Canadian federal election - October 19, 2015: Official Results & Analysis Thread

[2952-0-0]

^ And that further adds the urgency for the Conservative Party to move to the centre. If Trudeau is cunning enough to introduce IRV from 2019, it must assume a baseline of these 70 seats. Its new leader must convey a socially moderate and economically responsible message, or else it will turn into a rural populist rump which subsequently abandons its remaining presence in cities. That wouldn't be good for Canada's democracy in general.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

^ And that further adds the urgency for the Conservative Party to move to the centre. If Trudeau is cunning enough to introduce IRV from 2019, it must assume a baseline of these 70 seats. Its new leader must convey a socially moderate and economically responsible message, or else it will turn into a rural populist rump which subsequently abandons its remaining presence in cities. That wouldn't be good for Canada's democracy in general.

So .... The Liberal Party?

[YaBoyNY]

What makes Atlantic Canada such a Liberal bastion?

[andrew_c]

Very strong anti-Conservative sentiment (especially in Newfoundland) pushing NDP supporters to vote strategically for Liberals, and Red Tories switching en masse to the Liberals. Popular provincial Liberal governments also helped the national party.

[DC Al Fine]

^ And that further adds the urgency for the Conservative Party to move to the centre. If Trudeau is cunning enough to introduce IRV from 2019, it must assume a baseline of these 70 seats. Its new leader must convey a socially moderate and economically responsible message, or else it will turn into a rural populist rump which subsequently abandons its remaining presence in cities. That wouldn't be good for Canada's democracy in general.

So .... The Liberal Party?

Yes

This is why I really dislike IRV. It will produce a mass of bland centrists in Canada. I'd rather MMP so we can see socons, hardcore socialists, Greens, and separatists all having a real presence in parliament.

Very strong anti-Conservative sentiment (especially in Newfoundland) pushing NDP supporters to vote strategically for Liberals, and Red Tories switching en masse to the Liberals. Popular provincial Liberal governments also helped the national party.

One other point. In NS an unpopular NDP government had been thrown out since the last election which can account for the collapse of the NDP incumbents there despite the Tories not having a hope in hell in those ridings.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Could, if electoral reform was introduced, something akin to Social Credit make a comeback?

[Hatman 🍁]

A nasty Conservative leadership race could split the party if a right wing populist rump thinks it will be safe to go it alone under AV. I doubt that would happen before the next election though; likely it would happen after a few AV elections where the Tories can't elected.

Of course, the Tories are going to kick and scream about AV because they know full well it'll benefit the Liberals and will hurt them.

[Zanas]

I'd say the probability of a change in voting system before the next election is 0.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What makes Atlantic Canada such a Liberal bastion?

Bastion implies that we can reasonably expect it to stay that way. Actually if the Liberal government does anything to piss off people in the area then they will turn on them without a pause. The results in the Maritimes in 1993 presented a similarly absurd Liberal monolith (though the PCs held on to one seat) yet just four years later...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Could, if electoral reform was introduced, something akin to Social Credit make a comeback?

Why would it? The BC SoCreds were just a corrupt catch-all antisocialist party, the Alberta SoCreds were just a nepotism-and-graft machine, while the Quebec dominated federal party specialised in overtly right-wing ethnic politics of the sort that the Quebec Tories have cornered the market in.

[2952-0-0]

A nasty Conservative leadership race could split the party if a right wing populist rump thinks it will be safe to go it alone under AV. I doubt that would happen before the next election though; likely it would happen after a few AV elections where the Tories can't elected.

Of course, the Tories are going to kick and scream about AV because they know full well it'll benefit the Liberals and will hurt them.

Methinks a change in the electoral system isn't the only thing they will kick and scream about. The Liberals have already started to use social wedge issues to troll them (announcing its intention to permit MSM to donate blood) and will almost definitely do so throughout the CPC leadership race. If it wants to become the unelectable reincarnation of Reform/SoCred, Gerald Butts will be smiling.

As someone passionate for a strong democracy, I prefer STV. It forces all major parties to run truly national campaigns and retains the accountability of all MPs to their community. Small parties can still win seats, provided they build a good ground game.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I mean the logic for PR in Canada is overwhelming isn't it? Almost all MPs are elected entirely off party labels: the identity of candidates seems to matter very little. Who has a substantial personal vote in the new Commons? It isn't far off being Ralph Goodale, Ruth Ellen Brosseau and... er... that's it.

[136or142]

I mean the logic for PR in Canada is overwhelming isn't it? Almost all MPs are elected entirely off party labels: the identity of candidates seems to matter very little. Who has a substantial personal vote in the new Commons? It isn't far off being Ralph Goodale, Ruth Ellen Brosseau and... er... that's it.

