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

[KrazyHorse]

joncha

I am not in the country. That is why you should trust nye over me. He is also relatively astute when it comes to politics (as a practical & predictive art, not a normative one)

[joncha]

I am not in the country. That is why you should trust nye over me. He is also relatively astute when it comes to politics (as a practical & predictive art, not a normative one)

Oh I trust his opinion too. It's just that a voter in Vancouver or Toronto will have had a different perception of Ignatieff's campaign than one in Calgary or one of the suburbs.

[KrazyHorse]

Fact: the globe&mail excels at creepy pictures of party leaders



(included to quiet sparrowhawk's *****ing)









fact 2: not a single picture out of the 36 I scrolled through was of harper

[KrazyHorse]

There we go.

[notyoueither]

It's the wrong arm.

[KrazyHorse]

Goddamn, Layton is just a treasure trove of awesome tonight.

[notyoueither]

Well, I'm relieved the Alberta economy won't crash now.

But I'm worried what Harper will do with a majority.

I have a feeling that many of us will be pleasantly surprised.

The hidden agenda is and always has been for parliamentary reform. It isn't an issue that wins elections, in fact you lose them when you are a Westerner and you bring it up. I'm thinking that Layton, May, and Ignatieff would agree with many things he is likely to do (terms for senators, elected senators, more accurate rep by pop, possibly reform of the powers of the leaders and the PMO). That last one would be huge. Eliminating the power of the parties over riding associations would be huge for reforming Ottawa.

[notyoueither]

Oh I trust his opinion too. It's just that a voter in Vancouver or Toronto will have had a different perception of Ignatieff's campaign than one in Calgary or one of the suburbs.

He campaigned on higher taxes and redistribution while rousing the rabble. That doesn't play well among those who have china, and gave permission to leftist loyalists to vote on the wild side.

[Victor Galis]

Neither my party being gutted, nor the Conservative majority can really dampen my glee seeing the Bloc reduced down to 4 MPs.

[Kuciwalker]

Seems like a pretty fun result.

[notyoueither]

Jesus Christ! The NDP is sending Mr. Garrison to Ottawa!

[notyoueither]

[notyoueither]

For those who think that Harper is some sort of threat to democracy in Canada, and a cultural warrior, relax.

The man is a policy wonk. He is a political tactician. Also, he got interested in politics following Trudeau. He changed sides, and views, but he went to Ottawa as part of the response of the West to Mulroney and old party politics. He is a reformer, and a smart one. He watched what happened to Manning, to Day, and he was around to see what happened to Stanfield, Clark, and again Day.

Harper knows what will lose elections, and he is unlikely in the extreme to go there since his interests are more fundamental than what a single parliament may pass in a social policy bill. He's also smart enough to know that what won elections in minority politics, discipline and control, are weaknesses in the long run and he is likely to work on his weaknesses. Harper does not want to be a Canadian Falwell. He wants to be a Conservative Laurier.

[Uncle Sparky]

http://www.elections.ca/enr/help/map_41ge.pdf

For visual types, the new map of Canada.

[notyoueither]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadas-new-electoral-divide-its-about-the-money/article2009191/

Canada’s new electoral divide: It’s about the money
PATRICK BRETHOUR
VANCOUVER— From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, May. 03, 2011 9:56PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, May. 03, 2011 11:23PM EDT

The newly drawn electoral map is split, but the cleavage is not left versus right, nor is it Quebec versus the rest of Canada.

The true divide, the new reality of Canadian politics, is between the economic heartlands that the Conservatives now dominate throughout the country and the economic hinterlands won by the NDP.

The energy powerhouses of Alberta and the B.C. Interior are Conservative, while B.C.’s struggling north coast is solidly NDP. The suburbs and thriving technology centres of Ontario are deep blue territory, but the north of the province is orange. Quebec’s rural areas are largely held by New Democrats, but the entrepreneurial hub of the Beauce remains a Tory bastion.

With Canada still shaking off the effects of the recession, the Conservatives were clearly looking to herd economically worried voters into their column at the start of the campaign. The party was aiming not just at the haves, looking to safeguard their affluence, but at the just-hads, aching to reclaim their recently lost prosperity.

That message resonated strongly in Southern Ontario, where the manufacturing industries are still reeling and voters are no mood to take risks. “In Southwestern Ontario, they are not screwing around with the economy,” said Greg Lyle, managing director at Innovative Research Group. (Although the NDP also benefited in a more limited way from those same worries, maintaining its traditional strength in Windsor and Hamilton.)

Then came the unexpected surge of the NDP, and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s eleventh-hour appeal to Liberal voters with economically conservative leanings, often called blue Liberals. “Let me speak very clearly to traditional Liberal voters: I know many of you do not want NDP policies. That you do not want NDP tax hikes,” Mr. Harper said on Sunday.

The message: Only we can protect your prosperity.

The result is that the Conservatives were able to achieve in 2011 what eluded them in 2008, a coalition of economically conservative-minded voters who cast their ballots based on pocketbook issues rather than concerns over cultural issues, including the Tories’ supposed leanings toward social conservatism.

Those blue Liberals were the missing element in the Conservative coalition. In the 1990s, they were the foundation of the successive Liberal sweeps of Ontario. So long as they remained with the Liberals, Mr. Harper would be shut out of the urban heart of most big Canadian cities.

But the rise of the NDP, which siphoned off progressive-minded Liberals, clearly spooked a sizable number of blue Liberals, causing them to bolt to Mr. Harper in the last weekend of campaigning, said Nik Nanos, president and chief executive officer of Nanos Research.

It was clear at the start of the campaign that there were a large number of Liberals who would be prone to bolting: Nearly a quarter of committed Liberals (largely older men) ranked Mr. Harper, rather than Michael Ignatieff, as the most competent federal leader. Mr. Nanos said that figure is a clear proxy for the extent of the blue Liberal vote.

At the end of the campaign, as the Liberal vote dropped precipitously, so did the ranks of blue Liberals within their long-time party – just 16 per cent of Ignatieff supporters ranked Mr. Harper as the most competent leader. However, that figure also indicates that the Tories have yet to win over all of the Liberals’ economically conservative supporters.

The task of luring blue Liberals is not yet complete, and the Conservatives’ ability to woo voters on economic matters was far more limited in Quebec than in other parts of the country – NDP momentum simply overwhelmed the appeal of the Tory economic message. But the reduced Conservative foothold in Quebec is in that part of the province that is strongly for free trade, and that produced libertarian cabinet minister Maxime Bernier.

Unfinished it may be, but the new Conservative coalition now dominates more than just the natural-resources powerhouses of the West – it also has strengthened its lead in the areas containing the brainy industries of Ontario, in the prosperous, immigrant-heavy suburban communities and even, most startlingly, in the wealthy ridings in the heart of Toronto.

Those voters have delivered Mr. Harper his majority government. Keeping it, and keeping them, will depend on the Conservatives proving that their only agenda is prosperity.