Canadian federal election - 2015

[Hatman 🍁]

No way the Liberals only get 152 seats with those numbers...

2 more reasons:

1: ThreeHundredEight has given the NDP the advantage in rural Quebec. Liberal power is heavily concentrated in and around Montreal, this knocked off a very, very large amount of seats, in fact, the Liberals are over 10 points ahead of the NDP in Quebec, but his projection is giving the NDP more seats than the Liberals.

2:The CPC's vote share is extremely effective. Rural ridings virtually all have a "perfect" vote share, at the point where their vote isn't concentrated and therefore wasted, but is also powerful enough so that even if the Conservatives have low percentages, they have just enough support in these ridings to win.

I believe 308 doesn't look at sub-provincial numbers at all.

[adma]

And if 40% = minority, it might just be a Canadian version of the "monkey in the middle" dilemma that plagues centrist parties (cf. Britains' Lib Dems)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And if 40% = minority, it might just be a Canadian version of the "monkey in the middle" dilemma that plagues centrist parties (cf. Britains' Lib Dems)

You know, if the Canadian Liberals didn't have a (very) recent history as a party of power, I'd be tempted to write this all off as some kind of non-real Centre surge thing.

[Njall]

http://www.threehundredeight.com/2013/07/a-deeper-look-at-polls-from-environics.html?m=1

Kind of interesting thing on 308, looking at the subregional results for the environics poll from late June (subregional in this case meaning the provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador, and the CMA's of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal), as well as comparing overall results and likely voter results in the Ipsos-Reid poll from the same time period.

[Hatman 🍁]

Those "sub regions" have to have a small sample size. And how are they even defined? Is Toronto the city or the CMA?

[Njall]

Those "sub regions" have to have a small sample size. And how are they even defined? Is Toronto the city or the CMA?

CMA, apparently

[Bojack Horseman]

Any predictions for 2015 in the True North? While as of now it looks like it will be a minority government, my biggest hope is for the defeat of Stephen Harper. What are the chances of that?

[RogueBeaver]

I'm predicting another Tory majority, no idea who will be Opposition Leader.

[Hatman 🍁]

Surely we have a thread on this somewhere...

Anyways, I'm predicting a Liberal minority.

[Njall]

These days, either a liberal minority or a conservative minority would be plausible.

[DC Al Fine]

I'm predicting another Tory majority, no idea who will be Opposition Leader.

I honestly hope this doesn't happen. Lord knows the ass whooping we'd receive if we're in power 13 years. Tory minority is my prediction right now.

[RogueBeaver]

I'm predicting another Tory majority, no idea who will be Opposition Leader.

I honestly hope this doesn't happen. Lord knows the ass whooping we'd receive if we're in power 13 years. Tory minority is my prediction right now.

We have a high floor. Back down to '04 levels or slightly less.

[the506]

My guess is Liberal minority.

Given the current political climate I wouldn't be surprised if we go 10 years before the next majority by anyone.

[Talleyrand]

Probably a Conservative majority with a similar seat haul for the party. NDP will fall back to third place and Liberals will become the Official Opposition again fairly easily. Obviously, this is just gut feeling- I (hope) I may be completely off.

[mileslunn]

I am pretty sure it will be a minority, although if someone stuck a gun to my head and asked me to make a prediction, I would predict Tory minority, but considering how unpredictable elections have been of late, I wouldn't put too much stock into that.

The reason I give the Tories the advantage.

1.  They will present a balanced budget with tax cuts and whatever the merits of this I suspect it will help to some degree.

2.  Justin Trudeau has a strong tendency to stick his foot in his mouth and while this is not fatal in between elections or even in the early parts of an election, if done in the final two weeks it almost always hurts the party.  Of the three leaders he is by far the most likely to stick his foot in his mouth.

Now Why I don't think the Tories will get a majority can be explained by doing a regional analysis.

Atlantic Canada: Harper is extremely unpopular here so even if their numbers recover a bit they will almost certainly lose seats here and likely the majority, albeit not all.

Quebec: Harper is toxic here so they will be lucky to hold the five seats they already hold.  Maxime Bernier will probably hold his, but that's about it.  At the same time the NDP has an edge as they have a better distribution due to their strength amongst Francophones whereas the Liberals tend to run up the margins in the heavily Anglophone and Allophone ridings on the island of Montreal.

