Canadian Election 2019

[Oryxslayer]

Cons leading NDP in Acadie-Bathurst (behind the  Libs OFC) ...I thought the NDP had a star candidate here?

[Oryxslayer]

Acadie-Bathurst called for Libs, so much about the  hype there. Three flips so far: St. johns East, Tobique-Mactaquac, and NB Southwest.

[Oryxslayer]

Beausejour has to be a data entry error...correct?

[Oryxslayer]

24-6 isn't great for libs, no?

Tories wanted closer to 9ish if they were looking at govt, but it's likely not enough for a Lib majority. So, nothing that we were  not expecting.

[Oryxslayer]

LIB back up in Sydney-Victoria by 33 votes, with 167/196 polls reporting. If you like insanely close races, here's your seat.

And after being down for two hours, the Tories slowly crawled back a lead in Cumberland-Colcester.

[Oryxslayer]

The reports of a Liberal majority seem to be greatly exaggerated - that first wave of polls was very good for the Libs in Quebec, but now the map is nearly all blue. Certainly not good for the Cons, but Lib minority seems more likely.

[Oryxslayer]

CBC calls lib govt...not unexpected.

[Oryxslayer]

Lib Minority. Told you the majority talk was getting ahead of yourself.

[Oryxslayer]

People on twitter are saying a Liberal+NDP coalition will be more left wing then a singular liberal majority. Might be the worst outcome for the right in Canada.

I don't understand what people are basing the claim that "Trudeau will coalition with the NDP" on.

Hell, it will likely just be a minority. If Trudeau was closer to 150, maybe Singh's desire for a true agreement would come to pass, but him being closer to 160 means that a normal minority could probably work fine.

[Oryxslayer]

Jagmeet Singh is leading in his district by around 700 votes, what an embarrassment of a leader. So many decent and good NDP MPs have lost their careers today

I mean Quebec was always going to be lost, but his inability to pick up anything in urban Toronto or Peel where his 'surge' was supposed to occur certainly isn't nice. If I'm looking at this correctly, the NDP only picked up St. johns East and Winnipeg Centre, and maybe Nunuvut. Everything else is a hold or a loss. Not a great score sheet. Especially since candidate choice can be pointed to in those three.

[Oryxslayer]

BTW, Mirimachi-Grand Lake and Cumberland-Colchester were some of the first ridings to release results, and they are some of the last to call, gotta love those slow tabulators.

[Oryxslayer]

A relief for the Liberals but still not good; the majority is gone, they trail in votes and the pattern of the victory of sorts is not very healthy. Poor for the Conservatives: they have just blown an election they could have (and should have) won because they scared urban Ontario. A catastrophic set of results for the NDP, even if is a lesser catastrophe than looked likely earlier this year. An unwelcome return for the Bloc and on one of the darkest campaigns they've ever run: nasty stuff. A missed opportunity for the Greens. And, happily, a major flop for Bernier.

\ o / Everyone loses!

[Oryxslayer]

Richmond hill flips Blue right near the finish line.

[Oryxslayer]

A lot of people have noted how these results were bad for everyone not named the Bloc. It will be interesting to see how many of the current crop of Leaders are still around in six months or so once the dust settles. One could make serious arguments for all getiing replaced.

Trudeau: Yes he won reelection with a sizable minority. Now, Trudeau could have done far worse, but he also could have done far better. His new government also could be on a tight leash and have to walk between the policies desired by the NDP for the most part and the plains pipeline Tories for certain issues. Trudeau however hasn't exactly been that type of leader in the past. The Liberal caucus has to note that this time around they won In Spite Of rather than Thanks To their charismatic leader, and things could have been far worse eif Ford wasn't hated in Ontario.

Sheer: Sheer has the problem that he didn't really prove himself to be the leader the Tories need. Most of the seats he picked up tonight were the lowest hanging fruit, with the wipe-away of the opposition West of Ontario just being a reversion to the mean. Sheer needed to do, at minimum, one  of three things: Win a sizable amount of seats in Ontario proving their distance from Ford, convert CAQ voters in Quebec, or sweep the rural Atlantic. None of these potential inroads occured. The only prize Scheer can point to is his popular vote win. His candidacy and platform was certainly popular in the Oil Plains, and they turbo-charged the Conservative vote inefficiency.

