Canadian Election 2019

[jaichind]

I think such a big gap in seats, when compared to the MOE popular vote, is Unlikely. There's just too many easy flips for team Blue, even with the Grit stranglehold on Ontario. There's also the NDP right now, in broad strokes are going to be picking up a bunch of lib/NDP seats that they lost in the 2015 wave.

However, the core theme of this election appears to be uncertainty. The Libs and Cons are going to be within the MOE of each other in votes, with the Libs having a more efficient vote spread. Nobody really likes either of them right now, but instead people are voting red to stop blue or vice versa, a fact compounded by their negative campaigns. Behind them though are the three minor parties who are all much more popular than the big two, easing their access to votes. However there are plenty of places on the map where a vote for the minors is realistically half a vote for one of the big two, depending on the circumstances. How the minors affect the big two is anyone's guess - tactical voting may be a thing, or it may not considering how detestable the big two are. So Maggi's prediction, while out there, has probably the same chance of occurring as any other prediction, this is as close to a tossup election as you can get.

There is also the issue that BQ vote share to seat translation is fairly efficient and most BQ gains would be at the expense of LPC (assuming we are already writing off most NDP seats as lost to BQ already.)

[Pragmatic Conservative]

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/status/1185301232916860929

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/status/1185301232916860929

Yeah that makes more sense if we assume maggi has strong regional divides in voting - the tories are  going to pick up some seats even if they fail in ontario.

[DabbingSanta]

Even if Scheer wins the most number of seats, he risks losing to a Liberal-NDP coalition, which would be a sad day for our democracy IMHO, and also shows the issues with FPTP. This time, though, I expect you won't hear certain people complaining about it..

[Pericles]

Even if Scheer wins the most number of seats, he risks losing to a Liberal-NDP coalition, which would be a sad day for our democracy IMHO, and also shows the issues with FPTP. This time, though, I expect you won't hear certain people complaining about it..

How would that be undemocratic? The Liberals and NDP would have a majority of seats and so would have every right to form a coalition. Based on the numbers in CBC's poll tracker, the Liberals and NDP combined are getting a majority of votes or pretty close to it (and if you add in the Greens they're getting 58% of the vote combined). Harper when he formed his majority had less than 40% support, so if anything a Liberal and NDP coalition would be significantly more legitimate than Harper's majority.

[SPQR]

Even if Scheer wins the most number of seats, he risks losing to a Liberal-NDP coalition, which would be a sad day for our democracy IMHO, and also shows the issues with FPTP. This time, though, I expect you won't hear certain people complaining about it..

You have a very peculiar concept of democracy.

[politicallefty]

I haven't been following this election closely this time, but I can't believe it's looking like the Bloc is going to come back in force. I swear Quebec is the one province I don't think I'll ever be able to understand no matter how hard I try. If that is the case, it does seem to me like Quebec will be reverting to something pre-2011 as it always seemed to me that the Orange Wave was primarily a result of the collapse of the Bloc. It seems to me like Quebec is most looking like 2000, just with a stronger Conservative Party drawing roughly equally from the Liberals and Bloc.

It still looks to me like the Liberals are likely to come out of the election with a strong minority. Western Canada doesn't look good for them right now, but their seats in more left-wing enclaves. If the Tories are running up the score in rural and even some suburban areas, it won't net them much apart from maybe Saskatchewan and maybe the Liberal Calgary seats. If they sweep AB and SK, they're probably making inroads into urban areas and probably in strong minority territory (like 2008). If the Liberals come out of the election with a minority government, it'll be a result of holding the fort in Ontario and Atlantic Canada. If they are denied a majority, it's almost certainly because of Quebec (or at least 80% of the reason).

[DC Al Fine]

One thing I don't understand is why the Liberals didn't use their majority to push through ranked ballot legislation when they had the chance.  It would have set them up for almost perpetual majority governments.

And I REALLY don't understand why the Ontario Liberals didn't do it too.

The consensus coming out of consultations was that Canadians preferred some sort of PR system. Changing the vote system to favour your party, against what the people wanted, would be an extremely risky proposition, like calling a snap election early in one's mandate.

That especially goes for Ontario. "Premier 12% Approval Rating changes electoral system to favour her party" ain't a great headline.

True, but the worst part of the headline is "Premier 12% Approval Rating".

