We have a leader

Stephen Harper took a first ballot win today to become the leader of the new Conservative party. I'm glad he won it -- I voted for him, and I think he's the best of the bunch to take on the Liberals in the next election. But I'm also glad he won because if Stronach came out on top it would have torn the party apart.

It seems the politically incorrect thing to look at in this race was the popular vote. I had the pleasure of listening to the CBC's coverage of the results as they came in and not once was this subject raised. Ditto with the 6:00 news. All that was reported was the result using the 'points' system I mentioned in a previous post.

The pundits the CBC had gathered were surprised by the showing Harper made in Ontario, but noted that Stronach had done well in Quebec and the Maritimes, as expected. The odious Rob Love suggested that this was because Quebecers were impressed by her 'style' and didn't want another "white male in a blue suit" to be chosen. Such a load of horseshit.

Let me clue in the CBC on the reason she was even in the running in this race: her organizers went out to the remote ridings where the Conservative party was virtually unknown and signed people up. Whether they were signed up without their knowledge (as happened at least once), or the nice man at the door was just a good salesman, it doesn't matter. It didn't take too many new members in some ridings to make a big impact. Look at the riding results -- in the ridings where Stronach does well there are obviously few members. In Honoré-Mercier 95.65218% of the votes went to Stronach while Harper took 4.347826% (23 voters?). In Longueuil 66.6666% of the votes went to Stronach versus 33.3333% for Harper (3 voters?). And in Hochelaga, Stronach got fully 100% of the vote. Who knows, maybe there was only one voter. I don't know for sure that the turnout was that low in those ridings, the actual number of voter could be any multiple of my estimates. But turnout was low in Quebec with some ridings having no valid votes. I think my guesses are likely.

And let me also fill in the CBC as to the reason Harper did so well in Ontario: many people who are fed up with the Liberals joined the party and voted for the person they best thought could change things. It's hard to imagine, but there were issues in this election other than the home province of the candidate.

As I said earlier, it's a good thing Harper won. Stronach winning by 'getting out the vote' of people who couldn't give a damn would have ripped the new party apart. Someone would leak a voters list for some of the ridings, and 'unofficial' checks would be made on the circumstances of their vote. There would be challenges to results and threats to start a new party. It would have made the Copps-Valeri conflict look like a thumbwrestling match.

Posted by Bruce Gottfred at March 20, 2004 08:33 PM | TrackBack