Political Staples

I was going to name this post the English progressives*, but who doesn't want to reference Jackson 5 tune and many on the left dispute that the Liberals are a progressive party (again, whatever the heck that means) so we will go with the English Anybody but Conservatives.

Aside: I bring up the progressive issue in all seriousness, is progressive synonymous with "left-wing" as conservative is to "right-wing" or does it mean something different? Can you be centrist and progressive? Where the Progressive Conservatives progressive? Seriously, it confuses me.

Anyway, back to the post. As you see below the Liberals have been on the slide since the 2000 election. Why? Let's look at the combined Liberal, New Democrat and Green vote since 1993.

1993: Liberal, 41.2% + New Democrat, 6.9% + Green 0.2% = 48.3%
1997: Liberal, 38.5% + New Democrat, 11% + Green 0.4% = 49.9%
2000: Liberal, 40.9% + New Democrat, 8.5% + Green 0.8% = 50.2%
2004: Liberal, 36.7% + New Democrat, 15.7% + Green 4.3% = 56.7%
2006: Liberal, 30.2% + New Democrat, 17.5% + Green 4.5% = 52.2%
2008: Liberal, 26.2% + New Democrat, 18.1% + Green 6.8% = 51.1%

If we treat 2004 and 2006 as anomalies as the Conservatives re-combined their vote we can see a stable range from 48%-51%. From 1993 to 2000 the Green vote was a rounding error and the New Democrat vote was low leading to strong Liberal support and Liberal governments. After the sponsorship scandal we see a sharp increase in New Democrat support as well as Green support.

Since we have seen the Conservatives are now getting the traditional conservative support and that the New Democrats have been growing after 2000 it is safe to say that the Greens have become the home of disaffected Liberals. It makes me wonder about the whole Kyoto thing. Did the Liberals try to wrap themselves in Kyoto because they thought it was a wedge issue in which they could beat the C(c)onservatives with or did their polling show that they would bleed support on the issue and they were trying to protect their coalition? If it was the former then it worked out very poorly for the Liberals because the constant drumbeat of global warming or climate change hasn't helped the Liberals (deservedly as they signed Kyoto but did nothing about it, classic campaign left and govern right) but rather turned the Greens into an actual player in elections. I wonder if any Liberals think the agreement with Elizabeth May was a good idea now?

If the Liberals are to grow they need win back a larger share of this 48-51% (duh!). It seems to me that the route back is not through the centrist campaign that Michael Ignatieff is going to run but through the unite-the-left campaign that we see coming from Bob Rae. If only he didn;t have that disastrous run as NDP premier thing holding him back. Find me the "progressive" Liberal leadership candidate and I'll show another anybody but convention winner.

* and I now that the support includes some of Quebec but the BQ vote is pretty stable and I am trying to simplify things here