Canadian Election 2019

[Oryxslayer]

The Quebec Premier has started a list of demands to federal parties ahead of the federal election.

Have a single income tax return for provincial and federal government managed by Quebec
$300 million in compensation for costs incurred by asylum seekers crossing the border
More power over the selection of immigrants
Funding for public transit projects
Compensation for dairy farmers hurt by the Nafta renegotiation

The filing of a single tax return managed by Quebec was a motion supported by all parties in the National assembly last year. Conservatives and Bloc are for it. NDP adopted it as policy last year but seem to have changed their mind and no longer support it, the Liberals look like they are against.

Scheer has presented five policies to appeal to Quebec:
More autonomy over immigration
Single income tax return
Name a Quebec minister in charge of the federal economic development agency for Quebec
Incentive for retirees to work
Invest to stop wastewater flowing in rivers

https://ipolitics.ca/2019/01/21/scheer-presents-first-wave-of-tories-quebec-centric-policies/   

Pandering.

The path to an overall victory for the tories requires turning a good number of CAQ voters into Con voters, so...yeah they kinda have to pander.

[Oryxslayer]

I'm just going to pop in here and note that Quebec in 2015 was:

35.7 Lib
16.7 Con
25.4 NDP
19.3 BQ
2.4 Other

So the poll has Libs up 3, Con up 4, BQ up 2, Bernier gaining 6, and and NDP down 17.

[Oryxslayer]

In Laurier-Sainte-Marie, some have reported that Steven Guilbeault will be the Liberal candidate. He's a well known environmentalist. He could attract the young progressive of the riding who has environmental concerns, the voter who would not vote for the Liberal party but by the candidate and his star power (unless it is only seen as green washing for the party).

Seems like there will be competition for the environment issue. The Bloc wants it to be one of their main issues, NDP also, there is always the Green party and the Liberals maybe with Guilbeault will want to show it's a concern for them.

Those with environmental concerns, will not vote Liberal, they are not the party of environmentalism based on their term in gov't. Guilberault will spend all of his time defending the LPC track record; he will be attacked by the NPD, Greens on their lack of environmentalism. BUT I see the LPC point was to go after NPD/BQ/Greens votes and as you mentioned I expect to see "Green-washing". The only LPC talk track is Carbon Pricing, everything else is Harper legacy policy.

The NPD announced that Nima Machouf; Epidemiologist, former Project Montreal municipal candidate in 2009 and wife of former Quebec Solidare MNA/co-Leader Amir Khadir will be running for the nomination.

It will depend on polls as most environmentalists know Scheer will be even less supportive of their demands than Trudeau.  If Liberals have a solid lead or its clear the Tories are going to win, then they will probably vote for what they want, but if close, I think a lot will vote strategically.  Also what riding they live in will matter.  If in a safe Tory riding like Rural Alberta or no hope Tory one like Downtown Toronto and Island of Montreal, a lot will go elsewhere as no risk of splitting the vote, but if competitive ones like 905 belt many will probably vote Liberal strategically as the Tories have a strong base but not majority so every NDP and Green vote gained increases the chances of the Tories winning here.

Certainly some voters will vote strategically...but I just have to pop in and say to look at the 905 and Outer Toronto in Ontario 2018. Tons of ridings where the Tories ran down the middle between the NDP and the Libs. Maybe things will be different when there  is two parties rather then three in contention, but don't trust the voters. As the saying goes "A individual voter is smart, voters as a group are stupid."

[Oryxslayer]

Christine Moore, NDP MP for Abitibi-Témiscamingue will not run again. She can be added to the list of incumbents not running.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Canadian_federal_election#Incumbents_not_running_for_reelection

She had a lot of bad press recently and was never offered a senior role by Mulcair or Singh this Parliament.

Very likely Liberal gain.

I find that Northern Ontario's remaining strength for Liberals and the NDP contradicts the seeming worldwide trend of rural extractive areas moving rightward. Even in BC, the Kootenays are drifting rightward.

But it is in line with the increasingly common trend of minorities voting against conservatives.

[Oryxslayer]

I haven’t been following the campaign too closely but why is the Bloc doing so well now?

Good debate performance, and the Libs sliding in general. So their support might be a bit of a temporary bump, one that results in an underpreformance come election day.

Unrelated, but something I think that belongs in this thread:

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/status/1183366822806151172

[Oryxslayer]

Voted Tory in the advance poll yesterday.

I toyed with voting People's or spoiling my ballot, but my ultimately decided that Scheer and my local candidate were better fits for my views.

You didn't wait until election day? Don't you want to see your vote contribute to the maps?

