Canadian by-elections, 2016 (next event: Quebec provincial byelections [Dec 5])

[Hatman 🍁]

CBC calls Niagara West for the little fascist

[Hatman 🍁]

interesting to see the stop sex-ed party doing well in Ottawa-Vanier, but terrible in Niagara West, due to the fact that all the far right vote is going to the Tories there. Meanwhile, the Libertarian vote is higher than normal in Niagara due to moderate Tories not wanting to vote for the boy.

[Hatman 🍁]

Also, GPR is the only Francophone riding in the province. Ottawa-Vanier is only 31% French.

Timmins-James Bay and, I believe Nickel Belt, have larger French populations than Ottawa-Vanier.

Surprisingly, Orleans has about the same Franco population as well, but it is not as concentrated in any particular neighbourhood like in Ottawa-Vanier.

[Hatman 🍁]

Results:

Ottawa-Vanier
Liberal: 14,678 (48.6%) [-7.0%]
PC: 9,023 (29.8%) [+7.6%]
NDP: 4,544 (15.0%) [+1.7%]
Green: 972 (3.2%) [-4.8%]
Others: 1,012 (3.3%)

Turnout: 36.4%
Swing: -7.3% (PC to Liberal)

Niagara West-Glanbrook
PC: 17,651 (54.0%) [+12.2%]
NDP: 8,123 (24.9%) [+2.6%]
Liberal: 4,997 (15.3%) [-13.1%]
Green: 892 (2.7%) [-2.6%]
Others: 1,023 (3.1%)

Turnout: 32.0%
Swing: +4.8% (NDP to PC)

[Hatman 🍁]

West Vancouver council by-election:

Peter Lambur: 1262 (24.4%)
Andy Krawczyk: 939 (18.2%)
David Ayriss: 662 (12.8%)
Joanna Baxter: 550 (10.7%)
Tom Dodd: 544 (10.5%)
Tara Haddad: 432 (8.4%)
Carolanne Reynolds: 262 (5.1%)
David A. Jones: 183 (3.5%)
Vernon Pahl: 175 (3.4%)
Rosa Jafari: 73 (1.4%)
Farzaneh Bamani: 72 (1.4%)
Jon Johnson: 9 (0.2%)

Turnout was roughly 17%

Election was at-large, as BC municipalities don't have wards.

Lambur is an architect who campaigned on restoring confidence in the city planning process. The seat was vacated when previous councillor Michael Lewis died.

[Hatman 🍁]

CBC calls Niagara West for the little fascist

Oh please, do you know how many times I've been called a communist for simply supporting the NDP? After Trump's win last week, I have zero f**ks to give anyways.

Words cannot describe how icky I feel about this boy. The kid's been homeschooled his entire life, holds reprehensible views and has little real world experience. And now he's an MPP? Christ.

[Hatman 🍁]

1) No not on atlas, but in real life of course)

2) Layton was a saint. I am not. Sorry.

3) Some cultures are inferior to others. Many liberals won't say that of course, but it's true. It's wrong to be bigoted against someone for something they can't change/control, but I have no problem calling someone out for choosing to have beliefs that are bigoted against people who are different based on things they can't change.

Most people who are homeschooled are done so for one reason: Their parents want to protect them from outside influences. This is truly awful.

4) The young people elected in the 2011 election had way more real life experience than this kid. They weren't sheltered in some fundamentalist sect their who life. They went to public school where they were exposed to other cultures. This is not about his age.

I do hope his exposure to other beliefs at Queen's Park will moderate him. It has to right? I'm sure he's a nice guy. Hopefully he'll learn a thing or two.

[Hatman 🍁]

Back on topic,

Nicolet, Quebec didn't end up having a mayoral election after all as councillor Geneviève Dubois was acclaimed to that position, though they did have a council by-election to replace her. Dupous replaces outgoing mayor Alain Douin who had resigned. Nicolet is a town of 8,000 people opposite the St. Lawrence from Trois-Rivieres.

[Hatman 🍁]

Not a by-election, but there was a referendum in Outremont, Quebec on banning places of worship on Bernard Avenue. Voters there supported the measure 1561 to 1202. Outremont's large Jewish population is outraged.

Since I've just been basically called a bigot I would have voted no for the record.

[Hatman 🍁]

From what I gather, people don't like the fundamentalism of their orthodox Jewish neighbours (big families, insularity, misogyny, etc.) and have taken it out at the ballot box. I agree with their fears of course, but the whole thing seems unconstitutional.

[Hatman 🍁]

Is using a bicycle on the Sabbath forbidden?

[Hatman 🍁]

Since when did Quebec allow for such trivial municipal referendums anyways? This kind of thing is unheard in Canada outside of BC. Well, I guess there were those de-merger referendums, but that's all I can think of.

[Hatman 🍁]

Saskatoon Meewasin MLA Roger Parent (SP) has died due to cancer. By-election will of course be next year, but putting this here anyways.

The riding is usually an NDP seat, but has gone for the Sask Party since 2011 due to Brad Wall being more popular than Jesus.

[Hatman 🍁]

Missed this: Mathieu Fleury won't run for Ottawa Vanier.

Damn. Was hoping he'd run so he could be replaced by a proper progressive on city council. His ward should only be electing progressives, even if it always votes Liberal in federal/provincial elections.

[Hatman 🍁]

Provincial Sault Ste. Marie: David Oriazetti is quitting politics. First Red-Orange battle in a while.

If it is a straight "red-orange" battle, than the Liberals will win. The NDP only can win the Sault if the Tories do well.  The Tories may very well do well in the Sault though (don't forget it went Tory federally from 2011-2015).

