New Brunswick election 2006

[Hatman 🍁]

Premier Bernard Lord will be asking the Lt Governor to drop the writs for a September 18th election. This could be interesting.

Current standings in the house:

Conservatives 28
Liberals 26
Independents 1

One Conservative plans on resigning his seat, which will force a minority situation, which is probably why the election will be called.

The NDP won one seat in the last election (2003) but she has since resigned (she was also the leader). The NDP was unable to keep her seat. The new leader is an open Lesbian, and I'm not sure if she will be able to even win her seat.

For the last couple of years the Liberal have been leading in the polls, but the Conservatives led in the last poll in June.

More here:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2006/08/10/nb-votes.html

BTW, New Brunswick has redrawn their riding boundaries, which should make things interesting.

[Hatman 🍁]

Bump. Election is on Monday.

Most recent poll:

Liberals 46%
PC 46%
NDP 7%

Neck and neck! And with the NDP not having a chance to win a single riding IMO, then we know the race cant be a tie considering NB has 55 ridings. Since the current House is already pretty split, we'll see very little seat changes this election. 

[Platypus]

What % of New Brunswickers are francophones?

[minionofmidas]

Who is the Independent?

[Hatman 🍁]

What % of New Brunswickers are francophones?

32.9%

Polls have closed, and results will come in soon. PC's lead in one seat so far.

[Hatman 🍁]

Who is the Independent?

Frank Branch, who was elected as a Liberal in 2003.

5-3 Conservatives lead currently with only a few polls in.

[Hatman 🍁]

Close race!

22-21 PC leads

Strange they tell us the NDP leads in one riding but it doesnt show up on the bar on the TV

[Hatman 🍁]

26-23 Liberals lead. now 28 needed for a majority, but only 4 seats have been called.

[Hatman 🍁]

27-23 Liberals right now

[Filuwaúrdjan]

CBC projects... Lib 30, PC 23, NDP 0. Only 8 seats called (4 apiece).

[Hatman 🍁]

Wow. Tories lead in the popular vote but are suffering in the seat totals. Big story is the shift of the NDP vote that has collapsed.

[Hatman 🍁]

CBC Projects Liberal Majority

[Hatman 🍁]

Liberals still trailing popular vote. Looks like the redistribution has really helped them out.

[© tweed]

I thought the LPC was in the process of dying?

[Hatman 🍁]

I thought the LPC was in the process of dying?

No, and this is the Liberal Party of New Brunswick. Not to mention the provincial Liberals are actually weaker in New Brunswick than the federal party is.

[© tweed]

The last Ipsos poll has it at CPC 38% LPC 29% NDP 17%.  So is the liberals' gain in NB just a result of riding boundary changes?  Because otherwise it doesn't make sense.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Because otherwise it doesn't make sense.

Provincial and Federal politics can often be very different. In New Brunswick not only are the relative strengths of the parties different, but the areas where different parties do well in differs greatly as well (ie; the heavily Franco area around Bathurst is NDP federally but the provincial party didn't even bother to run candidates in most provincial ridings up there).

---
Liberals have taken a narrow lead in the popular vote.

[ag]

The last Ipsos poll has it at CPC 38% LPC 29% NDP 17%.  So is the liberals' gain in NB just a result of riding boundary changes?  Because otherwise it doesn't make sense.

Not just boundary changes. They still got, essentially, a tied popular vote (the numbers have been oscillating, but it is nearly certain that the gap will be well under 1%), so the provincial grits aren't collapsing - the provincial NDP is, though, which should be helping the grits. It's a second in a row very, very close election - that's it.  

Remember, the maxim that all elections are local is much more true in Canada than in the US.  They don't have a national president to elect (H.M. does it for them ), and the provincial parties, for the most part, are not even clearly related to their federal namesakes. The local Tories came to power, while the federal Tories were in the wilderness, so nothing surprising in them loosing power now.

[Hatman 🍁]

Last election the popular vote was 45-44 for the tories. The Conservatives now lead by 0.2% in the PV, but it keeps flipping back and forth.

[ag]

It's actually getting closer. So far, the grits have won or are leading in 29 ridings, tories in 26. In popular vote tories are ahead by 0.1% with both sides gaining about 47% of the vote, and it has been oscillating. There are a lot of ridings with a few dosen vote advantage for the leading side.

Update: the popular vote is really a tie. Now it is the Libs who are ahead - by 0.04%, that is. It's for the best that Canadian provinces don't have elected governors -  it would have been a nasty recount.

So far, grits have won in 23 ridings and are leading in 6, tories have won 18 and are leading in 8.  A lot of the places are going to need a recount.

[ag]

Actually, now it looks like the tories are having a noticeable margin on the popular vote - though it won't save them from defeat.  So far, grits have bagged 24 seats, tories - 21, with 5 ridings each not yet called. The popular vote, though, is 46.99% for grits and 47.66% for tories. Would be interesting to see how it ends.

[Hatman 🍁]

Wow. A swing of .5% changes the government.

[ag]

This seems to be final. In the end the Libs did get ahead on the popular vote as well - by 0.4% (by the standards of this year's elections, this might be considered a "healthy margin" ).

Here it is:

LIB 47.5%, 29 seats
PC 47.1% 26 seats
ND 5.1% no seats
Other 0.2% no seats

[© tweed]

Remember, the maxim that all elections are local is much more true in Canada than in the US.  They don't have a national president to elect (H.M. does it for them ), and the provincial parties, for the most part, are not even clearly related to their federal namesakes. The local Tories came to power, while the federal Tories were in the wilderness, so nothing surprising in them loosing power now.

I didn't really fully understand this until I was heading to school today and I saw a big campaign sign that advertised some Judge running for re-election that I've never heard of and it read, "vote republican."  I thought to myself that there's no way this guy has any ties to the RNC.

[Hatman 🍁]

This seems to be final. In the end the Libs did get ahead on the popular vote as well - by 0.4% (by the standards of this year's elections, this might be considered a "healthy margin" ).

Here it is:

LIB 47.5%, 29 seats
PC 47.1% 26 seats
ND 5.1% no seats
Other 0.2% no seats

Actually, the Conservatives still won the PV

PC 47.5
LIB 47.2
NDP 5.1
OTH 0.2