Canadian Election 2019

[adma]

The East-West split has been around for quite a few years and has taken different forms in terms of which party does well where. As a general rule, the same party doesn't do well in both urban Ontario and the Prairies (unless it's a big landslide).

And Manitoba takes a middling position between Ontario and Alberta/Saskatchewan.

Speaking of that, I wonder if it might be argued that a vestigial "Scheer effect" even leaked eastward into Northern Ontario--obviously with the Kenora pickup, but also in the Conservatives being second *everywhere else* except Sudbury and Nickel Belt--yes, even unexpectedly versus the NDP's Angus and Hughes...

[King of Kensington]

BC and Alberta being politically aligned in the Reform/Alliance days seems so long ago...

[DistingFlyer]

BC and Alberta being politically aligned in the Reform/Alliance days seems so long ago...

BC's political tendencies make more sense when you look at who's governing provincially - more specifically, when the NDP is in power.

The 1972 federal election was held several weeks after the NDP's first provincial victory; as one would expect, the federal party received a bit of a bounce too, but only a modest one (33% to 35%). The 1974 election - held while Dave Barrett was still Premier - saw the federal party plunge to 23%, and its MPs drop from eleven to two. Even Vancouver East, one of the most reliable NDP ridings, fell to the Grits.

By 1979, the NDP was out of power, and the federal party recovered to 32%. Support remained consistent (mid-30s) for the next three elections, peaking at 37% and 19 MPs in 1988 (thanks probably to the unpopular Socred government as well as Reform intervention federally, which got 5% of the vote and handed three ridings to the NDP).

In 1991, Mike Harcourt led the provincial NDP back to power, but the government's popularity didn't last too long. The 1993 election saw the federal party drop right through the floor, falling to 15% and only two MPs. Once again, Vancouver East was grabbed by the Liberals.

This time, the NDP remained in power for a decade; the next two federal elections had the NDP remain in a poor third and never with more than three MPs.

Finally, the NDP government was turfed in 2001; the federal vote in 2004 saw the NDP recover quite well (from 11% to 27%), and while they've never reached the heights of the 1970s and 1980s, they remained consistently in the high 20s to low 30s.

The election just past is therefore a bit of an anomaly: in spite of an NDP government back in power in Victoria (albeit a minority backed by the Greens), the federal party only from 26% to 24%, and lost only three MPs, making it by far the best election they've had while simultaneously ruling the province.

This 'vote against' tendency has been remarked on before regarding BC, but more often in the context of the federal government: the Liberals did poorly there and the Tories well during the Trudeau years, while the Mulroney government saw a sharp Tory decline and the rise of the Liberals back to second place. The Reformers provided a convenient vote too, as a Western-based, anti-Ottawa party, and were able to steal a lot of NDP supporters. Once they were folded into the re-united Conservative Party, that allure faded and many Reform voters went back to the New Democrats.

[Oryxslayer]

BC and Alberta being politically aligned in the Reform/Alliance days seems so long ago...

BC is still under the present electoral arrangement a conservative province. Vancouver's growth is hampered by geography and it's votes are fragmented. As long as the non-tory vote keeps getting cut into 20-20-20 (a simplification) chunks, the Tories will  waltz to popular vote victories thanks to the interior and seat count victories via vote splits in the suburbs. They did it under Harper and they did it this week. BC though is one of those places though if you forced people to pick a loyal-left or a loyal-right, when they both have realistic shots at power unlike 2011, they will pick loyal-left. The BC liberals provincially have a distinct brand from other local provincial conservative parties which allows them to win the two-party contests with the NDP.

[Holmes]

The East-West split has been around for quite a few years and has taken different forms in terms of which party does well where. As a general rule, the same party doesn't do well in both urban Ontario and the Prairies (unless it's a big landslide).

And Manitoba takes a middling position between Ontario and Alberta/Saskatchewan.

Speaking of that, I wonder if it might be argued that a vestigial "Scheer effect" even leaked eastward into Northern Ontario--obviously with the Kenora pickup, but also in the Conservatives being second *everywhere else* except Sudbury and Nickel Belt--yes, even unexpectedly versus the NDP's Angus and Hughes...

It's not a "Scheet effect", no. Trudeau's not really too popular in Northern Ontario compared to 2015, and Singh's not as popular of a leader that past NDP leaders were because of reasons (guess which ones!). That being said, the Liberals still did pretty well in the region. And Kenora has a history of electing Conservatives too, both federally and provincially.

