I think Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff, and Stephane Dion’s numbers will drop because I know in BC they are double running delegates.

Is Kennedy really that low?

Every candidates numbers are inflated by the number of delegate names on ballots that don’t live in the riding where they are listed. Some ridings have mostly delegate names that are completely unknown to the members there and potentially could be shopped in every riding to give the appearance of a show of strength. A bit of a house of mirrors.

Actually, in BC, the Dion and Kennedy teams ran almost entirely specific slates. There was very little overlap for any of them.

In my riding, most of the Dion delegates are riding residents, somewhat less for Kennedy, and although there are an impressive amount of names for Ignatieff(21) and Rae(24) only 1 out of those live in the riding as near as I can tell. Who knows how many ridings those names are being shopped in. In any case, Dion has the most support here in Skeena Bulkley Valley in terms of potential delegates that are riding residents.

As another minor note, Dion is first in Alberta (where you have to run in your riding and ONLY your riding).

[…] Any final predictions by DemocraticSPACE are noteworthy: “DemocraticSPACE is projecting that Michael Ignatieff will emerge from Liberal Party’s “Super Weekend” with the most delegates in his bid to replace Paul Martin as leader.” And the site is calling Gerard Kennedy as fourth after Bob Rae and Stephane Dion - a remarkable achievement. Related Posts […]

Unknown delegates, “double running” delegates, and delegate candidate counts are all irrelevant.

The first vote each party member casts, for the leadership contestant, is the one that determines how many delegates that contestant will get from that riding. If that contestant earns one or two more delegates than his delegate candidates filled, he gets to appoint later to fill the vacancy.

I predict Findlay will do better than expected. Many observers have failed to note that the particular brand of proportional representation being used here, the “highest remainder” calculation, normally means that, if she gets 3.7% of the vote in a riding and earns 0.52 of a delegate, she will get a delegate.

Wilf, while in some ways you are quite right that about the delegate selection process being “irrelevant”, I can tell you that many grassroots voters find the system highly confusing and at the end of the day, having people represent the riding who actually live there and support a particular candidate does say something meaningful about whether a/the candidate has paid any attention to that riding, particularly the more remote ones, and b/ whether there will be anyone on the ground that is going to work hard to prepare for the next election. On a practical level it is important for everyone to feel that they have a genuine stake in the process.

I think Kennedy did very well in compairing to his national political experience.My Ridding won 9 Kennedy Delegates.

Greg, Thank you for your work. As I understand it you had Dion and Kennedy getting more ex officio than Rae
UND.BRISON DION DRYDEN MHF IGGY KENNEDY RAE VOLPE
4.4% 3.7% 16.9% 7.5% 0.5% 36.8% 15.2% 14.2% 0.7%

Can you update your projections with ex offico and the ridings delegates we know. I suspect that gives Iggy a bigger lead and puts the second tier closer together.