While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Allan Gregg.
The dynamics of this election campaign have been nothing if not unusual. Consider, for example, that the Liberals’ remarkable ascent has had very little to do with the flagging fortunes of their Conservative rivals — and plenty to do with the near-collapse of the NDP and Bloc Québécois. Support for the independantistes has declined almost exclusively due to threats from...
It is nearly impossible to win a federal election unless you are able to attract two key constituencies of “swing voters” — blue collar workers and new Canadians.This formula has been the key to the Liberals’ success and the Conservatives’ failure in the last three federal elections and has reshaped how all parties campaign.
If you were a betting person and wanted to place a wager on the upcoming federal election, my advice would be to keep your money in your pocket — at least for the time being. Forget, for a moment, the wild polling swings of the past two months. Go a little deeper into the numbers, and you’ll find more important...
Most analysis of elections includes some discussion of the so-called “ballot question” — namely, the question the various political parties try to convince voters they are answering when they cast their ballots.Underlying this strategy is the belief that some questions will offer an advantage for one party over the others.
Professional gamblers accept that you play with the cards you are dealt. That maxim, of course, dictates that you can’t control what cards are in your hand; the measure of your talent is the strategy you devise as the game goes on. The political deck has been shuffled in Canada and the Liberals and Conservatives are now holding very different...
As a pollster, I must confess that I was shocked by the results of last week’s Ontario election. Not by who won, but by who came in second and third. There’s a lesson in the result — one the federal Liberals should be paying close attention to as they prepare for a likely imminent election. That lesson? The common wisdom...
Within political circles it is now pretty much taken as a given that you cannot win an Ontario (or for that matter, federal) election without capturing a significant portion of the population’s blue-collar workers and new Canadians, living in the suburbs. Historically, both constituencies were reliably in the camp of either the Liberal or New Democratic Party. No more, as...
Typically, calling an early election that appears to be both unnecessary and opportunist does not go well for an incumbent. Both David Peterson and Justin Trudeau were ahead in the polls when they voluntarily shortened their terms: Peterson went down to outright defeat in 1990 while Trudeau returned a status quo Parliament that looked pretty much like it did before...