Singh: Unless Singh can get a coalition deal out of the Libs, he has nothing to show for his time at the healm. Yes, the NDP was polling near wipeout territory a while back, but this doesn't excuse the fact that the NDP looked to be on track for an okay showing based on last-week polls. Quebec was always going to be lost, that was built in. The problem is that some projections put Singh close to giving the NDP their best non-quebec numbers ever. That of course didn't happen, and the NDP only really lost seats - even outside of Quebec. No pickups in urban Toronto or with the minority communities in Peel that Singh could have appealed to. Three seats were gained for the NDP this night, and all three could be justifiably the result of the local candidate more then Singh. Who knows, maybe the NDP will return to their doldrums post-election, now that the Singh moment never materialized.

May: This ones more up to her. Yes she increased her caucus, and yes it was outside of BC. However she has expressed an interest in stepping down from the helm of the party, simply because of the demands that the position requires. So she may just step down in keeping with her previous hints.

[Oryxslayer]

I wanted to write some thoughts on the NDP.

Where does the party go from here? Would Mulcair or Boulerice have performed better or was Quebec already lost?

BC - The NDP underperformed and should have gained a seat or two in Metro Vancouver or Surrey... very disappointing.

Alberta and Saskatchewan - Losing 3 seats is terrible, but maybe that's simply a Scheer effect?

Manitoba and North - the only bright spots, but these felt like reversions to the mean.

Ontario - I think this is the biggest disappointment. I was hoping Singh could boost NDP opportunities in the 905 and Toronto by reaching out to minority communities and getting the urban left excited... but it seems like the psychology of strategic voting is too powerful in this area unless people expect the Liberals to collapse like in 2011.

Quebec - Everyone expected losses here, but the vote share was worse than expected and the NDP has been reduced to the one area they have more of a natural base.

Atlantic Canada - NDP gained one seat... remember when they typically had a few? Another mediocre performance.

The biggest problem I see for the NDP is there is no clear strategy forward. A Quebec focused party will never overtake the Bloc + a Liberal leader from Quebec. Ontario did not have a breakthrough. Atlantic Canada seems more promising but the party infrastructure is very weak... look at New Brunswick. The NDP needs to build a more reliable base of voters on a regional basis if electoral reform cannot happen... but what would that look like?

I keep on reading how it was Singh that sunk NDP in Quebec.  But it seems to me that NDP already lost most of its ground in Quebec before Singh took over.  is that right ?

Yes there was very little the NDP could have done to hold Quebec, but they still could have won more seats here  in places like Sherbrooke and Montreal.  The thing was that even if we accept the Quebec losses, which many had, Singh still looked to be on track to make gains in the rest of Quebec. Some  predicted the best result for the NDP outside  of Quebec ever. That didn't come to pass - the NDP lost ground everywhere, their 3 gains of the night were all because of candidates rather then the NDP brand, and Singh ended up in a tight race in Burnaby South. Like if Singh can't hold/gain the Coquitlam region (which neighbors his seat) where the oil pipelines would terminate, then something is wrong.

[Oryxslayer]

Despite all the gnashing of teeth about Trudeau's "horrible" performance as PM, & all the sly nods about the shy Tories, it turns out that running without a climate plan, running on maligning your opponents outright, & explicitly supporting misinformation is a losing plan. Based on the regional results, the Conservatives were supported in the West by a larger margin compared to 2015 while losing votes everywhere else. This despite 4 years (& 40 days) of telling us over & over that Trudeau was ruining this country. So something went wrong.

Ehh...its already been said that everyone lost last night who wasn't the Bloc. Hoisting that blame solely upon one party is just spin. The Libs won in spite of not thanks to Trudeau, and if it wasn't for Scheer or Ford they may have gone down in flames. Scheer failed to expand the Blue vote beyond it's normal electorate. The NDP's balance sheet is deep in the red. The Greens failed to capitalize on the climate moment.

However, I do need to note that Scheer's conservatives did have a climate plan, you just had to read between the lines. The unfortunate truth is that while some climate change hurts most of the planet, it helps Canada on a purely transactional basis and especially helps the Tory west. A hotter planet will open up lots of farmland in the Plains provinces, uncover new resource deposits for extraction, and open up the Northwest passage for actual use. Of course, getting some climate change without the whole package of global unmaking is rather hard to achieve, and most voters don't think on a  transactional basis.

