Provincial Politics
 

2019 Newfoundland and Labrador General Election - May 16 2019

Opinion polling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_N...#Opinion_polls

Looks like we have ourselves an election. Also a thread for general politics of the province.

https://www.thetelegram.com/news/loc...ection-304296/

Behind a paywall, but the five districts are:

Mount Scio
Mount Pearl South-Southlands
Humber-Bay of Islands
St. John's Centre
St. John's East-Quidi Vidi

My predictions for said districts:

Mount Scio: Liberal gain
Mouht Pearl South-Southlands: Liberal gain
Humber-Bay of Islands: Liberal gain, though Joyce could possibly pull it off as an independent
St. John's Centre: Progressive Conservative gain
St. John's East-Quidi Vidi: NDP hold, though I think with the party in such disarray this is the best chance for another party to swoop in and flip the district.

St. John's Centre: Progressive Conservative gain

I'm hoping you are wrong about this one. I do not wish to see Galgay making a return to public service. I don't think Dinn has a enough time to make an impression to hold the seat for the NDP though.

I can’t imagine the Liberals winning Mount Scio. I’d say it’s the PCs to lose. Not sure how Mount Pearl-Southlands will go with Paul Lane on the ballot.

Name recognition goes a long way in NL politics. It'll likely come down to a balancing act between "Galgay....I know him" and "Galgay....I know him.....what a dick".

I'm still leaning heavy Liberal for Mount Scio. It's a St. John's district (or is made of previous districts such as St. John's North) that has a long history of electing Liberal MHA's. Since none of the candidates stand out above the other, I'll default to the district electing the party which is currently the flavour of the week, the Liberals.

Hasan Hai is pretty well known, and is very popular among a lot of different groups of people. I'm giving him Mount Pearl-Southlands for that alone. The only real people who take issue with him are the far-right idiots who think he's a terrorist.

Nice to see you posting again, Posc. It's been a while, but I knew a politics discussion could draw you outta the corner :haha:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfo...seat-1.5108434

Interesting update in Burin-Grand Bank. Bill Matthews was a highly popular PC MHA, followed by highly popular PC turned Liberal MP. It's been a long time since he was in politics though.

I had this district pegged as a shoe-in for re-electing Carol Anne Haley, who in herself is very popular due to her association with Judy Foote, but Matthews could make this race a little interesting.

The Paradise area that was joined with St. John’s North was also a strong PC area. Kirby had one of the lowest performances for a Liberal in the province back in 2015, though that was probably a reflection of him more so than the party. It’ll definitely be a race to watch but I think the PCs are the ones to lose.

Hassan Hai was a good catch for the Liberals. That area had not typically been a great area for Liberals so I’m wondering if his own brand is enough to put him over the edge. Paul Lane is the wildcard here and makes the race interesting. Did he get enough popularity from getting booted from the Liberals to be a contender? He narrowly won this seat in 2015 despite being the incumbent against a weak PC Party. If Gillian Pearson could hold onto the support the PCs won in 2015 it’d be enough for her to win. Not being a recognizable name will probably hurt her. Being female might be a help though. Unknown females did very well in the St. John’s municipal election, but who knows if that translates over to provincial politics.

And thanks. :) I’ve continued to follow along but rarely get a chance to post. I usually catchup on my phone and it can be harder to respond.

Yepyep. What a smug, opportunistic, mf.

Dinn seems likable enough but as you say... is there enough time for people to get to know him? And then there's the whole matter of financing the thing. I mean the largest NDP donors last time around were the MHAs themselves!

What we need is campaign finance reform but it looks like that'll have to wait until after the election now. Fingers crossed that it actually happens though. (https://www.thetelegram.com/news/loc...brador-300884/)

I believe the deadline for candidate nominations and appointments is this afternoon. If that's the case, the NDP party are dead in the water. Even the NL Alliance will have more candidates.

It will be embarrassing but let's face it....as long they have candidates in certain St. John's districts that's all that really going to matter.

I think if they manage to get Coffin and Dinn in it will be considered a success.

I'm not an NDP person but I still don't know how they seem so incompetent. What was the point Rogers running in that leadership race last year to only step down 10 months later?...

I think she just wanted out of it, but yes. Poor timing. It's really too bad..

From what I here there's party infighting between the 'SJ social justice club' and 'winning elections' camp. But who knows.. I'm sure it's all interpersonal at such small numbers.

Baffling that they continue to prove the naysayers correct ('disorganized', etc).

