2021 Canadian general election - Election Day and Results

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Why the Tory swing around Quebec?

Because when it came to post-Orange Crush dynamics, the Conservatives, and not the Liberals, were already positioned as the default alternative in most of the Capitale-Nationale (w/the exception of Louis-Hebert and Quebec)

I imagine it also has to do with ground game. The Capitale-Nationale/Chaudières-Appalaches/Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean belt is where Tories have a pre-existing base, so it would make sense if they put in a lot more effort there than, say, Greater Montreal where apart from a few Anglo suburbs they're lucky to keep their deposit.

I get that the Quebec City area and Chaudières-Appalaches are pretty well-suited to them, but I'll admit that I'm not really sure what Tory strength around Saguenay specifically is based on.

Well, "ground game" was my point when it came to being already established.  Essentially, they just picked up from before they were so rudely interrupted.

As far as the Saguenay goes:  think of it as a lucky circumstance of star candidates and a regional chain-reaction effect.  (And maybe more subliminally, it's more within the Quebec City orbit than it seems)

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Richard Martel seems to have a strong personal vote, but the Saguenay/LSJ region also had two Harper-era ministers in Denis Lebel and Jean-Pierre Blackburn, and I think that probably has downstream effects.

Yet both of those were "circumstantial" as well--the former through a byelection much like Martel, the latter a Mulroney-era retread who was the beneficiary of strategic supertargeting as part of the '06 Harper Quebec breakthrough...

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1.Saskatoon-University lost by 12.6%  Maybe if the NDP didn't keep running Claire Card there they'd do better, though she seems like a nice enough person to me.

Given that it's federal Saskatchewan these days, I'll assume the reverse, i.e. she's still a net asset.  (And it also fits into that "Mel Swart" NDP tradition of "viable perennial candidates" trying over and over until they actually win--which they actually can.)

Speaking of the NDP and its longer-term woes, another thing that's dawned on me is how, in Toronto, it's come to virtually disappear as a *municipal* factor outside of the core--up through the 80s, it was capable of viable runs for Council in Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, etc, but ever since the shock of the provincial Bob Rae regime, the viable "progressives" that run out there have tended to be Liberal or "non-affiliated", or else one form or another of pre-1990 retread.  And with that, the kind of infrastructural network that once would have buoyed such runs for higher office has died off or atrophied.  (Meanwhile, the "downtown caucus" has tended to get *more* NDP-dominant.)

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If you're an American and commenting on a Canadian election, you should be aware that Canadian ridings tend to have far greater swings from election to election than American U.S House districts.  So, whereas a 55-45% U.S House district is barely competitive unless that was the result in a wave year, in Canada that's much more competitive historically.

I can't help thinking of the bemusement of a lot of Canadians when they hear of a Mississippi US Senate race being deemed "safe GOP" even at a projected 55-45 margin--but that's all heavily racialized terminal inelasticity making its mark...

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If you're an American and commenting on a Canadian election, you should be aware that Canadian ridings tend to have far greater swings from election to election than American U.S House districts.  So, whereas a 55-45% U.S House district is barely competitive unless that was the result in a wave year, in Canada that's much more competitive historically.

I can't help thinking of the bemusement of a lot of Canadians when they hear of a Mississippi US Senate race being deemed "safe GOP" even at a projected 55-45 margin--but that's all heavily racialized terminal inelasticity making its mark...

The size of our electorates is much larger, so the number of votes difference between a Canadian Parliament seat being spread by 10 points and a U.S. Senate seat being spread by 10 points is very large.

Doesn't matter; it's not about the size, it's about the inelasticity.  That is, if you break Mississippi down into Canadian-style and Canadian-size constituencies, you'd have that same inflexibility problem--IOW everything depends not upon "swaying" voters, but upon turnout and gerrymander.  

Closest thing to "elasticity" might be if Memphisburban growth is "moderating" DeSoto County.

