Canada 2011 Official Thread

[RogueBeaver]

Parliament will be dissolved tomorrow morning with polling day likely to be May 2.

For non-Canucks, I'll compile a list of sources you can use to follow.

Globe and Mail (globeandmail.com): Our equivalent of The Times but more centrist.

Toronto Star (thestar.com): Our equivalent of The Guardian .

National Post (nationalpost.com): Our equivalent of the Telegraph .

ThreeHundredEight.com (threehundredeight.blogspot.com): Canadian equivalent of Nate Silver's 538 blog.

CBC (cbc.ca): self-explanatory.


French


La Presse (cyberpresse.ca) : centre-right, Quebec version of the Globe .
RDS :  Radio-Canada, the French division of the CBC.

[Smid]

Thanks for posting those links, mate!

[redcommander]

Thank you. What is the numbers of seats Conservatives need for a majority?

[RogueBeaver]

Thank you. What is the numbers of seats Conservatives need for a majority?

155/308 seats, roughly 40% PV.

[Fmr. Emperor PiT]

     Given that recent polling has shown the Conservatives running about as well as they did last time, this seems like a potentially foolish move on the part of the Liberals. Has there been any significant criticism within the opposition of this move?

[Vasall des Midas]

Yeah, as in "why now and not in any of the other months between the last election and now"?

[Hashemite]

     Given that recent polling has shown the Conservatives running about as well as they did last time, this seems like a potentially foolish move on the part of the Liberals. Has there been any significant criticism within the opposition of this move?

Opposition believes contempt of Parliament and the recent slew of corruption/accountability failures with PurgaTories can help them. There's the Bev Oda fraud, the G20 bloated costs, the F-18 bids, 2 prorogations in a row, government refusing to give Parliament the cost of its programs and so forth. And the opposition probably just said that they had enough with Harper practically laughing in their faces and told him to go f himself.

[Nichlemn]

Seems pretty likely the status quo will prevail, which is a waste.

[Hashemite]

So, yeah, May 2. Harper is going on with his lies.

He's going to campaign hard on the "coalition" and spread his lies about how coalitions are evil illegal things. What a pathological liar.

[cp]

Yay! I'm going to be in the country for the election (for the first time since 2006).

Though I doubt this will change the Tories' talking points very much, Ignatieff has "categorically" ruled out participating in a coalition.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ignatieff-rules-out-coalition/article1958015/

On another note, are there any good Canadian politics blogs/forums/sites that people follow other than this one? Someone mentioned threehundredeight.com, which is one of my favourites, but I'd like to know if there are any that offer a more qualitative analysis of the parties and the campaign; preferably from a non-hackish perspective.

[RogueBeaver]

Ever since the Liberal civil war, they seem to have lost their nerve for internal coups and prefer to use the electorate as their Human Resources Department to dump their leaders. Until they write a new Red Book and make it more than a one-time shot like Chretien did, they can continue cycling through Stornoway. Frankly I'm far more interested in who the next Liberal leader will be: Kennedy or LeBlanc.

There has only been one coalition in Canadian history, which put the senior partner out of contention for the better part of over six decades. Even the other example, Lib-Lab, had the senior partner with the most seats and votes, which the Liberals do not.

[Sibboleth]

Seems pretty likely the status quo will prevail, which is a waste.

While that's more likely than not, it's worth noting that the Canadian electorate can be a fickle thing, particularly during election campaigns.

[Trilobyte]

What are the statistics on governments that lose a vote of confidence and then win the subsequent election? The chances don't seem great if Joe Clark and Paul Martin were any indication. Maybe the Liberals can at least hope that history is on their side?

If I remember correctly, the Conservatives were still polling behind the Paul Martin Liberals when the government fell in 2006.

[Nichlemn]

What are the statistics on governments that lose a vote of confidence and then win the subsequent election? The chances don't seem great if Joe Clark and Paul Martin were any indication. Maybe the Liberals can at least hope that history is on their side?

If I remember correctly, the Conservatives were still polling behind the Paul Martin Liberals when the government fell in 2006.