Ontario: I want to wait until the provincial election is done as usually Ontario votes opposites but I would be quite shocked if the Tories held every seat they did.  Even if they win a majority in Ontario that won't be enough nationally as they need at least 60% of the seats if not 2/3 considering they will likely get fewer than 10 seats east of the Ottawa River and possibly fewer than five.

Manitoba/Saskatchewan: Tories should win the majority of seats but I doubt they will win 6 out of 8 seats in Winnipeg and likewise with the elimination of the rural/urban mixed seats in Saskatchewan and now just purely urban or purely rural, I don't think they will get 13 of 14 seats like they have in recent elections.

Alberta:  They should win the vast majority here and with six additional seats this will work in their favour although I doubt they will sweep the province.

British Columbia: A real wild card here as I highly doubt they will get 46% of the popular vote but depending on how things split they could end with as many if not more seats at 35% if they get the right splits.  Asides from Victoria and a few Vancouver ridings, they are competitive in most other ridings so a lot depends on how things are split between the other parties.  In 2004, they won 22 seats with only 36% of the popular vote while in 2011 they got 21 seats with 46% of the popular vote.  The Liberals should return to the 25-30% range they got between 1993-2006 while the NDP outside the Lower Mainland will be the Tories main opponent as well as they will win some in the Lower Mainland too.

The North tends to vote based on local candidates rather than party, so no comment here.

[mileslunn]

Any predictions for 2015 in the True North? While as of now it looks like it will be a minority government, my biggest hope is for the defeat of Stephen Harper. What are the chances of that?

If Harper is reduced to a minority he will be gone.  Either the Liberals and NDP will form a coalition or if they don't the party will get rid of him.  Up until now the party has increased their seat total each election so if they decline it will be tough from him to stay on.  Otherwise if the Tories don't get another majority, Harper will be gone as PM before the Fall of 2016.

[mileslunn]

My guess is Liberal minority.

Given the current political climate I wouldn't be surprised if we go 10 years before the next majority by anyone.

I would disagree.

The Tories won't likely get one with Harper as leader but if they get someone who is less arrogant, more likeable, and a bit more centrist I don't see why they couldn't.  Atlantic Canada is not anti-Tory, its anti-Harper as it frequently votes PC at the provincial level.  Quebec may be tough to win but I don't see why with a leader who spoke French fluently, was more moderate and sensitive to Quebec's needs couldn't win in many of the areas the CAQ did.  In British Columbia, outside Vancouver and Victoria, the Tories are competitive in most ridings so with the right leader and right splits they could easily get 30+ seats.

For the Liberals, they won't next time around since parties don't go from third to majority, but if they win a minority and the Tories and NDP are plagued by infighting while the Liberals do a good job, they certainly could win a majority the next time around.  The West may not be friendly Liberal turf, but a fiscally responsible one could win around 25 seats there while have similar results in Ontario to what Martin had in 2004 and McGuinty in 2003 while in Quebec win close to half the seats.  In 2004, had Martin held his Quebec seats, he would have won a majority even with the losses in Ontario so it is possible even with a united right (Chretien swept Ontario due to the division) and even without sweeping Quebec (prior to 1980, that's how they won the majority of their majorities) its still possible.  No doubt its a lot less favourable for them that it was last century which is why I doubt this next century they will enjoy the dominance they did in the 20th century, but I still suspect they will win some majorities and likewise I doubt the Conservatives will become the new natural governing party.  I suspect like most places, there won't be a natural governing party in the 21st century, but rather each party will be in for around 10 years give or take a bit and out 10 years.

[Hatman 🍁]

Right now I think the only party capable of winning a majority will be the Liberals, and that will involve a perfect storm, resulting in Quebecers somehow flipping to Trudeau.

[Citizen Hats]

Probably a Conservative majority with a similar seat haul for the party. NDP will fall back to third place and Liberals will become the Official Opposition again fairly easily. Obviously, this is just gut feeling- I (hope) I may be completely off.