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Another is just straight up demographics and what parties do well there.  Rural Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, and Northern Ontario saw Tories a lot closer than normal in ridings they normally aren't even competitive in.  But based on demographics in those ridings, this could more a case of starting to align with how other similar ones already vote.  If Calgary one election swung heavily Liberal, you could say same things as based on demographics of Calgary, it should be going Liberal not Tory.  It likely only goes Conservative due to feeling Liberals are hostile towards province so if you had a Liberal leader who was Alberta friendly, you could see a big swing that way. 

I'm still circumspect about whether rural Newfoundland really belongs in that category, mainly because it's been through this before (like, 1997 after 1993), and there's still a lot of in-riding variants that depend on candidates and ground teams and local issues.  Generally speaking, relative to the Libs, rural Newfoundland has played out over the years more like the proverbial grunge record (soft, and then LOUD, and then soft, and then LOUD). 

Though it could be that we'll never see 1993/2015-style landslides again--but when it comes to corresponding with patterns elsewhere, rural Newfoundland shifting terminally away from the Libs is not so much a "given" as urban Newfoundland (the St. John's ridings) shifting terminally away from the Cons.

(The Cape Breton seats are a little different due to their unique-for-Atlantic-Canada Rust Belt situation.  If they *might* be analogous to anything, it's Sault Ste Marie.)

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I guess people are thinking of rural NL as being traditionally safe Liberal, as it was one of the few strong Liberal regions in 2011. One has to remember the visceral hatred that Newfoundlands had of Stephen Harper (to the point that their Tory Premier was running an "anybody but Conservative campaign"). Take Harper off the (metaphorical) ballot, and the province gets interesting again.

Very true, although even before Harper, Liberals tended to win rural NL while Tories would win St. John's.  Now it seems to be reverse as rural NL competitive while St. John's Liberal/NDP and Tories in distant third.  After all Harper won the two St. John's ridings in 2004 and 2006 before Williams' ABC campaign, but those have not seen party rebound.  So probably true hatred of Harper is why strong in 2011, but overall rural/urban divide is why this is swinging Tory, but St. John's is not. 

It's not so much Harper who won those ridings in '04 and '06 as incumbents Norman Doyle and Loyola Hearn, carryovers from the PC era.  Once they left, Con support plummeted to the basement.

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To add to what Earl said, the Tories did better in rural Newfoundland this election than they did in 1997 with the Atlantic Chretien backlash, or Mulroney's 1988 result. This indicates that rural Newfoundland has had a rightward trend that goes beyond individual candidates doing well.

Though 1997 had an added "anti-Liberal option" factor in the mix: an Atlantic Canadian NDP leader in the form of Alexa McDonough.  (Even though that was only good for mid-teens shares in all but 3 ridings. And in a PPC foreshadowing, there were a few bottom-feeding Reform candidates that year as well.)

And Newfoundland being Newfoundland, it's still unclear how terminally "right" the Conservative vote necessarily is--there's still a lot of potential electoral promiscuity around the edges; we're not exactly talking about rural N&L going Fundy-Royal or New Brunswick Southwest on us...

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By contrast in urban Atlantic Canada, its Liberals in first, NDP in second and Tories distant third. 

There actually isn't much of "urban Atlantic Canada" where that's the case--basically, Halifax and St. John's and that's it.  And thank the Alexa and Jack Harris legacies for that.

And keep in mind that a generation or so ago, conventional wisdom was that Cape Breton as a "competitive" proposition would have been Lib vs NDP.  No longer.

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By contrast in urban Atlantic Canada, its Liberals in first, NDP in second and Tories distant third.  

There actually isn't much of "urban Atlantic Canada" where that's the case--basically, Halifax and St. John's and that's it.  And thank the Alexa and Jack Harris legacies for that.

Parallels with Quebec post-Orange Crush.

And keep in mind that a generation or so ago, conventional wisdom was that Cape Breton as a "competitive" proposition would have been Lib vs NDP.  No longer.

Why did this happen, btw? The provincial party is still competitive in part of the area, so it's not like it's a complete dead zone for the NDP even now, but it seems like a place where they could be more of a factor than they are.

