The aftermath

Alice has the definitive rundown from last night's by-elections - which from the standpoint of wanting to see the most progressive candidate win turned into about as gory a train wreck as possible. So let's take a look at what went wrong, and how to improve matters in future trips to the polls.

Obviously the biggest disappointment came in Winnipeg North, where Lib Kevin Lamoureux narrowly beat out the NDP's Kevin Chief in the seat that Judy Wasylycia-Leis had previously held for a decade.

Most of the talk in the wake of last night's results has surrounded Lamoureux as a candidate, and I don't think there's much room for doubt that his personal profile enabled him to win a seat that otherwise might not have been in play. But it's worth noting as well that the NDP spent much of the campaign on unfriendly policy ground which may have helped to push votes out of its column.

Nearly all of the coverage I saw of Winnipeg North was framed around the concept that crime was issue #1 for the riding's residents, and that all three parties were presenting similar messages in dealing with it. But that means that the main focus was placed on a policy area where the Cons have spent years building up their brand (even if it didn't seem to help them in the by-election result), while Lamoureux was able to run against Manitoba's provincial NDP in creating a bit of space for voters to lean his way.

Of course, it may be that Lamoureux was well enough positioned to take on whatever campaign the NDP could develop. But I have to wonder if some more time spent changing the topic of conversation to health care, poverty and other more NDP-friendly issues might have made all the difference.

As for the other seats, there wasn't much news for the NDP. While the party's vote share in Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette improved somewhat, I'm not sure it can be seen as much more than the expected gain from running as the alternative in a riding that received more attention than usual. And the much-ballyhooed Con/Lib contest in Vaughan looks to have completely silenced the other parties, including the NDP.

The end result is that all of the parties have at least some success to point to - but both Winnipeg North and Vaughan saw turns for the worse in their party representation. And that figures to make it all the less likely that we'll see much accomplished in Parliament until the next general election.

Worth following up

There doesn't seem to be much doubt that Lib candidate Scott Sarna will be an also-ran in Monday's Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette by-election. But he may manage to have some significant impact on his party due to a seemingly new position which looks to demand some response from Ralph Goodale and other Libs who have normally pushed a different line:

Liberal candidate and young businessman Scott Sarna said he's heard a mix of views from farmers -- most prefer the wheat board but some would like reforms or alternative marketing options. He said the party is toying with the idea of allowing farmers to decide riding by riding on the issue.

Races may be closer than they appear

Eric Grenier's by-election projections certainly make for an interesting read, and it's a plus to see at least some commentary based on voting patterns rather than conjecture. But with two of the three seats projected to be won by 40+ points, I have to wonder whether the nature of a by-election will cause problems for a model developed for general elections.

Without having crunched any numbers myself, it seems that by-elections generally tend to produce closer races - which makes sense as the parties throw everything they have into one riding, eliminating the gap in expenditures and narrowing the difference in manpower necessary for a candidate to run away from the pack. And that would lead me to expect both Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette and Winnipeg North to produce far closer races than projected, even if the projected winners sound about right absent some major change over the course of the campaign.

One more stop for the summer tour

The announcement that Con MP Inky Mark plans to retire raises the question of whether. And while Mark's 61% vote share in 2008 would seem to suggest an awfully tough climb for either the NDP or the Libs, the Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette riding may well be a classic case of an incumbent racking up votes due to a lack of challengers rather than a true stronghold.

After all, the 2008 totals for the NDP (16%) and Libs (14%) were both the lowest in decades - the Libs hadn't done worse since 1984, the NDP since 1963. And the riding has been home to some fascinating shifts in party support in the past.

Mark first won the seat in 1997 with 35% of the vote - in a race where three other parties topped 20% of the vote, with Lib incumbent Marlene Cowling coming in fourth. Before Cowling's victory in 1993, the seat was a two-way battle between the PCs and NDP through the '70s and '80s, and a three-way or four-way battle for most of the three decades before that - starting with a 1940 race where 811 votes separated the Libs in first from the CCF in third.

Of course, there may be a case to be made that the riding has changed fundamentally over the past decade. But considering that only one election saw a candidate take more than 50% of the vote in the riding in 70 years before Mark reached that plateau in 2004, there would figure to be some significant potential to make the seat competitive again. And one can't figure the opposition parties will want to let that chance pass.