Election Time in Canada (Part 3)

With a little over a week to go, it has finally gotten very interesting.

Iggy the American continues to underwhelm.  At this point it appears as if he will lead the Liberal Party to a defeat of historic proportions.  He may win more seats than John Turner did in 1984 but Turner was at least still the Leader of the Opposition.  At this point it is possible that the Liberals will slide to third place.

Now some of this may be wishful thinking on my part but it is clear that the more people see of Ignatieff, the less they like him.  Jack Layton is precisely the opposite.  People seem to have a greater affinity for him as they see more of him.  Harper has pretty much stayed unchanged.  This is not surprising.  As Prime Minister, he is the most well known of all of the leaders and a change in opinions of his likability were never very probable.

Pundits are rightly pointing out that we have seen this before with the NDP, (Ed Broadbent was on his way to 24 Sussex at one point according to the polls), however I do think that this time it is different.

Jack Layton has steadily increased his support during his time as leader...as has Harper.  Those two trends will converge to lead to a Tory majority.  (I see no reason not to stick to that prediction).  I'm not yet ready to predict Jack Layton's taking up residence at Stornoway.

The most interesting question is what happens next.  Michael Ignatieff will almost certainly quit as leader of the Liberals.  What then?  Bob Rae is the presumptive heir apparent but the people of Ontario still remember well his disastrous term as Premier.  He has a lot of baggage, too much to be a real force for rebuilding the Liberal brand.  There is a shocking lack of bench strength within Canada's natural governing party.  The Liberals would do well to acknowledge that their spell in opposition will not be a short one and they should really commit to passing the torch to a new generation of Liberals....and I don't mean that lightweight Justin Trudeau.

I am going out on a limb on a few of these predictions but what the hey, I'm not a journalist.  Who cares if i'm wrong?