As the Globe andMail reported Nov. 11

“So the party plans to hold its first ballot on Friday, Dec. 1, and announced yesterday that it will release the results late, probably after midnight.

The first-ballot results are expected to spark a night of deal-making in the corridors of Montreal hotels, as campaigns and delegates make and shift alliances, before the race really moves to the convention floor on Saturday morning.”

This is a little odd but:

19 Oct – Rae Wins British Columbia; Kennedy 2nd, Dion 3rd
Oct 12 — “Liberal Leadership First Ballot Estimate”

Any reason you switch from the silly American date system (although nowadays Canada follows suit) to the much more sensible European date format between Oct. 12 and 19 Oct.?

To try to figure out what happened I subtracted the delegate results from the actual vote to guesstimate the ex-offico/uncommitted vote breadkwon. Obiously not acccurate due to no-shows etc. but…

Ignatief 1413-1309 104
Rae 977-881 96
Dion 856-694 162
Kennedy 854-751 103
Dryden 238-187 51
Brison 198-153 45
Volpe 156-211 (55)
MHF 130-38 92

Superficially this shows more ex-officio/ uncommitted went to Dion on the first ballot(162) then to Ignatief (104), and almost as many went to Kennedy (103) as Iggy. Then we hae Rae with 96 barely topping MHF with 92.

So the “establishment” rejected Iggy in favour of Dion from the begining, threw some votes to the woman, and were seriuosly looking at Kennedy as much as Rae.

On the seond ballot it looks like Brison, 198 votes, and and Volpe, 116, couldn’t deliver their delegates to Rae who only went up 155 votes and most of MHF’s(130) ex officios went to Dion (up 158) with soem leaking from Volpe, Brison and MMHF to Iggy and Kennedy.(More analysis needed)

Conclusion- the ex officio uncommitted went Anybody but Iggy and Anybody but Bob early parking some votes with MHF, but primarly looking at Kennedy/Dion Then the KD vote coalesced around DIon. Rae And Iggy picked up few votes from their endorsers/second ballot choosers.

roumer is at least 3 of kennedy’s ex-officios voted MHF on the first ballot to support her numbers. had that not happened GK would be leader now. after what happened to him in the ontario leadership race, its a shame. at least there’s an upside; there’s no more room him his back left to stick any more knives.