The Longest Federal Election Ever!

For the first time we will have a Federal election on a fixed election date, October 18th 2015.   What this means is that we will see the longest election campaign in Canadian history.  With just under ten months to go there are already 531 candidates nominated for the 338 seats.   I expect we will see about 1650 candidates in total for the election, so we are at about one third already nominated

Current state of nominations (courtesy of Pundit's Guide)
CPC    196
LPC    187
NDP    104
Green   23
Libert. 16
Ind      3
F+D      2

The Conservatives have the most candidates nominated in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, BC and the North.   The Liberals lead in Newfoundland, PEI, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec

In the past when we were not sure of the election date, parties had to always be ready while at the same time not be really in campaign mode.   Now everyone can develop realistic long term campaign plans.  

Close to ten months will give all the local campaigns the time needed to build strong teams and manage to do the door to door thing.   It will also make it easier to raise the money needed to be competitive in the election because the effectively the campaign is now underway.

I would very surprised if we did not see large scale door to door campaigning by July 1st and maybe even start to see it underway by the end of April in some areas.   The summer of 2015 will be full scale campaign even though the writ will not have officially been dropped.

Because the three independents that have declared are interesting, here are some details on them:

• Brent Rathgerber - he left the Conservatives in June of 2013 to be able to vote as he wishes on bills
• Scott Andrew - he was expelled on November 5th 2014 from the Liberal caucus for allegations of personal misconduct against an NDP MP
• Inky Mark - he was an MP from 1997 to 2010 for the Reform party, Canadian Alliance, PCs, and Conservatives.  He also sat as an independent for a while.  He is running as an independent even though he is now a member of the Green Party.