Canadian Election 2019

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The ultimate emblem of how the NDP dropped the ball in downtown Toronto: they even lost Toronto Island.  (Though the fact that Adam Vaughan's rep is that of a "community politics" Liberal helps--it's hard to see a Tony Ianno capturing Toronto Island progressives in quite the same way)

I wonder if they won the Island vote in 1993.

By my recall, they actually *might* have.  (Though that's when Jack Layton, of all people, was making his suicide run in Toronto Centre--which it was part of at the time.  And were it part of Trinity-Spadina, it almost certainly would have.)

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Burnaby North-Seymour riding:

North Burnaby

NDP  11,707  35%
Liberals  10,727  32.1%
Conservatives  7,220  21.6%
Greens  2,473  7.4%

Seymour (North Vancouver)

Liberals  5,808  43.4%
NDP  3,316  24.8%
Conservatives  1,885  14.1%
Greens  1,777  13.3%

I suppose that ethnicity explains the higher Conservative share (for disallowed candidate Heather Leung) in N Burnaby than in Seymour.

And speaking of matters of ethnicity and whatever else: it's interesting how, in Markham-Stouffville, Jane Philpott's strongholds were heavily concentrated in Old Stouffville--but her share plummeted quite noticeably in Stouffville's newburbia; and likewise, she did better in Markham Village than its newer environs.  Seems that, as I suspected, her following was very much defined by "Red Tory Old Ontario", so to speak (and it's why her independent candidacy wasn't the up-the-middle drop-in-the-bucket for the Conservatives that some expected)

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From those maps I think Davenport is most certainly not lost for the NDP? They should at least remain competitive there. Plus several of the downtown Toronto districts look like possible "reach districts" if the local conditions are just right? (say a scandal plagued Liberal candidate, or a big NDP resurgence)

Though the picture might be skewed a touch by Davenport having been "supertargeted" via an Andrew Cash comeback bid--and given the party's depleted resources going into the election, that might have been all they were *really*, quietly, banking on.  But it's safe to say that most anything that's currently held by the ONDP provincially is a potential "reach district" federally.  (Maybe not Toronto-St. Paul's--then again, in Alok Mukherjee, they might well have had their "highest-profile" Toronto candidate there after Cash)

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The NDP apparently targeted Parkdale-High Park but lost by 10,000 votes.  Singh seemed to make more appearances there than anywhere else in Toronto.  How much can that be explained away by "no incumbency"?

Danforth also saw an 8000 vote loss.  No Jack effect this time?

Re PHP, I think it wasn't just "no incumbency", but "no Peggy Nash" as well--in some ways, her popularity transcended affiliation.  And of course, the messy nomination battle to replace her didn't help.  Sans Nash, areas like Bloor West settled into more of a natural North Toronto-ish kind of upper-middle Lib-friendly gravity.

And by and large, by the time Jagmeetmania *seemed* to start to kick in, the inner-416 oblivion was hardwired, with a bit of ballast from anti-Scheer strategizing.

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What "Jagmeetmania"?

I did say, "*seemed to* start to kick in".  That is, the post-debate boomlet--but in the end, its net effect was merely to bring the party up to the 15% threshold rather than what earlier seemed to be destined as single digits and behind the Greens.  That is, even if Jagmeet turned out to be quite good on the stump, the party he was leading was still deemed not ready for prime time; "but hey, maybe next time", etc.

Basically, it's what turned Parkdale-High Park into an "only" 1.5:1 margin for the Liberals rather than the 2:1 or worse it seemed destined for at the beginning.

But again, I'm noticing that the party actually seemed to hold its own in the no-hope Rest Of Ontario--shades of Howard Hampton in 2003 (increased share, but fewer seats and lost OPS) or even Jack Layton in 2004 (underwhelming in raw seat numbers, but overperforming in weird heartland Ontario seats).  And there were a *lot* more Ontario seats where they dead-cat-bounced into winning at least one polling station in 2019 than 2015, FWIW.  (Which is also saying something about how catastrophic Mulcair's 2015 campaign was)

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Sort of like, Mulcair's campaign in 2015 let the NDP off the cliff; and Jagmeet's campaign in 2019 put a cushion at the bottom of the cliff.  Which still led to unavoidable injury (after all, pre-writ planning and resources could have substituted an airbag for the cushion); but at least they lived to see another day, recoverably so.