[DistingFlyer]

The East-West split has been around for quite a few years and has taken different forms in terms of which party does well where. As a general rule, the same party doesn't do well in both urban Ontario and the Prairies (unless it's a big landslide).

And Manitoba takes a middling position between Ontario and Alberta/Saskatchewan.

Speaking of that, I wonder if it might be argued that a vestigial "Scheer effect" even leaked eastward into Northern Ontario--obviously with the Kenora pickup, but also in the Conservatives being second *everywhere else* except Sudbury and Nickel Belt--yes, even unexpectedly versus the NDP's Angus and Hughes...

It's not a "Scheet effect", no. Trudeau's not really too popular in Northern Ontario compared to 2015, and Singh's not as popular of a leader that past NDP leaders were because of reasons (guess which ones!). That being said, the Liberals still did pretty well in the region. And Kenora has a history of electing Conservatives too, both federally and provincially.

Only a recent history of doing so at the federal level: when Greg Rickford won there in 2008, he was the first Conservative to do so since 1917; apart from 1984-88, when the NDP held it, that riding was always Liberal. A number of northern ridings (such as the two Thunder Bay ones) haven't been held by Tories for similar lengths of time. Northern Ontario as a whole has been largely immune to Tory charms since the 1920s, even in the sweeps of 1958 & 1984.

Now, provincially it's a different story, as Leo Bernier held the seat for more than two decades. However, his 1987 loss marked thirty-one years of Tory defeats until Greg Rickford (again) won the seat back last year.


On a somewhat unrelated note, for the statistically-minded folks like myself the official count for Edmonton – Wetaskiwin has come in and a new record has been set: Mike Lake's majority of 52544 has exceeded Maurizio Bevilacqua's 51389-vote margin in York North back in 1993.

The Tories are racking up some very large margins (both in absolute and percentage terms) in Alberta, so I suspect the list of largest-ever numerical margins may change quite a bit when the final counts are completed. Pre-2019, these were the times that a winner's majority exceeded 40000:

51389 - Maurizio Bevilacqua (Lib) (York North) (1993)
47763 - Bobbie Sparrow (PC) (Calgary South) (1984)
42928 - Benoit Sauvageau (BQ) (Terrebonne) (1993)
42047 - Kevin Sorenson (Cons) (Battle River – Crowfoot) (2015)
41691 - Jason Kenney (Cons) (Calgary Southeast) (2011)
40480 - Monique Begin (Lib) (Saint-Leonard – Anjou) (1979)
40189 - Don Boudria (Lib) (Glengarry – Prescott – Russell) (1993)

So far, ten Tories in Alberta have exceeded that threshold in the official counts, with nine results left to come (including Battle River – Crowfoot). From this we can see a big reason why the Tories, for the first time since the King-Meighen days, did not win government in spite of receiving more votes.

[King of Kensington]

BC is still under the present electoral arrangement a conservative province. Vancouver's growth is hampered by geography and it's votes are fragmented. As long as the non-tory vote keeps getting cut into 20-20-20 (a simplification) chunks, the Tories will  waltz to popular vote victories thanks to the interior and seat count victories via vote splits in the suburbs. They did it under Harper and they did it this week. BC though is one of those places though if you forced people to pick a loyal-left or a loyal-right, when they both have realistic shots at power unlike 2011, they will pick loyal-left. The BC liberals provincially have a distinct brand from other local provincial conservative parties which allows them to win the two-party contests with the NDP.

Technically true the Conservatives won a plurality of the vote and seats but I doubt too many British Columbians feel a "shared destiny" of any sort with Alberta these days.  "The West" basically means Alberta and Saskatchewan now.

[vileplume]

BC and Alberta being politically aligned in the Reform/Alliance days seems so long ago...

BC is still under the present electoral arrangement a conservative province. Vancouver's growth is hampered by geography and it's votes are fragmented. As long as the non-tory vote keeps getting cut into 20-20-20 (a simplification) chunks, the Tories will  waltz to popular vote victories thanks to the interior and seat count victories via vote splits in the suburbs. They did it under Harper and they did it this week. BC though is one of those places though if you forced people to pick a loyal-left or a loyal-right, when they both have realistic shots at power unlike 2011, they will pick loyal-left. The BC liberals provincially have a distinct brand from other local provincial conservative parties which allows them to win the two-party contests with the NDP.

