Canadian Election 2019

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With all the talk of votes vs seat pluralities, it's interesting how when it comes to Student Vote Canada, the third place party in votes got the most seats, and the party with the most votes was third place in seats.  (And nobody got more than 25.1% of the vote.)
 https://studentvote.ca/canada/results/

Interesting to see it broken down by province; the low Bloc total in Quebec (both votes and ridings) is encouraging.

We have known for a while that separatism is a dead issue among the younger generations, with the exception being the 'radical-on-everything' types that are lockstep with the QS. Those born recently only have memory of the Bloc as a separatist party, so even their movement away on that issue might not help with the youth. There are different battles to be fought, so why bother picking up the banner left by your parents when the Bloc doesn't own your issues the best. Additionally rural Quebec has that rural problem where the youth are heading for the Liberal/NDP cities and not staying in communities more tied to the Bloc.

Agreed on all points - just having same confirmed by the figures was very nice to see.

Though young people being young people, I do notice your typical upticks in what might be called the trollish "Bart vote" (wherever there were Communist, Marxist-Leninist, Rhinoceros, Marijuana candidates running) and the more earnest "Lisa vote" (not just NDP/Green, but Animal Alliance and Stop Climate Change).

And perhaps, some might say in a scarier echo/reflection of the far right's young-male social-media outreach, the People's vote is also above par (though never in winning contention; almost like it's all confined to the scary-incel lunch room table)

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Though young people being young people, I do notice your typical upticks in what might be called the trollish "Bart vote" (wherever there were Communist, Marxist-Leninist, Rhinoceros, Marijuana candidates running) and the more earnest "Lisa vote" (not just NDP/Green, but Animal Alliance and Stop Climate Change).

And perhaps, some might say in a scarier echo/reflection of the far right's young-male social-media outreach, the People's vote is also above par (though never in winning contention; almost like it's all confined to the scary-incel lunch room table)

Could be, though I'd wager that most of their supporters belong with what you call the 'trollish "Bart vote"' than anything else.

Except that the PPC label doesn't have the casual "immediacy" of the Bart-vote exemplars listed above.  It's like you have to be *really* deep into and groomed by a beyond-Bart subreddit/chan/gamer-forum culture to take that option--and it accords with the far-right's current young-male reach in much of Europe, as well as with how Faith Goldy's biggest reported pool of Toronto mayoral support last year was among young males (and not just because she was "hawt", though that probably helped)

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I find the "counterintuitiveness" of the final Conservative tally interesting--that is, I know about the "wasted vote in the West" arguments; but usually (and contrary to uniform-swing arguments), when the share increases into a vote plurality as it did, it increases more in the lower-tier seats than in the maxed-out strongholds.  Instead, there was no ceiling to how maxed-out the Western vote could get, while Ontario and Quebec basically went flat.  (Maybe the closest hint of what "could have happened" was in the Maritimes, particularly w/the NB seat gains and the Newf/Cape Breton share increases--even if in the latter case, translating those increases into gains proved to be a bridge too far.)

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As I said at the beginning, one can't even come close to saying that there's a long-term shift going on there, but the results are anomalous enough to make me very interested to see what happens in that region next time.

And perhaps a leapfrog hint of that is in how Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke--probably the most "Northern/Rural-Prairie-esque" of the Southern Ontario ridings, demographically and economically--went from being a Liberal holdout in 1984 to a Cheryl Gallant Conservative stronghold in this century.  (Though the NDP's never really been a factor there, though there were hints of that provincially as recently as the 1970s)

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With all the talk of votes vs seat pluralities, it's interesting how when it comes to Student Vote Canada, the third place party in votes got the most seats, and the party with the most votes was third place in seats.  (And nobody got more than 25.1% of the vote.)
 https://studentvote.ca/canada/results/

Interesting to see it broken down by province; the low Bloc total in Quebec (both votes and ridings) is encouraging.

