I made this comment on Ted’s blog (Cerberus), which relates to this post: to get 35% on ballot 1, Ignatieff would have to get more than 50% of both the undeclareds and ex-officios. Just over half of the ex-officios have declared. Ignatieff has 31.6% (154 of 487). To get to 50% ex-officio support overall, Ignatieff would need to get 75% of the remaining ex-officios, which seems unlikely. It’s more likely he’ll get around 40-45% of the remaining ex-officios, putting him around 36-37% of the overall ex-officio support. That gives him around 32% on the first ballot. And if you assume that Ignatieff will get a proportionate amount of the bottom 4’s delegates, then he should get another 4-5% or so on ballot 2, resulting in Iggy around 36-37%, Rae around 23-24%, Dion and Kennedy each around 20% heading into ballot 3. Clearly, any combination of Rae, Dion and Kennedy — assuming that Rae/Kennedy/Dion don’t lose too much support to Ignatieff at that stage — can overtake Ignatieff on ballot 3. There will be compounding factors here. For example, if Kennedy backs Dion, then Dion will likely also siphon off some of Rae’s support as well, since delegates will know that Dion will jump far ahead of Rae. I suspect that the number of delegates that Rae loses to Dion is at least equal to the number of Kennedy supporters that go to Ignatieff. This would set up a ballot 3 result that puts Dion out in front, something like: Dion 43%, Ignatieff 40%, Rae 17%. If Kennedy backed Rae, then we’d probably see a similar result but with Dion losing more to Rae and Kennedy losing more to Ignatieff, something like: probably Rae 45%, Ignatieff 42%, Dion 13%. In both cases, Ignatieff is about 3% behind — note that is the difference between the 35% most people said Ignatieff needs on ballot 1 and the 32% I estimate he will get. In the end, Ignatieff will need to attract 25% of the Rae/Kennedy/Dion vote to win.

Greg,

Your predictions are always the most accurate available anywhere. I just wanted to commend you on the continued hard work.

Personally (and this is based more on assumptions than on hard figures,) I think that Dion is going to be the next Leader of the Liberal Party, as I think that both Ignatieff and Rae have too much baggage to pick up much support. I think it’s a race between Kennedy and Dion to see who drops out first and the one who can stand longest will win in the end.

Devin, oh no! If Dion wins, Quebec is lost until a leader comes along who has some objectivity…

I fear that those who do not live in Québec do not understand how Dion is seen as some kind of throw -back to the old Liberal Party in Québec; a party that may have elected Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien…. This is why the Liberals now need a leader who is not from Québec.

This is serious!

Forget Liberal delegates voting for a party leader! This is about choosing a leader who we want to have a chance defeating Stephen Harper. Delegates who vote for Stephane Dion are voting to keep voters in Québec to keep voting Bloc…

It would be a mistake to hope that Dion gets so strong in later ballots to become liberal leader…

Please, NO! “Anyone but Dion..”

Louise M.

Louise,

I’m a New Democrat, so I don’t really care that much who wins the Liberal Leadership. In my eyes, they are all right-wingers who are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. I’m much happier having Stevie H as PM than Paul Martin, because I at least know what Harper is going to do (because he does what he said he’d do.)

Dion is my prediction, not my hope. My hope is that the Liberal Party will realize how much of a joke it is, disband itself, and throw support behind a Social Democratic alternative.

Are we agreed that the bottom candidate AND anyone with less than 5% gets dropped? If so, Friday may see 4 go and the question for after the second ballot Saturday is: Does whoever gets dropped then, Kennedy or Dion, AND HIS DELEGATES move to Iggy in any substantial number or is there an Anybody But Iggy move-say Kennedy and his delegates to Rae? Even then, to stop Iggy Dion and his people would then have to go to Rae for him to win. Bottom line, it would take all 3 thre second tier candidates and their supporters in an open ABI for Iggy to lose.

Just a correction on your elected delegates. Note that some of the “ridings” left to report are not ridings but women and youth clubs so not all of the remaining with furnish 14 delegates - some will come back with 4 or 1 delegate per club. The actual total number of delegates to be elected (based on the breakdown of clubs provided by LPC) is 4602 not 4925.

Ken now has over 5% with mail in ballots first of all. Second of all, I now have confirmation from Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and SW Ontario that most of Gerrards delegates are bullshiot slates from one south Asian community in particyular and they aren’t going to show. Kennedy will be no where near Dion on the first or second ballot. he will have massive no shows.

Greg, your first ballot projections for the second tier are now Rae 19.8%, Dion 17.5% and Kennedy 17.3%. Given how close that is and the variables (how undeclared and ex-officio actually vote) can we now say it is uncertain which of the three is actually 2nd,3rd or 4th? No clear second place finisher alternative to Iggy and Kennedy,Dion or evenRae may be the one to go after the bottom four drop etc.?

