Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Hopeful signs

On Sunday, I posted this:
(T)he biggest reason why the Cons are in trouble now is that they've tried to re-fight the 2008 campaign while Canadians' preferences have changed in the meantime. And it would be downright tragic if Harper is able to win his desired majority thanks to progressive voters who make the same mistake.
And Alice is in the process of documenting just how many ridings saw "strategic" appeals go horribly awry - possibly leading to exactly that outcome.

But I'll take a moment to start a bit of a project of my own - for which I'll be glad for reader input. And that's to document the ridings where positive messages won out in the face of the dirtiest political tricks of the 2011 campaign.

So let's start with the first example I identified in pointing out the potential for just that result.

In Gatineau, NDP candidate Francoise Boivin was both publicly outed and smeared in an apparent effort to stop the NDP's progress in one of its longtime Quebec targets.

Boivin won by a tidy 46 points.

Dirty smears lost. Positive politics won.

[Edit: Fixed wording.]

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