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New Democratic Party incumbent Paul Dewar has won election in Ottawa Centre three times in a row, by increasing margins — including with a majority of the vote in 2011. He’s been front and centre in his party’s talk about the refugee crisis, he’s visible locally, his party’s in contention to form the government for the first time ever: all that together has led me to write that his seat is safe unless he bites a baby.
This understandably annoys people who are running against him, who don’t like to see their chances written off before voting day. Dewar’s Liberal challenger Catherine McKenna, in particular, says she does indeed stand a solid chance of defeating Dewar, and other Liberals have argued the same thing.
Last election, a historically terrible one for the Liberals, candidate Scott Bradley came third. I still think the fundamentals favour Dewar pretty heavily, but here are the elements of the Liberal argument as I understand them.
First, Ottawa Centre has a long history of Liberal representation. Mac Harb was the last in a long line of Liberal members of Parliament representing the same general geographic area going back to the 1960s, with only occasional interruptions. Provincially, Liberal Yasir Naqvi has a lock on it and Richard Patten did before him. The fact Naqvi is Ottawa Centre’s provincial representative at the same time as Dewar is its federal MP demonstrates that the riding isn’t inherently New Democrat territory despite Dewar’s repeated wins; voters there are willing to vote Liberal.
McKenna has been campaigning for many months. She’s not just a ceremonial candidate, carrying the banner for her party. Besides being an actual person of accomplishment and substance, she’s putting in the work. I haven’t walked every street in Ottawa Centre myself, but it’s true that she’s competitive in the sign war — which is, so far, being fought only on private lawns and those are the ones that count. She’s also been active with local policy announcements, and claims to be one of the top fundraisers among Liberal candidates across the country.
Finally, as one of her campaign people put it to me today, whatever the New Democrats’ national poll numbers are, they aren’t doing brilliantly in Ontario. When the Liberals are 15 points ahead of the New Democrats in Ontario, apparently, that’s about the point where we can think of Ottawa Centre being in play. There isn’t a ton of province-level polling out there, but Nanos Research in particular has found gaps of 15, 18, even 21 points in the Liberals’ favour. Those Liberal polling leads are based on small sample sizes and they aren’t steady, but I can certainly see why they give a local campaign hope.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
This understandably annoys people who are running against him, who don’t like to see their chances written off before voting day. Dewar’s Liberal challenger Catherine McKenna, in particular, says she does indeed stand a solid chance of defeating Dewar, and other Liberals have argued the same thing.
Last election, a historically terrible one for the Liberals, candidate Scott Bradley came third. I still think the fundamentals favour Dewar pretty heavily, but here are the elements of the Liberal argument as I understand them.
First, Ottawa Centre has a long history of Liberal representation. Mac Harb was the last in a long line of Liberal members of Parliament representing the same general geographic area going back to the 1960s, with only occasional interruptions. Provincially, Liberal Yasir Naqvi has a lock on it and Richard Patten did before him. The fact Naqvi is Ottawa Centre’s provincial representative at the same time as Dewar is its federal MP demonstrates that the riding isn’t inherently New Democrat territory despite Dewar’s repeated wins; voters there are willing to vote Liberal.
McKenna has been campaigning for many months. She’s not just a ceremonial candidate, carrying the banner for her party. Besides being an actual person of accomplishment and substance, she’s putting in the work. I haven’t walked every street in Ottawa Centre myself, but it’s true that she’s competitive in the sign war — which is, so far, being fought only on private lawns and those are the ones that count. She’s also been active with local policy announcements, and claims to be one of the top fundraisers among Liberal candidates across the country.
Finally, as one of her campaign people put it to me today, whatever the New Democrats’ national poll numbers are, they aren’t doing brilliantly in Ontario. When the Liberals are 15 points ahead of the New Democrats in Ontario, apparently, that’s about the point where we can think of Ottawa Centre being in play. There isn’t a ton of province-level polling out there, but Nanos Research in particular has found gaps of 15, 18, even 21 points in the Liberals’ favour. Those Liberal polling leads are based on small sample sizes and they aren’t steady, but I can certainly see why they give a local campaign hope.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