[Hatman 🍁]

Kevin Chief, the NDP MLA for Point Douglas (Manitoba) has resigned. Can't imagine this is anything but an NDP hold, no matter how unpopular the NDP is in Manitoba. Maybe if the Liberals weren't in total disarray there. 

[Hatman 🍁]

Provincial Sault Ste. Marie: David Oriazetti is quitting politics. First Red-Orange battle in a while.

If it is a straight "red-orange" battle, than the Liberals will win. The NDP only can win the Sault if the Tories do well.  The Tories may very well do well in the Sault though (don't forget it went Tory federally from 2011-2015).

Much of the "red" here was only "red" for Oriazetti and not for Wynne or the party.  That along with the unpopular hydro fiasco and a higher Ontario PC will certainly help the ONDP pick this up. 

Could we even see an orange-blue race?

Problem is the provincial NDP has been rather incompetent lately. I can't imagine they will be able to find a very good candidate. I mean, all they could find for Ottawa-Vanier was the brother of an MPP no one in the city has heard of from far away riding.

[Hatman 🍁]

The NDP has a bit of a hard ceiling in the riding: about 40%, I'd say. And they've only beaten that with Tony Martin as a candidate. In the 1990 orange wave, the seat was open, and he only won 36% of the vote. He actually gained support in 1995 (only NDP positive swing that election?) In the 2011 federal orange wave, he only won 37% of the vote, of course long guns had a lot to do with it.

So, even if Tony Martin is the candidate, there needs to be some dissension in the anti-NDP vote. When there are large swings in the north, it is usually anti-NDP voters swinging between the Liberals and Tories (just look at the 2008 federal election or 2003 provincial election). The NDP vote in the Sault is usually fairly stable (25-35%).

[Hatman 🍁]

Let's look at some numbers:

Since the late 1960s, the lowest the NDP has ever got in Sault Ste. Marie was actually in last year's federal election (22%). This was even lower than in 1993 when the NDP won just 6% province-wide (this was because the NDP candidate was the incumbent). The highest vote total was in the 1987 provincial election (49%). 22% is a remarkably high floor for the NDP, but 49% is a pretty low ceiling. The most they've got without an incumbent is in 1985 (45%).

The NDP is clearly not as popular in the Sault as they once were. In 2003, despite a 2 point gain in the province wide result, Tony Martin lost 11 points and the seat itself to the then political neophyte Orazietti. It didn't help matters that the Tory vote collapsed from 28% to 8%. Where do you think most of that vote went?

Since then, the NDP vote total has continually dropped compared to their province-wide numbers both federally and provincially. In 2003, Martin's 32% was 17 points more than the province wide mark of 15%. In 2007 it was only 9 points more (OK, no Martin on the ballot). In 2011 it was just 8 points more and in 2014 just one point more. Federally Martin was able to consistently poll about 20% more than the NDP's province wide margin when he won the seat in 2004, 2006 and 2008. However his loss in 2011 was just 11 points more than their province-wide margin, and their all time (well, since the late 60s) low of 22% in 2015 was just 5 points above the 17% they won across the province.

And this drop has occurred regardless of how well the Liberals have done. Again, in 2011 the Liberals won just 19% of the vote.

And yes, the NDP has benefited from vote splitting. In provincial elections, they have not won the seat with the next two parties below 20% since that big win in 1987. This did happen federally in 2008, but it was very close between Martin and the Conservative candidate, and the Liberals still won 17% (a 17 point drop from 2006 by the way, while Conservatives gained 14 points). Martin's 2004 and 2006 wins were definitely helped by a split in the anti-NDP vote.

All this to say is that with a generic candidate, the NDP will at best poll a few points ahead of their province-wide polling, based on recent trends. That is not even enough to win with a split vote.

What's Tony Martin up to these days?

[Hatman 🍁]

And what about the Liberals? They have an even lower floor, somewhere in the teens. In federal elections, their lowest % was 17% in 2008 and provincially it was 11% in 1977. In 2008, the NDP won, so the NDP can benefit from a depressed Liberal turnout (harder to do with a depressed Tory turnout though). So, there is some Liberal-NDP vote shifting in the riding. Just not as much as potential Tory/Liberal shifting.

The Tories have an abysmal floor in the riding, maybe 7%?. In recent elections whenever it's been in single digits, the Liberals have won huge margins, again indicating a large Tory/Liberal swing constituency.

So, an NDP-PC race is more promising for the NDP than an NDP-Liberal race. There may be enough soft Liberals who will vote NDP in the former scenario, but many more soft Tories who will vote Liberal the latter.

[Hatman 🍁]

Perhaps, but the Sault also has a strong populist streak. In 1990, the CoR Party had their strongest showing in the entire province in the Soo (20%), which was part of the reason why the NDP didn't do as well as you'd think given their result across the rest of the province.

[Hatman 🍁]

I think the days of Ontario Liberal and PC voter feeling they had to "vote strategically" to stop the "socialist hordes at the gate" in the NDP are long gone.

Except this large swing I described happened as recently as 2008 (~15%), and was intensified in 2011. So, I think it's still around!

And again, the NDP share of the vote relative to the provincial average has declined both federally and provincially for over a decade.

There's no evidence in this riding's history to show that would-be Liberal voters are more likely to prefer the NDP than Tories. Whenever the Liberals do poorly in the riding, most of the swing has gone to the Tories.

[Hatman 🍁]

haha! The only "Liberal" that would have a chance in Calgary Heritage is Nenshi. And that aint happening.