We have known for a while that separatism is a dead issue among the younger generations, with the exception being the 'radical-on-everything' types that are lockstep with the QS. Those born recently only have memory of the Bloc as a separatist party, so even their movement away on that issue might not help with the youth. There are different battles to be fought, so why bother picking up the banner left by your parents when the Bloc doesn't own your issues the best. Additionally rural Quebec has that rural problem where the youth are heading for the Liberal/NDP cities and not staying in communities more tied to the Bloc.

Totally wrong, there is huge overlap between QS voters and NDP voters. QS voters don't vote Bloc.

Yes, and? I wasn't implying QS voters picked the Bloc, only their political views on that issue align with said position on the separatist-federalist scale. The QS/NDP alignment does get a little weird at times like when the NDP had a separatist nominated this cycle form the QS, despite the official party mantra. I'm the guy who mapped quebec 2018 by poll, I know where the QS is strong and how their strength in Sherbrooke/Plateau/etc correlates with the NDP and visa versa.

Though keep in mind that voting choices don't necessarily align with views; and also, if hardcore separatism is dead issue with younger voters, so is hardcore federalism.  Remember: younger voters have lived under a PQ government for some portion of their lives, the universe didn't fall down, they operated and were accepted as a natural party of government.  The federalism-vs-separatism battles are old hat, it's all a bunch of aging hippies and stuffed suits to them.  And QS is "post" all of those battles--as is CAQ (or even the present-day Bloc, adjusting to CAQ-centric reality), in its way.

If anything, it's a sort of international urban cosmopolitanism that's defined young voting preferences--QS's youth appeal is founded upon its being fashionably left, not upon its separatist leanings (and even when said leanings are accounted for, they're subsumed within more generic smash-the-state sentiment).  And even the "soft QS" vote can be said to overlap with a certain "Steven Guilbeault Liberal" element--and remember that a large part of Justin's Papineau is represented by QS provincially (which played out in the *NDP* being a strong if distant second, ahead of the Bloc--their strongest showing in a Quebec riding they did not win in 2011)

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Yes, and John Yakabuski was able to do the same thing at the provincial level: he made it the only riding to switch from Liberal to Tory in 2003, and turned it into the safest Conservative seat in the province in 2011 (as well as the safest seat for any party in 2011 & 2018). Personal popularity has a lot to do with both members' successes, I'm sure, but it could also be a hint of something more. Certainly the more populist tone of the post-reunion Tories (and their Alliance predecessors) seemed to do reasonably well in these areas, though curiously the Prairie-based populism of Diefenbaker did not work its charms here six decades ago.

When it comes to six decades ago, I wonder whether Lester Pearson's regional representation played a factor.  (Also helping the RNP Libs of yore was a heavy Catholic undercurrent, not just Franco- but also Irish and Polish--a demographic that's tended to swing rightward in recent times.)

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Since 2015 the NoVA-ization of Ottawa is very much evident.

It's interesting then that the Tories were able to hold Carleton, when they lost the other 'bedrooming communities' of Milton and Kitchener-Conestoga, with Milton being the notable target of the  three. It's also interesting with the context of the CAQ victories in the Outaouais last year.

The Liberals had a star candidate in Milton, which is why they won it.

Conestoga has been known to give us surprise results in the past. In the 2007 provincial election, it was supposed to go PC, but the Liberals picked it up. I believe the Waterloo Region as a whole is also trending heavily away from the Tories.  It is after all dominated by the Tech sector.

As for Carleton, it's mostly an exurban riding, and also still has a large rural population, so it is still voting Tory. As Riverside South, Stittsville and Findlay Creek get bigger, the riding will trend Liberal, but by that point it will probably be split up again with the rural parts probably joining a Lanark or Leed-Grenville based district.

Judging from the narrowed margin in Kanata-Carleton (despite controversy surrounding the Con candidate) it seems to be a generic "outer Ottawa" thing. 

Let's not forget a third Lib-swinging "bedrooming" close call in Ontario: Flamborough-Glanbrook.