Well, it's not like the party couldn't *still* be competitive (particularly in Sydney-Victoria).  It's probably more the happenstance of CPC hyperstrategizing w/star candidates in 2019 + the federal NDP entering that election as basically a dead party walking, especially in the Maritimes where they were battling the Greens for 3rd.  And while Team Jagmeet was in better shape going into 2021, it wasn't enough to prevent the Cape Breton '19 result from being a template for '21 as well...

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Sure, but they were struggling to make an impact even in the Layton years, when the NS NDP was stronger across the board than it is now.

Probably because in this case, the Alexa years were more pertinent than the Layton years.  And even provincially, the NDP struggled in Cape Breton through this period--in part because the Libs and PCs were more prone to having high-profile regional leadership figures (Russell MacKinnon, Rodney MacDonald, Cec Clarke, etc), while the NDP tended to have more of a "metropolitan Halifax" profile.  (And in '11, I suspect the federal party was already hampered by Dexter government backlash.)

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And then of course there's Dominic Cardy. You could argue he didn't change his beliefs all that much though.

In Saskatchewan, there's Ross Thatcher. Elected in the 1944 CCF landslide wanting to do something about the depression, his small business sensibilities made him an awkward fit with a socialist party, so he became a leading champion of free enterprise, and an opponent of Tommy Douglas, later becoming Premier of the province.

There's also Dennis Fentie in the Yukon, who was an NDP MLA for six years before he switched to the Yukon Party; a month after doing so he became the party's leader, and five months after that he led them to victory in the snap general election.

And of course, Bob Rae in Ontario.

And there were not a few of Rae's MPP's who drifted to the Libs or beyond--an extreme case of "beyond" being Giorgio Mammoliti in Toronto...

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I see that it is still verboten to even mention the name of the final leader of the CCF!

No argument there ;-)

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I think the biggest shift in Ontario away from Tories to Liberals has been Ottawa.  Places like Kanata and Nepean were solid Tory a decade ago but now lean Liberal.  Ottawa West-Nepean and Orleans used to be swing ridings but now solid Liberal.  I think probably education as many university educated turned off by right wing populism who may lean right fiscally have moved away.  Atlantic Canada has seen some shift, but most were your Joe Clark or Robert Stanfield type Red Tories who never left party, party left them.  St. John's really only example of big swing away as discussed earlier.  If you go really far back, Tories used to win St. Paul's, Toronto Centre, and Vancouver Centre in 80s but so much has changed since then so not sure if its voters shifting more many who voted Tory then are now dead and those still around are too small to win on their own.  On other hand those who moved there since or became of age since have mostly gone for progressive parties.

Re Toronto Centre:  remember that unlike past incarnations, today's riding doesn't have Rosedale--in its present form (and I'm not talking about simple poll transposition), it might have had a hard time going federally Tory in '84, or indeed at any time post-Diefenbaker.  (OTOH there's a good chance that present-day University-Rosedale *would* have gone Tory, and as the place where David Crombie would likely have run had it existed in '84.)

Ottawa's actually an interesting case in that it's often been electorally ahead of the game--first, the Liberals managed a near-sweep in '88 one election ahead of the Chretien landslide; then, the Alliance + Tories seemed to ominously "overperform" in 2000 in a way that anticipated the more think-tanky side of Harper's "reach"; then, the Libs didn't lose as much ground as they could have, and in some cases even gained ground, under Dion and Ignatieff.  And *perhaps* signs of rekindled Lib weakness in places like Kanata-Carleton over the last couple of elections--or maybe, in the aftermath of '18 provincially, NDP "potential"?

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(Eves in 2003 much like Harper in 2015 got over 40% in a lot of 905 belt ridings despite losing most, it was mostly collapse of NDP that cost Tories there.  It was in 2007 provincially and 2019 federally Tories saw biggest fall in 905 belt and provincially weren't able to recover until 2018 and haven't federally).

There wasn't a collapse of the ONDP specific to 2003--if anything, they *gained* ground that year  (though their 1999 collapse helped strategically position a lot of 416/905 Libs for future victory in the form of 40% 2nd places and the like).

