- Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette - Inky Mark of the Conservatives resigned September 15th
- Vaughn - Maurizio Bevilacqua of the Liberals resigned September 2nd
- Winnipeg North - Judy Wasylycia-Leis of the NDP resigned April 30th
All three of the MPs stepped down to run to become mayor. Maurizio Bevilacqua was successful in becoming mayor of Vaughn. Inky Mark missed out by 36 votes in Dauphin and Judy Wasylycia-Leis did lost the race to be mayor of Winnipeg by a much larger margin.
The two ridings in Manitoba are highly unlikely to change hands, though the fact that Manitoba Liberal MLA Kevin Lamoureux is running in Winnipeg North makes the race a bit more interesting. Lamoureux is arguably the most successful Liberal in provincial politics in Manitoba in the last 20 years.
The race that is most interesting in the one in Vaughn. On the surface I would not think this riding could possibly be in play, but people keep telling me that Conservative Julian Fantino is wildly popular. I am not certain that he is nearly that strong a candidate. It is a by-election and this is normally the time the public votes against the government.
I think the most likely result is all the incumbent parties holding their seats, though if Fantino really can pull it off, this will add one more seat to the Conservatives. If this were to happen, the house would be as follows:
- Conservatives 144
- Liberals 75
- Bloc 47
- NDP 37
- Ind 2
- Vacant 2
- Speaker 1
This still leaves the Conservatives 9 short of a majority, even if both independents vote with the government, they are still 7 short, but the trend is in the right direction. It is still highly unlikely that the government could grow to a majority
1 comment:
Frankly, as an American I'm more frightened about what may happen in two years if someone such as Sarah Palin was elected to the presidency. Fortunately that is a bit off, so we'll just hope sanity prevails.
America's House of Representatives is our democratic body, one which is designed to boil radically if the electorate so desires. The U.S. Senate, however is a teacup which is designed to cool the boiling water by changing much more slowly.
So while these teapartier's may be fulminating in the House, their legislation will be steeped and cooled by the Senate, the deliberative institution which is designed to temper the U.S. legislative branch of government.
My fervent hope is that we'll see some cooperative and constructive bi-partison work in the next two years.
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