The whole race for second place media meme - bullshit that it always was - masked a very serious battle that’s been going on since the election started between the Conservatives and New Democrats.
You can tell it is serious because the media are starting to report it.
And what they are reporting is stuff like Kathy Dunderdale in a scrum with reporters as she campaigned in St. John’s for some of the Tory candidates who are having a really hard time.
Now Kath couldn’t acknowledge what’s really going on so she blamed on the Liberals. What’s going on is that all those people who were voting Tory in St. John’s are abandoning the Tory party and heading for the New Democrats. Since early 2010, Tory support has dropped 27 percentage points. Since May, that support has apparently been finding a happy home with the New Democrats.
Your humble e-scribbler thought the local Tories had a tighter grip on their voters provincially than they do. The signs, though, have been unmistakeable for a week or more and the opinion polls – all conducted up to October 3 – confirm the growing NDP vote in the metro region.
The other big problem the Tories are having is interesting the people who would vote for them to actually get to the polls. Unmotivated Tory voters and the ones that are motivated are voting for someone else.
Ouch.
That just makes the NDP surge all the more problematic for the Tories. Dunderdale tried once again this weekend to encourage people to vote.
There’s a picture of Dunderdale accompanying that CBC story where she’s whining about Liberals, incidentally, with Kathy standing next to St. John’s East candidate Ed Buckingham. Dunderdale looks like she needs to get out for a few more runs to restore her energy level to the magical new levels she’s supposedly found.
For another clue of the battle going on around Capital City, consider that long-time Tory Doc O’Keefe is out beating the streets for his old Tory buddy Shawn Skinner in St. John’s Centre. Earlier in the week, Doc wasn’t giving any clue he would be hitting the streets for his old pals. By the end of the week the local Tories are announcing that Doc’s coming in to the fight.
All of this is part of the two front war the Tories have been waging. The other front is for the most part a battle against the Liberals in parts of the province outside the northeast Avalon.
In a post some of you might have missed, the always insightful labradore used the advance poll turn-outs last week to show how the Tories appear to be deploying their forces. The fights in St. John’s are heavy enough that the Tories have had to deploy forces they sent in 2007 to wind Liberal seats in rural Newfoundland into their heartland in St. John’s in order to hang on.
- srbp -