Canadian Election Results Thread

[Antonio the Sixth]

You probably noticed I haven't posted in the canadian elections thread since a while... Not that I didn't care, to the contrary : I was afraid of being too disappointed by the results. This sudden NDP surge just seemed to be too beautiful to be true.

In the end, I feel it's a great day for Canada. Of course, we're headed to 4 more years of Harper, with the potentiality to do a lot of harm. But fortunately the majority is narrow enough for this not to be a total catastrophe. The most important thing is that the realignment of Canadian politics seems to be inevitable now. The bloc is already gone, and Quebec should remain a NDP stronghold. Whether they merge with the NDP, fade away or remain a minor parliamentary party, the liberals shouldn't recover the place they had previously (I can be wrong of course, but it seems difficult). Thus Canada will finally have a true left/right system. That was beyond anything I could imagine, especially considering how the election started. That's a great day in the long run.

It seems like Canada experienced the exact reverse of 1993 (maybe this has already been said though) : with the NDP as reform, liberals as PCs and conservatives as liberals. If this lasts, the entire political system will have radically shifted in a bit more than two decades. Now, with such results, will Layton still step down ? I've heard that he would, but that was before the massive surge. It would make little sense to get rid of such a successful leader, especially since he could very well become PM by 2015.

Of course I have a thought for my friend Hashemite, for which today is certainly a very bad day. As much as this wipeout seems somewhat deserved to the liberals (I've not followed the campaign myslef, but everybody in the forum seems to think they've run an awful campaign), it's certainly sad for all their supporters who didn't necessarily identify with the leadership. I can only feel sad to see the party of Pearson and Trudeau reduced to that.

Anyways, it's quite stunning to see how a dull and predictable election suddenly turned into a massive realignment. As I've said, Canada has extremely passionating politics, and has showed once again that nothing should be taken for granted there. Thank you Canada, please keep on thrilling us !

[Antonio the Sixth]

Actually when Lester Pearson was opposition leader the Liberal Party was in nearly as bad a place as now.  In 1958 the Progressive Conservatives under John Diefenbaker won 208/265 seats, which is 78.5%.  But at least Pearson still won his riding and the Liberals retained official opposition status.

The number of seats doesn't really matter as much as the rank. It's very easy to come from second to first, but far more difficult to come from third to second (in FPP countries at least).

The tab is quite stunning indeed. Of course seeing Quebec switching from BQ to NDP is a very good thing because that means Québec will finally play a true role on federal politics. But now the risk is to see the NDP becoming the party of the Québec and only of the Québec. It is very important for it to consolidate its inroads in Ontario or BQ, because they can't win more in Québec and they can't hope to win nationally with only Québec.

If we look at the results of previous elections outside Québec, we can see it even more clearly.

	2004	2006	2008	2011
Con	99	114	133	161
NDP	19	29	36	44
Lib	114	90	63	27
Others	1		1	1

That's quite surprising, actually. NDP gained a mere 8 seats, only one more than in 2008 and less than in 2006, when it gained 10. Almost all seats lost by the liberals have come to the conservatives. In some way, it's understandable : with NDP and liberals close in term of votes, there has probably been a huge voting split favoring the conservative. If the NDP confirms its second party status and the liberals further shrink, which seems likely, we will probably see strong NDP gains outside Québec. Otherwise, there's a risk to see the NDP become trapped in Québec.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Re-thinking about that, it seems pretty clear that NDP somewhat underperformed outside Quebec. Most of projections were giving NDP 90-110 seats, and they ended up with 102 : pretty correct. However, NDP was expected to carry between 45-50 seats in Quebec, and in the end they carried 58. That means the NDP lost around 10 seats it was expected to win outside of Québec.

I don't think this is really a consequence of NDP polling less well (I might be wrong of course), but rather a higher vote splitting and a stronger conservative performance. Still, the NDP needs to win outside of Québec if it wants a future as a national party. BC, the prairies and big cities should be their top targets.

So, this is the seat brekdown without Québec :

	2004	2006	2008	2011
Con	99	114	133	161
NDP	19	29	36	44
Lib	114	90	63	27
Others	1		1	1

What does the PV percentage look like ?

	2008	2011
Con	43.3	47.7
NDP	20.3	26.4
Lib	27.1	20.5
Others	9.3	5.4

The figures used are from wikipedia so it might be slightly imprecise, but overall it's clear enough : NDP still fairly above liberals, but by a tighter margin (by 5.9 instead of 11.7). Add to this a commanding tory lead, and it is explainable why NDP didn't surge there. However the NDP results aren't disappointing at all, just 4 points below the national results. I don't know what the polls exactly showed, but that seems more or less in line with what was announced. So there should be some field with NDP gain if they impose therselves as the second strongest party.

