08 03 15	Curley, Larry and Moe 24.244.244.114
In a close race like Ottawa Centre, the local candidate can make a big difference. In this case, Paul Dewar is simply going to out work Penny Collette at the doors. All three of us have seen both candidates in action. Collette thinks she's already taken the seat and isn't working like it's actually an NDP riding. Dewar, may not be the second coming of Ed Broadbent but he knows in order to hold his seat, he needs to show up at every event in the riding and knock on every door. That's why Dewar beats Collette. This riding stays with the NDP.
	08 02 29	Doug The Slug 192.30.202.21
Penny will prove the Collonettes are a spent force in federal politics when she fails to take this seat for the Liberals. Paul Dewar proved to be a strong campaigner in 2006 when most people wrote him off in the race against Richard Mahoney. The NDP are going to sin any other seat in this section of Ontario but they'll keep this one without a doubt.
	08 02 26	Peg Leg Pete 99.234.197.75
Paul Dewar vs Penny Collenette is going to be one of those races to watch on election night. Ottawa Centre is the only riding the NDP hold in eastern Ontario and they'll pull volunteers from every riding from Kingston eastward into Ottawa Centre to try to hold on. You'll know how well Dewar is doing by how many times the NDP drag poor old Ed Broadbent out to campaign here. The more you see Ed, the more trouble Dewar has. Penny Collenette on the other side has the backing of all the old Chretien Liberals who want to see her do well. Right now, I don't see any sitting Liberals in Ottawa in trouble so the party will be sending in a lot of volunteers from the rest of the national capital area to help Collenette. This means the streets of Ottawa Centre will be filled with NDP and Liberal armies who will knock on every door and pull every vote they can. I have to give a slight edge to Dewar as the sitting MP and because the NDP will have more soldiers on the streets because this riding is all they have the eastern region. Jack Layton will make a weekly stop in Ottawa Centre during the writ period because there are so few ridings the NDP are competative in. Collenette needs help from the leader to win and Dion is going to take such a horrible beating from the media and Conservative attack ads that he won't be able to make a positive difference for Collenette. I predict Dewar wins by 900 votes.
	08 01 08	Bernard Manning 64.230.10.14
You are getting it mixed up. Ottawa Centre is not a ‘by-election’ The Martin Liberals maneuvered the riding out of that dilemma two elections ago and they still lost both on the bounce to the NDP! Yes, the Liberals will win the TO Centre and Willowdale by-elections in a cake walk, but what bearing does that have on Ottawa Centre? There is and NDP Broadbent/Dewar incumbent. Maybe a better strategy for the Liberals would have been to move one of Rae, Hall Findlay or Kennedy to Ottawa Centre and trade Collenette to one of the TO ridings. That would also have broken up the Fortress Toronto mentality. We have a hung Parliament and are supposed to be looking for a clear winner, after all.
	08 01 07	99.230.250.127
A lot of Liberals sat on their hands last election because they didn't really want to support Richard Mahoney who was a very polarizing figure in the Chretien-Martin wars. With a new candidate, even one who is lower-profile, the Liberal vote would likely go up. Unfortunately, Penny Collenette is caught up in the very same intra-party strife as Mahoney.
	07 12 19	binriso 156.34.226.67
So according to seasaw the Liberals are going to win Ottawa Centre and Trinity Spadina, but probably lose Parkdale High Park? I know Kennedy was the one who put Dion into the leadership, but it was a pretty logical choice, theyre both on the left of the party, Dion was kind of a compromise candidate like McGuinty in 1996. Any backlash from that for Kennedy should be negated by the fact that he is a super-star candidate. And of course he is on the left, held the riding provincially by landslide margins twice. The NDP margin is also only 2000 votes there. As for here, Liberals might increase their votes a bit since they have a good candidate, but they had Richard Mahoney here twice with good support from Martin and he lost by more than 5000 each time. Greens will probably bleed a lot of votes, a few to each other party but more to the NDP from the left-wing greens and a few moderates.
	07 12 10	seasaw 99.225.19.235
Liberal Gain. The prospects of having a majority CPC government, will take many NDP votes to the Liberals. Also the Liberals are losing a lot of their right of centre voters to the Tories, so they'll be gunning for the soft NDP votes. I'd say the Liberals'll take this one by less than 1,000.
