Steven Harper: Little Engine that Could.

Bless Steven Harper's little heart; he knows he can, he knows he can, he knows he can defeat the Liberals in Parliament and win an election:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said after a weekly caucus meeting yesterday that he does not believe he must wait until Nov. 14 -- the first scheduled opposition day -- to introduce a no-confidence motion that could force an election.

Good luck with that, Steven. No, seriously.

See, here's the thing. On the right is a graph basically all of the publically available polls from over the last few years (the points), with a crude smoothing (thick solid lines). The thin horizontal lines represent the results of the last election. (You can click for a bigger, less fuzzy version). And what one sees pretty clearly is a slow reversion back to the previous election (late June '04) results. Maybe, if one was inclined to be uncharitable -- and I am -- you'd point out that the Conservative numbers are still a little lower than before, and the NDP and Green numbers are a little high.

Given the make up of the current Parliament, you probably don't need any models to tell you what that means, but it's fun to use one anyway. Bump down the Conservative numbers a couple and the NDP and Green numbers up a couple in the Election Calculator (Guaranteed accurate predictions, or your money back!), and see that those results would give the Liberals and NDP combined a solid lock on the Parliament -- and that assumes that there isn't a voter backlash against the Conservatives for an unneccessary election being forced.

Whether the Harper Conservatives like it or not, the Canadian electorate as a whole hasn't moved very much since the last election -- or at least, is moving back to where they were before. So one is left with two choices -- either convince the Canadian voter, by means of innovative new policies or statesman-like behavior, that they should change their mind and vote for you; or whine and kvetch and try to throw monkey wrenches into the mechanisms of Canadian governance.

I wonder which tack the Harper Conservatives are taking?

The federal Conservatives are threatening to resume the disruptive tactics that shut down the House of Commons for three days last spring if they can enlist the New Democrats in a plan to take down the Liberal minority government.

Oh, right.

Update: The Toronto Star agrees.