The NDP vote is surging, especially in Quebec where all the other parties are losing support to the NDP, particularly the Bloc. The NDP is clearly ahead of both of the other federalist parties in Quebec and depending on what poll you look at they are either just behind or ahead of the Bloc.
Bloc voters are switching to the NDP? Is this surprising? Not really.
Aside from the question of sovereignty many of the Bloc’s core positions are similar to the NDP’s social democrat positions. With these positions the Bloc was able to attract a large number of Quebeckers were not necessarily sovereigntists, but agreed with the Bloc in other areas. It makes sense really – federalist voters with social democratic values selected the party that represented their values that had a chance of getting elected, since sending Bloc MPs to Ottawa in itself wonuldn’t result in Quebec leaving Canada.
So what’s changed? Over the last few years the NDP has managed to attract voters who previously would have voted Liberal in Quebec and didn’t want to vote for the sovereigntist Bloc or the Conservatives. This rise in NDP support among federalist voters, particularly since the election campaign began has manged to convince federalists who had been voting Bloc that a federalist party that reflected their personal values now actually had a chance of winning seats in the province. Seat projections based on these most recent polls put the NDP winning anywhere between 11 and 30 seats in Quebec, mostly at the expense of the Bloc.
What does this mean nationally? Well the surge in popularity in vote-rich Quebec has propelled the NDP’s numbers to about the same numbers as those held by the Liberals. This increase doesn’t just come from Quebec however and the NDP has seen growth in all regions – it’s just most dramatic in Quebec. Seat projections based on the last few polls show the NDP ranging anywhere form maintaining their pre-election seat count to winning upwards of 80 seats and forming the Official Opposition. I’m personally more inclined to think that the NDP will pick up seats and find themselves somewhere in the 50 – 60 seat range with most of those new seats coming from Quebec, and will probably still find themselves behind the Liberals. This isn’t to say that the NDP won’t increase their seat totals outside of Quebec – I can see them picking up seats in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, BC and Edmonton-East in Alberta. I just don’t see the NDP winning as many seats as some of the projections are showing – at least based on current voting intentions.
There’s still time for change though. If the NDP manage to continue building on this momentum it’s not unrealistic to see them surpassing the Liberals and forming the Official Opposition. I don’t see a situation where they’ll actually form government following this election. I’m fairly confident in saying that the Conservatives will win a minority (probably a reduced one) and now it’s more of a question of the size of the minority and which opposition party wins the most seats.
I had my doubts going into this election. I didn’t think Harper would win his majority, but I was concerned that the NDP seat count would drop in favour of the Liberals. I was wrong.
On another note, it’ll be interesting to see how messaging and advertising changes now with the NDP rising. The NDP have already put out an ad that focuses on Jack Layton and what he will do. Layton consistently polls ahead of the NDP personally so the party is trying to capitalize on his image. The Conservatives have already launched a tweaked version of an earlier anti-Layton attack ad and we can expect the Liberals, Bloc and Conservatives to all switch up their messaging to attack the NDP and will likely see the Bloc and Liberals launch anti-Layton/NDP attack ads. I expect that the NDP ads for the rest of the election will be similar to their new one assuming the NDP manage to hold these new numbers or increase them and that their will be an increasing focus on Layton as leader.
Overall the last week of the election should be interesting, and I’m certainly expecting to see a more dramatic change than I though there would be going into the election.
Edit: The video is fixed. Thanks to “Skinny Dipper” for pointing out how to fix it.
