2021 Canadian general election - Election Day and Results

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Will we ever see a coalition in canada

If we ever adopt PR (hah), yes. Under FPTP, unlikely.

Though at the provincial level, I'd watch for Ontario 2022. If the PCs win the upcoming election but don't get a majority (I think this is a very likely scenario), there will be huge pressure on the OLP and ONDP to go into coalition. Whichever one of those is the third party will have to weigh the risks of being a junior coalition partner vs the backlash of allowing Ford to govern.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

So just as a refreshment, what was the final balance of power after this election?  Usually i follow the Canadian elections but this one came from nowhere and I was too occupied with U.S. issues and COVID to really devote that much attention to our lovely Northern neighbor.... Justin Trudeau will remain P.M.  Did any of the smaller parties make gains?

Not really, this election had the smallest change in seat count in Canadian history.

oh wow, so a "status quo election" it was, then?  Do you feel the next election will be a real game-changer?

Honestly, who knows. This election showed that Canadian politics can't be predicted even a few weeks out - when the campaign was called we all thought a Liberal majority was the most likely outcome, midway through we thought the Conservatives would win, and in the end nothing changed.

I guess generally speaking governing parties weaken over time. If the current parliament lasts the full term, Trudeau will have been in power for 10 years, so good chance that the Liberals lose out of sheer fatigue. But hard to say.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3149738/conservative-vote-plunged-canadas-most-chinese-electorates-did?

"Conservative vote plunged in Canada’s most Chinese electorates. Did party pay price for tough stance on Beijing?"

I am surprised this actually made a difference.  Most of the BC Chinese are from HK and all things equal I would think they would vote the opposite of what the CCP tells them to vote for.  A bunch of them do have financial ties to HK but for the majority I cannot imagine the amount of money involved would make any sort of difference.

I mean, I am pro-CCP overall but I do not care what they say, I am voting Trump no matter what.  And we are talking about people that are more anti-CCP than pro-CCP.

Hmm, I'm not sure CCP policy explains it all. For one, Scheer was by no means the pro-CCP candidate in 2019. But I understand that feelings about the CCP are themselves polarizing within first-generation Chinese communities. Given that, I don't think this issue alone would create an almost universal LPC swing in areas with high Chinese-Canadian concentrations.

Just taking a guess here, could it have been outreach? Community outreach is hugely important in immigrant communities, especially ones with relatively low levels of English knowledge (CensusMapper shows that in both the GTA and MetroVan, the census tracts with the highest share of people who don't speak English or French correlate very strongly with tracts with high shares of Chinese-Canadians, more so than other immigrant groups). Given this, I assume outreach is even more important for this demographic, as language barrier can prevent one from meaningfully engaging with the national campaigns.

So if the Liberals did better at engaging with Chinese-Canadian communities, and/or the Conservatives did worse than before, that might explain it.

As Mung Beans and others have already pointed out, it had more to do with a pro-incumbent COVID-19 swing, than any meaningful demographic "replacement" of 97er Hong Kongers with (not necessarily Cantonese speaking) Mainland Chinese arrivals.

I wonder what if any swings there were in heavily Korean (Kim's Convenience) or Filipino areas; other posters have remarked that certain heavily South Asian areas either had no swing (Sri Lankan/Tamil) or swung somewhat Tory (Sikh/Punjabi).

No real concentration of Koreans and Filipinos the same way you have with South Asians and Chinese, at least in the GTA, so it's hard to say without poll-by-poll data. The main Korean concentration in the GTA is Willowdale, and that swung Liberal, but there's also a large Chinese population there. For Filipinos the big ones seem to be York Centre, Eg-Law, Scarborough Centre and Southwest - but again, all these ridings are pretty heterogenous and have other ethnic concentrations - Jewish and Italian in YC/EL, and South Asian in the Scarborough ones. We'll have to wait for the poll-by-polls to definitively say how they swung, at least in the context of Toronto/GTA.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Finally, a map shaded according to the swing:

The swing map piqued my interest, especially looking at the GTA. Looks like the Conservatives did make gains in the parts of Toronto and the 905 that are considered essential to victory - Brampton, Mississauga, Oakville, Vaughan, Durham region, and most of Toronto's outer boroughs. But in a rather cruel outcome of electoral calculus, these places where they had a positive swing are the more LPC-friendly parts and their swing wasn't big enough - but the places that swung away from the Tories - Markham, Richmond Hill, and "Chinese Scarborough", swung hard, and those were the part of the GTA with a bigger Tory base to begin with.

Liberals were also hit with a similar phenomenon in Greater Montreal. Looks like they made gains on the North Shore (where they were never going to win many seats), and the islands of Montreal and Laval (where they were always going to dominate). But the part of Greater Montreal where they could have picked up seats, the South Shore/Montérégie, swung towards the Bloc.

So what this means is the Tories had a positive PV swing in the GTA but net lost one seat, while the Liberals had a PV swing in Greater Mtl but net lost one seat (assuming Châteauguay-Lacolle stays Bloc).

