Canadian federal election - October 19, 2015: Official Results & Analysis Thread

[Holmes]

Well at least now I'm prepared for Toronto. And the looming Liberal majority.

[Holmes]

I'm starting to think the polls underestimated Liberal support... I know it's still early but.....

Well maybe in the Atlantic, but not really. Everyone expected a blowout but it sucks to lose some good Dippers.

[Holmes]

I wonder if it is fair to say that Canada is the most "elastic" of the major industrial democracies. The swings are just amazing.  Is it because Canada is less ideological than others, so personalities matter more?

That's one way to put it. This election is a special case though that only happens whenever a party's been in power for over 10 years and people want change.

[Holmes]

R.I.P. Canada's New Democratic Party, 1961 - 2015
R.I.P. Harper's time as PM, 2006 - 2015


The Crimson Tide was just too much #Pray4Canada

But Rachel Notley!!!!!11!1!!!!!

Yes, only Rachel Notley, progressive queen of Canada, can save us from the tyranny that is Trudeau.

[Holmes]

So the boring moderates win?

No, the NDP lost.

Hurr.

[Holmes]

Depressing night. This isn't change. Could have been worse for the NDP and I think we're getting a new NDP and CPC leader in the coming year. We'll see how Trudeau leads - rather, how his handlers tell him to lead.

[Holmes]

Weird things happen in Canada when a party is winning by a large margin.

[Holmes]

Weird things happen in Canada when a party is winning by a large margin.

Is 187 seats a large margin?

You're not four years old, you don't need someone else to tell you if something is a large margin or not.

[Holmes]

I think, if anything, this election makes Horwath's hold on many non-Toronto ridings more impressive in last year's election.

[Holmes]

True, but Ontario still is a very large province with many ridings, and a large geographic landscape. It's not like campaigning in Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island.

[Holmes]

I think one of the most stunning displays of the Liberal wave and the NDP collapse was Toronto, where the sweep was complete in turning even Toronto-Danforth red.

Not so surprising if you take the 2014 provincial election in consideration.

[Holmes]

If NDP gets to 44 seats, as they seem to be on track for, this will still be the second-largest seat tally they get in history (the next largest would be 43 in 1988, though from a somewhat smaller parliament). Not such a disaster.

It's not so much a catastrophe as it is a lost opportunity. Layton already sowed the seeds that made an NDP government possible, all it would take for an NDP government now is one more great campaign. Mulcair could have been the one but failed. With how huge Canadian swings can be, every campaign from here on will be an opportunity for the NDP to win government, even if they start out in 3rd as Trudeau did.

This is a good point, but at the point Canada is at now, that probably wouldn't happen any time soon, unless the Liberals screw up badly within the next 4 years (the closer to election day, the better). But that's a crappy thing to hope for.

[Holmes]

Try looking in the Atlantic for biggest swing. Maybe somewhere in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia.

[Holmes]

Ruth Ellen Broussard is straight up BALLIN'.

[Holmes]

Ruth Ellen Brosseau actually increased both her vote share and her majority.

At a guess, she put in the work on the ground and made the effort locally (because she felt she needed to given the publicity at the last election) where a lot of her colleagues seemed to assume that the NDP brand would make up for lack of local organisation - there are quite a lot of Quebec OrangeCrushers in third or very distant second places in their ridings.

Unless someone knows better...

No, you're pretty much right. Ruth Ellen put a lot of work in her riding, and the results spoke for themselves. Not that other New Democrats didn't, and some really did but it just wasn't the NDP's night in Quebec. Or Ontario. Or the Atlantic.

The NDP's LGBT representation in their caucus really took a hit last night. Same for their PoC MPs. I'm glad Anne Minh-Thu Quach won. She's a backbencher but she has talent and is no scrub. It's a shame Rathika Sitsabaiesan and Laurin Liu were swept up.

[Holmes]

Pierre-Luc Dusseault hung on pretty comfortably too.

[Holmes]

Looks like that poster who thought the Greens would win out on Vancouver Island was wrong.

[Holmes]

There are NDP strongholds in downtown Toronto, but when one party is beating the other by about 30% in the province, well...

[Holmes]

I set up a new model based on the 2015 results and inputted 308's polling average from Aug 24 - when the NDP was at its height, with 37.4% to the CPC's 28.1% and the LPC's 25.9% (although this included a heavily dubious Forum poll). The results were 165 NDP, 108 Conservative, 63 Liberal.

I also tried inputting the 2011 numbers to see how the vote efficiency changed. I got 190 CPC, 128 NDP, 15 LPC. It seems the Liberal vote was more spread out this time. Good when you're ahead of course, not so good if you're third.

So the Liberals crash when their support is low and the Conservative vote is slightly more efficient. Just confirming what we more or less knew. The NDP vote also seems efficient too, but not as much as the Conservatives', it seems.