Angry in the Great White North

There are three federal by-election in Quebec, with voters going to the polls on Monday. It looks very bad for Stephane Dion and the Liberal Party:

Outremont
NDP 38%
Liberal 32%
Bloc 14%
Green 8%
Conservative 7%
Other 1%

Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean Conservative 43%
Bloc 37%
Liberal 12%
NDP 4%
Green 4%

Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot
Bloc 49%
Conservative 32%
NDP 7%
Green 6%
Liberal 5%
Other 1%

A shutout in Quebec could fatally wound Stephane Dion as Liberal Party leader.

Outremont is the most important. First, it is the closest race as far as the Liberals are concerned, and it is a riding that has aways voted Liberal, except in 1988, when Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives took the riding from John Turner's Liberals. That parallel itself is the most worrying for Stephane Dion -- if it is noted that he is as effective a leader as John Turner was, well, he's finished.

Either in a spurt of electoral energy, or more likely in a panic, the Liberals are pushing hard in Outremont:

The possibility they might lose has the party hitting the emergency button.

"I'll give you an idea of how much of a panic the Liberals are in," Fife said. "They told all their workers in Ottawa to get to Montreal this weekend. They need them on the ground to bring out the vote in Outremont."

How many voters are going to make a difference? According to Elections Canada, there are 63,728 registered voters in Outremont. Let's go a bit high and say there will be a 70% turnout, meaning about 45,000 votes are going to be cast. According to that poll, 17,100 are likely to vote for Thomas Mulcair of the NDP, and 14,400 for the Liberal candidate, Jocelyn Coulon. That's a 2,700 vote gap. The Green Party vote right now represents a pool of 3,600 votes. In past elections, Green represented parked votes, but not anymore. A significant share, perhaps more than half, of that will stay Green at the polls, and only the remainder will split between the NDP and the Liberals.

It is going to be hard to find 27 busloads of Liberals to avert disaster.

And that's if the Liberals go all out. That's where my thoughts are focused. All those Liberal workers from Ottawa and perhaps other places are converging on Outremont. But really, how many will that be? What I mean by that is that how many will want to help Stephane Dion survive this test?

Liberals who backed Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff will see a Liberal humiliation in Outremont as their guarantee that Stephane Dion will be finished as a leader. Dion would likely stick around through a general election (the Liberal Party constitution doesn't provide for leadership reviews in the wake of a by-election loss), but Ignatieff and Rae and their teams would be planning and plotting for the inevitable leadership convention.

To make sure that happens, you have to wonder just how Liberal volunteers will not be responding to the call to go to Outremont. And how many will have been told quietly by Ignatieff's and Rae's people to take the weekend off.

Check out other entries from the Outremont category
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