Canadian Election 2019

[Pericles]

I’m on a discord server with someone who thinks more blackface photos are going to come out. Now normally I’d dismiss this and say the damage was done, but he says he thinks the photo might be more recent, from say 2006 or later. Now, if that happened I honestly don’t know what would happen. As we’ve seen most people really don’t care about all this stuff, but if it’s that recent the dynamic is obviously a little different. I could see it leaving quite a bit of damage but also I could see it not doing anything, with the first photos having done all the damage.

2006 would certainly make it harder for people to use the distance in time between then and now as an excuse or mitigating factor. There are lots of other details that could factor in though.

[Pericles]

Anybody else think Justin Trudeau is insane?  

He didn't realize the Aladdin costume was racist?  Look at the incredible attention to detail.  He not only knew it was racist, he wore it because it was racist.  He wanted to be the center of attention.  I don't think he's just an extreme narcissist though, I've come to the conclusion that Justin Trudeau's reality is play acting through life.

Amazingly, I don't know if this is disqualifying though for a Prime Minister.  From what I've read, Mackenzie King was also quite insane and he was Prime Minister for around 22 years.

I always thought that of him, although didn't Reagan mention all politicians are actors.  Still I think Liberals made a big mistake in choosing him.  Marc Garneau probably would have not built the excitement Trudeau did, but if he was PM, would probably have a 10 point lead and be coasting to a second term.  Off course maybe Mulcair would have won instead as 2015 was more about getting rid of Harper vs. electing anyone.  If Mulcair won, I think if party stood behind him, he would be in good shape for re-election, but problem is much of the party felt he wasn't left wing enough so if he saw a drop like Trudeau, party would have knifed him in an instant and put in a more left wing leader.  Trudeau is safe as majority of Liberal MPs wouldn't be MPs if it wasn't for him.

Only Trudeau could have won 2015 for the Liberals imo. The NDP would have replaced the Liberals without him.

[Pericles]

Anybody else think Justin Trudeau is insane?  

He didn't realize the Aladdin costume was racist?  Look at the incredible attention to detail.  He not only knew it was racist, he wore it because it was racist.  He wanted to be the center of attention.  I don't think he's just an extreme narcissist though, I've come to the conclusion that Justin Trudeau's reality is play acting through life.

Amazingly, I don't know if this is disqualifying though for a Prime Minister.  From what I've read, Mackenzie King was also quite insane and he was Prime Minister for around 22 years.

I always thought that of him, although didn't Reagan mention all politicians are actors.  Still I think Liberals made a big mistake in choosing him.  Marc Garneau probably would have not built the excitement Trudeau did, but if he was PM, would probably have a 10 point lead and be coasting to a second term.  Off course maybe Mulcair would have won instead as 2015 was more about getting rid of Harper vs. electing anyone.  If Mulcair won, I think if party stood behind him, he would be in good shape for re-election, but problem is much of the party felt he wasn't left wing enough so if he saw a drop like Trudeau, party would have knifed him in an instant and put in a more left wing leader.  Trudeau is safe as majority of Liberal MPs wouldn't be MPs if it wasn't for him.

Only Trudeau could have won 2015 for the Liberals imo. The NDP would have replaced the Liberals without him.

That's probably true although one caveat is it was Niqab issue that caused NDP to plummet in Quebec and thus fall to third thus causing progressives elsewhere to shift to Liberals.  That would have happened no matter who was leader as even when NDP was in lead, quite inefficent as big lead in BC and Quebec, but behind elsewhere although competitive.  Either way long term Trudeau may do more harm than good but we shall see.

Trudeau also got the Liberals to a position where they were on 30% and able to capitalize on a strategic voting rush rather than be swamped by it. If the NDP were on 35% and the Liberals on 25% the NDP would have benefited from anti-Harper strategic voting.