In many ways, ironically enough, Jagmeet's campaign was like Mike Harris's first campaign in 1990 when the Ontario PCs were in the dumpster--still third place and their worst share ever, but at least they showed fire in the belly which foretold Harris's victory in 1995.  (Which'd make Mulcair something of a triangulating-into-oblivion Larry Grossman figure.)

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Looking at the results, it's interesting that Ajax had the highest Liberal share in the 905.  North Ajax has basically become the 905 extension of eastern Scarborough (and Scarborough-Rouge Park, at 62.1%, was the highest share for the Liberals in the country).  Conservatives are as weak in Ajax as they are in Brampton, but with no "Jagmeet effect" the NDP vote is lower too.

Though even there, in a repeated "wasted vote" pattern, the NDP had a dead cat bounce: their vote total was up more than 50% from 2015 (a bit because it had earlier been "strategized away" in a high-profile Con-vs-Lib race).  Which was a common under-the-wire pattern that was overshadowed by their inner-urban "promiscuous progressive" losses: single-digit shares becoming double-digit shares, etc.

And in both this case and Mississauga-Malton (second highest at .22% lower), the Liberal was a high-profile "machine incumbent" who bounced back in 2015 after 2011 losses.

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Why did Jagmeet's NDP do so badly in Windsor?

The Liberal candidates in 2019 - Sandra Pupatello in Windsor West and Irek Kusmierczyk in Windsor-Tecumseh - were far superior to the poteaux they ran in 2015.

Hard to say about Kusmierczyk; it's more that he was ironically lifted by Pupatello's coattails, and Cheryl Hardcastle was the NDP's weakest link in Windsor.

And then there's the matter of Essex, where the *Conservative* candidate benefited--but to a degree, that could have been foretold by the same candidate giving the supposedly "bombproof" Taras Natyshak a provincial scare in 2018.  That is, it's the Ontario version of the kinds of Labour/Leave strongholds that would have opted for Boris last year.

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London has really trended away from the Conservatives.  It was the NDP that benefitted from the wearing off of the Trudeau wave there.

Indeed, there's proof of my point re NDP "vote efficiency": the NDP won no polls whatsoever in London NC & W in 2015, but they won a fair number in 2019.

And it's interesting how the trending-away has even bled into the exurban polls of adjacent ridings that otherwise swung against the Liberals--the likes of Arva and Komoka are on a Liberal-red trajectory, it'd seem...

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I'm guessing the Liberals received a plurality of the votes of union members.

Or more like, the NDP was to some degree reduced to the hardcore "union member" core; whereas the not-necessarily-unionized soft centre--in usual-suspect suburbanizing/middle-class places like S Windsor and Tecumseh, as well as gentrifying downtown pockets like Walkerville--gravitated Gritward.

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In Windsor specifically, maybe.  Nationally I'm sure the Liberals took it.  The NDP might have won it in 2011. 

Yeah I was referring specifically to Windsor.  Though there's probably still a NDP/Con swing element in places like Essex and Oshawa (or even Hamilton, where in the NDP strongholds of much of the East End and on the Mountain the Cons challenged or even surpassed the Libs for 2nd place)

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Seat composition in three regional pockets with a history of industrial trade unionism and working class social democracy.

