Canadian Election Results Thread

[DistingFlyer]

I've been staring at the results on screen so stunned I forgot to say anything here.

I'd seen the polls indicating something like this, but I didn't believe them - I'd figured for the Tories staying at where they were, with the NDP getting no more than 50 (indeed, all three opposition parties splitting the rest fairly evenly). To be blunt, I was very wrong.

I had felt that the Liberals needed a pricking of their egos given their high-and-mighty attitude, and that the last two defeats had not given them that, but this is overdoing it a bit; I never thought I'd feel sorry for them, but I do now.

I'm a conservative (no capital), but I've been disappointed by the Tory government. This is probably the best result from my point of view, as there will be no constant electioneering whenever a contentious bill comes up, but it also means that an NDP government may not be far off. I'm unequivocally and unreservedly stunned tonight, but also a little uneasy. We finally appear to have headed off in the direction the British took ninety years ago, but hopefully we will not go through the kinds of Labour governments they have had.

As I have been so wrong about so many things in this election, I think I had better shut up for the rest of this discussion.

[DistingFlyer]

I'm not so sure the Liberals would prefer the NDP to the Tories - in Nova Scotia, anyway, their votes have been sliding more to the Conservatives as all Tory MPs have increased their majorities and Peter Stoffer has had his cut by a rising Tory vote.

[DistingFlyer]

Liberals may have gone the way of Fianna Fail - two of the most powerful parties in history getting record-low results within nine weeks.

[DistingFlyer]

Surely one can complain about "infantile leftism" dominating this election...

Liberals may have gone the way of Fianna Fail - two of the most powerful parties in history getting record-low results within nine weeks.

As bad as this seems, it's not THAT bad. Fianna Foil in a FPTP system would have seats numbering in the single digits. The Liberals still have their personalities, and they have not gone past a point of no return. Their stabilization or their demise will just be quicker than most.

I was referring more to their share of the vote - below 20% for the first time. Liberals are more likely to recover but both are in trouble.

I'm not sure how you drew 'infantile leftism' from what I said, especially considering that I am not in any way a left-winger. Infantile, maybe . . .

[DistingFlyer]

I've often wished that we would announce our results in Canada the same way Britain does it - it would have been especially delicious tonight to see the first Quebec & Toronto results be read out. The color would have drained from Bloc & Liberal supporters' faces in about half a second.

As for the suggestion about re-starting a provincial NDP in Quebec, I think that would be a good idea (and a lot of people may now think so too): Quebeckers seem to embrace leftism more than separatism, but unfortunately they must vote for both at once in the form of the PQ. Providing just the socialism might be just the thing that they would go for. It's at least worth a shot - I live in Nova Scotia and imagining what might happen to the Maritimes if Quebec were to go horrifies me.

[DistingFlyer]

Crap, sorry; that was not directed at you at all! I was making that reference with respect to May's victory and the NDP winning on a hope and a prayer.

[/quote]

Of course you're right - I should have realized what you meant.

I agree, unbiased though I'm not: since the election of Bush, I've found the Canadian left to be off-puttingly strident and self-righteous. At the start of the 2004 campaign (before I was old enough to vote), I supported Martin & his Liberals; by the end of it, I was solidly Tory. The constant nattering about hidden agendas and the evil Americans soured me on them, and their even louder talk about such things since then has made the break complete.

[DistingFlyer]

Plot twist!

Voter turnout still decreased this election. This time, it would be more immigrants not voting than general inactivity, though I think Albertans cared little either. At least my skepticism over high advanced voter turnout was justified.

Not quite - turnout is calculated from counted votes versus the number of eligible voters, even if not all the votes have been counted yet. It's currently at 57% but with a few thousand polling stations still to come I expect it will pass 60%. A rise, but a small one - certainly not the big increase a lot were predicting.

[DistingFlyer]

Two final observations:

1) Already the complaining (mostly from NDP supporters, but some others too) about the lack of PR. However, for the first time the NDP is on the benefitting end of our current system, giving them 103 MPs for 30-31% of the vote. Something I like to remind them of as well is the famous 1960 medicare election: the CCF won a 21-seat majority with 41% of the vote, similar to the Tory vote tonight. If we had had PR then, with the ambivalent Liberals and the anti-medicare Socreds holding the majority, would medicare as the NDP want it have come about?

2) The seemingly inexorable movement of affluent urban constituencies away from the Tories, starting during the Diefenbaker years. Britain experienced this in a big way in 1997 (though the cities had been drifting very slowly towards Labour in the years before that). However, there's been a big reversal tonight as the Tories have oh-so-carefully targeted issues that are big on city & suburban families' minds (much as Blair did). They got some nice fat swings last time (York Centre, for instance), but some even better ones today. Call it Labour's 1997 in reverse as decades-long Liberal seats like Eglinton & York Centre go blue.

[DistingFlyer]

Liberals did godawful across Northern Ontario. Not only did some Liberals swing to the NDP to stop the Conservatives, many did the same to the Conservatives to stop the NDP.

Perhaps more to the Tories than the NDP (most left-wing Liberals had probably bolted in the region already) - their Kenora majority is up & they even grabbed Sault Ste. Marie.

The same thing appeared to be the case in NS - Regan held on in Halifax West as his lost votes mostly went to the third-place Tory candidate; as well, the four rural Tory MPs all increased their majorities while the NDP's Peter Stoffer saw a swing against him in Sackville.

Perhaps in Winnipeg too - I had not expected to see someone lik Jim Maloway out of a job, especially in a seat like Elmwood.