I don't think you can say that at all.

If you look at the Tory held seats in Greater Vancouver the equivalent areas are mostly also represented by the (centre-right) provincial Liberals. As people have said on here multiple times the federal Liberal vote is not uniformly left-wing in the slightest and in the case where people were forced to choose between a 'right block' and a 'left block' a large chunk of the current federal Liberals would choose the 'right block' (indeed a number of Liberal seats in the region e.g. Delta, Vancouver Quadra, Vancouver South etc. may well vote for this 'right block' too).

[OSR stands with Israel]

At the end of the day, what a race. I think it has to be seen as a repudiation of Andrew Scheer & the Conservatives, though. He claimed he's put Trudeau "on notice," but that's what my 5th Grade teacher Mrs. Fox did when she wrote names on the whiteboard. Scheer isn't a teacher, & Trudeau isn't a 5th-grader.

As it stands, the Conservatives have received around 6.1 million votes. That's about 500,000 more votes than they received in 2015, & this was the election where it came out that the PM wore blackface more times than he could remember.

Despite all the gnashing of teeth about Trudeau's "horrible" performance as PM, & all the sly nods about the shy Tories, it turns out that running without a climate plan, running on maligning your opponents outright, & explicitly supporting misinformation is a losing plan. Based on the regional results, the Conservatives were supported in the West by a larger margin compared to 2015 while losing votes everywhere else. This despite 4 years (& 40 days) of telling us over & over that Trudeau was ruining this country. So something went wrong.

Despite what the CBC was intimating last night, we know this: Doug Ford is a disaster for the province & the Conservatives. Conservative supporters have trumped Ford up as some messiah, despite every indication that fatigue with Liberals granted him a majority, & we have yet more proof in Toronto last night that Ford is an albatross around the Conservative neck. Maybe somebody on the right will admit he was a bad choice? Maybe, somewhere, a cadre of social conservatives are understanding the depth of their mistake in supporting him?

We know this: the anti-carbon tax crusade was a disastrous position to take, let alone clutch to your chest like a pearl necklace. The Greens received 1.1 million votes in this election. They got 600,000 in 2015, & turnout dropped this time around. Right now, we can see that the Canadian electorate is changing. I think in 5 years' time, we'll be able to say that the Canadian electorate has changed.

All of this to say that as we hear whining about Western alienation & separation in the weeks to come, it's important to remember that a party that seemingly ran on a campaign for the last 4 years (& 40 days) crafted to increase their vote count in ridings that they've already won have dug a hole that Western voters are now sitting in. Andrew Scheer & the Conservatives have alienated the West. Andrew Scheer & the Conservatives are now the opposition to a minority government in which they'll have no say in the governance of the country. Andrew Scheer & the Conservatives have systematically turned this country against the West by refusing to budge on issues on which the majority of Canadians disagree. If the West wants in, the West must compromise.

Time to admit, for instance, that climate change is real (not a party position, but one anecdotally espoused by the CPC). Time to admit that a Conservative-originated carbon-tax might be an okay idea. Time to admit that Trudeau might be a bad PM, but not a traitor, nor a criminal, nor whatever denigrating term they're using this week.

If these results continue for Conservatives, they'll once again be shut out of government for a decade. Maybe it's time to rethink what they've done since 2011?

My friends who live in Western Canada say it’s the East who have alienated the west over and over again not the other way around . Which is why they hate the Liberals a lot .


They think the Tories are currently already too pro Quebec and pro East in general

The West keeps getting goodies and got the government to buy them a 5 billions pipeline. They have a full belly and keep whining for even more.

They are aliened because they keep whining and asking for more and nobody wants to have anything to do with the West.

Quebec gets way more then the West does

[EastAnglianLefty]

The East-West split has been around for quite a few years and has taken different forms in terms of which party does well where. As a general rule, the same party doesn't do well in both urban Ontario and the Prairies (unless it's a big landslide).

And Manitoba takes a middling position between Ontario and Alberta/Saskatchewan.

Rural Manitoba votes basically the same way as rural Saskatchewan. What's interesting is that Winnipeg is so much less Conservative than, say, Edmonton (and this applies double when you consider the suburbs of both urban areas.