Peter - I would be surprised if Rae wasn’t #2 on the first ballot. Either Kennedy or Dion could be #3, depending on who actually shows up. The above second ballot is guesswork — no way to know who will benefit when the bottom four candidates drop out. It part, it depends on if they endorse someone else. As you can see in the notes, I am assuming that most of Brison’s delegates go to Ignatieff, most of Volpe’s delegates go to Rae, and Martha Hall Findlay’s and Ken Dryden’s delegates are split among the four top candidates to varying degrees.

I doubt that ALL of the bottom four will drop out before the first ballot. Too many people in the candidates’s camps plus party bigwigs will want to see how the final four shape up when the 2nd ballot open vote comes.

The projections about where the bottom 4 delegates will go seems right.

Dryden’s phone must be the busiest of all, at least measured by incoming calls. He is by far the biggest catch of the no-hopers.

Of the three runners up, I doubt that Rae will go to anyone, unless he winds up a distant 3rd by the 3rd or 4th ballot. Should this happen, it means that either Kennedy or Dion would have backed the other. Too close to call to say who that would be.

Also, any gaffes (Israel war crimes?) between now and the convention could shift some ex-officio and 2nd ballot shifts.

Finally, conventions can sometimes develop their own shifts (Tories in 76) that hardly anyone foresees.

Abrawang Some of us beleive there is a rule that any candidate with less than 5% on the first ballot automatically gets dropped and that means the bottom 4 (MHF,Volpe,Brison and Dyden)prsuambly getting less than 5% would not be on the second ballot. There would only be Kennedy,Dion,Rae and Iggy.
Then the rules say the bottom candidate on any ballot gets dropped-so whoever is 4th on the second ballot (Kennedy or Dion, or possibly Rae)goes leaving only 3 candidates. Then on the third ballot the bottom candidate goes and the race is betwen two people.
Of course candidates can withdraw voluntarily and attempt to move their delegates to someone else. That could mean we get to the final ballot very quickly.

Shoshanaberman writes “I now have confirmation from Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and SW Ontario that most of Gerrards delegates are bullshiot slates from one south Asian community in particular and they aren’t going to show. Kennedy will be no where near Dion on the first or second ballot. he will have massive no shows.”
I am not sure where you are getting your info from, I am from a somewhat rural riding in the GTA with no significant ethnic community. Kennedy took the most delegates here and seems to inspire great loyalty from supporters.
I agree that both Dion and Kennedy have an excellent chance of growth on subsequent ballot and predict which ever one of the 2 is in third after the first ballot will go on to win.

Nice analysis, but I still think that they only drop the lowest, not necessarily everyone with under 5%. According to , it states that only the lowest is dropped. Now, all this basically changes is whether the top 4 end up in that order on the 2nd ballot or the 3rd or 4th.

I think it’s way too early to exactly figure out how Dion and Kennedy will end up. I mean, right now we’re only talking about about 2 dozen delegates difference between them, so anything could happen among delegates not showing up, delegates sleeping in, and even the split of undeclareds. Definitely it will be interesting when we get to those 4 how they stack up, who ends up 4th.

Sorry, cut out my link there. It was supposed to say, “according to liberal.ca (http://www.liberal.ca/news_e.aspx?id=11509)”

Matt and peter, there does seem to be a view out there that you must get 5% or drop off. However, I’ve checked the Liberal Constitiution and could find no such reference, only the rule that the lowest must drop off.

Probably the bottom 4 will choose to drop out after Ballot 1. However, maybe Volpe, whose public support no one really wants, may stay till Ballot 2. This would present an interesting test of how loyal and committed each candidate’s delegates are. Some of Iggy’s, for example, may voluntarily bleed to other candidates.

There’s a lot of motivation for the Dion and Kennedy camps to be talking mutual support. Probably they would let the convention decide, that is, if after Ballot 2 or 3, one of them was eliminated, the loser would pledge his support to the survivor. On the next ballot then, Rae would probably finish 3rd and the Kennedy-Dion survivor would emerge as the not-Iggy candidate.

The main hole I see in this scenario is that Kennedy may not back anyone. He is presenting himself as the new Liberal Mr. Clean and may want to eschew the appearance of being a backroom dealer.

Of course, the Rae camp will be assiduously wooing both candidates and their supporters, so sOme of kennedy’s inner circle will be imploring him to counter-act the Rae onslaught.

How Iggy will try to get additional support is an interesting question.

I have confirmed with the Liberal Party that the only rule is that the person with the fewest votes gets dropped from the subsequent ballot. Some have speculated that anyone less than 5% will be dropped. This is NOT the case.

