Recently, and especially since the two debates, Jack Layton has been claiming that his party could form the Official Opposition on October 14th! But when you look at electoral history and the number of ridings where the NDP is seriously in play, could this really happen?

I was hoping all of you could chip in with your point of view on the local campaigns in your region, your province, and your riding. Can the NDP really win more than 50 ridings throughout Canada and set a record for New Democratic MPs?

Based on what I’ve seen, there are only a few ridings where the NDP has a chance.

In Newfoundland, the NDP could take St. John’s South-Mount Pearl, while Prince Edward Island is out of the question. In New Brunswick, only Acadie-Bathurst is on the table. They have more opportunities in Nova Scotia in the ridings of Halifax, Halifax-West, Dartmouth-Cole Harbour, and Sackville-Eastern Shore.

In Quebec the best chance is in Outremont, with long-shots in Hull-Aylmer and Gatineau.

Ontario is more fertile ground for the New Democrats, such as the ridings in the north (eight of them), Ottawa-Centre, the three in Hamilton and maybe Welland. The NDP can also potentially pick up four or five seats in Toronto.

In Manitoba, the NDP could win four or maybe five ridings, and probably only one each in Saskatchewan (Palliser) and Alberta (Edmonton-Strathcona).

British Columbia is the NDP’s real chance for a breakthrough, where they could take seats from both the Conservatives and the Liberals. We could be talking about as many as 15-18 ridings. And then there’s one in the North.

So, in total it’s a maximum of 50 ridings where the NDP has even a slim chance. This is not enough to form the Official Opposition (even the Bloc has a better chance of that!). Unless, of course, the Liberals have such a bad result that they can’t even win their ‘châteaux-forts’!

(Thanks to Éric Grenier for his help editing.)

Les pancartes conservatrices sont finalement apparuent dans le nord de la circonscription. Le NPD tant qu’à lui n’a des affiches que dans le grand “Tremblant”, lieu d’origine du candidat. Il est cependant clair que les machines de ces deux partis sont moins nombreuses que celles du Bloc Québécois et du Libéral.

Fait intéressant pour les amateurs de statistique; Le Bloc Québécois a toujours obtenu la majorité des votes dans les limites actuelles de la circonscription. La plus faible majorité du parti fut d’un peu moins de 7000 voix lors de l’élection catastrophique pour le Bloc de 2000.

Il est clair en tout cas que même Élections Canada n’avait pas prévu ce déclenchement d’élection puisque les bureaux de la Directrice du scrutin dans la circonscription ne sont pleinement fonctionnels avec téléphones et tout que depuis dimanche le 14 septembre soit une semaine après le déclenchement!

À suivre…

Day 6 of the campaign! Liberal and Bloc candidate are definitely ahead in this race here! Liberal candidate, Pierre Gfeller and Bloc Québécois candidate and actual MP for the riding Johanne Deschamps have posters all around the riding. Not any from the NDP, Conservative or green north of Mont-Tremblant. The Conservative Guy Joncas and the NDP David Dupras both are from Tremblant while Gfeller is from Nominingue and Deschamps from Mont-Laurier…

The Bloc is the only party yet to have there office open both in the north and the south of the riding while Gfeller is driving the Liberal mobile, a kind of “office on wheel” … for those who don’t know, Laurentides-Labelle is a 3 hours drive to cross from the south to the north…

More to come, stay tune!