Canada 2008: Official Results Thread

[Smid]

Canadian elections are so depressing. 4 left of center parties against 1 right of center party in a FPTP system is fail.

I know it's sad, but how bad can Canadian conservatives be?

Speaking as a right winger, the Canadian conservatives are pretty moderate from my perspective.

[Smid]

Looks like Angus Reid was pretty accurate in their polling:

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[Хahar 🤔]

Canadian elections are so depressing. 4 left of center parties against 1 right of center party in a FPTP system is fail.

I know it's sad, but how bad can Canadian conservatives be?

The PCs were quite all right. But Alberta runs the Conservatives of today.

Final results in Ottawa-Vanier

Liberal 46.23 (+3.92)
Conservative 27.26 (-1.41)
NDP 17.07 (-4.74)
Greenies 8.57 (+1.97)
Indie 0.44 (+0.44)
Stalinists 0.25 (+0.04)
SoCred 0.19 (+0.19)

SoCred?

For real?

EDIT: Ah. Canadian Action.

[Hatman 🍁]

SoCred does not equal the CAP. I don't know what Hashemite is smoking. Probably some elite Parisian cigarettes trying to renounce his Canadianship.

[Smid]

Good result in Churchill, Earl.

[Hatman 🍁]

Good result in Churchill, Earl.

For sure. I think that makes Ashton the youngest MP

[Meeker]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/10/16/dion-plans.html

That was quick...

[Verily]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/10/16/dion-plans.html

That was quick...

Good riddance, and no surprise. The first non-interim Liberal leader to fail to become PM in over a century.

[2952-0-0]

Prime Minister Michael Iggnatieff...

Get used to that...

[Hatman 🍁]

Hope it's Ignatieff. More likely will be Kennedy or Trudeau.

[Smid]

Hope it's Ignatieff. More likely will be Kennedy or Trudeau.

My money would be on Trudeau... although he's first-term, I still think he's the best bet. Ignatieff doesn't connect well with ordinary voters. Kennedy probably doesn't have enough party support to get it, although I could be wrong. So long as the traitorous Bob Rae doesn't get it.

[cp]

The first, and probably most important, move is whether Dion resigns or tries to stay on. It would be better for everyone if he resigned, as Ignatieff would likely take charge and consolidate his position before anyone else could mount a challenge. Bob Rae will certainly try, but most of my Liberal friends are leaning toward Iggy - some out of admiration, some out of a desire to avoid any drawn out leadership contest.

If there is a true leadership contest, I imagine a lot of people will throw in their hat just to gain name recognition, but most of them wouldn't go very far. Ruby Dhalia is popular and hot but doesn't have enough support within the caucus to get very far. Same thing with Trudeau - his name recognition can't make up for the fact that he's still only been an MP for 2 days. Kennedy's good but his troubles in French make him unlikely to get much further than he did in the last leadership race. The outsiders, McKenna and Manley, would be the most likely ones to succeed if there's a true contest, though I'm not sure either of them wants to dive in right now.

Rae's got more money than Mammon and a chip on his shoulder to match, so one way or another he'll probably make a stab at the top job. I sincerely doubt he'll get in, though. Rae Days still send a chill down most Ontarians' spines, Liberals in particular. There's also a consensus that the party should move toward the centre and away from the centre left where Dion took it (sorry Earl)

[minionofmidas]

There's also a consensus that the party should move toward the centre and away from the centre left where Dion took it (sorry Earl)

...uh... Suicide Squad?

The path (even further) towards the centre is the path towards where oblivion becomes, not a certainty (the party has survived for too long for that), but at least an option. Just ask Paul Martin. Just ask Palmer.
A Liberal majority requires keeping the NDP down. That requires a leftist course (and a charismatic leader).


EDIT: Turner. Not Palmer. How embarassing.

Meh. Damn bland random surnames.

[Hash]

SoCred does not equal the CAP. I don't know what Hashemite is smoking. Probably some elite Parisian cigarettes trying to renounce his Canadianship.