[DistingFlyer]

The steep Tory rise in Nova Scotia surprised (and rather pleased) me - they'd not seen much of an increase in the last few elections as many red Tories (the norm around here) had not followed the merged parties, and provincially they've been devastated by Rodney MacDonald's bumbling. The CBC had been saying that Peter MacKay might be at risk, but I rarely trust CBC predictions of this kind (I don't remember them giving a great deal of chance to the NB Tories last fall either). The Atlantic Tories may be truly back in business at last.

Incidentally, thank you no end for these maps - given the size of this country it's rather difficult to make a good electoral map, and most that I've come across online have not been very good or editable. These are fabulous.

[DistingFlyer]

The NDP actually came out of no where to almost win heavily Sikh Bramalea-Gore-Malton and they picked up heavily South Asian ridings in suburban Vancouver like Newton-North Delta and Surrey North. Scarborough-Rouge River also went NDP in a shock upset (NDP vote went from 13% to 40%!!) and that seat is 89% (no typo) foreign-born and heavily Tamil (as is the new NDP MP). So for all the talk about Tory inroads in the immigrant communities - there was also an under-reported NDP story happening.

But yeah, I hate when people are referring to the GTA, and call it Toronto. Big difference.

But, going back to the Liberal collapse - more people should be talking about Mississauga-Brampton! Peel region has gone entirely Tory, and by a far wider swing than Toronto. The Tory takeover of Brampton, at the very least, could be evidence that their targeting minorities strategy has worked, if only among the Indians. Or that they were right about immigrants only voting Liberal out of nostalgia.

I suppose it was remarked on less because it was less unusual - a conservative party rarely does well among immigrant communities in this country compared to a party of the left.

[DistingFlyer]

Has anyone seen a handy list of all the ridings that switched parties, with results from 2008 vs 2011?

Comparing with the last election (not counting by-elections, party switches & the like) these are the seats to change hands:

Atlantic (6)

Ind to Cons (1)
Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley (NS)

Lib to Cons (3)
Labrador (NL)
Madawaska – Restigouche (NB)   
Moncton – Riverview – Dieppe (NB)   

Lib to NDP (2)
Dartmouth – Cole Harbour (NS)   
St. John’s South – Mount Pearl (NL)   


Quebec (58)

BQ to NDP (45)
Abitibi – Baie-James – Nunavik – Eeyou   
Abitibi – Témiscamingue   
Alfred-Pellan   
Argenteuil – Papineau – Mirabel   
Beauharnois – Salaberry   
Berthier – Maskinongé   
Brome – Missisquoi   
Chambly – Borduas   
Châteauguay – Saint-Constant   
Chicoutimi – Le Fjord   
Compton – Stanstead   
Drummond   
Gaspésie – Îles-de-la-Madeleine   
Gatineau   
Hochelaga   
Jeanne-Le Ber   
Joliette   
Longueuil – Pierre-Boucher   
La Point-de-l’Île   
Laurentides – Labelle   
Laurier – Sainte-Marie   
Laval   
Louis-Hébert   
Manicouagan   
Marc-Aurèle-Fortin   
Montcalm   
Montmagny – L’Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup (RECOUNTING)   
Montmorency – Charlevoix – Haute-Côte-Nord   
Québec   
Repentigny   
Rimouski-Neigette – Témiscouata – Les Basques   
Rivière-des-Mille-Îles   
Rivière-du-Nord   
Rosemont – La Petite-Patrie   
Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert   
Saint-Hyacinthe – Bagot   
Saint-Jean   
Saint-Lambert   
Saint-Maurice – Champlain   
Shefford   
Sherbrooke   
Terrebonne – Blainville   
Trois-Rivières   
Vaudreuil – Soulanges   
Verchères – Les Patriotes   

Cons to NDP (5)
Beauport – Limoilou   
Charlesbourg – Haute-Saint-Charles   
Jonquière – Alma   
Louis-Saint-Laurent   
Pontiac   

Ind to NDP (1)
Portneuf – Jacques-Cartier

Lib to NDP (7)
Brossard – La Prairie   
Honoré-Mercier   
Hull – Aylmer   
LaSalle – Émard   
Laval – Les-Îles   
Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – Lachine   
Pierrefonds – Dollard   


Ontario (28)

Lib to Cons (21)
Ajax – Pickering   
Bramalea – Gore – Malton   
Brampton West   
Brampton – Springdale   
Don Valley East   
Don Valley West   
Eglinton – Lawrence   
Etobicoke Centre (RECOUNTING)
Etobicoke – Lakeshore   
London North Centre   
Mississauga East – Cooksville   
Mississauga South   
Mississauga – Brampton South   
Mississauga – Streetsville   
Nipissing – Timiskaming (RECOUNTING)
Pickering – Scarborough East   
Richmond Hill   
Scarborough Centre   
Vaughan   
Willowdale   
York Centre   

Lib to NDP (6)
Beaches – East York   
Davenport   
Parkdale – High Park   
Scarborough Southwest   
Scarborough – Rouge River   
York South – Weston   

NDP to Cons (1)
Sault Ste. Marie


West & North (9)

Cons to GP (1)
Saanich – Gulf Islands (BC)

Cons to NDP (1)
Surrey North (BC)   

Lib to Cons (3)
Vancouver South (BC)   
Winnipeg South Centre (MB)   
Yukon (YK)   

Lib to NDP (2)
Esquimalt – Juan de Fuca (BC)   
Newton – North Delta (BC)   

NDP to Cons (1)
Elmwood – Transcona (MB)

NDP to Lib (1)
Winnipeg North (MB)

A total of 101 seats changed hands - quite a few, but not as many as the 120 in 1984 or the 203 in 1993.

Cons   143   +30     –7   166
Lib        77     +1   –44     34
BQ        49      –45       4
NDP        37   +69     –3   103
Ind          2        –2
GP           +1          1
TOTAL   308         308