It's a big weekend if you're a Liberal -- (a big weekend for us Ottawa journalists, too, for tomorrow is the annual Canadian Press golf tournament and the weather forecast looks promising. But I digress ...) for this is the weekend that, at riding associations across the country, card-carrying members of the Liberal Party of Canada will vote for delegates who will attend the December 2 leadership convention to be held in Montreal.
Each riding association gets to send 14 people to Montreal.
Those 14 delegates selected this weekend will be "locked in" for the first ballot at that convention. In other words, party members will be voting for a delegate who promises to vote for a particular candidate on the first ballot.
It appears almost certain that no candidate will win on the first ballot and so there will be a second ballot. How do delegates elected this weekend have to vote on the second ballot? Any way they want. That's what makes this weekend so interesting for political junkies. Who will people vote for on the second ballot, when every delegate is a free agent?
My colleague Roger Smith, who covers the Liberal caucus, gets to report on all the weekend races.
In the meantime, Greg Morrow, who runs the blog DemocraticSpace, has put together a handy little riding-by-riding scorecard of delegate selection for those who want to play along. When I checked in this morning, the first-ballot tally looked like this:
Ignatieff - 25.3 per cent
Dion - 19.8 per cent
Kennedy - 16.2 per cent
Rae - 14.9 per cent
... the rest each had less than 6 per cent.
(DemocraticSpace has a big asterisk to note that his numbers omit some regions for the Ignatieff, Dion, and Dryden.)
One of our favourite Liberal bloggers, CalgaryGrit, has some nice links and predictions in a Super Weekend preview post but -- be warned -- he's a Kennedy supporter :) . Meanwhile, Ignatieff supporter Cerberus has set up Liberal Leadership Central at his blog with more great links, predictions, and commentary.
Have fun, everyone!