- Harper Nation Building: Nation? What Nation

Posted: 11:17 AM on December 18, 2010 The Globe and Mail
Is a Tory majority even possible? , Eric Grenier, Globe and Mail, Dec. 17, 2010http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/is-a-tory-majority-even-possible/article1842218/

"In the last election, there were 12 seats in which the Conservatives lost by a margin of 4 per cent or less. Logically, these would be the 12 seats targeted by the Tories in the next campaign. . . ."

As attractive as this method of projecting is, I am not sure it is an effective way to project seat results in an election. To say it is simplistic is simplistic.

Perhaps, Éric Grenier could do some actual number crunching and apply this model to previous elections to see how the result compared with the realities.

The inverse may be a better model for projecting losses - i.e. riding that list by greater than a certain amount will likely not win.

This is referred to as the "write-off" strategy. A party puts no efforts into a riding that lost the previous election by over 20%, say - just ask the Liberal Party.

Although the write-off strategy is attractive when determining how to apply scarce resources during a campaign, it in reality is counter-productive overall as a national party building process. The strong riding get stronger and the weak ridings get weaker resulting in regionalism, bifurcation ("bifurcation is a period doubling, quadrupling, etc., that accompanies the onset of chaos" - mathworld.wolfram.com - now that carries over) and polarization. The result is a government that has fierce (die-hard) support by a small polarized fraction (right-wing extremists) of the population but large enough (33%) and focused enough (epi-centred Alberta) to get them in power and maintain it because all the other parties are even more polarized. Sound familiar.

Better is the Howard Dean's principle of fighting as hard as you can everywhere at every level: "to be committed to winning elections at every level in every region of the country" (Wikipedia)

Then there is the related strategy of "swing ridings".

Perhaps Grenier is applying this general model where he is applying his logic to the determination of what will be "swing ridings".

In that case I suggest he rethink things and perhaps talk to Jason Kenny, look at the 905 ridings (and others) and the Harper strategy of isolated one-off policies aimed precisely at specific micro-regions and micro-demographics to gain their support. The implementation of his policies are right wing, extremist ideologically based, of course, but disjointed, fragmented, hyper-partisan and with the only purpose of acquiring and maintaining power, Canada and Canadians be dam[redacted]ed.

excerpt: Lloyd MacILquham cicblog.com/comments.html