CANPOL: Today is election day

[notyoueither]

Tories. They got seats everywhere, and yes.

[Winston]

(mostly)

[joncha]

Not terribly shocking, but it was interesting to see how poorly some of the high profile "christian conservative" candidates did around here, even with (or, as BK will be sure to argue, because of) the great job Harper did of muzzling them. Darrel Reid, Cindy Silver and John Weston all lost very winnable ridings in Vancouver suburbs.

Was this the experience elsewhere?

[General Ludd]

I went to the polls intending to vote green, but something came over me when I had the ballot in front of me that made me vote NDP, and I don't know why.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Nows the time for Quebec to declare independance.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Neither of these are going to happen in any meaningful form.

What is going to happen are Harper's tax cut giveaways.

Strange I distinctly heard Harper say that his FIRST bill would be on accountability. It seems a smart move. The NDP and Bloc will support it if it has any teeth at all and the Liberals will be hard pressed to oppose it.

So his first legislation should get all-party support and Harper can walk around looking prime ministerial and "not scary"

[Fake Boris]

I have a sense that Duceppe's position may be contested... How he must regret not having made the jump to the PQ.

[Flubber]

pleased

Overall I am reasonably pleased with the result, although I would have liked the Conservative-NDP total to have exceeded 155 so that the Conservatives would have one more party to try to work with on a given issue ( and therefore a longer-lived parliament)

My only other disappointment was that I wish that the voters had expressed more anger at the Liberals (not caring really where the anti-Liberal vote went)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised though. I posted a few times about the candidate effect and the reality is that the Liberals had/have a number of great candidates so that their personal support will likely hold them through even in situations where "party" support is dropping. I think all of us when looking at the poll numbers failed to take into account the powerful effect of incumbency

ON another note I was a little sad to see Anne Mclelland defeated in Edmonton. From what I know she seems a smart and dedicated MP and it is too bad that an inept federal campaign likely cost her her seat

[Fake Boris]

If Harper has got any sense, he will act QUICKLY to save Charest's government. It should be feasible, given that Charest is a former Tory and he may still have some friends there. Now the interesting bit will be how the Bloc votes on Harper's proposals to Quebec. They'll need to find a way to convince the electorate that these overtures were made possible by their presence, and not Harper's.

A free vote on either abortion or gay marriage would be a BOON to them. They'll want as much redneckism as the West can give. Can Harper hold off his base? They will also try to dig further on the Option Canada thingy, but I doubt anything significant will come out of it.

Harper is facing a though prospect, but he's got the hand to win if he plays like a pro. He knows too well that it would be useless to gain 30 seats in Ontario while letting the Bloc keep its share of Quebec. Imagine how delighted the PQ would be to fight against a PM that doesn't speak French...
If he wants a majority next time, it appears obvious where he should bring the battle.

[Odin]

Edit: oops forgot there was a whole page between my post and the relavent stuff.

IIRC, the terms "whig" and "tory" come from the 1700's in the UK to represent the pro-king and the pro-parliament factions before the Liberals (the ancestors of the modern Lib-Dems) and Consrvatives became truely organized political parties.

[Odin]

Looks like the US isn't the only country in desperate need of proportional representation.

[Flubber]

The way forward

My take is that the Conservatives will likely survive at least 2 years ( barring some major galvinizing issue) in government for very pragmatic reasons


1. All parties-- Nobody wants to be seen as requiring ANOTHER election for a frivolous reason. The reality right now is that the likely results is a minority government one way or another if we held 10 elections so the electorate might get cranky being asked to do it all again.

2. Liberals -- need a new leader and some time-- their plan will likely be to allow Harper to govern for long enough for the stench of Gomery to fade. For purely pragmatic reasons they will want to wait . . . particularly if acts very moderate as PM. A situation where Harper looks "not scary"is probably one where the Liberals do not want to test the electorate again, at least not until Gomery is a lot less fresh in people's minds.

3. Bloc-- tougher to read but they are in a tougher position. With the re-emergence of the Conservatives in Quebec, they have the joy of federalist vote-splitting but the pain of not winning simply on an anti-Liberal vote. They would likely fear an early election too if Harper looks moderate since they could once again lose seats and votes-- My fear has always been that they might like to defeat the government ASAP and repeatedly as a demonstration that Canada does not work. This has NOT been their position to date as they have wanted to be seen as responsible parliamentarians

4. NDP --- Riding a new recent high, their test would be "can we go higher?". I think their fear would be NO. Their position is largely irrelevent since as it stands they cannot prop up the government by themselves anyway. BUT their support could be important in the public relations war. For instance do you think the other 2 parties want to go to the electorate after bringing down a government on a motion where the government had the support of the NDP?? How could an attack ad portray Harper as "scary" for anything that had NDP support.


My bottom line is that everyone will be taking a realistic look at their numbers and whenever they think the time is advantageous, they might pounce. The only positive for the Conservatives is that there is no way the Liberals want an election inside a year . After that, much depends on the Liberal rebirth.

The problem for the 3 opposition parties is that they are largely all centre-left and their support might come from the same base. In any scenario where one of them is soaring in popularity and might want an election, its likely the other two would be trying to avoid an election at all costs.

The scenario where everyone wants an election probably only comes about if the Conservatives make a big gaffe and are perceived as bleeding support in a big way. After all isn't that why the Liberal government came down??


The other election scenario is that Harper manages to govern for 2 years, manages things reasonably well and sees his personal popularity increase a bit. Canadians get used to him and say " what were we worried about?"-- Then he goes back for a new stronger mandate based on his record.

[Flubber]

Regional take

Atlantic Canada

Liberals are incredibly pleased but I was not surprised . Traditional voting patterns stay pretty strong and there is usually a large candidate effect. Conservatives should be a little pleased that they gained at all and with their gains in popular vote.


Quebec

Conservatives -- delighted -- totally positive news
Liberals -- delighted/relieved-- It could have been far worse

Bloc-- ok-- support went down but still 51/75 looks darn good


Ontario

Conservatives -- ok with the result but not the inroads they hoped for
Liberals-- Probably mixed feelings. Relieved to be as strong as they are
NDP -- hip hip horay

Prairies

Conservatives-- delighted-- They probably can't expect any more seats than this. When you dominate a region this thoroughly, the few holdouts are generally superstars

Liberals -- There are prairies?? No seriously 5 seats is probably as good as they hoped

NDP-- 3 in Manitoba has to feel ok but they don't seem to have a lot of potential growth

BC

LIbs-- status quo

Cons-- this time they lost the close races they won last time-- Probably disappointed

NDP -- hip hip hurray

NDP--

[RedFred]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Neither of these are going to happen in any meaningful form.

What is going to happen are Harper's tax cut giveaways.

No! Not tax cut giveaways! God save us from those evil tax cut giveaways!

[Flubber]

Look at the results

Looking at the results there was a lot of "no change"

Atlantic Canada-- no real change

Quebec-- big change with Conservative re-emergence
Ontario-- moderate change-- Cons made modest gains

Prairies -- ho hum

BC-- a little Contrary action-- it appears the NDP message resonated to the detriment of the Conservatives



But looking at the results, it was a whole bunch of "I'll send back the same MP as last time"-- incremental rather than wholesale changes