I suspect a mild Liberal minority. The Tories are ruthless, but their old methods are less effective against a Liberal leader that Canadians think they know.  Ignatieff and Dion were unknowns to the public, and thus Harper could define them.  By contrast, Trudeau is not.   Trudeau is a much more effective manager than Ignatieff. People actually like working for Trudeau, and things get done. This was not the case previously

The Liberals have enough money coming in that they can more than wage a full campaign, although they won't be able to go toe-to-toe prewrit.  They've got the most donors, and the from my own view on the inside the base of active volunteers has swelled enormously, as has the organizational capacity to utilize this.  

During the last election the electorate polarized against Harper or against the NDP, to the detriment of the Liberals.  Once the charismatic figure of Jack Layton caught on in Quebec, it triggered a cascade across the country in favor of the NDP or against them. Thomas Mulcair is no Jack Layton, and while I have no doubt the NDP will have one of their best results ever, the electorate in much of the country is still likely to polarize against Harper, but with the perceived-to-be-charismatic and credible-with-the-public Justin Trudeau rather than the NDP there to pick up the anti-Harper vote.  

The NDP is unlikely to win an election in this country as long as its true that in the event of polarization that more voters will vote against them than than will vote against the Tories. Without a credible centre party, Canada becomes a bigger BC (and nobody wants that). Trudeau is incredibly popular in the Atlantic Provinces.  In Quebec, voters tend to go with personality to a great degree, and Trudeau is simply much more of a personality than Mulcair. Mulcair will likely take the most seats, but I would likely chalk up the Liberals the most votes.  In Ontario, things will depend on the Provincial Election.

In the West, while the Liberals have swung downward in recent years like everywhere else, the trend has been somewhat in our favor.  Liberal voters are less likely to be a great mass of Central Canadians, and with the echoes of the once popular Reform Party slipping away into managerial CPC government. Mulcair has alienated many of the Old NDP types who might be susceptible to his message out west with his economic views that their gains are his voters' losses, and many more conservative leaning voters have discovered that, now that the West is in, it's not what they'd imagined it was going to be.

So minority it will be

[MaxQue]

In Quebec, voters tend to go with personality to a great degree, and Trudeau is simply much more of a personality than Mulcair.

No. Most people I talked with (and it's including usual Liberal voters) see Trudeau as lacking substance. Good-looking and talking, but a bit of an intellectual lightweight.

[DC Al Fine]

Here's my take on Atlantic Canada. I started writing out what seats the Liberals will pick up, but it's making more sense to just write out what the Tories & NDP will retain.

Newfoundland
St. John's East

Nova Scotia
Central Nova
Cumberland-Colchester
Halifax

New Brunswick
Acadie-Bathurst
Fundy-Royal
New Brunswick Southwest
Tobique-Mactaquac

The Tories will hold onto their historic strongholds and nothing else. The NDP will win where they have extremely popular incumbents (Harris & Godin), plus Halifax, which has all the prime NDP demographics.

Note that I did not include Peter Stoffer's riding in the NDP holds. Sackville-Eastern Shore was always more of a Stoffer riding than an NDP riding. The recent redistribution removed the outlying rural parts (which vote like BC) and tacked on some Liberal voting suburbs (Dartmouth East, provincially). I expect the Liberals to win the new Sackville-Preston-Chezzetcook by a nose.

[DC Al Fine]

Quebec: Harper is toxic here so they will be lucky to hold the five seats they already hold.  Maxime Bernier will probably hold his, but that's about it.  At the same time the NDP has an edge as they have a better distribution due to their strength amongst Francophones whereas the Liberals tend to run up the margins in the heavily Anglophone and Allophone ridings on the island of Montreal.

I agree that Harper is toxic in Quebec, but the Tories ought to retain a few seats due to the vote splitting cluster f[inks] that 2015 will be.

[mileslunn]

Right now I think the only party capable of winning a majority will be the Liberals, and that will involve a perfect storm, resulting in Quebecers somehow flipping to Trudeau.

While I don't totally disagree, its extremely rare for a party to go from third to winning let alone a majority.  Usually most parties tend to retain between 67-80% of their support from the previous election as well as the kind of things that might bring over the NDP-Liberal swing voters aren't necessarily the things that will bring over the Tory-Liberal swing voters.  I agree Harper has too much baggage that I would be extremely shocked if he won another majority (I don't say with certainty as I didn't see the BC Liberals making the comeback they did, but considering what happened there is an exception rather than the rule, its probably fair to say Harper won't). 