Windsor-Essex

2019  NDP 1, Liberals 1, Conservatives 1
2015 NDP 3
2011 NDP 2, Conservatives 1
2008 NDP 2, Conservatives 1
2006 NDP 2, Conservatives 1

Hamilton-Niagara

2019 Liberals 4, Conservatives 3, NDP 2
2015 Liberals 4, Conservatives 3, NDP 2
2011 NDP 4, Conservatives 4
2008 NDP 4, Conservatives 4
2006 Conservatives 4, NDP 3, Liberals 1

Northern Ontario

2019 Liberals 6, NDP 2, Conservatives 1
2015 Liberals 7, NDP 2
2011 NDP 6, Conservatives 3
2008 NDP 7, Conservatives 2, Liberals 1
2006 Liberals 7, NDP 2

It's interesting that the right hasn't advanced as much in these areas as demographic trends in other Western democracies (US, France, UK) would suggest. Sure, you had Kenora and a few swings towards the Tories in various places, but the rural and blue-collar center-left seems oddly resistant in Ontario. Unionization perhaps? Higher indigenous populations in Northern ridings? I've wondered about this for a few years.

Probably because Ontario hasn't had the history of "aggrievement" that has led to the populist right's gains in such jurisdictions--or at least, the urban ones.  Though I'd suggest that there definitely has been a rural-populist swing to the right, in that a lot of SW Ontario seats with a swingy or predominantly Liberal history even pre-Chretien are now pretty solid Conservative--and of course, in the other direction, Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke going from one of 1984's Liberal survivors to one of 2000's two Alliance gains in Ontario and solidly Conservative ever since.

Remember, too, that a lot is camoflauged by the NDP's relative weakness as a political entity compared to left/social-democratic proxies elsewhere--that is, where they *are* winningly strong in Ontario, there tends to be "special conditions" that don't work on behalf of CPC.

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But look at the SW. Big swings to PCs in Essex, Sarnia, Welland, etc. Basically Ontario's "midwest".

As a federal 3-way for several elections running (save the 2011 Liberal implosion), Niagara Centre's an eternally interesting case--and it's worth noting that S St Catharines, which contains some of the city's most well-heeled neighbourhoods as well as being within the campus-creative-class orbit of Brock U, is the part of the riding which swung most t/w the Libs and away from the Cons.  Whereas the further south you go, the more things tilted t/w the Conservatives relative to 2015--in Port Colborne, where incumbent Vance Badawey was once Mayor, two out of three "advance poll blocks" went Conservative, and the one that remained solidly Liberal likewise contains Port Colborne's most well-heeled neighbourhoods.

And re the "what Jagmeetmania?" question; well, while former NDP MP Malcolm Allen still finished third, it was a ten-points-higher finish than midelection polling indicated, and from the poll-by-polls it seems like he was still gaining momentum by e-day--indeed, he even repatriated some polling stations previously lost to the Libs in places like downtown Welland and Thorold and the Western Hill neighbourhood of St. Catharines.  I mean, a third-place loss is still a third-place-loss; but all things considered, that's not bad electoral Hail Mary-ing.

Interestingly Parkdale and southern Davenport were the two wards Olivia Chow won in her mayoral race. It looks like those neighbourhoods can now definitively claim to be the most progressive in the city. A lot different than things were 20-30 years ago. The NDP didn't even win Parkdale in the 1990 provincial election.

Not winning Parkdale in 1990 had a lot to do with the curious multicultural-Liberal-populist machine of Tony Ruprecht back when blue-collar ethnic blocs (Italian, Portuguese, Polish etc) defined the riding's character to a greater degree.  Though what makes things even more interesting is that the 1990 provincial version of Parkdale *also* contained the southern part of present-day Davenport riding--that is, transposed to the present, it's even *more* of an encapsulation of modern-day NDP/Chow/Keesmaat support.

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Looks like in Essex County, Tories pretty much cleaned up all the rural polls even ones in 2011 they failed to win, while it was the towns in Essex riding NDP won and Windsor NDP/Liberal so classic rural/urban split.

SW Ontario has a fair number of "rurban" ridings with a sizable manufacturing presence.  Essex, Sarnia, Chatham, Oxford etc.

But also, in a repeat of a pattern elsewhere (Western Canada, especially), electoral patterns are "sorting" much more dramatically on the Conservatives' behalf in rural/agricultural areas.  Whereas until quite recently, rural Essex retained a certain ancestral Windsor-zone "agrarian elasticity".