Tom Mulcair will not be coming back to Newfoundland and Labrador again during the current federal election.
He certainly won;t be coming back to visit Avalon and he will only be back if there is a sense that Ryan might actually have a shot at winning St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.
The only other reason he might come back is if he had a candidate in a fight for a seat. The latest poll from Mainstreet Research confirms what dedicated political analysts have known for some time: there is no race in Avalon. Liberal Ken MacDonald is miles ahead of any of his rivals.
The New Democrats are a distant second.
“Distant” means the Liberal candidate is out front by more than two to one either in decided voters or if you add leaning to the decideds.
Incumbent Scott Andrews is in third place among decided voters, with a mere 13%. Add in leanings and he is tied with the Dipper at 19%. The Grit is at 57%, including leaners.
There is no race in Avalon. There is nothing about the result that is even vaguely in question, if that poll is any guide.
For those who don;t know, the seat is an amalgam of the bits of the old St. John’s West riding that tended to vote predominantly Conservative federally and a chunk of the old Bonavista-Trinity-Conception riding, that tended to vote Liberal, more often than not.
The seat went Conservative due largely to Fabian Manning’s personal popularity. The internal fight between the provincial and federal Conservatives in 2008 handed the seat to the Liberals. Continued disarray on the Conservative side of things look like they will keep the seat in Liberal hands.
The only thing missing in Avalon is the truth about the circumstances that led Liberal leader Justin Trudeau to flick Scott Andrews out of the Liberal caucus. Andrews certainly hasn’t faced up to the issue, at least not with the media and voters. His campaign launch was a joke as he declared he’d answered all the questions even though he quite obviously hadn’t told even a tiny fraction of the story or acknowledged his role in it.
Andrews would have been better off to save himself the cost of the campaign and simply left politics altogether. Running against doesn’t do anything to secure a pension, fatten his severance or anything of the sort. it just adds to his own debt load.
And if the incumbent hasn’t come clean, the other crowd who haven’t acknowledged the story would be the Dippers. If the NDP had had their way, there’d have been no allegation, no investigation, nothing at all that would have dealt with the matter.
As it is, the latest poll should let people put to rest the question of who the next member of parliament will be from Avalon. Voting day will just make it official.
-srbp-