cent, not the 35 per cent that has been commonly predicted. Pity the momentum candidate with no momentum!
Meanwhile, can someone with access send me either a lock of Iggy's hair or some fingernail clippings? In a last ditch effort, I am taking this fight into the Spirit Realm. In a few weeks, Iggy will develop a strained left rotator cuff. A...STRAINED...LEFT...ROTATOR...CUFF. You hear me, Iggy? You asked for it, pal. Now you're gonna get it!
Still waiting for anyone to point to me a single right wing, let alone far right wing, position that Ignatieff holds outside of a foreign/military policy.
ReplyDeleteAnd nice try with the numbers. It really is shocking to you folks that 50%+ of Liberals are going to choose Ignatieff. Unfortunately, no amount of skewering of the numbers changes reality. He will have 34% minimum - absolute bare minimum - after the first ballot. There is no reasonable doubt about that as much as you may not like it.
Ted, do you have a lock of his hair you could send me?
ReplyDeleteIn any case, foreign policy is a pretty big deal when it involves sending troops overseas.
Also, how would you classify his support of Canada's joining the U.S. missile defense system? If that isn't foreign poicy, then there's your right-wing, even far right wing position.
Well, I wouldn't concede that his foreign policy is right wing. It wasn't right wing when we went to war in Europe in WWII, it wasn't right wing when we went to war in Korea, it wasn't right wing when we went to war in Yugoslavia, it wasn't right-wing when the Liberal Party went into Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, it wasn't right-wing to want to invade in Rwanda (as Iggy did)... so I don't buy that going to war is suddenly a right wing thing just because the Republicans and Conservatives are into it. Pearson, King, JFK, Clinton, Chretien were not right-wingers, folks. Chretien said the reason we shouldn't go into Iraq was because there was no UN approval, not because it was fundamentally wrong. Give your heads a reality shake.
ReplyDeleteAnd you continue to ignore his policies that obliterate the "right-winger" cant. Environmental, immigration, aboriginal policies, equality of opportunity policies, these are if anything too left wing for me and vear the party a little too far to the left if implemented.
The truth of the matter is that Ignatieff doesn't fit in the pre-defined ideological boxes people have. The left and the right tend to think in only left and right terms. Someone who is ideologically driven but not fully one or the other presents a great difficulty for ideological, PC purists.
So, instead of focusing on what he is trying to say and do, we resort to facile name-calling as a substitute for discussion.
Is this what the party has been rendered to?
Oh and back on topic, CTV completely (deliberately?) misread the Wikipedia entry.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear from that entry that Iggy has 154 ex-officios, not 83. That would be just about twice as many as Rae and more than double Kennedy and Dion. I think even that is a low estimate, but at the very least, it shows that Iggy goes up, not down.
Ted,
ReplyDeleteAt first glance, it looks like you're right. CTV bunged it up pretty badly. In fact, none of the numbers quoted in the article quite match up, so I wondered if they are looking at an old, cached version of the page.
Makes the creation of my Iggy voodoo all the more important, I suppose.
Still only gives him about 18% of the total, however.
ReplyDeleteI'm working on that lock of hair for you, BCL. But all the personal effects I've taken from him I am currently using in my home shrine. (All supporters of the Ignatieff team are required to pray to an Ignatieff shrine twice per day, of course.)
ReplyDeleteTed - why would we need more exmaples outside of foreign policy and military policy?
ReplyDeleteAlso, pointing to wars that were not ideologically inspired by the right wing says zero about Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which were, although one was popular and one was not.
BigCityLib - why don't you just delete the posts of that idiot bag of hammers?