Which party's defeat looked worse at the time

[mileslunn]

1997 by a long shot.  I think a better question would be to compare to 1997 Conservative defeat in the UK vs. 2015 Conservative defeat in Canada as both had very strong similarities both in share of popular vote and percentage of seats won.  Really only difference is Labour did somewhat better than the Canadian Liberals.  For comparison, Conservatives only got 31% in 1997 in UK while GOP still got 46% in 2008 in US.  The gap between the two main parties was 12% in 1997 in UK while only 7% in US in 2008.  In terms of votes on system, Tories only won 26% of constituencies while McCain got 33% of electoral votes however US has a different political system so a better comparison is how many Congressional districts McCain won and that was closer to 40% of congressional districts.  If UK had used the US electoral system depending on how it would have been either 0 votes for the Tories if it was by constituent country while if by constituent country and 9 UK regions, only East of England, Southeast, and Southwest went Tory which is a smaller share of the population than the percentage living states that voted for McCain.

[mileslunn]

Write in: PCs in 1993

That defeat was beyond I think anything seen in the English speaking world although considering the strong base both Labour and the Tories have in Britain and how electorally polarized the US is, I don't think a defeat like that is possible and is a matter of fact even possible today in Canada.  The only way I could say Canada having another defeat like that is if the Liberals stay in power until 2031 and become so unpopular they implode with their left flank going over to the NDP and right flank over to the Tories.  Also one could argue unlike the GOP and the Tories in Britain, the PCs never returned to power.  Yes the Conservative came back, but that was after merging with the Canadian Alliance and many would argue philosophically the Tories in Canada today are more like the Reform Party of the 90s than PCs of the 90s although it depends who you ask.  That being said the GOP in the US starting under Reagan and Tories under Thatcher saw a strong rightward shift and so in many ways perhaps the fact Canada saw a less dramatic rightward shift in the PCs could maybe make the merger a fair comparison as all three parties if you compare where they were on the political spectrum in the 70s vs. today the size of the shift is roughly the same.

[mileslunn]

When the BC NDP was reduced to just 2 seats in the 2001 BC election, it was an open question whether they would survive as a political force at all. Just four years later they bounced back to 35 seats and now they are in power.

Actually 2001 seems to have been an anomaly.  Since 1972, they have gotten above 39% in all but one election, whereas they've only cracked the 43% mark twice (1983 and 1979 which they both lost).  In fact with the exception of 2001, the BC NDP are a lot more consistent in their popular share vote than just about any party I can think of, its more a question of how those who don't vote NDP breakdown and how divided they are.  Also for those who don't know, the NDP in BC returned to power after 16 years in opposition, however in the most recent election they won fewer votes and seats than the BC Liberals, but since the BC Liberals lost their majority, they were able to get the Greens to agree to prop them up on supply and confidence thus form government with fewer seats.  In fact the BC Liberals got the same percentage of seats as the British Tories in 2017 (49%), the difference is in Britain there was one other party on the right they could turn to whereas in BC all of the other seats went for parties on the left whereas in Britain you had the DUP on the right, Liberal Democrats in the centre who flat out stated they wouldn't back either side and then the SNP, Greens, and Plaid Cymru on the left as well as Sinn Fein (who refuse to take their seats thus irrelevant in the UK).

[mileslunn]

Yeah.  Canada PC 1993 > UK CON 1997 > 2008 USA GOP

To repeat: *not* 2008 USA GOP.  More like 1964 USA GOP--or if you really want to go the "Canada PC" route, 1936 USA GOP.

Not quite 1964 GOP although probably somewhere in between the two.  There was 23 point spread between Johnson and Goldwater whereas there was only a 12 point spread between Blair and Major in 1997.  Also the Tories still won 25% of the seats whereas the GOP did much worse than that in electoral college votes.  I think actually the 2015 Canadian election is probably the closest comparison I can think of with 1997 in Britain in terms of defeat and its size.  In fact Abacus polling chair even compared to the 2015 election in Canada as having strong parallels with the 1997 election in the UK as it was a tired government on the right vs. a younger charismatic and different progressive government sweeping back to power.  Also in vote tallies it was 43.2% vs. 39.4% and 30.7% vs. 31.9% while as seat percentage it was 63% of seats vs. 54% of seats on the winning side and 25% of seats vs. 29% of seats so I guess the Tory defeat in 2015 was slightly less bad than the British Tory defeat in 1997, but not too far off. 

The best comparison for the GOP in 2008 would be the Australian election in 2007 which was a similar size defeat but within 6 years the Liberal/Nationals were back in power (note Australia has elections every 3 years instead of every four).

[mileslunn]

I'd still favour Canada Lib 1984 over Canada CPC 2005 on that UK CON 1997 count.

I don't think any party in the UK has seen a defeat that crushing.  Both Labour and the Tories have too strong a base for that to ever happen.  Even in the US a defeat like that is probably impossible today although has happened in the past such as LBJ in 1964, Nixon in 1972, and Reagan in 1984.  I agree the Tory defeat in 1997 was somewhat worse than the Tory defeat in Canada in 2015 and likewise the Labour win was a big bigger than the Liberal win, but still similar parallels.

I think the Liberal/National defeat in Australia in 2007 has very striking similarities to the GOP defeat in 2008 both in numbers and also how well the parties were doing at the sub national levels in the lead up.  And in both cases the Liberal/Nationals and GOP started to rebound fairly quickly after those crushing defeats, they weren't stuck at the same level for 3 election cycles like the Tories were in Britain.  Also perhaps the German election in 1998 has some parallels too if you take SPD/Greens as the equivalent of the Democrats and CDU/CSU-FDP as GOP but even there were strong differences although to be fair Germany has a very different political culture and electoral system.