Leadership 2012 Roundup

With the NDP's leadership campaign entering its final week, it's no great surprise to see plenty more punditry than usual surrounding the race. But what might influence the ballots cast this week (which may end up making all the difference)?

- The most attention over the last day or so has gone to Doris Layton's letter in support of Brian Topp - which certainly offers a stronger and more sentimental appeal than a lot of the other late-campaign messages. But given that her endorsement had already been announced, I'm far from convinced the latest appeal will make all that much difference - no matter how well-worded.

- Bill Tieleman offers his theory as to how Peggy Nash can win the leadership. And T.C. Norris provides similar analysis of the relative positioning of the candidates, albeit leading to a conclusion that Thomas Mulcair is likely to emerge victorious.

- Tim Harper wonders whether Mulcair's opponents have helped pave his path to victory by not coordinating with each other's camps. And in particular, I'll note that the work the campaigns have done to encourage advance ballots aimed at a single candidate (or limited number of them) may make it easier for an early leader to hold on in a multiple-ballot vote.

- John Ibbitson declares Mulcair a shoo-in before offering a warning about undue certainty in prediction:

(A Cullen win) remains the least-unlikely alternative to the much-more likely victory by Mr. Mulcair. Your correspondent is as certain of this as he was in October, 2007, that Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic presidential nomination.

- Ish Theilheimer looks to sum up the differences between the leadership candidates. And John Baglow sorts out a four-candidate top tier.

- Finally, Mulcair offered a stronger rebuttal than usual to the suggestion he'd want to move the NDP to the right:

(Topp) has repeatedly said that Mulcair's vision for modernizing the party would move the party over to the centre.

But in a french-language interview with Radio-Canada's Sunday political flagship program Les Coulisses du Pouvoir, Mulcair said he has never used that expression.

"Others have used it for me, and attributed it to me," he said.

"What I have said from the start, however, is we have to bring the centre towards the NDP," specified Mulcair, who sees a distinction between the two positions.

- Which is for the best, since Frank Graves points out why the NDP looks to be in a strong position in building toward 2015:

Mr. Graves said he believes, based on his polling trends and contrary to the view held in red Liberal territory, that the NDP has shown, leaderless as it has been and with most of its star frontbenchers out of House action since October, that its success last year was not “an ephemeral blip propelled by the charismatic authority of Jack Layton.”

Mr. Graves posed that it is because, underneath the effect Mr. Layton’s leadership and strategic success in Quebec had, there have been dramatic subterranean shifts in Canada’s voting population in the past five years, which in the broader international sense, have also been reflected by the post-recession upheaval over the mushrooming gap between the poor and the rich.

“It is the increasing ideological fragmentation of the Canadian electorate, but also new sort of splits on, I’m not sure another term captures it as well, basically class conflicts. The new dominant issue that we see, but which nobody else is talking about, what the Americans are noting as the new number one issue, is income inequality,” said Mr. Graves.