Voters don't care a lot for the 'inside baseball' stuff, as much as we pundits might like to think.  Despite the Fair Vote folks claiming that huge majorities of Canadians favour Proportional Representation, those numbers seem to evaporate whenever a plebiscite is held.

Ranked ballots would have kept the 'electoral reform' promise without bringing in the transformative effects of PR.  Voters would still keep their local MP/MPP, and no one would get elected without majority(-ish) support of the voters.  The NDP and Greens might howl, but the Liberals would get the benefit of strategic voting without having to force people to vote against their first choice.  

And it could have the added effect of splitting the Tories into further factions.  A new SoCon party could run unabashedly against abortion and gay rights, with the assumption that their supporters would give the Conservatives their second ranking.  How well would the PPC be doing now under ranked ballots, if their voters knew they could oppose immigration without helping to re-elect Trudeau?

Frankly, I see far more upside to the Liberals if they had just plunged right through the line.

Don't the Liberals have a right flank (the blue liberals, whom are extremely prominent in some of the wealthier parts of Canada) that would almost certainly peel off under this scenario?

Whatever the (fair) electoral system you devise you will always get governments of both the left and of the right over the years. Changing the electoral system will only allow for the wide range of views that exist in society to each have their own political party and basically not force people with very different views to share a 'broad church' political party (a good thing IMO). If you think proportional representation will lead to permanent left rule (or right rule for that matter) then you are utterly delusional and clearly have no idea how people vote or how democracy works.

NC Yankee has done some good work on this in the American context. In short whenever one party gains a signficant advantage, ther coalition is spread too thin. Eventually part of the winning party's coalition gets alienated either through the winning party choosing on group over the other or a new issue emerging. The losing party moves in the path of least resistance and appeals to the alienated group. E.g. The GOP had an advantage in the 80's but eventually alienated socially liberal northern suburbanites, leaving them open to the Democrats.

Applying this to a Canadian context, the Tories act the way they do in part because the electoral system allows them to win on 35-40% of the vote. If the system changed to preferential voting, the Tories wouldn't change overnight, which would lead to a big Liberal advantage in the short to medium term.  In the long run though, the Liberals would alienate some of their voters and/or the Tories would modify their approach, restoring competitiveness. 

[Oryxslayer]

I haven't been following this election closely this time, but I can't believe it's looking like the Bloc is going to come back in force. I swear Quebec is the one province I don't think I'll ever be able to understand no matter how hard I try. If that is the case, it does seem to me like Quebec will be reverting to something pre-2011 as it always seemed to me that the Orange Wave was primarily a result of the collapse of the Bloc. It seems to me like Quebec is most looking like 2000, just with a stronger Conservative Party drawing roughly equally from the Liberals and Bloc.

The triumphant revival of the BQ is probably going to the forgotten story of this election, unless they end up enabling Scheer. The reason for this revival cannot simply be blamed on debates or issues, since the BQ brand was not that long ago at a record low. The problem that the BQ faced heading into this election was that separatism is a dead issue, and if they tried to revive in then the party dies. Separatism was only brought up this campaign for the BQ to disavow it. by There was also talk before the election of the tories trying to convert the overwhelming amount of light blue voters (CAQ) to dark blue voters (CCP). Their revival is in many ways thanks to the fact that the BQ are campaigning like a federal arm of the popular CAQ who seems to represent the post-separatism realignment the best. The CAQ are a conservative party, many of the 'unique quebec' policies that are winning voters are conservative identity policies, and not just the grits but the Tories dropped like a stone in quebec once the BQ made themselves known. The seats the BQ are going to be picking up are rural or suburban, white, poorer, and might be more open to the tories provincially if their Quebec brand wasn't dogsh**t. There's an argument to be made that the BQ's future depends upon it transitioning to the right like the province as separatism fades from memory, a future where it may just be an eager ally of the CCP.

So in effect, the transformation that happened at the start of the decade thanks to value shifts hasn't gone away. Quebec's transformation though means that parties can campaign in the  province on more than just Federalist/Separatist issues. For the BQ that was projected to win 0 seats last year, this means a reorientation into a "Quebec First" party rather than a "Quebec Liberte" party. We only have to look at the (limited) polling for a hypothetical provincial election to see just how well a party that ran on separatism would fare: the PQ are polling at 10%, projected to win ~0/125 seats, and the Quebec-First CAQ are approaching a 50% majority of the popular vote.e

[VPH]

The data shows that the Orange Wave in Quebec was propelled largely by soft-nationalist voters who had an (at times uncomfortable) home in the Bloc voting for the NDP instead. As others correctly note, this represents a return of the soft nationalists to the Bloc Quebecois. Blanchet is effectively running the sort of campaign that puts Quebec interests first as opposed to a declining hardline secession. Those who pronounced the death of the Bloc with the disappearance of their seeming driving issue forgot that the nationalism underpinning separatist demands hasn't gone away even if their policy end has become unpopular.

