2011 Canadian Provincial Elections - Wrap-up phase.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Two retirements announced in the past week in seats that become much less safe without the incumbent: Kormos (NDP - Welland) & Pupatello (Lib - Windsor West)

[Linus Van Pelt]

This poll is basically useless, but it's not outrageous that the Liberals will hold better here than elsewhere. The religious schools issue is no longer a focus, and Hudak's campaign themes (of which the main one thus far seems to be YOUR HYDRO BILL IS TOO HIGH CAUSE OF MCGUINTY'S GREEN ENERGY SCAMS) aren't exactly geared towards North Toronto professionals.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The basic issue with Newfoundland parties, and the reason for the odd regional distribution, is that they are descended from the pro- and anti-Canada forces in the 1948 referendum. The areas around St. John's supported independence (as a Commonwealth dominion), since they were more prosperous and economically diversified and thought they could survive as a self-sufficient country, while the rural outports supported confederation with Canada since they were poor and dependent on a single declining industry (the fishery) and wanted Canadian federal money. (Wikipedia results map, no percentages).

After the Confederation side won, the pro-Confederation side became the Liberals, in part because their leader Joey Smallwood wanted to ally himself with St. Laurent's federal government, but it also made a certain amount of ideological sense, since the pro-Canadian fishermen supported a strong safety net but had little tradition of union or co-operative politics. The independence side then became the PC's sort of by default, since they were the other side. Support for actual independence hasn't been a significant force since then, but there is a strong tradition of devolutionist PC politicians. (And "became" here is meant literally: the Newfoundland Confederate Association and the Responsible Government League just changed their names to the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Progressive Conservative Party of Labrador respectively in 1948-9). This is the reason that Newfoundland traditionally has had the reverse of the usual urban-rural pattern.

Now, however, St. John's is developing a more typical contemporary style of politics and so the NDP is gaining there while the rural areas are more traditional.

[Linus Van Pelt]

If you mean federally, then wasn't it actually elsewhere on Cape Breton? I think the only time the Sydney riding was ever won was 1997. Provincially the NDP hold two seats in that area and both are usually won by big margins. Personality politics matters a lot there, of course.

Clarie Gillis's seat was essentially Sydney and Glace Bay, in spite of the "south" in the name.

In the post-WWII period, the provincial party was dominated by fractious disputes between the Cape Breton coal unions and the mainland party who had to appeal to a quite different electorate; I'm pretty hazy on the details of this period or what it was all actually about, but the end result was basically that the mainlanders won and industrial Cape Breton left the party en masse for a long time.

[Linus Van Pelt]

1.

In the post-WWII period, the provincial party was dominated by fractious disputes between the Cape Breton coal unions and the mainland party who had to appeal to a quite different electorate; I'm pretty hazy on the details of this period or what it was all actually about, but the end result was basically that the mainlanders won and industrial Cape Breton left the party en masse for a long time.

Was that the split that led to Paul MacEwen forming the CB Labour Party (and then later joining the Liberals) or an earlier one? MacEwen's seat is NDP again, of course.

Basically I plead the bolded excerpt - but while that's an example of the kind of thing I have in mind, the issues go back at least a generation earlier.

2. Regarding the recent discussion, I think that for all that Canadian voters can be asymmetrical in their federal/provincial voting patterns, there is still, at least in Ontario where the party systems are basically parallel, a group of moderate/low-information voters who are at least somewhat influenced in their polling responses by which election is in the media focus. I doubt that all that much is really happening other than this crowd switching their attention from Harper/Ignatieff/Layton to McGuinty/Hudak/Horwath.

3. In unrelated news, Wildrose Alliance has had some sort of mass office staff resignation, which doesn't seem like great news for them, and about which there appears to exist a rule that every media story use the cliché phrase "growing pains".

[Linus Van Pelt]

Yeah, I vote for the emphasis on "it'll take awhile".

The SP got in just on the cusp of the commodities boom, and they've just coasted along cutting taxes without cutting services because of the increased revenues.

I mean, the government still owns the phone company and has a monopoly on car insurance. We're not exactly in Paul Ryan territory.

[Linus Van Pelt]

So basically, the NDP is reduced to:

- the core working-class areas of west side Saskatoon and north-central Regina (generally by about 7-15 though approaching 20 in R.E.C. which is all around pretty dodgy and undergoing rapid demographic change with the old-timers moving out and young Aboriginals moving in from economically dire reserves)
- the two northern Aboriginal seats (by a lot)
- the U of S/what-Americans-would-call-"white-liberal" seat (Nutana) (by about 7-8)

and maybe, barely, either of two ridings where some of their core constituency meets generic suburbia.

Obviously exceedingly poor, but not quite in B.C. 2001 "what, they lost that riding?" territory. Although southeast Regina is kind of embarrassing considering how public-sector the Regina middle class is (and the leader running there).

[Linus Van Pelt]

The weak NDP area of SK is basically this map.



All the plains states have this issue. As you move west, even long before the mountains start, the fertile wheat-growing territory transitions into a sort of dry ranching upland that is very sparsely populated and even more ultra-conservative. See also the larger size of the provincial ridings in the southwest; there's practically no-one there.

(Clearly this is my month for environmental causes of voting patterns).