[Pericles]

Singh looks great. Such a shame that the NDP never polls well enough pre-election for NDP supporters to feel like actually voting NDP at the ballot box isn't a waste of a vote in many of the ridings.

Yeah tactical voting looks like it'll squeeze the NDP again. It's tragic how they lost in 2015, I wish Mulcair had won that election and the NDP was the major party of the left.

[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.

[Pericles]

I'm not sure what to expect from this election, it seems really close. Gut feeling is probably that the Conservatives get the most seats, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberals outperformed either.

[Pericles]

Where did it all go wrong for the NDP?

They were supposed to do badly their late surge just raised hopes that they would not get crushed.

[Pericles]

Lol that'd be something for a strong Liberal win in seats with a CPC PV win. Sad for democracy but would be nice irony, and payback for the 2016 US election in a way.

[Pericles]

NDP with 2 seats left in Quebec...

Knew Singh was going to be unelectable in that province.

Huh thought they might end up with only 1 seat there.

[Pericles]

Disappointing night for every party haha darn seems Canada doesn't have much faith in any of their parties Glad to see the left party still
right now its
54% Left (Lib+NDP+Green)
44.6% Right (Con+BQ+PPC)
So the right wing bloc over preformed the polls by quite a bit but not nearly enough to come close to the left

Why are you including BQ on the right.

Yeah, the actual left (NDP+BQ+Green) gained seats.

Doesn't seem like the BQ is clearly left or right, it should probably be its own category.

[Pericles]

Not sure why the disappointment among Scheer supporters.  The CPC performance is pretty much right about what was expected, maybe a little less strategic than hoped for, but basically they hit their support level.  The problem of bad vote distribution was there from the beginning of the campaign wasn't it?

Well the CPC should have been able to win this election, this seems more of a case of people not wanting them and Scheer than actually supporting Trudeau.

[Pericles]

Wow, the left wing blew dozens of seats by splitting the vote, fdck them.

Arguably, that always happens in Canada.

[Pericles]

I had a look through the riding results and it seems that, on a uniform swing of just taking votes from the Liberals and adding them to the CPC (unrealistic of course but a rough guide), to become the largest party the CPC would have needed to win Peterborough-Kawartha (if they won that and all seats the Liberals beat them in by a smaller margin they'd have 137 seats to 135 for the Liberals). Peterborough-Kawartha was won by the Liberals by a margin of 4.36% (while they lost the popular vote remember), so a 5.7% popular vote win was needed by the CPC just to get a bare minority.

[Pericles]

I had a look through the riding results and it seems that, on a uniform swing of just taking votes from the Liberals and adding them to the CPC (unrealistic of course but a rough guide), to become the largest party the CPC would have needed to win Peterborough-Kawartha (if they won that and all seats the Liberals beat them in by a smaller margin they'd have 137 seats to 135 for the Liberals). Peterborough-Kawartha was won by the Liberals by a margin of 4.36% (while they lost the popular vote remember), so a 5.7% popular vote win was needed by the CPC just to get a bare minority.

That's a... serious handicap, if it carries over going forward (which of course it might not, since Canada sometimes has weird provincial trends).

Yeah tbf it might not I believe the CPC had a more efficient vote than the Liberals in 2004 and then a less efficient one in 2006.

[Pericles]

How come the NDP seems to routine be overrated by the polls? This election, Alberta 2019, Ontario 2018, and arguably the 2015 election all come to mind as examples of the NDP underperforming their poll numbers. It can't all be late swings surely?

[Pericles]

Other than the natural post-Mulcair Quebec attrition and other places where they no longer had incumbent advantage (like downtown Toronto), they treaded water more than they took a tumble.  All in all, 2015 was the more critical "tumble" than 2019.

Yes, it was a a two-stage tumble for the NDP.

The NDP pretty much stayed even in English Canada in terms of seats, but their 15 seat loss in Quebec meant they needed to make big gains outside of Quebec just to tread water, and they couldn't do that.