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(One curious instance of provincial & federal trends briefly paralleling and then diverging is Winnipeg: in 1988, the provincial NDP government was heavily defeated and fell to third, while the Liberals took a strong second and dominated the capital. The federal election eight months later saw a similar change, as the Liberals jumped to second place in the province and did extremely well in Winnipeg. However, while at the provincial level the Liberals quickly fell back again and haven't elected more than three MLAs in a general election for the last quarter-century, at the federal level they've remained strong in Winnipeg, generally placing first or second in most ridings there.)

Countering that, the federal NDP's 1980 best result in Manitoba happened when there was an unpopular provincial PC government--ditto with Sask and (using the Socred proxy) BC in 1988...

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Popularity of a recently-elected government can also be a boost federally: their best-ever showing in Saskatchewan was in 1945 (just edging out 1988), which I'm sure had to do with Douglas' provincial victory a year earlier. The NDP's modest gains in BC in 1972 were also probably a reflection of Dave Barrett's win two months before. Obviously Alberta in 2015 is an exception to this, as the federal party did very poorly at year's end, as is Manitoba throughout the Doer years (particularly 2000).

Re Manitoba, any "particularly" in 2000 probably had more to do with federal than provincial patterns (it being a sloppy-seconds election for Alexa and all); but they held all of their seats, and a lot of the shifts (much as in Saskatchewan) had more to do with the broader federal ReformAllianceConservative shifts that have brought us to this monolithic-blue-bloc day.  In fact, I'd argue that Doer's steady hand at the official-opposition tiller actually made, in a reverse from 1988, the NDP *overperform* in Manitoba relative to the federal pattern in 1993 (even if said pattern was so dismal, it was only good enough to save Bill Blaikie's seat), and turned that into four seats in 1997, which was double the 1988 tally...

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And in each of those cases, incumbency matters.  (Remember: the NDP netted no Ontario gains.)

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Also, the NDP was short on cash, so didn't put up much of a fight in Toronto.

It should never be forgotten that at the beginning of the campaign, there looked to be a realistic possibility that the NDP was headed for a 1993-type decimation debacle--thus a lot of their "poor" and  "disappointing" results were actually improvements on what looked to be on the horizon a month or so earlier.

One case in point that comes to mind: Niagara Centre, where former MP Malcolm Allen finished 3rd with 27% of the vote--but that was 10 points higher than an earlier Mainstreet poll projected...

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I think proximity to Manitoba must explain it partially. The riding is on Central Time, and I'd imagine is in the Winnipeg media market.

Yeah, in some ways, Kenora's become the eastern frontier of "Scheer Country".  And more subtly, while the Cons lost some ground in Ontario at large, they in fact gained ground in much of Northern Ontario--and in Kenora, they actually gained less than 5 points over 2015; it's just that it turned out to be a reprise of 2015's three-way race with the Cons on top this time.  (Surely benefiting this time from piggybacking off Greg Rickford provincially.  And maybe even, counterintuitive as it sounds, from Doug Ford's appearance in Kenora--unrelated, perhaps, except in maybe energizing local Conservative forces t/w the finish line.)

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The other unspoken issue is race. The NDP almost won Kenora in 2015 running former Ontario leader Howard Hampton. But this time the NDP ran First Nation chief Turtle - and while he likely did very well on a lot of FN reserves - there is a large chunk of WWC voters in northern Ontario who will vote for white NDP candidate but will go Tory if the NDP nominates an "Injun" (sic.)

Tania Cameron, who has led FN GOTV efforts in the last two elections, also did quite poorly in Kenora in 2011.

Though Turtle actually didn't lose that much ground over the higher-profile Hampton, either--in fact,  Trudeau stumbling over the FN issue probably worked on Turtle's behalf.  So it was really a matter of Bob Nault leaking votes that "should have been" his (on incumbent-advantage and Hampton-absence grounds) in both directions.

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What is it about the Soo that causes the Tories do so much better there than other Northern ON towns?

I wonder if it has to do with with the city's right wing populist streak? There's a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to the controversy over making English the city's only official language in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sault_Ste._Marie_language_resolution (the same year, the CoR got 21% of the vote in the provincial election there)

Not many Francophones live there any more. I wonder why...

