Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The unstoppable Stephen Harper

If you thought Stephen Harper reached the zenith of political power with his majority government win on May 2, think again.

Though the powers of a majority government are considerable, the emergence of a strong opposition under a charismatic leader in Jack Layton nevertheless posed a problem for the Conservative prime minister.

With the passing of Layton, however, the opposition is leaderless and circumstances both inside and outside Ottawa are fracturing the opposition even further. 

A little late, but you can read the article on The Huffington Post website here.

I'm a little late as I just returned from Toronto. I spoke at an event held by the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy (LISPOP), generally about my seat projection model. Barry Kay of LISPOP also spoke about his model, while the morning session featured discussions by Darrell Bricker of Ipsos-Reid and Peter Loewen, who headed up the Vote Compass during the last federal campaign. While Kay and I spoke about seat projections, Loewen and Bricker spoke about polling and the gathering of public opinion data. They had some really fascinating things to say.

For any of you who made it to the event, thanks! It was a lot of fun.

Now, as I was out of town I was unable to address the provincial polls released by Nanos and Corporate Research Associates today. You can rest assured that the projections will be updated tomorrow with this new data.