Canadian conservatives(moderate liberals) win minority control…

Ok - a couple of things . . .

1. this was The Conservative Party of Canada - a party that arose out of the joining of the Reform Party (far right wing) and The Progressive Conservatives (somewhat right of center).
2. This party is about as conservative as the Republicans, except maybe without such an “edge”, so i really don’t know (again) what EJ is talking about.
3. They formed a “minority government” meaning that the balance of power is held by the left (as it was before when the Liberals were the government).
4. The Liberal party of Canada were known as being “conservative Liberals” because of their fiscal policies - debt repayment, decreasing taxes and social spending, etc.

I think in general Martin’s strategy of attacking the US backfired.  The Canadian Liberal Party has actually pursued fairly positive ties with the US within the past several years, despite the mild disagreement over Iraq.  Thus, Martin attacking the conservatives over a pro-America policy rang kind of false in many peoples’ ears, as far as I understand, as well as the typical Liberal strategy towards the NDP.

Actually, does anyone know why, right around New Year’s, a dramatic swing in public opinion began?  I met with some Conservative campaign managers and strategists, all of whom were just scratching their heads.  The best they could think of was that their strategy, based on repeating a consistent message prior to the holidays (unlike the Liberals, who were making a big push after the holidays), gave their message more air-time.  When people got together for vacation, they talked about things, and that helped coalesce opinions.  Yeah, not the best reason, but I’m wondering if anyone knows of any other theories running around.

No doubt the recent scandals (adscam and the alleged income trust scandal) played a part.  But I suspect the real reasons probably run deeper than this.

People were probably just sick of the Liberals and their attacks on Harper and wanted a change.  But if you look at the pre-election poll surveys versus the final results of the election itself, people apparently thought twice about the Tories and still went back to voting for the Liberals.  For example, in a poll taken two weeks before you could vote, the Conservatives had a 40% overall lead over the LIberals in terms of who people were going to vote for.  But after all the voting was done, the Tories only came out with 124 seats, the Liberals 103, the New Democratic Pary 29, Bloc Quebecois 51, Independent 1.  The Conservatives needed 155 seats in total to have a majority.  So it just goes to show that public polls are never accurate and the Tories aren’t that well liked as everyone thiinks/thought.

I think that the sudden change was due to Liberal ads that backfired.  They had some attack ads that ended up touching otherwise-Liberal supporters that just chased them into the Conservative camp. 
Also i think that people just wanted to punish the Libs. 
Not sure how long this will last tho’.  The Conservatives have a minority gov’t with very few options for “teammates” with the exceptions of otherwise conservative Liberals.  We shall see . . .