UPDATE
Thu Oct 15, 2015 at 5:12 AM PT: We are still four days out, but the major tracking poll we have in Canada, Nanos, is showing that the Liberals have opened up their biggest lead of the campaign, with 37% support to 29% for the Conservatives. See the detailed numbers here.
This isn't done yet, but things continue to look promising.
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Americans have traditionally seen Canadians as their politer, universally covered, and more liberal friends to the north. Well, for the past decade, through three excruciating election cycles, the eyesore of Conservative Stephen Harper as Canada's Prime Minister has laid waste to that image.
It's worth noting that Harper paved his path to power through a particularly narrow path, never winning even 40% of the national vote (even for his "big" majority victory in 2011, he won only 39.6%). Despite being utterly despised by well over half the country during much of his term, Harper has brilliantly exploited the chaos and lack of cohesion that has characterized the left-centre Liberals and left New Democratic Party (NDP), and been given free reign to ignore climate change, drive the economy into the dirt, gag and subvert public servants and manipulate the levers of government. Among many other grievous offences.
Well, driven by a desire to see this sort of nonsense finally go away, the centre-left consensus in Canada has gotten its act together and appears poised to at long last dump Harper and his divisive, cynical and ego-maniacal governing style.
Only a week ago, the polls indicated that Harper might very well save face and wriggle out of this election with a strong minority government. But this past week, the polling is beginning to converge, with the almost uniform narrative that the formerly moribund Liberal Party and its leader Justin Trudeau are riding a big-time wave of momentum and are now poised to win a minority government. This trend line is beautiful......
Because of the less efficient nature of the Liberal vote, a 5-6 point margin would give the Liberals a decent minority government, probably in the 140-150 seat range, with the Conservatives at 110-115 or so (out of 338). Most of the major projection models, although still cautious,
are starting to
bear this out.
But a few things portend even bigger, better things. First of all, Canadians are voting in record numbers at advance polls, always a positive sign for progressive, non-incumbent candidates. And a major Canadian pollster is teasing that the numbers he is seeing coming in for his outfit's upcoming poll may portend an even bigger Liberal wave next week:
The Liberals are benefiting from Trudeau's bold progressive platform promising a massive boost to federal infrastructure spending, defections from NDP voters eager to back the best option to dump the Conservatives, and fatigue and revulsion over Harper's continued attempts to shamefully use divisive, irrelevant wedge issues to find a path to 35% of the vote.
Meanwhile, it is a beautiful thing to watch Harper play defense on previously safe seats, while resorting to hilariously lame 80s game-show style props and losing his shit behind the scenes. The prospect of Harper, whose entire political philosophy is based on his hatred of Liberal legend Pierre Trudeau, losing to the great man's untested son running on an unabashedly liberal platform, is almost too delicious to even dream up.
In the larger context, this would be an historic win as part of the broader and deeper trend away from know-nothing conservatism and back to Canada's unabashed liberal roots. Out of the 10 provinces across Canada, there is currently only one Premier from the Conservative Party (Newfoundland's Paul Davis). Booting Harper would almost banish Conservatives from the Canadian political map.
Election is this Monday. This isn't quite over yet, I wouldn't count Harper out until the final vote is counted. Keep your fingers crossed.