And '07 and '19 were a matter of them losing whatever incumbent advantage they previously had.

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Ottawa was also one of the few places in the province that saw a large (comparatively) swing away from Doug Ford's Tories in 2018.  I've also noticed the NDP has been doing much better in Ottawa, than ever, really (except in Ottawa Centre ) For example, the NDP had its best result ever in my riding of Ottawa South this year.

The 1970s provincially could stand as an exception, i.e. when they held both Ottawa Centre and Carleton East, and performed respectably elsewhere (in '75, a 32.4% 2nd place in Ottawa South as it then existed, i.e. N into the Glebe, and no further S than Walkley Rd)

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Who do you think most NHL players and coaches voted for? Liberal? Tories? Stayed home?

This the wrong thread to ask this.

To go way back to this post, I was just reminded of a quip I made in 2015:  Stephen Harper earned Wayne Gretzky's support that year, and came out of the election with 99 seats ;-)

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As I posted earlier, the Liberals won 160 ridings and lost another 20 ridings by less than 10%.  That combined is less than the 184 ridings they won in 2015.  So, what are the ridings that the Liberals won in 2015 but lost by more than 10% in 2021?  I don't know all of them, but I believe these are all of them outside of Ontario and Quebec.

1.Kelowna-Lake Country
2Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon
3.Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge
4.Calgary Centre
5.Regina-Wascana
6.Kildonen-St Paul
7.Winnipeg Centre
8.Fundy Royal
9.New Brunswick Southwest
10.Tobique-Mactaquac
11.Cumberland-Colchester
12.West Nova
13.Nunavut

I imagine there would be a fair number in Quebec, as the Liberal's main opponent in Quebec in 2015 was the NDP, while in 2021 (and 2019) it was the Bloc.  

To that, I'd add Kenora, Hastings-L&A, Northumberland-PS, Laurentides-Labelle, Saint-Jean, Montarville, Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, Avignon et al.

Kenora's a case of throwaway candidate in 3rd and CPC/NDP filling the void.  Hastings/Northumberland were supermarginal/unexpecteds in '15, and were still not *that* much over 10% in '21.  Chicoutimi was a case of a byelected Conservative throwing the dynamic inside out and turning the Libs into an also-ran force.  LLB was a total '15 "shouldn't have happened" fluke; Avignon happened in '15 largely by default through the ex-Bloc incumbent splitting the separatist vote; Saint-Jean & Montarville provincially border onto the Bloc leader's riding, and Montarville over 10% might be pure happenstance.

The thing is, there were surprisingly few Lib-to-Bloc steals in '19 (most of the uptake came from walking-dead NDPers), and some of those came from Montreal outskirts where there were ex-MPs bidding to take back their seats and more of a baked-in base that wasn't just '15 caught-up-in-the-Justin-rapture.

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On Liberal side biggest shock was picking up Richmond Centre which I heard was not on their target list.  But it seems both parties missed the massive shift in Chinese-Canadian community from Tories to Liberals. 

I suppose Markham-Unionville would be the Richmond Centre of Eastern Canada.

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Be interested in knowing how Avi Lewis did in the various municipalities of West Van-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country.  Maybe I'll tally it up.

Quickly looking, he actually finished 2nd (ahead of the Cons) when it came to e-day ballots.

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Be interested in knowing how Avi Lewis did in the various municipalities of West Van-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country.  Maybe I'll tally it up.

I seem to recall seeing a map of that one on twitter - the Tories won the center and inland, the NDP won the north, and Libs won the urban/suburban far south of the seat.

What sorts of people live in each of those parts of the seat?

Well, that was a pretty aggressively dumbed-down map that anyone could have educated-guessed on.

