When the media started reporting in August that an election was imminent I had a “Please, No!” feeling.   Then once the official campaign started, there was Puffingate and Danny Williams rant.  I was re-energized, I was watching the news again, I was surfing the internet for election news and views.

Then something happened…

While Hurricane Ike ravaged the Texas coast, and gas prices had spiked up dramatically, way down the headline page on some news site was an article  titled something like “Trouble at Lehman/Merrill”.   I read the article and started thinking this looks bad.   While I’m really more of a soft political junkie, I am much more hardened financial junkie (full disclosure: I work in the industry).   While most news organizations were doing things like showing Anderson Cooper getting blown around in his red CNN windbreaker, I gave up on broadcast media (aka television and radio) due to lack of content and went straight to the web for places like Bloomberg and Reuters.   That Sunday evening, there were headlines like “Lehman not expected to make it through the night” and the like.   A lot of people woke up Monday morning “surprised” that Lehman Brothers was gone after 150 years and Merrill Lynch was now part of a bank.

Since then, the election has been a non-event to me.   Realizing that maybe I was living in the industry bubble, I sought out others outside of it.   Their views were the same.   Way more interested in protecting their RRSP investments – no time to listen to rhetoric from the parties and their leaders.

Now that the markets have at least temporarily settled down a bit, when I bring up the topic of the election, it gets sort of a “whatever?!” reaction.   If there’s one election they are interested in, it’s Obama vs. McCain and the drama injected by the financial crisis.

When pressed on our election, I get responses that fit this pattern:

• Harper will still be the Prime Minister October 15th
• Not crazy about the idea of a Conservative majority
• Don’t really like Harper’s style but the other leaders aren’t demonstrating they are PM material either
• Dion is uninspiring

And probably most telling,

• just get it (the election) over with

I expect that the race in Etobicoke Lakeshore will capture the interest of the national media as it has in the past two elections.

For the Liberals – the incumbent MP, Michael Ignatieff, runner-up in the most recent Liberal leadership contest. In the 2006 election, there was a number of upset people in the riding due to Mr. Ignatieff being parachuted in over the wishes of the riding assocation. There was also a lot of concern in the riding (and nationally for the leadership convention) about his absence from Canada. My sense is that this animosity has subsided. I don’t get the sense there’s much of a “oust Ignatieff” feeling in the riding. At some level, one might conclude the Liberals should hold this riding.

For the Conservatives – Patrick Boyer. Mr. Boyer was the MP in this riding during the Mulroney years. While I did not live in the riding at the time, people who did says he was quite popular, even as Mr. Mulroney’s approval faded. He was narrowly defeated in the 1993 election. In both the 2004 and 2006 elections, the Conservatives worked hard to try and make this the breakthrough riding in Toronto, yet the Liberals won it fairly easily.

As for the NDP and Green Parties (and other candidates) I don’t expect they will be much of a factor here. The NDP did win here in the Trudeau years and won provincially in the Rae years, but that’s ancient history now. I can’t imagine a scenario that would result in neither Ignatieff or Boyer winning, but….

I know lawn signs are pretty bad indicator, but for those interested, the Liberals are far ahead of Conservatives. I’ve seen nothing from the rest.

Let’s see how this race develops.