[jaichind]

When will voting end in the Atlantic Provinces? 7pm EST?

[Pragmatic Conservative]

When will voting end in the Atlantic Provinces? 7pm EST?

7 PM est is for Newfoundland and Labrador only the rest of the Atlantic provinces close at 7:30 PM est.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Have the ridiculous media blackout rules on east-coast results in the West come to an end yet?

[ON Progressive]

Have the ridiculous media blackout rules on east-coast results in the West come to an end yet?

That rule ended before the 2015 election, I'm pretty sure.

[Pragmatic Conservative]

Have the ridiculous media blackout rules on east-coast results in the West come to an end yet?

Yeah that ended last time in 2015 and I don't believe it was reintroduced.

[trebor204]

When will voting end in the Atlantic Provinces? 7pm EST?

7 PM est is for Newfoundland and Labrador only the rest of the Atlantic provinces close at 7:30 PM est.

In addition the riding of Gaspésie–Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine in Quebec follows Atlantic Time and polls will close at 8:30 PM (Atlantic Time)

Polls close at 9:30 pm (Eastern)  in the Mountain, Central (as Well as Saskatchewan) and Eastern Time Zones
and 10:00 pm in the Pacific Time Zones.

https://www.elections.ca/content2.aspx?section=faq&dir=votinghours&document=index&lang=e

[Foucaulf]

I haven't been following this election closely this time, but I can't believe it's looking like the Bloc is going to come back in force. I swear Quebec is the one province I don't think I'll ever be able to understand no matter how hard I try. If that is the case, it does seem to me like Quebec will be reverting to something pre-2011 as it always seemed to me that the Orange Wave was primarily a result of the collapse of the Bloc. It seems to me like Quebec is most looking like 2000, just with a stronger Conservative Party drawing roughly equally from the Liberals and Bloc.

The triumphant revival of the BQ is probably going to the forgotten story of this election

This is a ridiculous statement. How will the BQ surge be a "forgotten story" if they get 30-40 more seats over the last election? Maybe I buy what you're saying if you're saying Anglophone pundits can't explain why the Bloc is on the rise again, but this is not news.

There are only a few Canadian pundits in the non-Quebec press who are fluently bilingual and have a pulse on the mood of Quebeckers. Chantal Hébert is widely considered to be one of them. So you can start with her explanation of the Bloc surge:

By now, most Quebec voters know that the Conservative governments of New Brunswick and Ontario are the least francophone-friendly to have ruled those two provinces in decades. They know Scheer’s counterparts in the Prairies expect a Conservative government to override Quebec’s objections to the construction of a pipeline through the province to the East Coast.

Finally, add to the mix the conviction — widespread in francophone quarters in Quebec — that the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons would not have been as relentless in its pursuit of the SNC-Lavalin affair if the company had been based in Ontario. Given all of the above, the real surprise is that Scheer’s Conservatives did not expect Quebecers to turn away from their party.

...At the same time, many of them do not trust the Liberal leader to have their backs. They stack the suggestion that Trudeau would not impose a pipeline on Quebec against the extraordinary efforts his government expended on forcing the Trans Mountain expansion on an unwilling British Columbia government.

The thing is Quebec never fully committed to an idea of a multicultural Canada that Anglophone Canada (or at least Anglophone Canada's cities) has embraced since the 80s. Approval for the secularism/headscarf ban bill doesn't reflect some shift in attitudes after the CAQ got elected, but rather a feeling of solidarity against Anglophone Canada's unwillingness to compromise on the issue. Whether you think Legault is in the right or wrong, he isn't one to compromise and is someone who presses on federal leaders to "keep their word" to Quebec voters.

The other thing is Quebec voters aren't that different from any other swing voters. They have priorities and don't mind flipping over to another party if they trust them more. Most people in this thread no longer find it weird that Obama-Trump voters exist. Why is a BQ-NDP-BQ voter any weirder than that?

