How do the other federal parties need to adapt their strategies now that Michael Ignatieff has replaced Stéphane Dion as Liberal Leader?
Greg Lyle
(former chief of staff for Gary Filmon and adviser to Mike Harris): Other parties should be nervous right now. Michael Ignatieff is no Stéphane Dion. Mr. Dion became a perfect storm - for the Liberals' opponents. It may not have had to be that way, but that is the way things turned out.
Under Mr. Dion, the Liberals secured four percentage points fewer votes than would have been expected if they had only won the votes of their brand-loyal voters. If they had also won their share of independent voters, they would have won more than 30 per cent of the vote. The departure of Mr. Dion creates an opportunity for those alienated voters to come home.
Who has the most to lose?
The biggest losers are likely to be the New Democrats. Most of the movement in Canadian federal election campaigns is centre-left voters moving back and forth between the NDP and the Liberals. In the last campaign, doubts about Mr. Dion and the Green Shift chased those swings voters into the NDP's arms.
Our polling in the last Liberal leadership showed Bob Rae was best positioned to win those NDP switch voters, not Mr. Ignatieff, so the new Liberal leader needs to earn his spurs with these folks. The NDP needs to define Mr. Ignatieff as a pro-American, pro-torture corporate puppet before he gets a chance to earn those spurs.
There is no immediate threat to the Bloc Quebecois. Its vote is reanimated and doesn't need Mr. Ignatieff to fight its fight given the Bloc's strong current balance-of-power role. True, Mr. Ignatieff has a much more nationalist-friendly message than Mr. Dion, but the new Liberal Leader has said a lot of things that give the Bloc lots of ammunition to demonstrate that Mr. Ignatieff is off-side with many key Quebecois values. This is particularly true of his positions on Iraq and torture. The challenge for the Bloc is to time its attacks correctly so it doesn't blow its best ammunition too soon.
Stephen Harper and the Conservatives do face a real threat. If Mr. Ignatieff appears to be a stronger alternative to Mr. Harper than Mr. Dion was - and how can he not? - the Liberals will both regain lost Conservative-Liberal switchers and mobilize Liberals who stayed home last time. As the Liberals gain, the Tories slip farther away from majority.
Like the NDP, the Tories also need to define Mr. Ignatieff before he defines himself, just as they did with Mr. Dion. They might be able to make a flip-flop image stick. They may also be able to run with the arrogance label.
The bottom line is simple: If the law of the jungle is eat or be eaten, the law of the political jungle is define or be defined. Mr. Ignatieff and his team need to make sure he defines himself before his opponents do it for him.
Leslie Campbell
(former chief of staff to Audrey McLaughlin and former assistant to Gary Doer): The political drama of the past few weeks has confirmed that Canada's electoral framework has run its course and is now delivering unstable, regionally derived governments. Ontario, Quebec and Alberta already have their own parties, and now that the Conservatives have played the national unity card, it will only get worse. The Liberals and Conservatives both dream of turning back the clock to the days when one or the other could command a majority, but the balkanization of Canadian politics is likely to continue until we adopt a new election system or form party coalitions.
Michael Ignatieff has the potential to reinvigorate the Liberal brand and to build an attractive, broad-based national party. He is articulate, accomplished and cunning. But while he might retake a few of the Ontario and Atlantic seats lost to the Conservatives and NDP, a Liberal breakthrough west of Thunder Bay (or north of North Bay) is unlikely. The Conservatives will successfully paint Mr. Ignatieff as an aloof Toronto egghead with no connection to the concerns of - to paraphrase Sarah Palin - "real" Canadians. And the NDP will be difficult to beat in its incumbent seats.
