At most race tracks today, the race fans are offered television views of the back stretch. It helps them follow the race, recognizing that most of the positioning moves in the back stretch develop the story of the race. It is the same in a political race such as the current Conservative Party of Canada run for the Leadership Roses.
An obvious loss in the back-stretch positioning was TV star Kevin O’Leary. Wandering off to Florida shows the lack of commitment that O’Leary has to the race.
O’Leary left Leitch lost in the pack. She will not be with the leaders in the final turn.
But you have to remember that this is a race reserved for losers. And 13 of those losers will still be losers when it is over. The winner will be able to decide whether it was worth it at his/her leisure. There is no second prize.
What makes the race interesting is that no accurate polls can be taken. With the supposed highest polling score of 10 per cent of Conservative voters, there is really no front-runner. The leaders are too tightly bunched.
Even the new sign-up Conservatives are a wasted effort as you can hardly get them all to strategically indicate a second, third or fourth choice that can be of any help to their candidate.
We expect the sleeper in the race will be Erin O’Toole from Ontario. It is one of the interesting complications of the party rules. O’Toole concentrated on the Atlantic Provinces at first. Logically, an Atlantic Conservative voter would have up to five times the voting power of an Ontario Conservative voter. If the average Atlantic electoral district with 50 party members has the same number of points in voting as an Ontario electoral district with 300 members, it shows Mr. O’Toole knows his math.
But whether O’Toole can challenge either Michael Chong or Lisa Raitt (also from Ontario) is impossible to guess. Raitt has the women’s second vote and Michael Chong has the Liberals (that is not a typo).
Michael Chong is the thinking Conservative’s choice because he is the closest to a Liberal that the Conservatives have to offer. He is that old fashioned Progressive Conservative that brought the Conservatives to power federally or provincially over the years. It was the extremists of the Harper crew who finally brought down that government. Chong was a dissenter.
We will give you another snapshot when the horses make the final turn.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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