1. Joan Bryden reports on the massive recount in Quebec which, one imagines, will trim a few delegates off the totals of the three front runners in that province.
More alarmingly, the story claims that only 10% of Liberal Party members voted at their delegate meetings. With 37000 card carrying Liberals in Quebec, that means there were only around 3700 votes cast last weekend. By comparison, in Alberta there were 3299 votes (plus the aboriginal ballot). Given that Alberta has 37% of the ridings and 0% of the MPs Quebec has, I’d say there’s a lot of work which needs to be done rebuilding the Liberal Party in Quebec. On a more partisan nature, I’d also say that it shows none of the candidates were overly successful at winning the hearts and minds of Quebecers over during this leadership race and that there will be big challenges for whomever wins. While Kennedy may have bombed in Quebec, the truth of the matter is, so did everyone.
2. Despite winning BC, Bob Rae’s campaign manager from that province, Mason Loh, has resigned after it was revealed that 37 signatures had been forged on delegate forms. While the Rae team will be allowed to run alternates in most of those ridings, it may still cost them a handful of delegates in Montreal.
3. Gerard Kennedy gave a great interview on The Current which everyone can listen to here. Seriously – check it out if you’re a delegate for this convention.
4. This is really interesting. Infoscape is tracking what bloggers are saying about the Liberal leadership race. Among the things they’re tracking is the tone of coverage on the frontrunnes – as you can see, it’s been a good week for Iggy:
They’ve also got graphs on the amount of volume of coverage candidates are getting on the blogs and in the media. For comparison’s sake, I’ll include the blog/media percent of coverage for all eight candidates here:
Ignatieff 25% blog, 24% media
Rae 20% / 28%
Dion 15% / 24%
Kennedy 13% / 6%
Volpe 9% / 5%
Dryden 8% / 5%
Brison 6% / 4%
Findlay 4% / 4%
I generally don’t like to complain about media biases and all that, but given that Kennedy and Dion came out of last weekend neck and neck for the number of delegates, does it strike anyone as odd that Dion has gotten four times as much mainstream media coverage as Kennedy?
