It's a By-Election Bonanza!

Three federal by-elections today could give us a preview of the next federal campaign, but the real race to watch is for a provincial riding in Québec.

With three federal by-elections being held today, the Ottawa Sun reprises its role as Tory cheerleader yet again and predicts a clean sweep for the Conservatives. The Sun is about the only outlet predicting this, but insists that Conservatives will win “because they are the best candidates, arriving at a time when the Liberals are … getting no traction from Michael Ignatieff, a truly hapless leader.” In the Winnipeg North riding, the frontrunner is actually not a Liberal candidate but the NDP’s Kevin Chief, but the Sun says the NDP’s soft stance on street crime will propel underdog Tory Julie Javier to victory. You’ve got to admire that optimism.

If the Liberals lose in Vaughan, Ignatieff may discover he wasted a lot of gas and ate a lot of backyard barbeque hotdogs for nothing this summer, opines the Globe and Mail’s Tim Powers. “One of the key purposes of [Ignatieff’s summer bus] tour was to inspire Liberals at the local level and utilize that motivation to build back the on-the-ground networks necessary to win,” writes Powers. The Grits have held Vaughan since 1988 and if Iggy’s summer tour didn’t motivate grassroots party members in a long-held Liberal riding, his caucus will have to do some serious thinking on Ignatieff’s leadership.

The vote that could have the largest long-term national impact isn’t any of the three federal races but the Québec by-election in Kamouraska-Témiscouata, says the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert. Given the provincial Liberals’ plummeting popularity and the riding’s large francophone population, the by-election should be a lock for the Parti Québécois, but polls say it’s too close to call. Should the PQ lose, it will likely mean the end of Pauline Marois’s leadership, which means “all eyes would turn to Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe.” Duceppe’s been linked to take over the PQ, and Hébert says his departure from federal politics would likely weaken the BQ in the next election and potentially completely reshape the Canadian electoral landscape.