Liberal leadership candidate: Justin Trudeau,
Not that we were expecting otherwise, but Justin Trudeau should easily win the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. Only a miracle would turn the race in favour of one of the other seven candidates running against the runaway freight train of the Papineau riding MP’s campaign. In fact, we should see the first concrete signs of Trudeau’s victory in the next few days.
The real race will draw to a close on March 3rd – that is, the race for membership.
Trudeau’s campaign is actually inciting people to register as partisans to vote for him. The Liberal leadership campaign allows people to vote without being full party members. You only have to register as a partisan. And it’s free.
This method is giving Trudeau a great advantage. He is the one who is drawing the most curiosity from a good number of people, particularly young ones.
And since becoming a partisan is a bit like signing a petition – it doesn’t really tie you down to much – it is attractive to young people who aren’t in the habit of becoming party members.
And if we judge by just how many people Trudeau has been gathering at his public meetups, he should not have too much difficulty loading up on partisans. Another sign of popularity is the number of people following him on Twitter. With a count close to 189,000, he leads his closest adversary, MP Marc Garneau, by almost 70,000 followers.
Of course, this is still no guarantee of success. All of the partisans and Twitter followers in the world mean nothing if no one votes for you. Starting next week, Trudeau’s campaign will deploy all necessary energies to assure a win on the first ballot. It’s not a given, since the preferential system in place gives 100 points to each of the 308 ridings across the country. The percentage of votes earned by each candidate equals his or her number of points, which means he will need 15,401 points to win. To get there on the first ballot, he will have to win over a great number of ridings. Personally, I think that he is the only one capable of doing so because his campaign has the greatest financial and organizational resources.
Once party leader, he will have to expect a welcome from both the Conservatives and the NDP. The former have proven to be masters at defining their opponents in public opinion. They have great financial resources to work with. I am not expecting anything different this time around.
His advantage is that, unlike the last two party leaders, he will have at least two elections to bring the party to power before he is shown the exit door.
Translation Monique Kroeger
