The free Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia is emerging as a tool in the Liberal leadership race, to track the intentions of the most influential delegates.
It has become practically de rigueur for strategists to check and update the Wikipedia entry "Endorsements for the Liberal Party of Canada leadership convention, 2006," over coffee every morning.
"It's an easy way of figuring out what the other people are doing," said Mark Marissen, a key player in Stéphane Dion's campaign.
Wikipedia works on a model in which anyone can contribute and edit entries. Many leadership candidates' teams now regularly add new endorsements to the page -- including the all-important ex-officio or "automatic" delegates.
From 5,700 to 6,000 delegates are to take part in the leadership convention in early December. About 850 of those are ex-officio delegates, including former privy councillors, senators, MPs and former candidates. They are golden to the leadership camps because they do not have to be elected as delegates, and come with high party stature.
The Wikipedia list shows front-running Toronto-area MP Michael Ignatieff leading with 50 ex-officio delegates. Former Ontario Liberal minister Gerard Kennedy has 42 ex-officio nods, followed closely by Mr. Dion, the former environment minister, with 41 and hockey legend and ex-Martin cabinet member Ken Dryden with 34.
Former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae is given the support of 25 ex-officio delegates and Atlantic Liberal MP Scott Brison shows 13.
The site notes that 22 of 102 Liberal MPs are undecided, as are 18 of 65 Liberal senators. Eight MPs and six senators are remaining neutral.
Ignatieff campaign director Ian Davey said his camp looks at the site but does not contribute to it. The campaign prefers to announce endorsements strategically to "help build momentum," but it does have an Internet team.
"It's a huge part of politics now," Mr. Davey said. "What messages are out there, what people are saying, the whole blogging community, we follow it extremely closely."
However, he said the Ignatieff endorsements shown on the Wikipedia site are "substantially short of what we have."
Mr. Brison's campaign director, Leslie Swartman, said her campaign doesn't make a point of updating the site. But she also thought it was "a bit out of date." While Wikipedia bears out Mr. Brison's ex-officio in the Atlantic, her candidate has picked up support among aboriginal Liberals as well, she said.
At the least, the trend adds a bit of spice to the Liberal convention for tech-watchers -- as a real-world test of Wikipedia's reliability.
Jane Taber is The Globe and Mail's senior political writer.
