Canadian Election 2019

[DC Al Fine]

Ipsos conducted an exit poll which included a question about how you would vote under straight PR. Actual poll results only added up to 95%, so I pro-rated the extra 5% by vote share. Seat change is vs actual FPTP results.

Tory: 31.6%, 107 seats (-14)
Liberal: 27.4%, 93 seats (-64)
NDP: 21.0%, 71 seats (+47)
Green: 8.4%, 28 seats (+25)
Bloc: 7.4%, 25 seats (-7)
People's: 4.2%, 14 seats (+14)

Tl;dr: PPC enters parliament (or narrowly misses out if we have a 5% threshhold), Liberals would have tremendous difficulty forming government on their own, and would need the support of the NDP + Bloc and/or Greens to pass anything. We probably see a coalition or at the very least a more formal arrangement with the NDP.

One wonders what seats would flip if people voted their true intentions under FPTP. Obviously there are many people who "vote strategically" despite not living in a riding where it's necessary.

Of course, even under PR people would vote strategically, as a lot of people think most seats=winner. (This explains why otherwise smart people vote strategically in ridings that the Tories have no chance in).

Interesting question. I'm annoyed Ipsos didn't provide crosstabs on that question. n was nearly 10,000 so we could've had some solid regional numbers to play with. Just eyeballing it, the Tories probably pick up most of York region and a few more Atlantic seats. NDP probably wins a few in central Toronto and that Windsor seat they lost. Come to think of it, the NDP probably lost a couple seats to the Libs because of tactical voting Greens probably win a seat or two off the NDP in Vancouver Island.

What does tactical voting look like in Quebec?

[DC Al Fine]

So far anti-Scheer rebellious noises have been mostly coming from Quebec - couple of senators (Jean-Guy Dagenais and Josee Verner), publicly wobbly (Joel Godin, Jacques Gourde) or anonymously sniping MPs and to a lesser extent, Ontario. Now MacKay took a public swipe at Scheer. https://twitter.com/DonMartinCTV/status/1189637337585725440

To paraphrase Chris Warkentin: "Strong words for a guy who wasn't on the ice"

[DC Al Fine]

How come the NDP seems to routine be overrated by the polls? This election, Alberta 2019, Ontario 2018, and arguably the 2015 election all come to mind as examples of the NDP underperforming their poll numbers. It can't all be late swings surely?

Part of it is that the NDP are more reliant on younger voters than other parties, and another part of it is the NDP GOTV infrastructure is a lot weaker than the Liberals or Conservatives. I'm sure there's other reasons too though.

I think in Ontario 2018, the NDP peaked earlier and then failed to capitalize on it, but they were polling about 30-35% in that last few days and got about 33%. I think the party made a few mistakes that last week and many anti-OLP voters who were polling ONDP moved to the OPC. Again strategic voting always hurts the NDP, even when the NDP/ONDP were polling ahead of the OLP, the OLP was pushing strategic voting against the ONDP.
That was a different case then we saw here in Fed2019. Here we did see the NDP peak at a good point, a few days earlier would have been nicer but, the last weekend we saw a massive push to vote strategically, and many Progressive voters who lean NDP voted LPC...you can see that in the cities, particularly in Toronto.

Which was lolworthy given the poor NDP results in Toronto seats the Tories had no chance of winning. I'd love to know how many people voted tactically when it didn't matter or voted tactically in the wrong direction

[DC Al Fine]

More fun with FPTP. Here are the biggest "Aw come on!" (I.e. highest share of the vote where they still lost) results for each party:

Conservative
King-Vaughan: 43.2%
Richmond Hill: 43.0%

Liberal
Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill: 42.4%

NDP
Davenport: 41.0%

Bloc
Gaspesie-Les Iles de la Madeleine: 40.8%

Green
Victoria: 29.9%

[DC Al Fine]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm still surprised by Edmonton's reversion to the Tories (Calgary wasn't surprising, but I figured there was a chance in the more urban core ridings). At the provincial level (and yes, I'm well-aware of the differences between federal and provincial politics), Edmonton was still very much a fortress for the NDP. Vote splitting can certainly not be blamed for the Liberals losing Edmonton Centre considering the NDP vote share dropped by almost 4% from 2015. What explains the divergence between federal and provincial politics in Edmonton? I suppose more specifically, what does a federal Conservative/provincial NDP voter look like (particularly in Edmonton)? And we're talking about elections only 6 months apart, so not exactly far apart.

