Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
Well, at the federal level, I would argue that the NDP and Liberals are not close to each others ballparks. Your argument, while passionate, is invalid.
At the provincial level, this is pretty much a proposal to vote for Chicken McNuggets: Take the leftovers nobody would rightly want separately and mash it together to try and make it into something palatable if you bread it thick enough.
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At the federal level, I would agree. But there are a few things to point out. First, an NDP supporter would almost certainly prefer a Liberal representative or government over a Conservative one. Therefore, strategic voting where they are third place should be a no-brainer. Second, a merged Liberal-NDP party would be closer to the Liberals than the NDP currently are, and it would also be closer to the NDP than the Liberals currently are. For a sizeable chunk of their current supporters, the merged party would be in the ballpark (which really just means prefered over the Conservatives; it is only for some of the Liberals that a merged party would be less attractive then the Conservatives). Post-merger, the merged party and the Conservatives would be faced with the same dynamic the US parties face: where the party has to balance appealing to its based with being moderate enough to win. Let me tell you though, the longer the Conservatives stay in power, the more appetite for a merger there will be. And should that happen, I think the Conservatives would be pretty damn screwed.
At the provincial level, I think some kind of unification is an obvious move, simply because each party individually has such a low support party. Even a unified party would likely need to move to the centre (or at least be perceived as such - I think the Liberal issue at the provincial level is more a brand thing than a policy thing).