The CAP supports social credit-like monetary policies. Hate to break it to you.

I didn't know you also supported the Pat Buchanan-9/11 conspiracy theory party.

[Hash]

Random stats:

Liberal
Best riding: Bonavista–Gander–Grand Falls–Windsor 70.27%
Worst riding: Yellowhead 3.98%

Tories
Best: Crowfoot 82.04%
Worst: Laurier-Sainte-Marie 4.84%

NDP
Best: St. John's East 74.63%
Worst: Haute-Gaspésie–La Mitis–Matane–Matapédia 4.69%

Bloc
Best: La Pointe-de-l'Ile 56.11%
Worst: Mount Royal 4.36% (behind the Greenies)

Greenies
Best: Central Nova 32.24%
Worst: St. John's East 1.39%

Conservative losses:
St. John's South-Mount Pearl (to Libs)
Avalon (to Libs)
Edmonton-Strathcona (to NDP)
St. John's East (to NDP)
Louis-Hébert (to Bloc)
Cumberland-Colchester-M Valley (to Wet Tory)

[cp]

There's also a consensus that the party should move toward the centre and away from the centre left where Dion took it (sorry Earl)

...uh... Suicide Squad?

The path (even further) towards the centre is the path towards where oblivion becomes, not a certainty (the party has survived for too long for that), but at least an option. Just ask Paul Martin. Just ask Palmer.
A Liberal majority requires keeping the NDP down. That requires a leftist course (and a charismatic leader).


EDIT: Turner. Not Palmer. How embarassing.

Meh. Damn bland random surnames.

Martin and Turner lost because of their poor organization and bad luck of rising to power at the time when the public was souring on the Liberals overall, not because they were centrists.

The Liberals didn't lose this election because they weren't leftist enough. They lost way more seats to the Tories than to the NDP and, Northern Ontario notwithstanding, they lost (or failed to win back) in places where centrist voters were the deciding factor.

Liberals bleed support to the NDP (and Greens, now) not because of a sudden leftist reawakening among Canadians, but because they're weak overall: poor leadership, scandal, fatigue, bad economic stewardship (in the 70s and 80s, less so now). Voters get tired of the complacency that characterizes long stretches of Liberal tenure, so they move their vote elsewhere. The Tories are the main beneficiaries of this disillusionment, as centrist voters switch sides; this overall weakening of the coalition that elects Liberal governments frays the left flank of the party which moves toward the NDP. Once the Liberals regain credibility among centrists (who then abandon the Tories), they regain the support that they lost to the NDP without really having to work at it. My theory for this is that because the NDP can never deliver on its promises by forming a government, its erstwhile-Liberal supporters get frustrated and look elsewhere.

Electoral dynamics aside, my point is that the left isn't as crucial to Liberal victories as the centre-left/centre is. Look at 1997: the Liberals lost support on the left to the NDP, who picked up seats across the country, especially in the East: but the Liberals were still returned with a majority, albeit a slim one. They held onto the centre, almost sweeping Ontario and gaining ground in Quebec, so they stayed in power. They didn't lose any real power until 2004 when scandal and an undivided, credible rightist party emerged and started competing for centrist voters.

[Hatman 🍁]

Rae's got more money than Mammon and a chip on his shoulder to match, so one way or another he'll probably make a stab at the top job. I sincerely doubt he'll get in, though. Rae Days still send a chill down most Ontarians' spines, Liberals in particular. There's also a consensus that the party should move toward the centre and away from the centre left where Dion took it (sorry Earl)

Why are you apologizing? It would be great if the Liberals move more to the right.

[minionofmidas]

The Liberals didn't lose this election because they weren't leftist enough. They lost way more seats to the Tories than to the NDP and, Northern Ontario notwithstanding, they lost (or failed to win back) in places where centrist voters were the deciding factor.