The important factor is why they lost the vote of no-confidence. It's usually because of unpopular decisions, which should already be reflected in polling. As such, polling is almost certainly a better predictor of results than the means of a government falling, exceptions like 2006 not withstanding.

[Hashemite]

What are the statistics on governments that lose a vote of confidence and then win the subsequent election? The chances don't seem great if Joe Clark and Paul Martin were any indication. Maybe the Liberals can at least hope that history is on their side?

If I remember correctly, the Conservatives were still polling behind the Paul Martin Liberals when the government fell in 2006.

Discounting Trudeau's engineered 1974 defeat, all those brought down by NCMs have lost. Meighen 1926, Dief 1963, Clark 1979, Martin 2005.

[Holmes]

He's going to campaign hard on the "coalition" and spread his lies about how coalitions are evil illegal things. What a pathological liar.

People will eat it up. They do up in northern Ontario, and though everyone hates Harper there, they believe his verbal diarrhea.

[Hashemite]

He's going to campaign hard on the "coalition" and spread his lies about how coalitions are evil illegal things. What a pathological liar.

People will eat it up. They do up in northern Ontario, and though everyone hates Harper there, they believe his verbal diarrhea.

Yeah, that's the sad thing about this country. People are stupid.

[RogueBeaver]

So this will be the second, and the defeat was also partially engineered by the government here. All the parties wanted an election for different reasons, it's foolish to believe otherwise. The opposition is tired of propping us up, Duceppe doesn't care one way or the other if there's a campaign, and the Liberals again want the electorate, not the caucus, to fire their leader.

[Frodo]

It will be funny if voters reward Conservatives with a parliamentary majority on May 3rd -the exact opposite of Liberal hopes when they brought down this government.  

Is there any likelihood of this happening?  

[RogueBeaver]

There is a distinct possibility, though I refuse to believe it till I see it. The last time we had four elections in so short a time (1962, 1963, 1965, 1968) the fourth ended in a majority government. Already the PM has explicitly asked for us to be given a majority, letting the word slip once but emphasizing stability. Chretien didn't get his 1997 majority (in the Balkanized '90s) until the last 10 days of the campaign.

[Harry Hayfield]

Thank you. What is the numbers of seats Conservatives need for a majority?

The full figures for the last election in 2008 were:
Conservatives 5,208,796 votes (37.66%) winning 143 seats
Liberals 3,627,891 votes (26.23%) winning 76 seats
New Democrats 2,512,880 votes (18.17%) winning 37 seats
Bloc Quebecois 1,379,991 votes (9.98%) winning 50 seats
Green Party 940,294 votes (6.80%) winning 0 seats
Independents 89,387 votes (0.65%) winning 2 seats
Other Parties 72,757 votes (0.53%) winning 0 seats
Conservative lead of 1,580,905 votes (11.43%) but short of an overall majority by 12 seats

In order to get an overall majority, they need a swing from Liberal of 2.32%. The most recent poll suggested there has been a swing of 2% to the Liberals

[Hatman]

Depending on what polls are to believed, the Tories are on the cusp of a majority.

Here's where we shape up:
Greens: 0 (no one thinks Elizabeth May will win)
NDP 25-40
BQ 45-55
Liberals 55-75
Tories 145-160

[You kip if you want to...]

Eugh, I hate how centre-left parties seem to be doing so badly, all over the world.

[True Federalist]

Whether the Conservatives can win a majority may well depend on how well the BQ does.  If the BQ does poorly, while it would help the liberals even more, the Conservatives could conceivably gain as many as 3 seats in Quebec as a result.  Conversely if the BQ does well, they could cost the Conservatives 1 or 2 seats, plus the nominally independent André Arthur.

[Senator MaxQue]

Whether the Conservatives can win a majority may well depend on how well the BQ does.  If the BQ does poorly, while it would help the liberals even more, the Conservatives could conceivably gain as many as 3 seats in Quebec as a result.  Conversely if the BQ does well, they could cost the Conservatives 1 or 2 seats, plus the nominally independent André Arthur.

Well, according to polling, in Quebec City area, Conservatives are now polling behind BQ, mainly because Conservatives don't want to fund the hockey rink project of Quebec City.