From the Indy:

"But the provincial Tories, at worst, are facing some modest embarrassment; the NL NDP faces outright obliteration. In what should otherwise be a knock-down election for them—it is rare to see a Newfoundland and Labrador electorate so blasé with both governing parties—the party instead managed to dismantle itself completely 45 days before the writ dropped. Gerry Rogers threw her ten-month tenure as leader out the window in February, leaving Alison Coffin to come in and try and invent an election campaign from scratch. Then, because certain members of the party would prefer to start a civil war through the media than talk to one another, the NDP proceeded to shut down St. John’s deputy mayor Sheilagh O’Leary as a candidate and bled some of its stronger names (i.e. George Murphy and Nicole Kieley) to the Liberals.

As it stands, the NDP have five of their 40 candidates in place and less than a week to sort everything out. It is grim. But low expectations can make their own luck; Coffin is an unknown quantity to the public, which makes the high-energy MUN economist a wildcard in a leader’s debate. This would be more helpful if there was a party apparatus that could translate her clowning the other leaders into votes. But hey: they’ll be ready for that in 2023! (Maybe.)"

http://theindependent.ca/2019/04/20/the-phony-war/

Was out in Mount Pearl today and did a quick drive through some of the residential streets. In Mount Pearl Southlands Paul Lane definitely had the most signs on people’s lawns. While there were more Hasan Hai signs around in public areas I only saw one or two on people’s lawns. His signs started going up last week I believe so was surprised to see they weren’t on lawns. Gillian Pearson didn’t have a great deal of signs in public areas but she seems to have a nice few on lawns.

I live in the riding and I'm torn. I feel that Lane has been a good representative for the community but I love what Hai has done for charity, helping others and standing up to racism. I'm excited for what he can do for us but I feel he might serve us better federally.

PC and Liberal Platforms
 

Here are direct links to the PC and Liberal 2019 election platforms:

PC:
https://crosbie2019.ca/wp-content/up...-V04-WEB-1.pdf

Liberal:
https://nlliberals.ca/wp-content/upl...orm-forweb.pdf

I haven't heard if the NDP platform has been released yet.

Considering the state of the NDP I’m wondering if there will even be a platform. Their campaign has been pretty quiet, have hardly heard a thing besides the party defending not being able to get candidates.

Very true. I suspect it will be very difficult for them to win a seat this time around. Best hopes are Coffin in St. John's East - Quidi Vidi and Dinn in St. John's Centre. Although, it won't be easy for either of them.

They’re supposedly releasing their platform next week. Coffin announced yesterday a shocking policy that the NDP would hire more heath care workers. :runaway:

A very contentious issue, that's for sure. Especially given that we have the highest per capita spending on health care in country (excluding the territories). Although, there are underlying factors at play here. I find this a little surprising seeing that Coffin is an economics prof. If you ask most economists and they'll tell you that we are grossly overspending on health care. I may be jumping the gun here - may be the NDP platform will include ways to create efficiencies in HC, reducing costs in areas without compromising jobs... I guess we'll find out.

However, at the end of the day, saying you will hire more health care workers probably doesn't bode well to many of the voting population.

You may be surprised what the general public think versus what some of us think. There's a general feeling that our health care system is failing (it is), and I'm willing to bet that a lot of people would think that throwing more money at the problem would resolve it. We always hear about the need to hire more nurses, recruit more doctors, and all that stuff. I bet the NDP saying they'll increase health care spending will resonate with people who feel this way.

That being said, I think all of us here know this is the wrong approach. We need to drastically cut our health care spending through a mix of reducing inefficiencies and consolidation of publically-funded rural health clinics.

The NDP (and the Alliance) know they have the upper hand on the campaign trail. They can promise the world knowing very well they have no way of forming government to follow through with said promises. Best case scenario for them is that they get a few seats in the house to push for these promises knowing very well the party in power and the opposition won't listen to them.

I think some of this stems from the unions as well. You can't really blame them either given that many are over-worked, and that can affect quality of care. But this jesting is not uncommon between unions and government and will continue to happen. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we need to hack and slash health care to pieces and cut jobs, that would be detrimental to the province. There are so many inefficiencies in the health care system. I think this needs to be addressed first before throwing more money into filling jobs. But you do make a good point, a significant chunk of people would think throwing more money at it would solve their (not the) problem... but lines start to get blurry when many talk about the system vs themselves. It would be very unfortunate, however, if this was a tactic to drum up more votes. I honestly don't see where the extra money can be budgeted for more jobs. Just my honest opinion.... take it for what it's worth.