There are more than that.  Here in B.C, the New Conservative M.P for South Surrey-White Rock, Dianne Watts, probably would not have won had she not been previously the extremely popular mayor of Surrey.  Given the increase in gun violence in Surrey after she left the mayor's office, there has been some reevalution of her time as mayor and that has almost certainly lowered her popularity, but I'd say it's pretty obvious that had the Conservatives ran a generic no name in that riding that the Liberals would have won it.

For the NDP, the New Westminster-Burnaby riding likely would have gone Liberal were it not for the personal popularity of M.P Peter Julien.  It's also likely that the Green Party would have won Victoria were the New Democrat's Murray Rankin not such a high quality M.P. Also, the NDP would likely win Skeena-Bulkley Valley anyway, but Nathan Cullen also gets votes from non New Democrats who like him personally.  Finally for off the top of my head in B.C, although he was likely mostly unknown when he was first nominated, the military background and the past Conservative Party connections almost certainly were a major reason Steven Fuhr won for the Liberals in a Kelowna riding.  The Liberals have never even come close to winning in Kelowna since 1968.

In Elmwood-Transcona in Manitoba being the son of Bill Blaikie almost certainly was the reason Dan Blaikie was able to narrowly beat the incumbent Conservative there and reclaim that riding for the NDP.

Finally, although the Liberals won every riding in the Atlantic, I think there's no question that a lot of people also voted personally for Bill Matthews.  He did previously get reelected as an independent after all.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well obviously there are more than that as I was making a rhetorical point.

[136or142]

Well obviously there are more than that as I was making a rhetorical point.

Fair enough.

Judging from the reaction of the National Post (the house paper of the Conservative Party) but also here in B.C from the reaction of the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Province (which are also affiliated with the Post Chain, but I believe have a different owner than the National Post), the conservative media in Canada is extremely angry with the Liberal Party win.  I don't doubt they had reconciled themselves with a Liberal win by the time of the election, but I'm sure they didn't expect a solid, stable, Liberal majority government.

There was a ridiculous editorial in the Vancouver Sun on Friday about how the Liberals need to be responsive to the desires of the people of British Columbia like the Conservative Party was (the Conservatives were so responsive to the desires of the people of British Columbia that they lost 1/3 of their share of the vote and nearly 2/3 of their seats based on the redistributed results that would have given them 28 of the 42 seats in the 2011 election.)

The rest of the editorial sounded like it was written from an Alberta perspective and not a British Columbia perspective with comments like "the need to get oil to market should come ahead of the concerns of environmentalists."

The Vancouver Province in their Friday paper ran a column from a guest editorialist who said Justin Trudeau was already 'going it alone' by announcing the ending of the bombing campaign against Isil and that this was extremely unpopular with Canadians and, also, that this wasn't a 'major' campaign promise of Trudeau's.

1.I've seen polls that show that the mission in Iraq is popular with Canadians but I've never seen a poll just on the bombing campaign itself, and I don't believe any poll has been conducted on the Iraq mission itself since it was reported that at least 3/4 of the bombing sorties don't drop their payloads out of fear of hitting civilians and not ISIL targets  and that Canada only launches something like one plane a day anyway.

2.Justin Trudeau was hardly 'going it alone' as almost the entire Liberal Party caucus in the previous Parliament against the bombing mission.

3.The idea that this wasn't a major campaign promise is laughable.  First, Justin Trudeau announced his opposition to the bombing campaign in the speech were he made the major gaffe, and then he restated it in, I believe, two of the debates.  That he maybe didn't mention much on the campaign trail is because, obviously, foreign policy tends not to be featured prominently in campaign speeches at rallies.

I also note that Jean Chretien is said to have promised to repeal the GST in the 1993 election campaign when he actually repeatedly said "we will repeal the GST, but we will replace it with another tax because we need the money."  (It was actually Sheila Copps who only promised to repeal the GST.)  At one campaign stop Chretien forgot to add that caveat while making his speech and yet, on that basis alone, the right still claims that Chretien solely promised to repeal the GST. So, I have no idea where this new distinction between 'major' campaign promises and 'minor' campaign promises comes from.

The reaction from the National Post, the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Province is so pathetic that were it not for the fact that newspapers are slowly dying, I'd say that an enormous business opportunity would exist of starting up a newspaper that actually shares the opinions of the vast majority of its readers.

[2952-0-0]

Of course no one will ever forget the Globe twisting itself into a Mobius Strip with its bizarre endorsement of the Conservative Party as long as Harper goes.

[DC Al Fine]

I'd say the probability of a change in voting system before the next election is 0.

I'm inclined to agree, but given how much IRV would favour the Liberals, there's a non-zero chance they'll get a reform through.

Back in the Chretien era when IRV meant a bunch more rightists would get elected (and a decent number of Dippers in the West would 2nd preference Reform), there would be no chance, but now that reform favours the governing party, they just might seriously try it.

