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Conservative Party of Canada

Dream King's picture

The new Conservative Party elected Steven Harper as its first leader in a first round primary.

Does this new party with a new leader have a chance to unseat the liberals?

No, Reform changing to Alliance was not a split. The issue since the creation of the Reform party is a split of the right-of-centre vote. If, for example a riding where the vote is typically 60% convervative and 40% liberal has both an Reform/Alliance candidate, a Tory, and a Liberal, the Liberal is bound to win because of the split when, for example, the 40% vote Liberal as usual, but the conservatives split, say 35% Tory, and 25% Reform/Alliance.

Because of that the Liberals win more seats in Parliament than usual and the Reform/Alliance and Conservatives both getting a small fraction of what they would get if they were the only conservative ticket. So when, if there were a single conservative party, the house would ordinarily be made up of a roughly 50/40 split of Liberals and Tories (swinging back and forth between the two) and the remainder going mostly to the Bloc and pittance to the NDP, we instead end up with the Liberals getting the vast majority of the House and the Bloc doing better than either convervative party (despite the fact they don't exist outside Québec) and winding up leading the Opposition. 

I don't see the Reform changing into the Allience as a split, rather they just changed their name so that they didn't seem so anti-East/Anti- Ontario/Anti-Quebec.

Personally I think that Quebec which will probably vote Bloc, will act as a Nader (and this is not a quip about the Arab population of Quebec and Nader being Lebanese), Quebec which generally votes "conservative" (Bloc is an offshoot of the Tories afterall) which will mean that the Liberals will lose precious votes which it will need to form the next government.

Personally I believe that this election will mirror BC's, where as we all know, the current government is Liberal in name only. (Not that I am complaining, what with me being a conservative and all).

I would think so. Now that the conservative vote is not split the party has a much better chance of getting the majority in the house. Of course the fundamental issue that caused the Reform Party to spring up in the first place still exists, which is of course that Ontario/Quebec is not all of Canada and no matter what national party is in power the west remains second-rate.