A personal viewpoint by Dave Diduck

The Mythical Party of Canada

 A position paper on the United Alternatives Initiative, commonly known as a Unite the Right Campaign Proposed By Preston Manning.
The reason given by Preston Manning for attempting to combine the Progressive Conservative (PC) vote with the Reform Party of Canada (RPC) support is to defeat the Liberals in the next election. This election is expected to take place in 2001. The focus of the initiative was on converting PC executives to RPC, with Nancy Branscombe employed for that purpose. Despite attempts to explain that the initiative was intended to include people from all parties, that weak explanation came only after opposition to the idea, was expressed. Since there have been several press releases naming a few PC organizational people that have taken out a RPC membership there is no reason to believe that the denial was anything other than a political smoke screen to overcome those objections.

 As far back as the fall of 1997 there have been a number of references to the number of seats that would have been won by a Mystery Party of Canada (MPC) if so called vote splitting did not occur. This MPC is very nearly always portrayed as the RPC, in other words the PC support and voters would find their place within the RPC rather than vice versa or a new party structured on the same lines as the RPC. I have looked at the "vote splitting" from the perspective that the official avowed reason of combining forces is to defeat the Liberals as really truthful. Until such time as there is another reason given for UA I will confine my analysis with a list of those seats that were won by parties other than RPC and PC, but would have fallen to a united MPC. After all, getting rid of the Liberals can be done by giving all of our support to the PCs, and with a coalition of more than one party once elected is sometimes possible to form government.

For the purposes of this paper a seat will be considered belonging to a party rather that the electorate. Also a seat won by either the PC or RPC will be considered as being one for the MPC.

 Had 100% of both partys’ vote been combined, there would have been an additional 42 seats won by the MPC for a total of 122 seats. Four of those taken from the NDP and the other 38 from the Liberals. Obviously this raises some questions that will be need to be dealt with later.

 Several assumptions must be made to conclude that the MPC would indeed win those extra 42 seats. Firstly, that votes will transfer easily between parties and that in many cases a much higher transfer rate must be achieved than previous polls have shown would be likely to occur. In some cases nearly 100% of the vote would have to swing.

 From the RPC perspective:
In 34 constituencies more than a 50% swing of PC votes would have been needed to be added to RPCs’ to elect an MPC candidate and less than 50% in 8 . This is very similar in the 10 Constituencies that a PC candidate would have needed in those cases where the PC received more votes than the RPC. Further accuracy is moot until it can be predicted where the vote that did not go to the MPC would end up. If more of those votes went to the Liberals, it should be obvious that the swing to the MPC must be very much greater for success. Manning and his cohorts say that another 40 seats would put us in a minority position. On the surface that is a possibility, however it is doubtful that people would either vote for the MPC or stay home. Their choices would essentiall boil down to Liberals or NDP with Liberals being the most likely choice. At any rate, the conjecture was about the last election and a whole new set of circumstances will unfold next time.

 Both parties have a penchant for running candidates that have ran and lost in several previous elections as a different party candidate. Therefore another assumption is that voter rebellion against the MPC candidate will not occur. On the philosophical side, a belief that is often expressed by both parties, which is that the consumer must be given options or choices must be ignored. This attitude could very well be viewed negatively especially when a call to privatize Crown Corporations is made. It is also necessary that the party make the assumption that it will be easier to convert approximately twice as many PC votes than it would Liberal votes. Our Liberal -Tory same old story rhetoric becomes a bit foggy when viewed from that perspective.

 A view of fairly recent history in Saskatchewan would reveal that when the public is tired of the "Natural Ruling Party" they find a party that they will turn to. An example is the conservative vote coalescing for Lib Ross Thatcher, and in 1982 giving a landslide victory to the PC party led by Grant Devine. There was no need to create a new party or hold expensive conferences, basically it was done by the CAs selecting candidates that could win.

 Note: Column 2 are the winning Lib votes unless otherwise noted. The PC and RPC columns are actual votes and are added for reference. The formula for calculating the percentage of PC votes needed to elect a MPC M.P. is Runnerup votes in column 2 (bearing in mind that this figure was the actual winning vote) minus RPC votes divided by PC votes.
 

Const                 MPC Col 2       PC   RPC
Barrie Simcoe........26777 23549    10735 16042 70%
Brama-Malt.......... 19340 18933    10655 11883 66%
Bruce -Grey..........27300 17896    11139 16161 16%
Burlington...........25006 22042    16344  8662 82%
Cambridge............20066 17673     9299 10767 74%
Charles Assin........17062 15925     8664  8398 87%
Churchill Rvr.........7827 7288 NDP  1088  6750 49%
Dartmouth........... 14629 12326NDP 10183  4446 77%
Duff-Peel-well.......25849 20957    11089 14760 56%
Durham...............22054 19878     8995 13059 76%
Edm- SE..............15289 14745     1994 13295 73%
Edm WEST.............19311 17802     4403 16392 32%
Elgin Mdlsex.........21806 17890    11499 10307 66%
Erie Linc............19105 17542     6317 12788 75%
Fredricton...........18650 12252    10835  7815 41%
Hal Nor Brant........22252 21043     9704 12548 75%
Hastings Fron........24272 18399    12227 12045 52%
Hum ST Barbe.........13794 12057    11825  1969 85%
Lanark Carl..........29978 28151    13213 16765 86%
Leeds Gren...........26112 19123    15636 10476 55%
Miramachi............15238 13924    10570  4668 88%
Niagara Falls........20921 15868     9935 10966 49%
Northum land.........22060 21182    11458 10602 92%
Oakville.............24523 24487    15473 9050 100%
Oshawa...............18946 15925     6972 11974 57%
Oxford...............24239 16281    14706  9533 46%
Parry Sound........ .22344 17752    11435 10909 60%
Perth Mid sex........20253 19583    11073  9180 94%
Provencher...........18753 14595     5955 12798 30%
Ren Nip Pem..........25387 19569    12352 13035 52%
Richmond.............18347 18165     3435 14912 95%
Sack East Sh.........17547 12433 NDP12392  5155 59%
Simcoe N.............25212 22775    10849 14363 78%
Simcoe Grey..........29175 17895    11761 17414 7%
St Catherines........21532 21081     6503 15069 92%
Van Quad.............19886 18847     7546 12340 86%
Victoria.............18982 18130     3589 15393 76%
Vic Hal..............31307 18205    14283 17024 8%
Waterloo Well........22317 20038     8175 14142 72%
Went Burl............23748 19584    13481 10267 69%
York N...............24553 22942    11308 13245 86%
Yukon.................5421  4002 NDP 1928  3493 26%