Very interesting to compare the swings with or without Quebec though. Quebec doubled the NDP surge from 6.1 to 12.4. At the same time, liberal collapse is almost unchanged (6.6 to 7.4). Finally, Tories' surge is halved from 4.4 to 2.

[Antonio the Sixth]

What worries me is the NDP losses outside of Quebec... with nearly 60% of the caucus now coming from there, and many of the newbies being totally new to politics, I hope they remember that the party stands for labour and farmers' rights. Many of the (serious) candidates outside of the province were serious FFs in that regard, whereas a lot of the winners in Quebec don't seem to be... maybe I'm worrying for nothing.

That's my concern as well. But I'd hope the leadership realizes these dangers and will try to do things intelligently.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Here are a couple of maps. Of course that's nothing compared with other maps that have been posted, but if you don't mind.


Percentages by province (Atlas scale) :








And here is "trend", ie the difference between change in the province and overall change. The 0% shade is for a trend lower than -5, 20% is between -5 and 0, 40% is between 0 and 5, etc...








NDP is quite horrible, if I must say...

[Antonio the Sixth]

Here's what the election would look like in a 3-way tie (each party has 29.72%) :




And the same map excluding Québec (each party has 31.53%) :

[Antonio the Sixth]

Results of the election with PR :

	FPP	Nat	NB	Pr
Con	167	128	164	128
NDP	102	99	79	98
Lib	34	61	49	60
BQ	4	20	16	18
Gr	1	0	0	4

Nat : National PR, Ste Lagüe method with a 5% threshold.
NB : National PR, Ste Lagüe method with a 5% threshold for 246 seats. 62 seats (20%) given to the winning party.
Pr : PR by province, Ste Lagüe method with a 5% threshold.

Interestingly, no notable distortion between provincial and national PR despite the unfairness of the repartition of seats between provinces. The greens manage to break the threshold in Alberta (1 seat) and BC (3 seats).

I'd like to experiment some math about what it would look like with AV, but I'm too lazy to look at 308 different ridings. I guess the liberals would benefit the most from it.

[Antonio the Sixth]

How would you estimate the results by AV?  Guesswork?

I think you have to estimate how the voters of each parties would split their preferences, and do as if those percentage were the same everywhere. For example, for NDP voters we could say 50% liberal, 20% conservative, 30% no preference. Of course some poll of 2011's voters would be very useful in this situation, but I doubt we can find something.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, that's the best we can come with the data we have. Of course there will be a lot of mistakes, but at least we'd have the general picture.

Also, here's something interesting. Similarity rates between a province and the country overall. Similarity rate is calculated as the sum of the lowest results (between the provincial one and the national one) for each party.

- NB : 92.06%
- NS : 89.94%
- ON : 88.81%
- BC : 88.42%
- MB : 86.13%
- SK : 81.67%
- NFL : 79.07%
- PEI : 76.39%
- AB : 70.49%
- QC : 70.37%

New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are mini-Canadas. Quebec and Alberta virtually tied for most "eccentric" provinces. Other western provinces surprisingly high.

[Antonio the Sixth]

EKOS' 2nd last poll had 2nd preferences

Cons: NDP 22.9%, Libs 17.7%, Greens 9%, BQ .7%, Others 2.1%. Would not vote: 47.2%
NDP: Libs 37%, Greens 20.5%, Tories 15.3%, BQ 8.9%, Others 1.8%, Would not vote 16.6%
Liberals: NDP 53.9%, Tories 13.2%, Greens 13%, BQ 2.9%, Others .8%, Would not vote 16.3%
BQ: NDP 48.7%, Liberal 11.5%, Greens 9.8%, Tories 6.7%, Others 1.9%, Would not vote 21.4%
Others: Greens 16.4%, Tories 14.5%, BQ 13.6%, NDP 11%, Liberals 8.3%, Would not vote 36.2%

That's interesting. Now if someone is ready to do the math, it'd be really great.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Vorlon, the problem in you theory is that you think to assume the Tories will always remain at this level in Anglo Canada. What you seem to consider a realignment could very well be a temporary surge that could go away as soon at it has come. What if Tories won outside Quebec, but by a more reasonable margin (say 38% instead of 48%) ? They could possibly win a narrow majority in Anglo Canada, but still get trounced in Québec and thus be a minority overall. If the NDP retains its domination on Québec and makes even only small inroads outside, it could very well come to power.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but let's not be too categorical.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I wonder how much British NO voters had a vague idea of those results...