	07 11 12	Bernard Manning 64.230.52.42
You have a point. The Conservatives have been universally awful in this riding and never do much more than parachute in a Candidate from somewhere, anywhere, in Eastern Ontario and wait for the miracle that never happens. That's 10-15k votes regardless and it never moves. The Greens are a presence that cannot be denied and that is 5k-8k votes. So, in this riding you have 15k-23k voters who vote regardless of the fact that their Candidate can never win. It all comes down to NDP vs. Liberal. I don't think that Dewar is a very strong MP, quite the opposite. I do agree that he is a very popular MP and there are obviously many in this riding who identify strongly with him based on his prior pre-political life as someone who had a real job, went to work and is raising his young family. That is particularly appealing to female/family/senior voters of which there is that strange mixture of demographic in this riding. The Liberals know this and now we have Penny Collenette, but she seems too little and all too late for their cause. She is a bit 'old' in a political sense for this riding, and I do not wish to be unkind. In hindsight she would have been a much better Candidate than Mahoney in the last two. Dewar is going to be very difficult to dislodge.
	07 11 10	binriso 156.34.236.173
Also the person who said that this was the highest vote share for the Greens is incorrect, since that went to Shane Jolley in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound in 2006 and Andrew Lewis in 2004 in Saanich Gulf Islands. This time we might even see a 2nd place CPC finish but if that happened the NDP would probably be up by about 8-10000 votes here. Easy win.
	07 11 02	Adam H. 99.240.174.85
Yes, Haqvi pulled it off, but I think it had more to do with factors outside of the NDP's control than anything else. Even though the Greens were expected to do well, they took 12% of the vote in Ottawa Centre, pulling votes from all parties, especially the NDP in this riding. More importantly, the poorly run PC campaign (see religious school funding) drew many of the centrist Glebe area votes strongly into the Liberal camp. (This is not to mention that Trina Morrisette was a weak candidate for the Tories)Thirdly, it certainly helps the Liberals that Mr. McGuinty is right next door in Ottawa South. Federally, this riding will stay NDP in the next election barring a Liberal resurgence and an NDP collapse, which are both unlikely at this point. Dewar is a very strong MP, and will benefit from incumbency as well as the federal NDP's position as the party that best represents urban issues. Also, the Conservatives are bound to run a strong campaign that will draw voters from the Glebe away from the Liberals. Finally, Chernushenko isn't running again for the Greens, so a few of those votes will bleed back to the NDP, as well as the other parties. The Liberals would need a star candidate in a potential Liberal-election year to get this one back.
	07 10 17	Bernard Manning 64.230.66.161
Well, spoke too soon! Haqvi pulled it off for the Provincial Liberals by about 2,000 down from the outgoing incumbents 9,000 but still solid enough. So now we have NDP-Federal and Liberal-Provincial as before. What this tells us is there are enough Liberals in Ottawa Centre to win it Federally but they are not voting for the Federal Liberals. They stopped pulling themselves apart publicly for the Provincial Election but now they are back at it again.
	07 10 05	Bernard Manning 64.230.11.237
You're right. Unless the Liberal Party had decided to put in a definately Left leaning Liberal heavyweight such as a Bob Rae or Gerard Kennedy you are not gong to get this one back. Paul Dewar has taken up the mantle for Ed Broadbent and at his age looks set to take his seat for a long time as all the demographics slide slowly but surely his way. It is settling into NDP Federally and Liberal Provincially.
	07 10 01	binriso 156.34.212.190
The NDP will win here pretty comfortably again. I dont think the CPC or the Liberals will be too far apart in vote totals probably 25ish each with the NDP up at around 35-40. You know Bob Rae(who is originally from Ottawa) might have given the Liberals a chance here but honestly without any stars, anyone else will be hard pressed to beat Paul Dewar.