A nasty Conservative leadership race could split the party if a right wing populist rump thinks it will be safe to go it alone under AV. I doubt that would happen before the next election though; likely it would happen after a few AV elections where the Tories can't elected.

Of course, the Tories are going to kick and scream about AV because they know full well it'll benefit the Liberals and will hurt them.

It would screw the NDP as well, so they should be kicking and screaming if it comes to that. Look at the last Nanos poll. Tories preferred the Liberals to the Grits, and if we are back to the old Lib-Con-NDP alignment, there won't be many Liberals in third place to compensate.

[DC Al Fine]

One thing I would really appreciate is regional 2nd choices, or at least Quebec/ROC 2nd choices so we could really see how IRV would play. It would also help to get an accurate idea of how many Quebec voters are normal progressive voters now vs how many are still in the Bloc's universe and might be convinced to come back.

[Boston Bread]

If the election was actually held under IRV, there would have been more first preference NDP votes since there is no spoiler effect. Tories preferencing Grits in LPC-NDP races would be balanced by strategic voters voting LPC coming back to the NDP. I think IRV would still be much better for the NDP than FPTP.

[Pragmatic Conservative]

I mean the logic for PR in Canada is overwhelming isn't it? Almost all MPs are elected entirely off party labels: the identity of candidates seems to matter very little. Who has a substantial personal vote in the new Commons? It isn't far off being Ralph Goodale, Ruth Ellen Brosseau and... er... that's it.

There are more than that.  Here in B.C, the New Conservative M.P for South Surrey-White Rock, Dianne Watts, probably would not have won had she not been previously the extremely popular mayor of Surrey.  Given the increase in gun violence in Surrey after she left the mayor's office, there has been some reevalution of her time as mayor and that has almost certainly lowered her popularity, but I'd say it's pretty obvious that had the Conservatives ran a generic no name in that riding that the Liberals would have won it.

For the NDP, the New Westminster-Burnaby riding likely would have gone Liberal were it not for the personal popularity of M.P Peter Julien.  It's also likely that the Green Party would have won Victoria were the New Democrat's Murray Rankin not such a high quality M.P. Also, the NDP would likely win Skeena-Bulkley Valley anyway, but Nathan Cullen also gets votes from non New Democrats who like him personally.  Finally for off the top of my head in B.C, although he was likely mostly unknown when he was first nominated, the military background and the past Conservative Party connections almost certainly were a major reason Steven Fuhr won for the Liberals in a Kelowna riding.  The Liberals have never even come close to winning in Kelowna since 1968.

In Elmwood-Transcona in Manitoba being the son of Bill Blaikie almost certainly was the reason Dan Blaikie was able to narrowly beat the incumbent Conservative there and reclaim that riding for the NDP.

Finally, although the Liberals won every riding in the Atlantic, I think there's no question that a lot of people also voted personally for Bill Matthews.  He did previously get reelected as an independent after all.

Your forgetting Bill Casey in  Cumberland—Colchester who has won as a PC, Conservative, Independent and Liberal.

[Boston Bread]

I don't think anyone has noted the biggest swings of the election yet. Central Nova and Cumberland-Colchester, which both saw 45 point swings to the Liberals.

Other big swings (all towards LPC):
Gatineau: 40 points
South Shore-St. Margarets: 39 points
St. John's East: 39 points
Pontiac: 39 points
Sackville-Preston-Chezzetcook: 37 points
Acadie-Bathurst: 36 points
Kelowna-Lake Country: 35 points

[adma]

Finally, although the Liberals won every riding in the Atlantic, I think there's no question that a lot of people also voted personally for Bill Matthews.  He did previously get reelected as an independent after all.

Your forgetting Bill Casey in  Cumberland—Colchester who has won as a PC, Conservative, Independent and Liberal.

I believe he meant "Casey" when he wrote "Andrews".  (Bill Andrews was a different Con-to-Lib jumper, in Newfoundland c15 years ago.)

[136or142]

Finally, although the Liberals won every riding in the Atlantic, I think there's no question that a lot of people also voted personally for Bill Matthews.  He did previously get reelected as an independent after all.

Your forgetting Bill Casey in  Cumberland—Colchester who has won as a PC, Conservative, Independent and Liberal.

I believe he meant "Casey" when he wrote "Andrews".  (Bill Andrews was a different Con-to-Lib jumper, in Newfoundland c15 years ago.)

Yes, my mistake. Sorry.

[Krago]

The darker green colour in Eglinton-Lawrence was an error in the preliminary count.  When the validated results were released, the Greens dropped by 1,949 votes (from 5% to 1%) while Joe Oliver jumped by 2,187 votes (from 39% to 43%).

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

It's interesting that the Greens perform so badly in the major cities. Even results from Vancouver are fairly mediocre.