Election Watch: Day 822

Drop a writ already! We can't take all this suspense.

With Michael Ignatieff hitting the pre-campaign trail to visit 20 key ridings the Liberals hope to snatch from their rivals, Maclean’s John Geddes gives us an in-depth look at the Grits’ chances. By Geddes’s count, there are only seven ridings on Ignatieff’s tour that the Liberals have a fair-to-good chance of taking, leaving them far short of forming a government. Geddes admits his numbers might be skewed because he’s basing his predictions on the “the historically unsuccessful campaign” Stéphane Dion led in 2008, but with Harper’s Conservative base holding firm the Liberals will need to steal votes from the NDP and Green Party. Geddes wagers that “for Ignatieff to win the next election … he needs a wholesale change in attitude on the left side of the political spectrum.” In other words, the picture is grim for the Grits.

The Ottawa Citizen’s editorial board thinks that Michael Ignatieff’s recently unveiled ballot question (“Is Canada better off than it was five years ago?”) is an insult to Canadians’ intelligence. “The answer might well be ‘no,’” says the Citizen, “but Canadians are aware there was a global credit crisis and recession. They're also aware that Canada is actually in relatively good economic shape … The Harper government might not deserve all the credit for the way Canada weathered the recession, but blaming the government for a global crisis is a bit rich.” We in The Mark Newsroom are equally unimpressed with Iggy’s question, as it reinforces our suspicion that the Liberals have no actual platform to offer voters, just bold assurances that they are not Conservatives.

Noting that the supposedly conservative government is wracking up spending and New Brunswick Premier Darrell Dexter “is a New Democrat the way Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a lounge singer — that is, only occasionally when the mood strikes,” the Times & Transcript’s Alec Bruce makes the rare argument for abolishing political parties. This would certainly shake up the next election, but Bruce admits it won’t happen because it would rob Canadians of watching politicians sling mud at each other, one of our favourite spectator sports.