[Oryxslayer]

I haven't been following this election closely this time, but I can't believe it's looking like the Bloc is going to come back in force. I swear Quebec is the one province I don't think I'll ever be able to understand no matter how hard I try. If that is the case, it does seem to me like Quebec will be reverting to something pre-2011 as it always seemed to me that the Orange Wave was primarily a result of the collapse of the Bloc. It seems to me like Quebec is most looking like 2000, just with a stronger Conservative Party drawing roughly equally from the Liberals and Bloc.

The triumphant revival of the BQ is probably going to the forgotten story of this election

This is a ridiculous statement. How will the BQ surge be a "forgotten story" if they get 30-40 more seats over the last election? Maybe I buy what you're saying if you're saying Anglophone pundits can't explain why the Bloc is on the rise again, but this is not news.

There are only a few Canadian pundits in the non-Quebec press who are fluently bilingual and have a pulse on the mood of Quebeckers. Chantal Hébert is widely considered to be one of them. So you can start with her explanation of the Bloc surge:

By now, most Quebec voters know that the Conservative governments of New Brunswick and Ontario are the least francophone-friendly to have ruled those two provinces in decades. They know Scheer’s counterparts in the Prairies expect a Conservative government to override Quebec’s objections to the construction of a pipeline through the province to the East Coast.

Finally, add to the mix the conviction — widespread in francophone quarters in Quebec — that the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons would not have been as relentless in its pursuit of the SNC-Lavalin affair if the company had been based in Ontario. Given all of the above, the real surprise is that Scheer’s Conservatives did not expect Quebecers to turn away from their party.

...At the same time, many of them do not trust the Liberal leader to have their backs. They stack the suggestion that Trudeau would not impose a pipeline on Quebec against the extraordinary efforts his government expended on forcing the Trans Mountain expansion on an unwilling British Columbia government.

The thing is Quebec never fully committed to an idea of a multicultural Canada that Anglophone Canada (or at least Anglophone Canada's cities) has embraced since the 80s. Approval for the secularism/headscarf ban bill doesn't reflect some shift in attitudes after the CAQ got elected, but rather a feeling of solidarity against Anglophone Canada's unwillingness to compromise on the issue. Whether you think Legault is in the right or wrong, he isn't one to compromise and is someone who presses on federal leaders to "keep their word" to Quebec voters.

The other thing is Quebec voters aren't that different from any other swing voters. They have priorities and don't mind flipping over to another party if they trust them more. Most people in this thread no longer find it weird that Obama-Trump voters exist. Why is a BQ-NDP-BQ voter any weirder than that?

Of course I meant the Anglo press, because they are the ones reporting the stories. It's all the contest between scheer and Trudeau, because they are the unpopular frontrunners. Trudeau probably will be forming the govt, so when minors are talked about it's the NDP and how Singh turned it around and now looks to place demands on govt. At least this is how it is in what I read.

[trebor204]

Dang!
The Final Star Wars Trailer will be airing during Monday Night Football.
It will be airing during half-time, which makes it  right after the 9:30 pm (ET) poll closing.

[Pragmatic Conservative]

https://mobile.twitter.com/quito_maggi/status/1185677207705964545

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Dang!
The Final Star Wars Trailer will be airing during Monday Night Football.
It will be airing during half-time, which makes it  right after the 9:30 pm (ET) poll closing.

Interestingly, the final Force Awakens trailer came out on the night of the last Canadian election.

[Oryxslayer]

Dang!
The Final Star Wars Trailer will be airing during Monday Night Football.
It will be airing during half-time, which makes it  right after the 9:30 pm (ET) poll closing.

You can only watch this election live once, whereas you will probably see said commercial...way too much once December rolls around.

[Pragmatic Conservative]

https://mobile.twitter.com/VoiceOfFranky/status/1185768465623334913
https://mobile.twitter.com/voiceoffranky/status/1185768930939416577
https://mobile.twitter.com/VoiceOfFranky/status/1185769552585596929

[brucejoel99]

Wow. They're actually gonna pull this off. They'll probably be the least deserving elections winners ever, but they're gonna do it.

[the506]

Now Nick Kouvalis and Joseph Angolino from Mainstreet are trying to get him to walk back the majority talk.

I swear the battles between pollsters are more frustrating than the actual campaign.