Thanks Greg and those clairifying the rules. Now, I believe the first ballot (when delegates have to vote for the candidate they are pledged to)takes place Friday THEN the leadership candidates give their speeches, THEN the results of the first ballot are announced, dropping just the bottom candidate (MHF?) and then serious politics takes place with first ballot results known and the real balloting starting Saturday. Feel free to correct me or throw in other procedural points (e.g. how much time between ballots to allow candidates to drop out and for fierce lobbying deal making to take place.)

Louise,

Ahem….. For the comments about Dion being a throwback to the Trudeau era in Quebec, need I remind you that the Liberal Party won 74 of 75 seats in Quebec in 1980 and 66 of 74 in 1979. The take no nonsense from separatists approach is a winner. People respect strength.
Want to see the Bloc Quebecois reduced to a rump, or worse? Get someone with the intellectual capacity to demolish their arguments and who will not try to appease the “soft nationalists” in any way.
That man is Stephane Dion.

Neal, might I remind you that the BQ did not exist in 1979 or 1980, and, in fact, there was no federal party advocating Quebec separatism? The Liberals were fighting only the PCs in Quebec, which was a Liberal stronghold until 1984.

Actually, back then (1979) the Socreds were more of a force in Quebec than the PCs were at the time, so the Liberals didn’t quite have a monopoly on Quebec.
The Bloc is just a big waste of taxpayers money (thank you Chretien). We need to think about what happen when the incredibly unpopular Jean Charest likely goes down to defeat next year, which means we’ll be looking at another referendum in 2 years.
I, for one would rather have Dion leading the federalists than appeasers like Iggy or Rae.

By 1979, the Socreds were dying, and not particularly relevant. A party that won 4.61% of the national vote with many more candidates than the BQ runs was not a real threat to the Liberals in Quebec. Some of them were separatist-leaning, yes, but that was not their primary issue.

Dion won’t do anything to shore up Liberal support in Quebec. The Liberals might win a seat or two back from the BQ while the BQ picks off a few Conservative seats. Ultimately, the Liberals have virtually no room for growth in Quebec. The Quebecois don’t trust the Liberals anymore, and Dion, as a former part of the establishment that caused that distrust, won’t win them back.

The rupture between Quebec and the LPC occured on Nov 4, 1981, in what is widely called “The night of the long knives”. Before that, the sovereigntist movement never paid much attention to what was going on in Ottawa politics. A proposal for a “Bloc” of sovereigntist MPs was first discussed within the PQ in the early 70s, but René Lévesque quickly killed the idea. In these days, sovereigntists were either abstaining, blanking their vote or voting for third parties (NDP, Rhinos, Créditistes…)

In 1984, Lévesque gave the word to his organization to help Mulroney exterminate the 74 Liberals in Quebec, in line with the “Beau risque” strategy. In 1988, both Bourassa and Jacques Parizeau campaigned in favour of free trade.

And since the collapse of Meech, we know what happened. A bunch of orphaned MPs formed the “Bloc Québécois”, and became the Official Opposition after the 1993 election…

The most the LPC can get back in Quebec in these circumstances is approximately half the seats, like they did in 2000, but they can’t get much lower than they were in early 2006. Their way back includes rejoining the mainstream with regards to concepts such as fiscal imbalance and Quebec nationhood.

I doubt any of the small fry will want to stay more than the first ballot as their supporters will go one of the top four and embarrass their guy. So unless that huge number of undeclared exofficos goes to Dion and makes up the difference between him and Kennedy - Dion is toast.
Dion’s franco delegates will never go Kennedy and since Kennedy is not likely to support a guy not much older then him, Rae is likely to pick up more from either on the third ballot.

ABI vs ABR, I say the Chretienite organizers play the convention floor better.

There is the rumour that Kennedy and Dion are making a deal so that whoever finishes behind the other on the 1st or 2nd ballot will support the other. This, coupled with today’s G&M story about a shift of ex-officio support to Dion, could leave him as the ABI candidate.

OTOH, Rae is surely trying to deal with both GK and SD and I don’t have any particular insight as to which of the possible deals will come to pass.

I think it’s less likely that MI will be able to swing such a deal. He may be able to tempt Brison (probable) and Dryden (less likely but not out of the question) which could give him some mo on the convention floor.

I still see MI coming up a bit short. He’ll get to the last ballot along with the guy who beats him.

It is going to be between Ingnatieff and Dion. Dion could win a Minority Government, Ingnatieff will be able to get a Majority. He has charisma that can unite the Liberals that were lost in the last election and he can unite the Liberal Party. He can do what has not been done since Trudeau and that is to win Quebec. He can also win BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Ontario is a given. He will also win over the Maritimes. I see a BIG MAJORITY with Iggy. He has the experience of the grass roots people. Sure he has made mistakes during his campaigne but I am sure he has learned from them. He will win a Majority for us Liberals.