Actually, said streak was dormant for a good generation after that controversy--in fact, the Liberals had tended to be the parking lot for "anti-NDP" votes in the Soo through much of that time; however, this was one of 2004's two NDP pickups in N Ontario (the other being Charlie Angus's seat), and by 2008 the federal Soo Libs were so depleted that the hitherto also-ran Cons took clever advantage of the "anti-NDP" void, nearly upsetting them that year and finally doing so in 2011.  So, re the Soo's present Con-friendly profile, blame that 2008-and-then-2011 one-two--and provincially, blame the 2017 byelection...

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Because I'm too lazy/distracted at the moment, does anyone want to report on advance/special vs final tallies (i.e. where the leading party was different from the final result)?

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I believe every election Tories have done better in advanced polls than election day.  They have the most motivated base so they are good at getting their supporters out early.  Usually those who are certain who they will vote for are more likely to vote in advanced polls than those on the fence and Tories have the highest floor but lower ceiling than Liberals.  Likewise all parties tend to try to get supporters our for advanced voting so they have those votes locked in and can focus on undecided as well as ensure if something happens that prevents those people from voting they have those votes. 

Though there are differences--in a riding like Davenport, it's the *NDP* with the most motivated base.

And at times, advance-polling demographics make a difference--for example, in places like Kenora and Skeena-Bulkley Valley, FN and related groups tend to be underrepresented...

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Surprised about Davenport, actually. Our polling had the Liberals with a decent lead early on in the campaign, with the NDP closing the gap later on.

Well, it was the top NDP target in Toronto--and it could well be the fashionably-urban-left "selfie voting" phenomenon that preferred to vote in advance to show ultra-commitment to their franchise.  (Which may also be why last provincial election, Davenport voted 3/5 NDP, but the *advance* vote was closer to 3/4.)

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And at times, advance-polling demographics make a difference--for example, in places like Kenora and Skeena-Bulkley Valley, FN and related groups tend to be underrepresented...

Actually, one thing that drew my attention via electoral-atlas.ca is that the Conservatives won *every* advance poll in Kenora--even those which encompassed the vast swaths of reserves in the north.  Which definitely tells you something about those who actually avail themselves of the advance polls.  (In 2015, they won all but the two "northernmost", which went to the Libs.)

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Where are you good folks getting your 2019 poll-by-poll results?  I can't find anything on the Elections Canada website.

http://www.election-atlas.ca/fed/ has results. He was sent them from someone (presumably a contact at Elections Canada)

I find that it's still missing a few riding results (the Barrie ridings, among other things)

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One thing I found: that thanks to the election being on a Jewish holiday the e-day turnout in the more orthodox Jewish polls in ridings like Eglinton-Lawrence and York Centre and Thornhill was exceptionally low, and those who *did* turn out weren't as monolithically Conservative as one'd expect--and even the "normal" advance polls for those districts weren't enough to compensate.  And it appears that said shortfall was made up for by way of special ballot--in E-L and YC, which both went comfortably Liberal at large, the special ballot went Conservative by over 2:1; while in Thornhill, it went Conservative by nearly 80%...

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And now it's pretty easy to know where the biggest Orthodox Jewish concentrations are precisely.  Going up Bathurst St., it's pretty clear that they dominate the area between Briar Hill and Lawrence (Eglinton-Lawrence) and York Hill Blvd to Centre (Thornhill).  Two contiguous areas of polls with E day turnout below 25%.

Plus the Clanton Park area in York Centre.

And when it comes to what depleted e-day turnout can do to the shares, the "central three" ultra-Orthodox Clanton Park polls in 2015 went 341 CPC (68.06)%), 134 Liberal (26.76%), 23 NDP (4.59%), 3 (.60%) Green for a total of 501 votes.  In 2019 they went 150 Liberal (55.97%), 97 CPC (36.19%), 16 NDP (5.97%), 5 Green (1.87%) for a total of 268 votes.

While there might have been *some* more organic post-Harper swing to the Liberals (after all, their raw e-day vote *total* went up), I highly doubt it would have been a 30-point swing at large, particularly in light of the special-ballot totals.