Liberals bleed support to the NDP (and Greens, now) not because of a sudden leftist reawakening among Canadians, but because they're weak overall: poor leadership, scandal, fatigue, bad economic stewardship (in the 70s and 80s, less so now). Voters get tired of the complacency that characterizes long stretches of Liberal tenure, so they move their vote elsewhere.

The two issues are related. Dead Centrist leadership is no leadership, almost by definition. Not of course sayin' a hard-left university Marxist would do better...

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Check the national fi'ures (missin' letter seems not to work...) since the Bloc appeared... (for what they're worth)

PC/Reform/CA/CPC
93 34.7
97 38.2
00 37.7
04 29.6
06 36.3
08 37.6

Lib/NDP/Greens (from 04 - irrelevant before)
93 48.1
97 50.0
00 49.4
04 56.7
06 51.1
08 51.2

How credibly, exactly, are the Conservatives appealin to the Centrist voter?

04 is the one outlier... when based on seats you mite have thouht it rite in the middle.

[Hatman 🍁]

Please don't put us with the Liberals, again please.

An interesting coalition, that one might see in the future is that of a BQ+Green+NDP one.

If this merger were to happen, they would have ~35% of the vote. Probably not enough to beat the Tories.

[Dan the Roman]

Please don't put us with the Liberals, again please.

An interesting coalition, that one might see in the future is that of a BQ+Green+NDP one.

If this merger were to happen, they would have ~35% of the vote. Probably not enough to beat the Tories.

The Bloc, while left-leaning, gets votes based not on ideology but on its support for sovereignty. Most of its voters are substantially to the right of the party, which is why its major competition outside of Anglophone areas is the Conservatives. If it were to attempt to play a role in national politics(which by implication would require dropping sovereignty) it would likely lose most of its voters either to the Conservatives or to a rightwing alternative which is what happened to the PQ when they took that track last time around.

So the Bloc will take part in national cabinet when hell freezes over, and in one with the Greens and NDP quite a bit thereafter. The Bloc is not into suicide, they do want to collect their Canadian pensions after all.

[Hash]

Please don't put us with the Liberals, again please.

An interesting coalition, that one might see in the future is that of a BQ+Green+NDP one.

If this merger were to happen, they would have ~35% of the vote. Probably not enough to beat the Tories.

The Bloc, while left-leaning, gets votes based not on ideology but on its support for sovereignty.

Very true.

[The Man From G.O.P.]

Why isn't there a Bloc Right and a Bloc Left?

[Verily]

Why isn't there a Bloc Right and a Bloc Left?

Because they would never win anything. The Bloc depends on voters from all ends of the political compass to win seats. If they split up, "Bloc Right" would get obliterated almost immediately and "Bloc Left" would only win a handful of seats in the Montreal area. The rest would fall to the Liberals or Conservatives due to vote splitting.

In its last years, Social Credit was basically "Bloc Right", but it had no "Bloc Left" splitting the Quebec nationalist vote.

[Хahar 🤔]

Why isn't there a Bloc Right and a Bloc Left?

If Canada were to use IRV, that'd make sense.

Which Liberal leader is the least charimsmatic? I'll root for him.

[Hatman 🍁]

Please don't put us with the Liberals, again please.

An interesting coalition, that one might see in the future is that of a BQ+Green+NDP one.

If this merger were to happen, they would have ~35% of the vote. Probably not enough to beat the Tories.

The Bloc, while left-leaning, gets votes based not on ideology but on its support for sovereignty. Most of its voters are substantially to the right of the party, which is why its major competition outside of Anglophone areas is the Conservatives. If it were to attempt to play a role in national politics(which by implication would require dropping sovereignty) it would likely lose most of its voters either to the Conservatives or to a rightwing alternative which is what happened to the PQ when they took that track last time around.

So the Bloc will take part in national cabinet when hell freezes over, and in one with the Greens and NDP quite a bit thereafter. The Bloc is not into suicide, they do want to collect their Canadian pensions after all.

Merger's probably not the best word. But the BQ will die one day, and it's possible that many of its members may at that point join a new left wing party with the NDP and Greens.