Fierce: Gearing Up For The Jack-Attack!
Jack-Attack comin atcha! Or so say the latest political polls.
Jack Layton & his NDP are rising meteorically across Canada. Late last week, a number of political polls from reputed pollsters such as Nanos, Ipsos-Reid and Ekos showed a shocking trend, suggesting that Jack and his party are gearing up to make a major derailment in the train that is the Liberal campaign.
The polls show NDP support higher than the Liberals in several areas of the country. Especially in dire straights is Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois. For the first time in years, the Bloc is trailing in popularity in it's own province to a rival. And who would have guessed that rival would be the NDP?
Currently, the NDP holds a single seat in the 75 seat province of Quebec, and naturally that seat is in a multi-lingual section of Montreal.
These revelations have prompted mass panic from The Liberal, Conservative and Bloc camps, with all parties launching all out attacks on Jack Layton and his party over the Easter weekend (not very love-thy-neighbor, is it?).
All of the pollsters cautioned on Friday, however, that while the NDP has slowly made gains in popular vote since the beginning of the election campaign, things may not be as they seem. Political polls tend to have fickle outcomes in general, but can be even more so prior to a weekend. The pollsters urged Canadians to wait until after the Easter break to draw conclusions as to the reality of the numbers.
Well, the Easter break is over, and the numbers are in again. And they are higher than they were last week. This is shocking news. Ekos predicts, that if the election were held today, the NDP would take 100 seats in the house of commons, second only to Stephen Harper's conservatives with 131. The Liberals have been projected to scavenge off the remnants with 69 seats.
And that's not all. If these numbers hold true, the entire landscape of Canada would surely change. With the NDP taking so many ridings in Quebec, the Bloc would be reduced to fringe party status. Additionally, this would reduce the Conservatives stronghold to only the prairies and Ontario, forcing the two to unite. No more of that "Western Canada - Vs. Ontario" argument. But it doesn't stop there either.
With this Jack-Attack, it would be difficult to imagine a Conservative minority government surviving for long. All opposition parties stated prior to the election that they would not support the budget put forth by Stephen Harper. And Harper himself has stated that after the election, they would present the exact same budget to parliament. This does not bode well for Harper's continued residence at 24 Sussex. It is unlikely that the same budget would pass, which would either trigger another election, which is not likely to occur. The other most likely option would be for the Governor General to ask the leader of the Official Opposition (Jack Layton) to form a government. Of course, Layton would require the support of the Liberals to make such an option work.
Of course, Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Leader could choose not to support the NDP, and throw his support to Stephen Harper instead. However doing so would likely drive even more of his supporters to the NDP.
The ironic part is, after two elections of Layton proclaiming that he was "running for Prime Minister", it seems he proved he was telling the truth!
There is still 1 week left in the campaign, and as the Jack-Attack proves, anything can truly happen in a week. But for the mean time, we will have to wait until tomorrow, as the pollsters are furiously working through the night to determine if Canadians are suffering with a bout of mass-hysteria, or if the love of Jack is strong and true.
