Newfoundland and Labrador election, 2019

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Live Stream
https://www.cbc.ca/news/n-l-election-night-special-live-1.5134291

It's early yet, but it looks like the polls have, for the first time in a while, overstated the support for the conservative party.

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Hrm, what if they held an election, and (almost) nobody on Dave Leip's Atlas Forum cared?

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I'm calling it now, if the Liberals win this election it will be because Ches Crosbie and the P.Cs opposed the carbon tax.

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Was the Liberals running former NDP MLA George Murphy against Alison Coffin the equivalent of the Liberals recruiting high profile Canadian Eric Kierans to run against Robert Cliche?

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Gerry Byrne right now on the CBC making the loony conspiracy theory that the mainstream polling outlets were engaged in 'push polls' and even accusing them of being associated with NL Strong.

I don't think much of the Forum Polls, and it appears they finally had a final election poll that wasn't that close, but Gerry Byrne, if he actually believes what he said, is insane.

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Alison Coffin now ahead by 4 votes!

Alison Coffin is now ahead by 72 votes and the New Democrat in Labrador West is only down by 50+ votes. It seems the New Democrats are doing better with the vote today than with the advanced vote.

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CBC now projects a "Liberal Government"

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New Democrat Jordan Brown trailing in Labrador West by 8 votes with 2 polls to report.

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New Democrat Jordan Brown trailing in Labrador West by 8 votes with 2 polls to report.

Jordan Brown has a 5 vote win, but that'll go to a recount.

The NDP did well in Labrador West in 2015.

Alison Coffin now leads by over 100 votes, last time I saw the result.  

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Labrador West is an NDP gain by fives, taking their total to three seats and potentially denying the Liberals a majority.

The two independents are former Liberal MLAs (one of them was a P.C in the 2011 election and then ran as a Liberal in 2015.)  I'd assume the Liberals would try to get at least one of these back in the fold.

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This looks like it could be similar but opposite to the 2017 Nova Scotia election where the Liberals ended up with a narrow majority but started the night in a minority position and gained as more votes were counted.  Here the Liberals have dropped in seats as the count went on.

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Liberals down to 20 seats.  Maybe they can get one of the two independents to become the Speaker. 

A good news for the Liberals is that Liberal Elvis Loveless has won in Fortune Bay-Cape La Hune.  Elvis has entered the Assembly!

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Insane swing in Torngat Mountains wow. Small number of votes is part of the story there.

On the CBC they said that voters there were unhappy that Randy Edmunds no longer had a home in the riding.

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Interesting that the NDP appears to have won three seats (assuming they hold on to Labrador West in the recount) but came in second in only one other, and only by default (Waterford Valley, where there was no Tory candidate).

It seems most people assume that because Labrador West isn't in central St John's that the NDP shouldn't have much support in the area.  If you check the 2015 election result, Labrador West was the NDP's 3rd best result, and one of only four ridings in that election that they came in second place.  (Then Party leader Earle McCurdy came in second in St John's West.)

I'd assume that this is industrial Labrador and the NDP does well there in the same way that the NDP does well in industrial Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

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Truly an insane result.

Can't believe the NDP won three seats after running in only 14 ridings. Clearly a miracle. And Labrador West? I thought they were running a no name candidate up there!

Well, I didn't think it was likely, but here we are a Liberal minority, and the closest election ever to boot.

Looks like the NLA did fairly well in the ridings they ran in. Clearly people wanted change, but not the Tories.

The NDP candidate is a local activist on issues of Labrador heritage.  He's the heritage director of Gateway Labrador.  He led some campaign on behalf of the Labrador flag and apparently gained a following over that.

According to the CBC, when discussing candidates Alison Coffin specifically mentioned Jordan Brown as a person she had high expectations for.  I put on the CBC live stream after the advanced vote had been counted and the NDP was ahead in only one riding at the time, and the NDP representative on the broadcast said they hoped to win three ridings.  I don't know if the NDP really expected to win it, but, as I wrote in my previous post, this was the third best riding for the NDP in 2015.

On the other hand, apparently the NDP did not put any resources into winning the riding and they said Alison Coffin didn't campaign in Labrador.