One thing’s for sure, if Don Mills is right and Moncton is the key battleground for the election, Al Hogan has certainly been a good foot soldier for the Tories. He’s got the big bus on the front page of the paper showing not only a 5 point lead for the Tories but that Lord is favoured to be Premier. For measure, we get “Gas prices fall again!”.
Only when you dig into the text do you read that of the three major polls done, the Grits have led in two out of three. Only Bristol shows the Lord in the lead and their VP disclaims that lead all through the article. In fact, all three polls are within the margin of error and in 2003 the actual results were way out of Bristol’s margin of error.
It must be that 19 times out of 20 thing.
But I digress.
No matter how things turn out on Monday, Al Hogan deserves at least a thank you card.
But I digress.
The purpose of this little tome was to address this lingering question. I covered it in a previous blog but I still can’t rectify it in my mind.
I just assumed when Lord called the election his internal polling must have shown a huge lead. Two people told me the Tory polling had them ahead – one by 9 points and the other by 12 points. One person told me that the Tories were ahead in the vast majority of ridings.
But if those polls showed a huge lead, what happened? There was no ‘defining issue’. No rallying issue that angered the voters. In fact, Desserud is visibly agitated that there is no spark to this election.
If there is no spark, how do you go from massive lead to too close to call in a few weeks?
Hmmm.
One thing’s for sure. Peter Mesheau didn’t trigger this election. He’s way to classy a guy to bring down his own party and jeopardize the pensions of half his caucus (not his own by the the way) but not waiting through one more sitting of the Legislature. Everyone knows he could have worked for his new employer and sit through the House. In fact, he had been working for his new employer for several months already.
But Lord needed a pretext. You can’t insist for three years that you believe in fixed election dates – “and my date is October 2007” and then just change your mind.
So Mesheau took one for the team.
But I still don’t understand. Why not wait a year? Chisholm and all the spinners must have worried about the underlying sentiment. What about the Saint John By-election?
A colleague of mine stated that Lord called the election (in his opinion) because he thought the Prime Minister told Lord he would going to the polls next year and he wanted Lord to get the election behind him and then run for the Federal Tories.
But, again, that would not be consistent with Lord’s position. He stated he would serve the full term.
I hope that no matter what happens on Monday night, some Tory insider will blab on the CBC about the reasons why Lord really called the election – because it’s still a lingering question for me.