The Alberta NDP is pro-oil and pro-pipeline, while the national party is not. Moreover, the West and particularly Alberta are irritated right now. Edmonton and Calgary have some of the highest unemployment rates of any metro in the country. The Tories are perceived as the defenders of the West, while the national progressive parties are perceived as indifferent or openly hostile to their interests. The Alberta NDP doesn't suffer from that problem.

There's not a huge amount polling about who exactly those switching voters are, but just eyeballing it from polls and the final result, they seem to disproportionately be college educated women living in the suburbs.

[DC Al Fine]

I think proximity to Manitoba must explain it partially. The riding is on Central Time, and I'd imagine is in the Winnipeg media market.

Yeah, in some ways, Kenora's become the eastern frontier of "Scheer Country".  And more subtly, while the Cons lost some ground in Ontario at large, they in fact gained ground in much of Northern Ontario--and in Kenora, they actually gained less than 5 points over 2015; it's just that it turned out to be a reprise of 2015's three-way race with the Cons on top this time.  (Surely benefiting this time from piggybacking off Greg Rickford provincially.  And maybe even, counterintuitive as it sounds, from Doug Ford's appearance in Kenora--unrelated, perhaps, except in maybe energizing local Conservative forces t/w the finish line.)

Yes. If the Tories treaded water in Ontario but lost ground in prosperous suburbs, they needed to make up the ground somewhere. Northern Ontario is a decent fit for a more downscale right.

[DC Al Fine]

Northern Ontario is very "populist" or "WWC". One of my fears about having Singh as leader was that he would not appeal at all to Northerners. And on the same note, Trudeau's brand of Liberalism doesn't play well in the North either. Nonetheless, both parties held their own in terms of keeping their seats (Kenora notwithstanding), but did tread water to the Tories in most ridings. The Tories don't have much history winning seats in the North, so probably have little ground game.  I'm sure a better campaign in the Soo could've flipped it though.

What is it about the Soo that causes the Tories do so much better there than other Northern ON towns?

[DC Al Fine]

The ultimate emblem of how the NDP dropped the ball in downtown Toronto: they even lost Toronto Island.  (Though the fact that Adam Vaughan's rep is that of a "community politics" Liberal helps--it's hard to see a Tony Ianno capturing Toronto Island progressives in quite the same way)

Agreed. Obviously Jagmeet Singh should get a pass for the Quebec losses, but going backwards in Toronto, when Trudeau was tainted by scandal is not good at all, and absolutely needs to be corrected next time around.

I'm curious what the NDP post-mortems about the area have concluded.

[DC Al Fine]

Average income

University-Rosedale  $98,820
St. Paul's  $92,952
Spadina-Fort York  $66,906
Parkdale-High Park  $57,459
Beaches-East York  $56,130
Danforth  $54,560
Toronto Centre  $49,909
Davenport  $40,586

Top Decile

University-Rosedale  24.9%
St. Paul's  24.9%
Spadina-Fort York  19.2%
Parkdale-High Park  18.8%
Danforth  17.9%
Beaches-East York  16.7%
Toronto Centre  12.2%
Davenport  7.8%

Rent

Toronto Centre  70.9%
St. Paul's  60.5%
University-Rosedale  57.8%
Spadina-Fort York  56.8%
Davenport  48.7%
Danforth  44.7%
Beaches-East York  44.4%

University Degree

University-Rosedale  67.2%
Spadina-Fort York  66.3%
St. Paul's  60.5%
Toronto Centre  56.4%
Parkdale-High Park  54.6%
Danforth  49.5%
Beaches-East York  46.8%
Davenport  38.1%

From these figures, PHP and Danforth are rather socioeconomically similar, though PHP has more renters.  Davenport seems to be the right mix of cultural workers/young people/few affluent people for the NDP.  Toronto Centre perhaps shows the most NDP "potential" as evidenced by the big swing in the provincial election - though it has a rather bifurcated character (Spadina-Fort York with lower incomes and more social housing).

Link to those stats? I want to compare ridings in other metros.