[Oryxslayer]

The issue with the Tories is they've got to get over their obsession with negative campaigning. Yes it worked well on Dion and Ignatief back in the day, but I think they've allowed their cadre's visceral loathing of Lil Justin to allow the campaign to essentially become preaching to the choir (for comparison, see 80's Labour unable to square the deep loathing their core seats had for Thatcher with a cohesive electoral message for people with less strong opinions on her). Like, even post-blackface and post-scandal, most Canadaians seem to regard their PM as essentially an affable dumbass, but the Tories insist on personal attacks as if he is some unknown figure yet to be defined in the eyes of the masses.

Tbh this election is really bad for them, even worse than it was for the NDP and Liberals. They were this close to squaring the big issue for the Canadian Right in the post-Mulroney era: uniting Anglophones and Francophones. If they had managed to get the CAQ coalition - even a significant portion - they could honestly be in a position to challenge the Liberals as the natural governing force of Canada. Instead they frittered it away and allowed a zombie party to rise from the grave. And unfortunately for them, I don't think they'll get the opportunity again: the Alberta/Sask coalition is too pissed off and interrnally powerful to accept much capitulation to Quebec (even ignoring the pipeline issue).

Theres an interesting hypothetical out there where Bernier becomes Conservative leader and is able to grab the CAQ'ers and get them to coexist in the party with the Plains base. He would be losing even more seats in the Toronto and maybe even the Vancouver metros, but it's quite possible Quebec and more working class areas like southern Ontario and the rural Atlantic would have pushed him over. It's a hypothetical I'm happy we don't have to explore.

[Oryxslayer]

The (clap) Liberal (clap) Party (clap) of (clap) Canada (clap) is (clap) not (clap) "left"

Left (clap) And (clap) Right (clap) Are (clap) Meaningless (clap) Terms (clap) Whose (clap) Applicability (clap) And (clap) Tenants (clap) Change (clap) Based (clap) On (clap) Time (clap) Period, (clap) Geography, (clap) Culture, (clap) Context, (clap) And (clap) Perspective (clap) Of (clap) The (clap) Defined (clap) Selection.

[Oryxslayer]

I'm not saying the left wing would take all of them, that's why I labeled many tossup, but like there is no doubt vote splitting cost the left wing like a couple dozen seats ish.

***So.  Freaking.  What.***  Such is non-binary FPTP.  You win some, you lose some.

And y'know; whatever one's partisanship, that's what makes Canadian elections and election results so much more *interesting* than when it's pared down to a strict US-style binary.  Like, take a Lib-NDP marginal race like Davenport; if it were the US, the seat would be 80-90% Democratic.  *Bo-ring*...

Excitement and how interesting something is? Wut? This isn't some game. A safe and boring left wing hold sounds just fine, thank you very much.

Also, this benefitted the left wing in canada in almost no races whatsover, instead it prolly cost the left wing a couple dozen seats. So f%ck that, bring on the mundane.

You have to realize, though: in this forum, you're dealing with psephologists.  Election geeks who are into poll-by-poll statistics and election maps and whatnot: documents which express the electoral "soul" of the land, if you will.  We may have our political inclinations; but we're willing to suspend them on behalf of fascinated bystanderdom relative to maps like this (Toronto 2011: a wonderful patchwork of blue, red, and orange)
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a0qWaCgupOk/Tib2R82-bRI/AAAAAAAAAGs/NAsWVtrTH2Q/s1600/toronto2011.png
It's kind of like opting for an electoral Route 66 over the electoral Interstate.  And if you'd rather take the Interstate even as a "leisurely" option, that's your problem.

I'm sorry, but this is a copy-pasta waiting to happen.

[Oryxslayer]

Another thing that we are  all forgetting when talking about scheer is that Canada on the provincial level right now is a Blue Dominion. The Conservatives and their allies rule nearly the entire country provincially, with BC being the only stickout. This shows there are plenty of paths to a Tory govt: reaching out to the left-behind Rural Atlantic, hugging the CAQ for rural Quebec, flipping Suburban Toronto, going full populist and targeting the WWC in South/North Ontario, appealing to Conservative minorities in BC and Peel. Scheer did none of this and just ran a plains-based campaign that got it's dead-cat bounce in most of the country. If the NDP did a bit better, and divided up the Lib/NDP vote, then Scheer still probably couldn't win a majority. Ontario ended up as a firewall, the gains in BC and potentially the Atlantic wouldn't get him close to the now-reduced Liberal minority govt's overall total. He needs to go.

Canadians now just need to pray that Ford doesn't decide to abandon Ontario for national politics, because the eventual recession in the next five years will likely bring down Trudeau's govt and put in power whomever happens to lead team blue.