But blue = W Van = affluent-class suburbia.  Orange = Sunshine Coast = "hippie types" (and Avi himself).  Red = Sea To Sky Country = ski and resort country, Whistler et al (though w/more of a historical blue-collar streak in Squamish that's made for high NDP figures there over time)

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One glitch to report on: Etobicoke Centre registered as the best PPC riding in Toronto, but there are a couple of very conspicuous tab errors (Poll 98 and Advance Poll 606) where the CPC and PPC numbers were almost surely transposed.  So the "official" result is Lib 48/CPC 34.9/NDP 10.1/PPC 7; but the "corrected" result would have PPC at 5.8% and CPC at 36.1%.  (Which'd still make it the only 5%+ PPC result in the 416.)

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Be interested in knowing how Avi Lewis did in the various municipalities of West Van-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country.  Maybe I'll tally it up.

I seem to recall seeing a map of that one on twitter - the Tories won the center and inland, the NDP won the north, and Libs won the urban/suburban far south of the seat.

What sorts of people live in each of those parts of the seat?

Well, that was a pretty aggressively dumbed-down map that anyone could have educated-guessed on.

But blue = W Van = affluent-class suburbia.  Orange = Sunshine Coast = "hippie types" (and Avi himself).  Red = Sea To Sky Country = ski and resort country, Whistler et al (though w/more of a historical blue-collar streak in Squamish that's made for high NDP figures there over time)

Well, that was unnecessary, especially since Oryx hadn't yet edited the map into his post when I asked. But thank you for the breakdown anyway - I was particularly interested in teasing out how much of a blue-collar streak Lewis would have had to work with.

Yeah, I wasn't addressing the "dumbed-down" assessment at you, or to a degree Oryx.  However, West Van et al depicted as if it were 3 polling stations is like an 3 1/2-year-old's stick-figure-drawing rendition of a polling map--particularly within a riding whose electoral "parts" are so clearly delineated as that...

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Briefly looking at my home riding of Essex and the areas of strength for each party.

The CPC did well in the rural polls but the NDP kept most of them surprisingly close; it was the wealthier parts of LaSalle and Lakeshore that gave Chris Lewis his best margins. The NDP's strength was concentrated in the working class sections of LaSalle plus the downtown small town polls. The Liberals put up strong numbers in LaSalle and Lakeshore with a decent showing from ancestral Liberals in the Kingsville downtown polls. Nothing too surprising from the usual parties except the unusual NDP strength in rural polls, but PPC support didn't fit the expected patterns.

They didn't do particularly well in rural polls (except in Kingsville) and received very low support from the suburbs but had surprisingly high support in the NDP supporting towns (except Amherstburg). Rather than PPC support correlating with high CPC support it seems to have be a strong inverse of areas with Liberal support. In Lakeshore and Kingsville it's almost uncanny how perfectly their respective areas of strength and weakness match up. Chatham-Kent-Leamington and Lambton-Kent-Middlesex seem to show the same pattern: strength in the towns and smaller cities plus consistently high support overall in the region bounded by Chatham, Wallaceburg and Kingsville. If it isn't a glitch they actually won a poll in downtown Leamington and came very close in several Chatham and Wallaceburg polls.

There are a lot of Mennonites in the area but I'm still not sure what the explanation is for such a concentrated region of support.

Some of it sounds like a sequel to "promiscuous populism"--like, that which made the town of Essex, normally a NDP stronghold, go for the Canadian Alliance during the NDP's low ebb of 2000.

But what I'm also finding upon initial glimpses is that PPC also tended to overperform in the advance polls--in CKL, they won one for Leamington, and almost won one for Wheatley.  And you find that advance overperformance in such places as the Mennonite strongholds in Manitoba--and in fact, PPC *won* the Group 2 Special Voting Rules balloting in Portage-Lisgar...

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Besides the Mennonites the other demographic that the PPC did oddly well with are Francophones outside of Québec. They actually won Val Gagné and Matachewan in Timmins-James Bay outright and the rest of their best polls in northern Ontario seem to generally be in Francophone areas. They also beat the Conservatives in many Francophone areas in Beauséjour, Acadie-Bathurst and Madawaska-Restigouche.

Maybe we can chalk that up to Bernier's semi-unique position as a Francophone bringing a message geared towards non-urban and non-Quebec Canadians.

I'm also wondering how much "mobilization" there was within the RC Church community.