Perhaps it was the weekend start or the fact that the parties have been using the last week as their unofficial start to the campaign, but today was a rather dull affair. Conservative leader Harper went straight to Quebec after meeting with the GG, Liberal leader Ignatieff stayed around in Ottawa, while Jack Layton was out west in Edmonton. As this blog will be providing our thoughts on who "won the day" during each leg of this campaign, we've got to chose somebody but it's fair to say that today wasn't the most dramatic beginning to an election season.
While Michael Ignatieff's team put out a press release to clarrify their coalition stance, the document quickly met with mixed reviews as to how sincere the Liberals are to avoiding a formal coalition with either the NDP or BQ in the event that the next Parliament looks similar to the one that was dissolved yesterday, while leads me to grant today's vote to the Tories -- this is still a campaign being defined on their preferred topic of the coalition and not one about the recent controversies that the government has suffered.
Often in politics, the first punch is the one that counts the most and the Conservatives deserve credit for making this an issue out of the gate. That said, the Liberals have plenty to distance themselves from the coalition issue if they can convince the media to look to more interesting stories. The governing party might have landed a clean opening hit, but they are far from winning the round.
Day 1 Winner: The Conservatives
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