[Oryxslayer]

Yes, I think the question of whether Singh is a long-term success is ultimately probably at least as much about whether he can fix its finances as it is about how he navigates a hung parliament.

Wouldn't it be best for Singh to form an official coalition government with Trudeau? I know this is not as common as in countries like Germany or Italy, but the UK also had a coalition government from 2010 to 2015. I think the Liberal Party and NDP could get some stuff done.

Why would either party even want a coalition?

Singh getting a coalition agreement gives  him something concrete to point to when the NDP gets money and people start whispering that he has to go. Trudeau though has enough seats that his minority can last without an agreement, his total would need to be at least 10 seats lower to make it a possibility.

[Oryxslayer]

 Anyway to quickly find a list of closest seat vote margins, say the closest 40?

Download the text document from elections canada and then do statistical analysis. I used a now outdated version for this map:

https://twitter.com/OryxMaps/status/1186777303642263552

[Oryxslayer]

I'm familiar with the general lay of the land in Canadian politics and the big names in Canadian political history but don't follow the Canadian political process day-to-day. Can someone explain to me what exactly it is about Biebertrudeau that makes him so uniquely loathsome to the West? He's not even that anti-fossil fuel except rhetorically. Do people see the campaign rhetoric and assume he's coming for their livelihoods even though he's barely lifted a finger against the oil lobby in the past four years? Is there just a different culture out there that's put off by the dictatorship-of-the-woketariat vibes? Is it an affirmative strategy on the CPC's part to establish itself as a Western Canadian sectional party, rather than toxicity on Trudeau's part?

Less a failing of the Libs or Ottawa in general, and more a success on the part of the various conservative parties that they have cultivated a loyal base in the oil industry - it's just maybe a bit too successful. Various conservative tickets have not lost Alberta in recent history, more often than not it's their best province. The province was so loyal that it had two viable right-wing parties locally until their vote splitting finally enabled the NDP opposition. The Petroleum industry in general tends to draw/cultivate right-wingers, no matter where you are in the  globe. The low education requirements, high pay, and male dominated environment all set the starting point for the industry rather far toward the conservative axis of ideology.

More recently though? Oil states as a general rule go in boom and bust cycles that boom when the overall market is poor and bust when the overall market is high. Since the markets are  strong, Alberta will suffer no matter how many pipelines are built. Same situation in Alaska which is why the state is ungovernable right now. People were highly motivated to turnout and highly motivated to vote for the  opposition because they feel left behind in contrast to the rest of the country, even though whenever the next recession hits it will be the other way around. We can debate endlessly whether the decision to put all of Alberta's eggs into to Oil extraction basket rather then diversifying industry to oil-related manufacturing for plastics or cement or whatever was a good one, but Alberta's situation is that of a rentier state whose opinions of govt move with the markets. Add on a side of every other serious party supporting some sort of climate policy that attacks the fuel industry and we get a recipe for 80% blowouts.

[Oryxslayer]

BC and Alberta being politically aligned in the Reform/Alliance days seems so long ago...

BC is still under the present electoral arrangement a conservative province. Vancouver's growth is hampered by geography and it's votes are fragmented. As long as the non-tory vote keeps getting cut into 20-20-20 (a simplification) chunks, the Tories will  waltz to popular vote victories thanks to the interior and seat count victories via vote splits in the suburbs. They did it under Harper and they did it this week. BC though is one of those places though if you forced people to pick a loyal-left or a loyal-right, when they both have realistic shots at power unlike 2011, they will pick loyal-left. The BC liberals provincially have a distinct brand from other local provincial conservative parties which allows them to win the two-party contests with the NDP.

[Oryxslayer]

 

Yes, the East-West divide is sharp in Canada in a way American observers may not be able to comprehend (we have no "Midwest" equivalent).  Also the Great Plains isn't a cultural region in the US but the Prairies very much is one in Canada.

I thought Manitoba and Northern Ontario were your Midwest.

Ew, I refuse to believe I’m from the Canadian equivalent of the Midwest.

To be honest, all of Ontario is the Midwest. Toronto is Chicago. Windsor, Hamilton, London, Niagara, Oshawa -- all very Midwestern. Sorry.

Ontario simplified is just a mixture of Illinois and New York. The province as  a whole is very similar structurally to Illinois, except the GTA and Ottawa are far similar to Albany and NYC in their cultural impact/growth/influence (etc) rather than Chicago. Ontario also lacks much of the American midwestern culture and rightly so has their own thing.