Rather I go on the idea he steps down and there is new Tory leader in which case I still think they could pull of a majority.  Of those who voted Conservative last time around, I don't think they've permanently ditched voting Conservative, they just feel Harper has overstayed his welcome.  While this obviously won't happen next time around, about 45-50% of Canadians have voted for a centre-right party at either the provincial or federal level in the last decade meaning there is a large pool of potential voters with the right leader.

[mileslunn]

Probably a Conservative majority with a similar seat haul for the party. NDP will fall back to third place and Liberals will become the Official Opposition again fairly easily. Obviously, this is just gut feeling- I (hope) I may be completely off.

I suspect a mild Liberal minority. The Tories are ruthless, but their old methods are less effective against a Liberal leader that Canadians think they know.  Ignatieff and Dion were unknowns to the public, and thus Harper could define them.  By contrast, Trudeau is not.   Trudeau is a much more effective manager than Ignatieff. People actually like working for Trudeau, and things get done. This was not the case previously

The Liberals have enough money coming in that they can more than wage a full campaign, although they won't be able to go toe-to-toe prewrit.  They've got the most donors, and the from my own view on the inside the base of active volunteers has swelled enormously, as has the organizational capacity to utilize this.  

During the last election the electorate polarized against Harper or against the NDP, to the detriment of the Liberals.  Once the charismatic figure of Jack Layton caught on in Quebec, it triggered a cascade across the country in favor of the NDP or against them. Thomas Mulcair is no Jack Layton, and while I have no doubt the NDP will have one of their best results ever, the electorate in much of the country is still likely to polarize against Harper, but with the perceived-to-be-charismatic and credible-with-the-public Justin Trudeau rather than the NDP there to pick up the anti-Harper vote.  

The NDP is unlikely to win an election in this country as long as its true that in the event of polarization that more voters will vote against them than than will vote against the Tories. Without a credible centre party, Canada becomes a bigger BC (and nobody wants that). Trudeau is incredibly popular in the Atlantic Provinces.  In Quebec, voters tend to go with personality to a great degree, and Trudeau is simply much more of a personality than Mulcair. Mulcair will likely take the most seats, but I would likely chalk up the Liberals the most votes.  In Ontario, things will depend on the Provincial Election.

In the West, while the Liberals have swung downward in recent years like everywhere else, the trend has been somewhat in our favor.  Liberal voters are less likely to be a great mass of Central Canadians, and with the echoes of the once popular Reform Party slipping away into managerial CPC government. Mulcair has alienated many of the Old NDP types who might be susceptible to his message out west with his economic views that their gains are his voters' losses, and many more conservative leaning voters have discovered that, now that the West is in, it's not what they'd imagined it was going to be.

So minority it will be

Its true that Trudeau lacks a lot of the problems Dion or Ignatieff does.  His main problem is he comes across as quite amateurish albeit very likeable and tends to stick his foot in his mouth frequently.  Thus if he runs a solid campaign and listens to his handlers, I tend to think your right, but I find he has a tendency to do stupid things which won't hurt him per se, but as the election draws nearer they can be fatal.  As for the West, the Liberals will probably pick up some seats in Winnipeg and the Lower Mainland, but I would be quite shocked if they get over 25 seats.  It will take a few elections to win over the West.  Now that doesn't mean the Tories will take all the rest.  In Saskatchewan the NDP should win some of the urban ones as well as Vancouver Island and some of the working class suburbs in the Lower Mainland look favourable for the NDP.

[mileslunn]

Quebec: Harper is toxic here so they will be lucky to hold the five seats they already hold.  Maxime Bernier will probably hold his, but that's about it.  At the same time the NDP has an edge as they have a better distribution due to their strength amongst Francophones whereas the Liberals tend to run up the margins in the heavily Anglophone and Allophone ridings on the island of Montreal.

I agree that Harper is toxic in Quebec, but the Tories ought to retain a few seats due to the vote splitting cluster f[inks] that 2015 will be.

Maxime Bernier should hold his seat, but beyond that any other wins will be tough.  The splits only work out if the BQ makes a comeback which could happen but seems unlikely.