[adma]

Speaking of that, I wonder if it might be argued that a vestigial "Scheer effect" even leaked eastward into Northern Ontario--obviously with the Kenora pickup, but also in the Conservatives being second *everywhere else* except Sudbury and Nickel Belt--yes, even unexpectedly versus the NDP's Angus and Hughes...

It's not a "Scheet effect", no. Trudeau's not really too popular in Northern Ontario compared to 2015, and Singh's not as popular of a leader that past NDP leaders were because of reasons (guess which ones!). That being said, the Liberals still did pretty well in the region. And Kenora has a history of electing Conservatives too, both federally and provincially.

Though I'm also taking calibre of candidates and conventional wisdom into account (the incoming Kenora Con being a lot "rawer" than Greg Rickford--though in a funny way, I wonder whether Premier Ford's Kenora visit actually *helped* CPC here).

And in some ways, my point might be more regarding seats like Algoma (where 2015's Lib candidate was running again) and Timmins--even if Justin was less popular, few would have called for *those* seats to be second-place Conservative unless Scheer was polling in clear seat-plurality territory...

[MaxQue]

At the end of the day, what a race. I think it has to be seen as a repudiation of Andrew Scheer & the Conservatives, though. He claimed he's put Trudeau "on notice," but that's what my 5th Grade teacher Mrs. Fox did when she wrote names on the whiteboard. Scheer isn't a teacher, & Trudeau isn't a 5th-grader.

As it stands, the Conservatives have received around 6.1 million votes. That's about 500,000 more votes than they received in 2015, & this was the election where it came out that the PM wore blackface more times than he could remember.

Despite all the gnashing of teeth about Trudeau's "horrible" performance as PM, & all the sly nods about the shy Tories, it turns out that running without a climate plan, running on maligning your opponents outright, & explicitly supporting misinformation is a losing plan. Based on the regional results, the Conservatives were supported in the West by a larger margin compared to 2015 while losing votes everywhere else. This despite 4 years (& 40 days) of telling us over & over that Trudeau was ruining this country. So something went wrong.

Despite what the CBC was intimating last night, we know this: Doug Ford is a disaster for the province & the Conservatives. Conservative supporters have trumped Ford up as some messiah, despite every indication that fatigue with Liberals granted him a majority, & we have yet more proof in Toronto last night that Ford is an albatross around the Conservative neck. Maybe somebody on the right will admit he was a bad choice? Maybe, somewhere, a cadre of social conservatives are understanding the depth of their mistake in supporting him?

We know this: the anti-carbon tax crusade was a disastrous position to take, let alone clutch to your chest like a pearl necklace. The Greens received 1.1 million votes in this election. They got 600,000 in 2015, & turnout dropped this time around. Right now, we can see that the Canadian electorate is changing. I think in 5 years' time, we'll be able to say that the Canadian electorate has changed.

All of this to say that as we hear whining about Western alienation & separation in the weeks to come, it's important to remember that a party that seemingly ran on a campaign for the last 4 years (& 40 days) crafted to increase their vote count in ridings that they've already won have dug a hole that Western voters are now sitting in. Andrew Scheer & the Conservatives have alienated the West. Andrew Scheer & the Conservatives are now the opposition to a minority government in which they'll have no say in the governance of the country. Andrew Scheer & the Conservatives have systematically turned this country against the West by refusing to budge on issues on which the majority of Canadians disagree. If the West wants in, the West must compromise.

Time to admit, for instance, that climate change is real (not a party position, but one anecdotally espoused by the CPC). Time to admit that a Conservative-originated carbon-tax might be an okay idea. Time to admit that Trudeau might be a bad PM, but not a traitor, nor a criminal, nor whatever denigrating term they're using this week.

If these results continue for Conservatives, they'll once again be shut out of government for a decade. Maybe it's time to rethink what they've done since 2011?

My friends who live in Western Canada say it’s the East who have alienated the west over and over again not the other way around . Which is why they hate the Liberals a lot .


They think the Tories are currently already too pro Quebec and pro East in general

The West keeps getting goodies and got the government to buy them a 5 billions pipeline. They have a full belly and keep whining for even more.

They are aliened because they keep whining and asking for more and nobody wants to have anything to do with the West.

Quebec gets way more then the West does

1. The equalisation formula is there since decades, Trudeau cannot be blamed.
2. Alberta still has a better economy than Quebec. The only reason why it has a deficit is because of their very low tax rates (perequation assumes average tax rates). Same reason why Quebec has big surplus (tax rates are quite higher than the average).