In BC, the Liberals benefited from vote efficiency in an exceptional way. Outside Metro Vancouver, all ridings either swung NDP or Tory - doesn't matter, those places were never voting Liberal anyway. The more Liberal-friendly part of BC, Metro Vancouver, swung opposite to the rest of the province, giving the Liberals a net pickup of five seats

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Finally, a map shaded according to the swing:

The swing map piqued my interest, especially looking at the GTA. Looks like the Conservatives did make gains in the parts of Toronto and the 905 that are considered essential to victory - Brampton, Mississauga, Oakville, Vaughan, Durham region, and most of Toronto's outer boroughs. But in a rather cruel outcome of electoral calculus, these places where they had a positive swing are the more LPC-friendly parts and their swing wasn't big enough - but the places that swung away from the Tories - Markham, Richmond Hill, and "Chinese Scarborough", swung hard, and those were the part of the GTA with a bigger Tory base to begin with.

Doesn't this imply that Tories made gains with Indian as well as white middle class voters?

Kinda. White middle class, definitely they made gains. Indian/South Asian voters seems like more of a mixed bag. The classic example of an Indian ethnoburb is Brampton, and it did trend Tory but barely - although Surrey, the BC equivalent of Brampton, trended Liberal like the rest of Metro Van. Mississauga, Oakville, Pickering, and Ajax also have a significant South Asian presence, and those trended CPC quite clearly - though unlike Brampton and Surrey, those places are also home to large numbers of white middle-class voters who may have had more of an effect in that direction. Milton was the black sheep of middle-class South Asian suburbia, trending Liberal (probably owing to rapid population growth). South Asian voters within the 416 didn't show any significant shift. Etobicoke North went more Tory, but the non-Chinese parts of Scarborough didn't swing.

In any case, whatever gains they made with white middle-class and South Asian voters in Ontario, it was too little. Scheer was terrible with both groups, so the CPC was starting from a bad place.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

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.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

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)

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.

Because Conservatives win few seats in Quebec, the ones who do win tend to get good jobs and profile. Let's not forget, Maxime Bernier was the Minister of Foreign Affairs at one point - a job he was criminally unfit for, but Harper needed Quebecers in cabinet. Quebec Tories get a lot of attention and resources, and by extension, this builds ground game and party ID around their sphere of influence. This in addition to Quebec City's right-wing radio culture gives the CPC an unusual level of strength in this part of Quebec - at least, that's my theory.

At the provincial level, the Quebec City/Chaudières-Appalaches region is pretty right wing, but Saguenay/LSJ, not so much. The heartland of the CAQ vote really seems to be in the eastern townships, so I think Harper-era ground game is the crucial factor for the Conservative strength in the Lévis-Québec-Saguenay corridor

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Could also as you mention be hedging bets as Quebecers always want influence in government so where Tories competitive some do just to ensure they have a voice in government if they win.

Yes, I suspect many of the Tory voters in the Capitale-Nationale sphere of influence would have voted Bloc if they lived elsewhere in the province - although the key difference with Saguenay being that the Capitale-Nationale was pretty split on sovereignty (and Beauce voted "no" fairly comfortably), while Saguenay was the strongest region for the "yes" vote. This is probably a big part of why anti-Liberal voters in the Quebec City area gravitate to the Tories and not the Bloc.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Probably a mistake to be lumping the BQ with the left at this point.

What makes you say that?

In addition to what others have said, I get the feeling that they'd prefer to prop up the Conservatives over the Liberals if they held the balance of power.

On the one hand, aligning more closely with the Conservatives makes strategic sense in an era where the Liberals have found an ally in the NDP. Being the only viable minority partner for the Tories gives them a lot of political capital. But on the other hand, the pipeline issue would really mess things up, because the Bloc and CPC have diametrically opposite views on the question of an east-west pipeline through Quebec. One would have to back down - the Conservatives backing down on this issue would anger most Conservative voters and make them look like complete hypocrites, and the Bloc backing down on this issue would basically ensure the end of the Bloc Quebecois as a political party with any degree of support in Quebec. The third option would be what used to happen sometimes in the Harper minorities, the Liberals give their guys a "free vote" that basically ensures that the government continues, without forcing the Liberal leader to be seen supporting Conservative policy, but that didn't work out too well for the Liberals back then.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I also think when people say working class much like how I mentioned with wealthy, it depends on definition.  I think NDP still does well with minimum wage workers and jobs like long term care workers, servers, bar tenders, cleaning staff, retail clerks as those tend to be more urban, more likely to be female, often younger and long term and cleaning staff often immigrants.

Where struggling is more in jobs like forestry, mining, manufacturing, construction which are heavily unionized but tend to be in smaller urban centres or sometimes rural.  Fairly white, very male dominated, and often over 50.  These jobs also if you look at pay not image are solid middle class as most of those pay wages above what average Canadian makes.  And its latter not former where you are seeing Conservatives gaining from NDP.  Most ridings mentioned of blue collar shifting away have lots in latter category whereas in former its more your urban core ridings which are Liberal/NDP and Tories a distant third.  

Likewise with unions as we saw in Ontario election seems a strong divide between public and private sector unions.  Public sector unions for obvious reasons are definitely not voting Conservative.  But some private sector ones are and today of union members in Canada, more work in public sector than private.  Public sector is 70% unionized, while private sector it is only 15%.

100%. "Working class" is not one unified voter bloc and is very loosely defined in the first place. I think there are certainly some working-class voters that the CPC could pry away from the NDP and Liberals - the global trend of these voters shifting to the right has been slower in Canada than in many other places, so there's room for growth. But Pierre Poilievre is not going to win over unskilled labour, nurses and PSWs, unionized public school teachers, etc.