Modeling Journey

A key factor for Liberal delegates in the second ballot is this question: Will he win the next election?

The number of delegates chosen for the convention is one indication of possible success on the hustings.

However, polls of Liberal members and voters in general are another, and here Bob Rae is leading the pack as the most favoured leader for the Liberals.

An interesting analysis of the delegate selections has been made by democraticspace at their website. They analysed the ridings based on past elections, and narrowed them down to the 163 ridings where the Liberals came within 15% of the total votes cast in the last election (up by 15% or down by 15%), and named these the "battleground ridings".

A quote from their site: "Thus, barring a shift of greater than 15 points in the polls (which appears unlikely in the near future), this suggests that the Liberals could win a maximum of 163 ridings (50 safe ridings, 50 that the Liberals won by 15% or less and 63 that the Liberals lost by 15% or less). So, while a leadership candidate may be popular in Alberta or rural Quebec, there is little chance that popularity will translate into electoral success in those ridings in the near future (since the Liberals lost these ridings by an average of 40 points). A candidate?s popularity in the 163 winnable ridings, by contrast, could make the difference between whether the Conservatives or Liberals win the next election."

And the results?

- Ignatieff's delegate share drops 9% to 26.1%.

- Rae's share goes up 2.7% to 21.4%.

- Kennedy picks up a whopping 7.7% to reach 20.5%, beating out Dion, who drops 8% (almost as much as Ignatieff), to end up with 13.5%.

Another indication that this race is far from over, with Bob Rae an very strong contender, hot on the heels of the stumbling Ignatieff-mobile, and Kennedy still in the running.