Liberal Leadership Race - five days to go

Since the middle of the last week the media momentum in the campaign has been in favour of George Abbott, the latest news being key de Jong organizers saying they will vote Abbott second.   But is it enough?

Of the four candidates, I see George Abbott being the strong leader among existing members.   The 35,000 members of the party before the race are less set in their in their choice so it is a place where the other campaigns could make up some ground, but I see little evidence of that.  

Of the four candidates, George Abbott had the smallest sign up campaign, but he seems to have pulled in a moderate amount of spontaneous support.   The people I know that joined the Liberals without prompting to support Abbott seem to be doing it to either stop Christy Clark or Kevin Falcon.   I still think Abbott is way behind in the new members and this likely means that he is not only third, but too far back to be able to avoid elimination after the second count.   If I had better numbers to work with I could do something more accurate.

As I write this, the Christy Clark website is down (15:48 on Feb 21st).

I am not thrilled to have the leadership candidates campaigning as if this were a general election and not a leadership race.  Promising all manner of things to the public is not going to help much in the vote and will only cause problems for the government down the road.   Party members need to know what they will do to make the party a stronger organization and how they will ensure the NDP will not win in 2013.

As I write this now, the Christy Clark website is back online.  (15:50 on Feb 21st).   It was off for a bit, why that is I have no idea.

The leadership debate - I need to watch it because I have been asked by Shaw to comment on it....