On perfect storms

Among loads of other interesting information in her latest nomination roundup, Alice at Pundits' Guide points out why Sherbrooke indeed makes loads of sense as one of the NDP's Quebec targets:

Sherbrooke, QC - NDP Leader Jack Layton will be in Austin, Qué. next Wednesday to attend a fundraiser for his star candidate in this riding, TV host Yves Mondoux, reports the Sherbrooke Tribune. Mondoux was substituted in as NDP candidate very late in the 2008 campaign, when Bishops University professor Cheryl Gosselin had had to step down, and yet he still achieved 13% of the vote with few resources, said NDP Québec Lieutenant Tom Mulcair, who has promised the riding a much higher level of support this time around, and indeed it was named one of the Québec target seats by newly-appointed NDP campaign chair Brad Lavigne last week. 2008 Conservative candidate André Bachand has accepted a government appointment with UNESCO, while 2008 Liberal candidate Nathalie Goguen has elected to run municipally this fall instead, and no replacement has been identified as yet. Mondoux does not underestimate his remaining opponent, five-term Bloc Québécois M.P. Serge Cardin, but notes that "M. Cardin ne sera pas éternel". "Il faut préparer le changement," he says. No word on when the NDP nomination meeting is expected to be held, and Cardin has not been renominated for the Bloc in this riding as yet either.

Needless to say, there's probably no better opening for the NDP to make the jump from a competitive fourth to a serious contender than to combine a high-profile candidate of its own with a sudden dropoff in interest from the Libs and the Cons.

Which isn't to say that the other parties are wrong if they've concluded that their effort is better placed elsewhere: after all, fully-funded campaigns from the Libs in 2004 and the Cons in 2006 fell roughly 14,000 and 16,500 votes short of Cardin's total respectively. But Mondoux' early start and high profile should establish him as the main challenger to Cardin - and if the Bloc decides to move its resources elsewhere as well based on a perception that Cardin is in less dire straits than candidates facing challenges from the Libs or Cons, then it's not out of the question that Mondoux could take advantage of that opening to push Sherbrooke into NDP hands.

On targets

With a federal election likely around the corner, one of the main questions for the NDP is how effectively it can build on the inroads it's made in historically barren terrain. And Norman Spector notes that the party's Quebec strategy may not be what one might have expected based on its 2008 results:

(B)efore you forget about an imminent election so as to get on with your life, you should note that La Presse is reporting that “An election is inevitable. … An NDP source indicated last night that there have been no discussions with emissaries of the Harper government to find common ground. 'This leads us to believe that they, too, want an election.'" And, behind its fire-wall, Le Devoir is carrying a report this morning that suggests that NDP planning in Québec is proceeding full speed ahead:

“Strategists have set four ridings as their priorities, and those ridings will have greater resources during the campaign: Gatineau, Outremont, Sherbrooke and Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup. … New Democrats will be reinforcing the Bloc message, which is attempting to demonstrate that Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper are one in the same for Québec. The NDP will hammer home the fact that the Liberals have voted 79 times to save the Conservatives from being defeated in the Commons."

Of course it isn't the NDP's message that figures to come as news, as the opportunity to have the party's traditional "same old story" line of attack reinforced by the strongest party on the Quebec political scene makes for an opening far too valuable to miss. But it's worth noting where that message is apparently going to be focused.

Outremont and Gatineau are obviously the NDP's two strongest ridings in Quebec. But while there are some points in favour of each of the other two priority ridings as being potentially favourable territory, neither would jump out as potential targets based on their recent results.

In Sherbrooke, the NDP ran a respectable fourth with 13.1% of the vote in 2008. But one could say the same for dozens of Quebec ridings which aren't apparently being promoted to the top of the NDP's list of targets as a result. Which means that the riding will likely serve as a test case for the NDP's ability to find demographic factors aside from voting results alone which can bring a riding into play.

Meanwhile, Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup was actually one of the NDP's weaker Quebec ridings, with the party taking only 5.7% of the vote compared to 12.2% province-wide. Mind you, there is one obvious reason why the riding would be its target: its former MP (the Bloc's Paul Crete) resigned giving rise to a by-election campaign, and the combination of no incumbent and the resources put in during the by-election campaign might well create an ideal set of conditions for a breakthrough.

Still, the NDP's current position includes a seemingly more promising base in ridings where it has already moved up in the party standings and substantially closed the vote gap such as Hull-Aylmer, Drummond and Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, as well as ridings where it took second place like Westmount-Ville-Marie, Rivière-du-Nord and Repentigny. And we'll likely find out before long whether the ridings which surprisingly made the party's shortlist ahead of those better-developed options will actually offer more fertile territory.