They believe they are electing the man who will become prime minister after the (expected) 2007 elections. And after a disappointing first ballot, it's looking more and more like that man might not be front-runner Michael Ignatieff. His 29% of the ballots far exceeds the totals posted by his rivals - but it's below expectations.
Posted by armand at December 2, 2006 08:43 AM | TrackBack | Posted to International AffairsYep, Iggy has stalled. The 2nd ballot is done, and Ignatieff only has 31.6% of the vote. The candidates who have the wind at their back today appear to be Bob Rae (24.1%) and Stephane Dion (20.8%). They both picked up a lot of support after the first ballot. But Gerard Kennedy remains in the mix as well, with 18.8%. Former hockey star Ken Dryden came in fifth place, so he won't be in the next round of voting.
Posted by: Armand at December 2, 2006 12:27 PM | PERMALINKWOW - Now if US political conventions were like this they could get great ratings and create a world were reporters are blissfully happy.
After round 2 Dryden endorsed Rae - and then Kennedy dropped out too, before the next round of voting, and backed Dion. Then in round 3 virtually all of Kennedy's voter joined Kennedy in backing Dion. So Dion's gone from being a distant 3rd (with only a 2 vote margin over 4th placed Kennedy) in the 1st round of voting to now leading after the 3rd round. He's up from 856 votes to 1782, and has now displaced Ignatieff as the leader (Ignatieff has only gone from 1412 votes in round 1 to 1660 votes after the 3rd round). Bob Rae climbed almost 400 votes today - but he still ended up in 3rd place, so he's now out of it.
So it all comes down to Dion and Ignatieff and the 1375 people who voted for Rae in the last round.
Posted by: Armand at December 2, 2006 04:16 PM | PERMALINKWow - Dion clobbered Ignatieff, 2521 - 2084. Let's hear it for voting systems that allow for people's second-choice preferences (in multi-candidate fields) to count.