Ignatieff Still Leads

The votes are still not all in, according to the Liberals' nifty Flash program. But Ignatieff is steady at just under thirty percent. More important, perhaps, is that four candidates now know for sure that they are not going to be Liberal leader: Brison, Volpe, Dryden, Findlay. Findlay barely even counts. For the other three, if they all went to Ignatieff, with his support among ex officio delegates, they would actually put him over the top.

There might indeed be a significant temptation there: why not do it more or less together, guaranteeing one another nice cabinet positions should the Liberals win the next election? After all, staying in the race now is just going to be embarassing.

If, on the other hand, any one of them has strong personal or ideological reasons to avoid Ignatieff, who's the alternative? Rae is second, but Dion and Kennedy are close enough that another endorsement by anyone else might make the difference, shooting them past Rae and badly hurting his chances.

Rae may be a tough one for Volpe or Dryden to bow before--after all, he's an outsider. They might feel happier going to Dion. But Dion, conveniently for Ignatieff, is back in fourth position. Brison? He's over towards the right, and Rae is a bad match ideologically. Ignatieff would actually be the best fit.

So there you go; the math still seems to favour Ignatieff. He only has to get a quarter of remaining delegates as others drop out, Paul Wells points out. Everybody else could drop out in favour of the very same alternate candidate, say Bob Rae, and Ignatieff might still very well get that number. Conversely, just one endorsement might be enough statistically to vault him over the top, at this point.

So the temptation might become enormous for these four third-tier candidates to go over to Ignatieff now. If one does, the other two are under even more pressure.

And now there are rumours that Brison is in talks with Ignatieff.