2011 Canadian Provincial Elections - Wrap-up phase.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I believe that each province gets its own thread.

Quite so.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think the issue with the NDP during the Harris years had more to do with the damage done by the incompetence of the Rae government (which, as you all know, managed to piss off it's own natural supporters about as much as right-wingers) than a desire to rally round the largest opposition party.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I disagree. The 1995 election wasn't that bad for the NDP, after all... it got 21% of the vote, which is pretty good for the party.

It's only 'not so bad' when looked at outside of any context. To pick just one... there were a lot of NDP incumbents running for election and incumbents - even ones with no chance of being returned - will normally poll better than non-incumbents. As has been seen federally wrt the collapse of the Liberal vote following the removal of an incumbent.

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Sure, but the key question is why the NDP was stuck where they were (as the party to get squeezed, rather than the party doing the squeezing) when they had formed the government just a few years earlier. And the only logical answer is one of credibility. So it all links up, in that way that these things tend to.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Unless they want someone from Newfies as their leader.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That would be a ridiculously large swing. Comparing to the last election you have PC +9.4, Lib -16.2, NDP +5.3

If it held up, would 26% be a record low for the provincial Liberals?  Even in the Big Blue Machine years, it seems, at worst they never really went much below 30%...

Yeah, even in 1971 they did better than that.

Seems that the last time they were below 26% was in 1926. Did parties even run candidates everywhere back then?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not terribly surprising; if you drop double-digits you do tend to lose a lot of seats.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Obvious comment is obvious: if the swing is low in and around Ottawa, then it will be rather high elsewhere. Probably in places where there are more seats and seats where there are more swing voters. Oh.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't think I'm off when I think an ELEVEN POINT LEAD will result in a Conservative majority or even a massive majority.

Almost certainly a massive one, actually.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

EPP normally does quite well

And the reason why they fycked up earlier this year was because they were gutless wrt Quebec and (I suspect) wearing rose-tinted specs wrt the entire Toronto metropolitan area.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Uniform national swing was never as effective at predicting the outcomes in individual seats as people seem to think it was once, but the then that was never actually the point. The point was that you could look at the swing in the first few seats to come in on election night (and this was when counting took longer; usually lasting much further into the next day than has become normal in recent decades) and then work out whether there would be a Labour or Conservative Prime Minister. Individual seats would always swing in weird ways (there was a marked swing to Labour in parts Lancashire in 1959, for example), but the theory was that all of those individual and regional movements would cancel each other out. It was developed as much for television as anything else, and in a country with a notably stubborn electorate. It obviously makes no sense in a country like Canada, not even for its original purpose. It doesn't even make sense to include parties other than Labour and the Tories in it when using it in Britain.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Who or what are 'Polara'? Constituency polls, of course, do not have a good record anywhere. As we all learned (again!) a couple of months back.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Such considerations only really matter if the poll is accurate. If it's dross, it's dross...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For comparison, 2007:

Saskatories 51%, NDP 37%, Liberals 9%, Greenies 2%

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Heh, entryism.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, well, she was a terrible leader so it's appropriate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Because the Newfie PC's aren't really a right-wing party.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not much industry left there, I guess.

So long as the people - some of them anyway - are still there then that's never really an explanation. But I think the fact that the Tories ran an outstanding candidate in Sydney-Victoria (CB North MLA Cecil Clarke) might be the start of one.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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

Ah, yeah. Forgot about him. I was thinking of seat they held in the late 1970s, though it must have had part of that area as well.

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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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If it can be in Germany, then why not Newfoundland? Especially as we're really only talking of vague tribal identification and nothing more serious than that.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wordpress is better.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

City of Toronto (416) is also shaping as a three way race - when you have Liberals at 36% and NDP and Tories at 38% each - it smells to me like a three way split in the seat count because of the way the Liberal vote is spread evenly across the city.

Or a Liberal catastrophe as they finish second everywhere.

Mind you, have to be wary of regional breakdowns (or breakdowns of any kind). People are too trusting of poll internals.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ontario's election is in five weeks, are we going to have a separate thread for it eventually?

Absolutely not.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's no way he stays as leader if the inevitable defeat is anywhere near that bad.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's no way he stays as leader if the inevitable defeat is anywhere near that bad.

Though given how urban-vs-rural polarized the electorate is compared to 1982, he could *still* win more seats now compared to then...

Not impossible, though if the Sask Party really does end up leading the pv by over 30pts then a lot of places that have no business being lost will go.

Does anyone know anything about the record of the company that did the poll, btw?