NDP warns against Conservatives’ snooping law TIMMINS, ON – If the Conservatives get their way, police will be soon be able to track every e-mail sent, every website visited and every comment left on Facebook – all without warrants or judicial …
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Accidental Deliberations: Parliament In Review: June 21, 2011
Issue of the DayMuch of the day’s debate was taken up with the final debate on the Cons’ budget legislation, with the NDP particularly highlighting provisions to subsidize private mortgage insurance – while the Cons responded at times by insisting that…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week.- Trish Hennessy’s latest Numbers consist of a comparison between Canada and other OECD countries…featuring some great news on the social front:84Percentage of Canadians, on average, who report the highest communit…
Continue readingCowboys for Social Responsibility: A handful of questions
During his most recent infrequent visit to Calgary, Stephen Harper told Conservative supporters that his government would finally get around to repealing the life saving long gun registry.Three questionsNow that the NDP is the Official Opposition, will…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Still hard at work
In case there was any doubt whether the NDP’s hard-earned reputation as the most productive caucus in Ottawa would change as the party moved into its new role as Official Opposition, LEGISInfo provides a handy comparison for the bills introduced in the…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: A different story
Yessiree, the conventional wisdom goes, Canada’s political parties are all the same. Especially the NDP, which having reached Official Opposition status is sure to abandon any pretense of principle when it comes to, say, electoral reform. (Especially n…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament In Review: June 20, 2011
Yes, it’s tempting to Bruce Anderson’s conjecture about the NDP with a direct rebuttal. But I hardly see the need when the next day in Parliament to be reviewed offers an ideal example of the NDP standing up for its principles rather than merely positi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Barbara Yaffe points out that the Council on Hemispheric Affairs seems to have a much better idea what Canada needs out of a fighter jet than the government that’s trying to push ahead with a multi-billion doll…
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: I, for one, would like an HST job – and it might sway my vote.
If you’re registered to vote in BC, and provided that Elections BC hasn’t completely screwed up your voter registration (I have, at times, received three voter information cards for variations on my name), you’ve probably by now received a ballot in the mail for the mail-in referendum on the HST in BC. (If you haven’t […]
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Harper’s Assault on Libya NOT Sanctioned by UN
I wondered why Harper took the extension of the so-called “mission” in Libya to Parliament. He didn’t have to. As prime minister he alone can decide whether or not to go to war.One of the arguments was that it was sanctioned by the UN. However, what go…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On target groups
For all the opinion polling we’re bound to see in the years to come, this may be one of the more important surveys in determining the future shape of Canadian politics. Based on Statistics Canada’s data, Canadian non-voters who classified themselves as…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week.- John Crocker points out that the need for secure and sufficient pensions is only made all the more obvious by the abject failure of policies intended to force Canadians to fend for themselves:According to Statistic…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your long weekend.- Sixth Estate’s evisceration of the Fraser Institute continues, this time with a response in substance to the claim that private-sector rent-seekers will somehow make prescription drugs more affordable:(T)he r…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The NDP and “Big Labour”
Rob Silver, a sharp guy I first met through university debate, has written a rather disappointing piece entitled, “Would NDP be neutral were it in power during a labour dispute?” This question is interesting and significant. On the one hand, the NDP’s political philosophy is strongly supportive of working people. Compared to Liberals and Conservatives, […]
Continue readingBlunt Objects: Saturday News Smash-Up
Sorry about my absence for the last five days, but I’ve been going to “school” and attempting to learn basic Spanish. Suffice to say, yo no hablo espanol, pero poco a poco, yo aprendo.Anyways, it hasn’t been an exactly major week anyways, not after the…
Continue readingPredictability
A quote from Maclean’s, about six weeks ago:”Jack Layton’s biggest management problem when the House of Commons reconvenes may well be the newly elected MP from St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.”Ya don’t say…
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Mushy Middles, Dirty Words and Why we Must Rebuild the Centre
When I posted on why Jack Layton should drop the “brothers and sisters” socialist talk if he hoped to survive the next four years, I received several comments and many emails, telling me that I was wrong.Many of his followers actually fully support the…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Andrew Jackson points out and sums up a Statistics Canada study showing how much possible revenue is lost to the underground economy:Statscan have produced interesting and important new estimates of the upper b…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Fund-Raising Review By Province – NDP
Following up on my previous post, let’s take a look at the NDP’s partial fund-raising numbers from 2007 to 2010. (I’ve kept the 2010 data in the chart as an FYI, but a keen-eye reader notes that we shouldn’t compare to previous years’ data since it reflects quarterly returns rather than annual ones.)
