Why Elizabeth May's leadership is finished

Because she can't win in her selected riding of the Saanich-Gulf Islands. She's chosen to make her last stand here against CPC incumbant Gary Lunn, and there's no possible electoral math where she can win this one, unless the Liberals choose not to run a candidate here... which Iggy has already ruled out, and which may not even allow her to win anyway.

Here's the 2008 numbers from Elections Canada:

Lunn (CPC) - 27991
Penn (LPC) - 25366
Leier (GPC) - 6742
West (NDP) - 3667 (he was the naked dude who had to drop out, but his name was still on the ballot)

Any way you crunch the numbers, she loses. For her to win, she'd have to take 80%+ of the Liberal vote. There's just no way that happens. Even if the Liberals don't run a candidate, there's no way that she wins... some disgruntaled Liberals will swing to the CPC just to deny her a seat, and/or the NDP in protest.

There was only ONE riding in the entire country where she had a legitimate shot... Guelph. With the base built by retired candidate Mike Nagy, and with the bleeding she would have inflicted on both the Liberals and the Tories, along with the MASSIVE support she'd draw from the University of Guelph, she'd have been the one to beat. While it would have been a three way battle in some respects, it would have pretty much been a Green lock.

But you see, there's a REASON she didn't run in Guelph. For her, the price of a victory was just too great. That's the reason she's finished as the Green Party leader... she doesn't have the guts required to turn her protest party into a mainstream force to be reckoned with. For her, she's only willing to go so far, and she's unwilling to make the sacrifices required to get into the House. For her, the price of a Liberal Member of Parliament was too high a price to pay.

Her mantra that the "Number One Priority" of the Green Party is to get a seat in the House rings hollow. Her best shot was in Guelph, but she was unwilling to unseat Liberal MP Frank Valeriote in the process. And she would have unseated him, any way you slice it... she would have automaticly been the leading candidate, followed by either the Liberals or the Tories, with it being a real tossup between the two of them.

With the conventional wisdom being that the Greens bleed at least three Liberal votes to every lost Tory vote, her entrance into the Guelph race would have either sown up a victory for her, or maybe, if every single star aligned correctly, allowed the CPC to eke out a 100-ish vote win... but there are almost no permutations possible would have allowed Valeriote to keep his seat. (FULL DISCLOSURE: Yes, I did help out in Guelph for the by-election and General Election last time around, but this analysis is strictly by the numbers... various Liberal pundits have already agreed with my analysis that Guelph was her only shot)

And that's why she didn't go for it... forget all the rumours that the local Greens didn't want her, they'd have rallied behind her in a heartbeat, knowing a that victory was almost assured. She chose not to do it because she didn't want to take out a Liberal MP. (Who knows... maybe she didn't want to risk her future chances of a Senate seat?)

Any way you slice it, whenever the next election is called, Elizabeth May is finished... I even predict that calls for her head will sound before the last ballots are counted. And she'll have ultimately failed to accomplish her ultimate goal, to make her Party a mainstream force to be reckoned with... all because she's been too cosy with the Liberal Party of Canada for too long.

So then... let the speculation on their next leader begin. Any names come to mind?