What if...

Well, with the results behind us, I thought it would be interesting to see how it could have ended up differently based on various rumours or possibilities:

1. Kennedy stays on for ballot 3

Well, the most obvious what-if situation is what would happen if Gerard decided to stick it out for another ballot. Barring any strategic voting (which I will get to later), we didn't have enough support coming to us to overcome Dion. Then Kennedy bows out on ballot 3 instead of 2. Would he still be able to deliver his support to Dion? I would tend to think so. As I said before, Kennedy's people went to Dion because we generally liked him more than Iggy or Rae. It may not have been as big, and maybe Dion would have been a couple points behind Iggy at that point instead of a few up. It would have made the final ballot closer, but I think Dion would have still won it.

2. Brison goes Iggy Friday night

Well, according to my sources inside the Iggy camp, Brison was going to go Iggy. They had the rally set up, then Scott backed out and decided to wait for first round results.

Now, I'm pretty sure very few Brison people went Rae, but I think had he gone Iggy, they would have been much more likely to follow him there. It would mean that Iggy would get a better bump after the first ballot, but it might also mean that a few less of those Brison delegates would have gone GK or Dion. GK gained 30 votes, Dion gained 120. Would it have been enough to keep Kennedy close enough to Dion to make him decide to stay around? It might have, but I'm not sure what his split of people were. I don't know what Gerard's cutoff was (I think we could have made up 50-60 from Dryden's people, but not much more).

3. Dryden declares for Kennedy instead of Rae

I could also have the opposite, where Dryden declares for Dion, but all that would have done is make Gerard walk over with Dryden, and probably give even more momentum to Dion.

As for Dryden going Kennedy, obviously GK couldn't have dropped off the ballot then, and we go into the ever crucial ballot 3. As I said above, I think we could have had a net gain of 50-60 from Dryden, maybe even a few more if he declared, but alone it wouldn't have been enough. It would have made us all even more devastated, probably, but hard to say if it would have affected anything in the end.

4. Strategic voting

Rumours out of the Iggy camp had them much more worried about Stephane than Gerard, so what if they decided to give the Kennedy camp a few votes? This would probably be if Gerard had stayed on, since I don't think they would have gone en masse before ballot 2. This would have ensured that Kennedy is ahead of Dion, especially with Dryden's delegates going more towards us as well ("Ken, tear down this ribbon between the boxes").

Then Dion's folks have to pick. Assuming Dion declared for Kennedy, I think we would have picked up a large number of his people. Would we get enough to pass Rae? I think we could have. But then it's much closer, and Iggy would have a bit more. If the second last ballot had Iggy at 40, Kennedy at 33, and Rae at 27, could we have stolen enough of Rae's delegates to win? It would certainly have been an intense final ballot. Iggy managed to make it up to 45% against Dion, could he do better against Kennedy?

5. Plane from Vancouver not cancelled / Rae doesn't challenge AB results

2 rumours from inside the Kennedy campaign has the red eye from Vancouver with a dozen delegates for Kennedy on it cancelled due to weather. We also lost 17 delegates in Alberta due to out of riding rules (they're not allowed people who don't live in the riding to run). Now, I know other camps probably had a few people who missed out for various reasons (for example, I think Dion had a few people who were trucked off with food poisoning), but these would have been big ones.

Had one or the other not happened, then Kennedy would have been about 10-15 votes ahead of Dion after the first night. Dion still picked up about 90 people more than we did on day 2, but some of those may have been following the momentum. Even if Dion passed us, we would have been closer, bringing us to the "Kennedy stays on ballot" from the top. But if we were closer, maybe Ken would have come our way (the "Dryden to Kennedy" section). With both of the situations not happening, we may even have stayed ahead of Dion after the second ballot.

6. Rae declares for Iggy before the last ballot

The last ballot was 55-45. Would Rae's people have followed him if he himself buried the hatched and shook Iggy's hand before the vote? You've got to think at least a few people would have been swayed. It was only about 200 votes difference between Iggy and Rae. An Iggy-Rae team would definitely made Iggy seem better, since at least it's not just an "Ignatieff against the world" feeling (even if Brison did go to Iggy in the end).

And I'm sure there are a lot of other scenarios that would have been interesting as well (Dryden to Iggy would have given him a good boost, for example). But what to make of this all? Well, to me, it seems to make about as much sense and it's just as easy to predict what would have happened after it's all done than it was to try to predict it all before we started.