Prov/Reg | 2007 $ | 2007 % | 2008 $ | 2008 % | 2009 $ | 2009 % | 2010 $ | 2010 % |
AB | $307,001.80 | 10.31% | $406,575.72 | 9.23% | $307,350.79 | 10.01% | $143741.94.50 | 9.44% |
BC | $805,217.20 | 27.04% | $1,109,104.94 | 25.18% | $680,108.02 | 30.22% | $504,443.60 | 33.13% |
MB | $148,937.94 | 5.00% | $251,361.54 | 5.71% | $174,442.71 | 5.68% | $64,005.27 | 4.20% |
NB | $34,410.77 | 1.16% | $42,393.92 | 0.96% | $38,635.19 | 1.26% | $13,144.86 | 0.86% |
NL | $13,894.00 | 0.47% | $22,273.00 | 0.51% | $22,290.00 | 0.73% | $11,340.00 | 0.75% |
NS | $105,734.34 | 3.55% | $155,442.45 | 3.53% | $110,203.00 | 3.59% | $37,112.50 | 2.44% |
NT | $7,146.00 | 0.24% | $21,542.00 | 0.49% | $9,433.00 | 0.31% | $2,150.00 | 0.14% |
NU | $2,830.00 | 0.10% | $2,420.00 | 0.05% | $4,018.00 | 0.13% | $2,040.00 | 0.13% |
ON | $1,199,357.72 | 40.28% | $1,841,233.15 | 41.81% | $1,364,679.90 | 44.46% | $583,063.67 | 38.29% |
PE | $7,145.00 | 0.24% | $8,300.82 | 0.19% | $5,952.00 | 0.19% | $2,470.00 | 0.16% |
QC | $94,120.42 | 3.16% | $120,570.19 | 2.74% | $65,811.41 | 2.14% | $30,502.58 | 2.00% | SK | $243,518.12 | 8.18% | $411,029.18 | 9.33% | $278,655.30 | 9.08% | $124,664.37 | 8.19% | YT | $8,300.92 | 0.28% | $11,703.92 | 0.27% | $8,174.92 | 0.27% | $3,887.34 | 0.27% | Total | $2,977,614.23 | n/a | $4,403,950.83 | n/a | $3,069,754.24 | n/a | $1,522,571.13 | n/a |
The NDP received $23,019.67 in other donations included in La Presse’s dataset; as with the Cons, that extra amount looks to consist generally of donations from Canadians living outside the country. And another $1,237,818.50 was linked to a province but not classified by year.
I’ll note that the above chart doesn’t include one of the ways I played around with the data, which was to compare the parties’ 2008 donations to their votes in each province. Based on the Cons’ numbers alone I wasn’t entirely sure what to look for, but there are some rather interesting comparisons to be drawn between the Cons and the NDP:
– Both parties posted their top fund-raising take per vote in…the Yukon, with the Cons raking in $11.85 per vote and the NDP $9.17. The Northwest Territories also rank near the top of both parties’ lists, but Nunuvut breaks the territorial trend as the Cons’ lowest per-vote source of income.
– The Cons’ most efficient province for fund-raising is predictably the one where they hold a stranglehold on the popular vote, with $4.53 finding its way into party coffers for every vote won in Alberta. Next in line were B.C. ($3.89), Ontario ($3.69), Manitoba ($3.52) and Saskatchewan ($3.36).
– For the NDP, by far the most efficient province for fund-raising compared to votes received (and the lone one where it exceeded the Cons on that measure) was Saskatchewan, with $3.83 raised by the NDP for each vote it won. Surprisingly to me at least, Alberta ranks second at $2.52, followed by B.C. ($2.37), Manitoba ($2.24) and Ontario ($1.96) – making the fund-raising bases substantially the same for the NDP and the Cons, even if they’ve had varying success in cultivating them.
– Meanwhile, the NDP had two provinces far below the rest in dollars raised per vote. In Newfoundland and Labrador ($0.34), the party’s vote was itself based largely on Danny Williams’ ABC campaign, making for an obvious explanation for the disconnect. But even that effect couldn’t win the bottom place on the NDP’s list of dollars raised per vote – which leads us back into the discussion of the NDP generally.
While I noted that the Cons’ returns in Quebec has always been less than impressive, the NDP’s (at least for the years covered by La Presse’s data) have been substantially lower…and declining by the year as a proportion of the NDP’s overall fund-raising. And even in the 2008 election which saw the party make modest gains with a 12% showing at the polls and its first ever general-election seat, the NDP raised only 27 cents for every Quebec vote it won.
Which isn’t to say that the NDP can’t indeed build up its capacity in Quebec now that it has 59 MPs and a majority of popular support to work with. And one can’t say that the model of working toward winning votes based on relatively soft support which doesn’t yet reflect a donor base has been anything but a stunning success.
But there’s an awfully long way to go for the NDP to turn what had previously been its least efficient fund-raising generator into a national power base. And I’ll be highly curious to see whether the party’s fund-raising base shifts substantially based on its Quebec success.
I’ll note one other trend in the NDP’s data, as the close relationship between the NDP and its provincial sections looks to have a significant influence on how the party raises its money. The 2007 and 2009 years offer an ideal basis of comparison since the dollars raised are such a good match, and they show an almost unbroken pattern: where a provincial party faces an election (including Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario in 2007, and B.C. in 2009), the federal party’s fund-raising is lower for the year.
And the exception that proves the rule is Nova Scotia – where despite the euphoria of winning a provincial election for the first time and the added attention from hosting the party’s federal convention in Halifax, the federal NDP improved on its 2007 fund-raising numbers by less than $5,000.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On direct representation
In discussing how the new Parliament has functioned so far, Charlie Angus makes an important point which hints at how the Bloc lost touch with Quebec – as well as where the NDP has a massive opportunity:NDP MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay, Ont.) ag…
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