	07 08 06	A.S. 74.99.222.209
Chernushenko's departure certainly appears to help the NDP, though a lot of Ellie May-hating Dippers might sarcastically claim it'll benefit Liberals and Tories instead--then again, Ottawa Centre's been so traditionally Green-strong, it's difficult to imagine Ellie May will simply ‘throw’ the Chernushenko-less seat. But right now, if Liberal/Tory/Green opponents here form such a comedy of riches, that'll more likely work to cancel each other out on behalf of the incumbent. Ottawa Centre-ites are now pretty much used to the NDP, and Paul Dewar's high on the ‘likely successor to Layton’ list--maybe what we should be keeping our eyes out for isn't Dewar's defeat, but both sides of the Chaudiere painted orange...
	07 07 17	Porter 198.103.172.9
This one just became a lot more solid for the NDP! David Chernushenko has resigned his position as deputy leader of the Green Party and will not be running in Ottawa against NDP incumbent Paul Dewar. Chernushenko was very popular in several areas of the riding, greatly increasing the GPC tallies 2004 and 2006 and having the highest vote count of any Green Party candidate in the 2006 election at 10.2%. He was endorsed by the Ottawa Citizen in both 2004 and 2006 elections.
	07 04 17	R.D. 64.195.177.3
The Ottawa Citizen reports that Mahoney abandoned this riding to take a shot at the Liberal nomination in Pontiac, PQ instead: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/local/story.html?id=7aae14c9-0b14-4eed-a06e-11e59231b3dc&k=0 If Mahoney was ready to throw in the towel in Ottawa Centre to try and unseat a Quebec Tory instead, I think that the NDP has this riding locked up. By the way, Mahoney lost the Pontiac Liberal nomination, too.
	07 04 08	Joe 68.148.61.68
Another election, another round of predictions that the NDP can't win this seat. First many predicted Broadbent couldn't overcome the Liberal support in the riding. Then more predicted the NDP couldn't win it without Broadbent. When will it end. If Dewar won it last time, he'll win it again this time. The NDP has started to again poll around the same range of votes it recieved in the last election, with the Liberals starting to drop. This is a pretty easy seat to predict. NDP.
	07 04 08	Brian Appel 70.48.240.240
The numbers for the NDP in Canada, and in Ontario in particular, are grisly indeed. Latest poll by the ever-reliable SES put the NDP at 15% in Ontario, down 4% since the election. The Conservatives, whose fortunes are rising in Canada's largest province, have no chance here, but should take enough votes to let the Liberal candidate take the seat. I call a Liberal gain.
	07 04 05	Rob C 204.42.175.210
Former Regional Councilor and ‘Funeral Director to the Prime Ministers’ Brian McGarry is the CPC candidate. Frequent candidate David Chernushenko is running for the Greens. 3 Liberals have declared interest or are considering seeking the nomination: Gerard Kennedy organizer Scott Bradley, U of O Professor / Lawyer Penny Collenette (Yes the wife of former MP and Chrétien loyalist David Collenette), and the Liberal candidate last two times around Martin confidante Richard Mahoney. Current media speculation suggests Mahoney may opt out or run in another riding. At this time, I believe this riding will remain in the hands of the NDP regardless of who the Liberal nominee is. The Conservatives may fair slightly better with the better known McGarry this time around, but there is no evidence to suggest a three-way race is developing. Consideration: @ 10% in the last election, this was one of the best performing Green ridings. The Green Party is the only party to see its vote consistently rise in this riding over the last 5 federal elections. IF the Greens target this district in the next election, it could move this riding into more competitive territory especially if Layton's NDP continues to cede environmental support to both the Liberals and the Greens.
	07 04 04	W.B. 65.95.51.162
Dewar as a relative unknown won this seat comfortably last election, and he has since done a very credible job as MP. It seems the Liberal candidate will be Penny Collenette. She has extensive party connections, but as a former Chretien backroom operative will have the same aura of corruption that hurt Mahoney. The Conservatives, while running a strong candidate, have no hope in this riding. McGarry will only help Dewar by drawing more Liberal votes.
	07 04 02	free_thinker 137.122.73.209
Im calling this for the Conservatives for two reasons. One, a very well known candidate who has been campaigning for quite some time. Two, a proper vote split will put him right over the top. I seriously think this riding is a three-way race.
	07 03 25	King of Kensington 74.98.171.205
This riding should stay NDP. Some had claimed it only went NDP because Ed Broadbent was running (and indeed it helped) but in the last election Paul Dewar won by quite a comfortable margin.