[DC Al Fine]

Speaking of that, I wonder if it might be argued that a vestigial "Scheer effect" even leaked eastward into Northern Ontario--obviously with the Kenora pickup, but also in the Conservatives being second *everywhere else* except Sudbury and Nickel Belt--yes, even unexpectedly versus the NDP's Angus and Hughes...

It's not a "Scheet effect", no. Trudeau's not really too popular in Northern Ontario compared to 2015, and Singh's not as popular of a leader that past NDP leaders were because of reasons (guess which ones!). That being said, the Liberals still did pretty well in the region. And Kenora has a history of electing Conservatives too, both federally and provincially.

Though I'm also taking calibre of candidates and conventional wisdom into account (the incoming Kenora Con being a lot "rawer" than Greg Rickford--though in a funny way, I wonder whether Premier Ford's Kenora visit actually *helped* CPC here).

And in some ways, my point might be more regarding seats like Algoma (where 2015's Lib candidate was running again) and Timmins--even if Justin was less popular, few would have called for *those* seats to be second-place Conservative unless Scheer was polling in clear seat-plurality territory...

I'd suggest it wasn't Scheer specific, or Western alienation. Just the slow steady trend of the left upscaling and the right downscaling. To be honest, what I find confusing is that the Liberals do so well in Northern Ontario to begin with. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the region, but it feels like the sort of place that would be Tory-NDP out in BC.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

1. The equalisation formula is there since decades, Trudeau cannot be blamed.

I mean, a Trudeau can be. Just not this one.

[Hatman 🍁]

One has to remember that in Northern Ontario, much of the vote shifting is on the right, not on the left. So when the Liberals go down, the Tories go up.

As for BC, the NDP government is actually popular right now (relatively speaking), so makes sense that the federal party wouldn't be hurt because of them.

[OSR stands with Israel]

1. The equalisation formula is there since decades, Trudeau cannot be blamed.

I mean, a Trudeau can be. Just not this one.

[MaxQue]

1. The equalisation formula is there since decades, Trudeau cannot be blamed.

I mean, a Trudeau can be. Just not this one.

The formula was actually amended under Harper to include offshore oil in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But if we want to discuss the issue of Western Alienation seriously (and we should because it is a serious issue, a real threat to the stability of the country etc), you have to have to remember that the problem is deeply rooted. Whatever they are now, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime Provinces all are in origin attempts to establish Old World types of societies - with dominant and basically monotone ethnic and religious characters - in the New World. The West was never like this; it was a much more typical New World society almost as soon as white people began to move there in large numbers. Exactly how that sort of thing manifests is never predictable - and rarely stable - but that's a fairly fundamental cultural division.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

1. The equalisation formula is there since decades, Trudeau cannot be blamed.

I mean, a Trudeau can be. Just not this one.

The formula was actually amended under Harper to include offshore oil in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

It is fiddled with all the time, sure, and the basic concept didn't even start with Trudeau the Elder. But we should never allow such minor details as 'facts' to interfere with the opportunity for cheap word-based humour.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Although again the interesting thing there is that British Columbia has ended up on the wrong side of that particular cultural divide.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Although again the interesting thing there is that British Columbia has ended up on the wrong side of that particular cultural divide.

Yes and no: its traditional (and current once more) status as the stronghold of the federal NDP has similar origins.

[King of Kensington]

I would highly recommend reading this:

John Conway, The Rise of the New West

[King of Kensington]

Yes, the East-West divide is sharp in Canada in a way American observers may not be able to comprehend (we have no "Midwest" equivalent).  Also the Great Plains isn't a cultural region in the US but the Prairies very much is one in Canada.

[Lord Halifax]

Yes, the East-West divide is sharp in Canada in a way American observers may not be able to comprehend (we have no "Midwest" equivalent).  Also the Great Plains isn't a cultural region in the US but the Prairies very much is one in Canada.

I thought Manitoba and Northern Ontario were your Midwest.

[Holmes]

Yes, the East-West divide is sharp in Canada in a way American observers may not be able to comprehend (we have no "Midwest" equivalent).  Also the Great Plains isn't a cultural region in the US but the Prairies very much is one in Canada.

I thought Manitoba and Northern Ontario were your Midwest.

Ew, I refuse to believe I’m from the Canadian equivalent of the Midwest.