CanPol: May(?) 2011 Election. Vote today!

[KrazyHorse]

The operative word here is "you". The specific, not the general.

BTW, the "system" is identical to the legislative system used in the US. It's just that our politics have not yet become compressed along a single axis.

[Flubber]

4-5 years.

and I am happy about that-- the constant prospect of elections for the last several years has been politically exhausting

[KrazyHorse]

Indeed. Try dealing with the biennial American cycle...

[Asher]

Duceppe just resigned.

[KrazyHorse]

Did he even keep his seat?

[KrazyHorse]

Answer: no

[Uncle Sparky]

Congrats to the Cons. Not the Canada I wanted, but you can't always get what you want. And I never thought I'd agree with Asher on CanPol.

2 Manitoba seats with less than 100 vote (at this point) plurality and might go to recount. Elmwood has been NDP and curently has the Con leading. Winnipeg North currently Lib with Libs leading by less than 50 votes.

Congrats to the Greens - your leader will be in the next debate!

And for those of you too young to remember, the Cons were left with 2 seats under Campbell - this too will pass. I'm to old to draft, so Harper can't hurt me too much.

[joncha]

Wow. An even crazier outcome than I had predicted.

[KrazyHorse]

Congrats to Harper

Hopefully the feds under him will continue the long-term trend of the federal government moving toward in-cash transfers (away from in-kind centralized spending) and a flatter tax system based on a single, flat wedge between production and consumption.

[Garth Vader]

I see a lot in Harper I don't like . .. . but I don't think anything worrisome will happen-- I expect he will just go out and execute his platform-- but like you I will be interested

That is the worrisome part.

[Uncle Sparky]

Wow. An even crazier outcome than I had predicted.

Split votes & a general Lib collapse won it for the Cons.

Winnipeg South Centre, for example, the Libs "safe" seat west of Ontario, had an unprecedented number of NDP vote NDP rather than strategically prop up the Libs. The Con won by about 1200 votes. The NDP more than doubled its vote.

On the bright side for me as a pro-democracy type, when the dust settles, I suspect the total voter turnout will be about 70% - this is good.

[Asher]

So why exactly did the Libs collapse so spectacularly?

[KrazyHorse]

Ignatieff, I suspect. As well as the lack of a real differentiation between themselves and the Tories.

[KrazyHorse]

The QC electoral map may be the most astonishing thing I have seen come out of a Canadian election in my lifetime (the only other contender is the 1992 election).

[joncha]

Split votes & a general Lib collapse won it for the Cons.

Winnipeg South Centre, for example, the Libs "safe" seat west of Ontario, had an unprecedented number of NDP vote NDP rather than strategically prop up the Libs. The Con won by about 1200 votes. The NDP more than doubled its vote.

On the bright side for me as a pro-democracy type, when the dust settles, I suspect the total voter turnout will be about 70% - this is good.

This is far more a case of Liberal collapse than of any vote splitting.