And in Eglinton-Lawrence, in the the most critical south-of-Lawrence-around-Bathurst polls with the biggest shortfalls, I added up for 2015

CPC 1737 (68.76%) Liberal 656 (25.97%) NDP 95 (3.76%), Green 27 (1.07%), other 11 (.44%), for a total of 2526.

For 2019

Liberal 697 (48.91%) CPC 539 (37.82%) NDP 118 (8.28%) GP 49 (3.44%), PPC 22 (1.54%) for a total of 1425.

Again, there was an actual mild increase in e-day Liberal (+ NDP & Green, for that matter) vote *numbers*--but it doesn't explain the Conservative vote total being reduced to less than a third of 2015.

It's certainly not a Wisconsin-style voter-suppression case (after all, a good deal of that missing electorate evidently compensated through special ballot; and there were other extenuating reasons behind the Conservative defeat in said ridings); but it does lead one to contemplate the *logic* behind such suppression.

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NDP are taking a tumble.

Other than the natural post-Mulcair Quebec attrition and other places where they no longer had incumbent advantage (like downtown Toronto), they treaded water more than they took a tumble.  All in all, 2015 was the more critical "tumble" than 2019.

And the Eglinton-Lawrence and York Centre stats I posted were seats where they didn't have a chance in blazes, so don't use that as a barometer.  (Heck, they went up in votes as well as share in the Eglinton-Lawrence sector I highlighted)

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Other than the natural post-Mulcair Quebec attrition and other places where they no longer had incumbent advantage (like downtown Toronto), they treaded water more than they took a tumble.  All in all, 2015 was the more critical "tumble" than 2019.

Yes, it was a a two-stage tumble for the NDP.

The NDP pretty much stayed even in English Canada in terms of seats, but their 15 seat loss in Quebec meant they needed to make big gains outside of Quebec just to tread water, and they couldn't do that.

We already knew that before the poll-by-polls.  I'm looking in more granular poll-by-poll terms--and in Ontario in particular, aside from the post-incumbency swoon in the 416 and a few other saggy spots like Windsor, there were actually signs of at least a "1997 Alexa"-type up periscope.  (Probably piggybacking at least a bit off their being in Official Opposition provincially.)

Though yes, that's probably fairly Ontario-specific.  But Quebec was more of a silently-anticipated "managed decline" circumstance (and there, whatever urban-Montreal strength they showed actually shows promise for the future), the West was compressed by the Scheer/Wexit juggernaut, and the Maritimes saw their biggest grapple with the Greens for the "Red Tory" vote.  (And even in the Maritimes, whatever NDP strength there *has* been in recent years has coasted on Alexa's own 1997 "Orange Crush" effect.)

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Evidence of the swing away from the Tories in very Jewish neighborhoods.  

Hampstead E day and advance polls (Mount Royal)

Liberal  1,925  53.4%
Conservative  1,002  27.8%
NDP  265  7.4%
Green  194  5.4%

Cedarvale E day (St. Paul's)  

Liberal  555  45%
Conservative  437  35.4%
NDP  145  11.8%
Green  77  6.2%


The town of Hampstead is the most Jewish municipality in Canada.  Cedarvale is home to Toronto's most prestigious Conservative and Reform synagogues.

And if one wants to know where that shortfall went (and why it's more complicated than a swing away when a Jewish holiday's involved): in Mount Royal, the special ballot vote went 2,713 Conservative to 1,906 Liberal (the riding at large went 56.3% Lib to 24.9% Con).

OTOH in Toronto-St Paul's, the special ballot Conservative share was actually *below* the riding par, probably in part because while predominantly Jewish, Cedarvale isn't an Orthodox bastion--and the NDP share was *above* the riding par, perhaps reflecting the affluent-urban-cultural-class lean of those voting by special ballot in a riding like St. Paul's.

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The ultimate emblem of how the NDP dropped the ball in downtown Toronto: they even lost Toronto Island.  (Though the fact that Adam Vaughan's rep is that of a "community politics" Liberal helps--it's hard to see a Tony Ianno capturing Toronto Island progressives in quite the same way)