{"id":3125,"date":"2011-08-31T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3125"},"modified":"2011-08-31T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T00:00:00","slug":"taste-of-victory-on-the-danforth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3125","title":{"rendered":"Taste of Victory on the Danforth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There’s a lot of talk today about the eventual by election for Jack Layton’s Toronto-Danforth seat. Many Liberals are salivating at the prospect of a victory there which would pull them within a mere 67 seats of official opposition status:<\/p>\n

Liberals hope to paint Layton\u2019s Toronto riding red again<\/strong><\/p>\n

Liberal Party president Alfred Apps is counting out Stephen Harper\u2019s Conservatives, predicting a two-way fight with the NDP for Jack Layton\u2019s Toronto seat.<\/p>\n

Mr. Apps, a Bay Street lawyer who knows the Toronto political landscape well, told The Globe Wednesday that Mr. Layton won the seat because of his \u201cterrific municipal background and powerful personality.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cJack actually won it on the strength of his personal reputation and charisma.\u201d<\/span> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given that by elections are all about expectations, I certainly wouldn’t be advising Alf Apps, or anyone else, to raise expectations of a Liberal win on the Danforth. But it’s still likely worth examining just how probable a Liberal pick-up actually is.<\/p>\n

For starters, we need to accept that anything <\/em>can happen in a by election. In Kevin Lamoureux’s Winnipeg North by election upset last year, NDP support fell from 62% to 41% while Liberal support jumped from 12% to 46%. So at least in theory<\/em>, Jack Layton’s 43-point victory in May is not an insurmountable <\/em>hill to climb.<\/p>\n

But that’s still a mighty tall hill, which only looks taller when you take a proper scan of the landscape. As the map at the top of this post shows, the two ridings to the East of it fell to the NDP in May. A relative no-name, Matthew Kellway, beat a 6-term incumbent in the Beaches by 11 points. That’s nothing to sneeze at.<\/p>\n

The riding has gone NDP provincially the previous four elections – most recently by 6,500 votes. Yes, Peter Tabuns is a popular incumbent, but there are a lot of people in the riding who are used to voting orange, even when Jack’s name isn’t on the ballot.<\/p>\n

Finally, it’s a riding that, demographically, “should” be an NDP seat. When I put the Census demographics into the regression meat grinder, it comes out as the 16th strongest NDP seat in the country.<\/p>\n

Add it all up, and the odds of an upset on the Danforth are exceedingly small. Raising hopes to the contrary is only setting Liberals up for disappointment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of talk today about the eventual by election for Jack Layton’s Toronto-Danforth seat. Many Liberals are salivating at the prospect of a victory there which would pull them within a mere 67 seats of official opposition status: Liberals hope to paint Layton\u2019s Toronto riding red again Liberal Party president Alfred Apps is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}