What I'm finding from my social-media feed is that an *awful* lot of people are "selfie voting" in advance--sort of like a forthright declaration of a commitment to exercise their franchise, the earlier the better; and in a way that implicitly encourages others to follow suit.  And reports are that advance turnout's up 25% from last time, which I think is all about advance turnout, rather than turnout in general.  (And the phenomenon seems particularly common among the "fashionably left"; thus, some of last year's Ontario NDP landslides were even *more* landslidish in the advance polls.)

Which, of course, is hell to those of us who use the polling-map barometer--almost as if good old-fashioned voting on Election Day is becoming a Luddite anachronism a la land lines and print newspapers...

It's almost like you are trying to convince people that this is a bad thing?  Good on those people for voting early and sharing it.

if you're on this site, there's an assumption that you like election maps, no? When you vote advance your vote doesn't go in to the poll by poll maps.

Agreed, but not people voting in advance polls' fault.  That's all.  The impression I got from the post was kind of like a "Who are they to think they should be voting in advance polls" nonsense.  I'm happy people are sharing they are voting, and encouraging others to do the same, even if it means fewer maps / less accurate maps.

Yeah this is more a failing of Canada to match advance voters to their poll, which should always be done no matter what country or election, simply for administrative reasons. The side affect is that I can then make more accurate maps, rather than be forced to either ignore the advance voters or dispersing the advance poll numbers across every poll equally - both methods have their flaws.

[Oryxslayer]

So, I have not been following this election that much beyond the newspapers. This is especially shocking considering how much effort I poured into keeping on top of Quebec and Ontario's elections. Anyway, my question to all the Canadians is: how likely is govt gridlock post-election similar to what happened in Spain? If polls and history is to be trusted, the Libs will more likely than not be positioned to form the next govt, but not without some NDP/Bloc cooperation. In such a situation, Trudeau will no doubt try to stand firm to the history of Canadian minority govts, but Singh seems to want more from the Liberal government than just "not the Tories." So what's the chance we end up with a prolonged coalition vs minority standoff?

[Oryxslayer]

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.

Changing electoral laws without a referendum always appears authoritarian or single-minded, and is never a good move in a healthy democracy. Every opposition can not only run on accusing you of their usual points, and run against your 18% popularity, they can also now run to restore the  traditional system. Keeping things functioning as they are now is also a powerful motivator (when everything is fine mind you) - remember that BC has had several electoral referendums, including one under the current popular NDP govt, and FPTP has always prevailed. If the Ontario Lib's put it to a referendum, they would lose because  of said 12% approval. Voters  may not vote based on positive approval, but they certainly do based on negative ratings. In weak ones where party corruption is expected to maintain stability, then changing electoral laws is just part of your daily dose  of political preservation from the incumbent regime.

 Also remember that this stuff always takes a good time to implement and see effects. Unless this is truly a weak democracy that changes right before an election to preserve the incumbent party, the new rules wouldn't go into effect for a few years, not in 2017/18/19. So you are just handing your opponents ammunition, with no upside. In a similar vein, party splits and joins would also not occur immediately. The only way to avoid the downsides of said transition period would once again be handing the question to the people, and who knows what they may decide.

[Oryxslayer]

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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/VoiceOfFranky/status/1186091782200856576

Well, we now know why this guy is calling a liberal majority. If the grits are back ahead by this much in Quebec then they get the lions share of seats - mind you EKOS is going out on a limb from the trend here. On the other hand, even with such a large lead I can still see it mostly all getting packing onto the Island and Ottawa regions. The same poll showed that higher education correlates with Lib voting, and the CAQ territory where the BQ/Lib's are fighting is mostly rural.

EDIT: I got sniped by Atlas lag.

[Oryxslayer]

  Conservatives are kind of in a box because I would think most soft NDP or Green voters who are wavering, are wavering between voting for their first choice, and if not for the Liberals. Not a big universe of potential CPC voters out there, outside of the already small PPC electorate. Don't see how they get too close to a majority.

Indeed. I haven't seen any polls like this lately, but for a while around 2011-2015 some pollsters published figures for a question along the lines of 'what party would you ever consider voting for?'. The Libs always managed in the 50s, the Tories could never crack 45. Add to that the fact that the 'pool' of voters who would consider voting Tory is disproportionately concentrated in the 75 or so ridings in the prairies and you've got a serious structural impediment to a Tory majority.

The 'tragic' thing (at least from a Tory perspective) is that there are voters out there that are far more reachable then the Toronto Suburbs swing types that decide every major Lib/Tory contest. The problem is these voters are all in Quebec. The CAQ win and their subsequent rise in popularity shows that their national-conservative brand and conservative identity politics has a large market in the many seats between Montreal and Quebec City. The Tories though have a horrible brand in Quebec and can't seem to access these voters because they like to ignore the national side of that equation. I suspect the Conservatives would really benefit electorally from a 'sister-party' type deal, like the German CDU/CSU, but that is not something likely in the foreseeable future.

The Tories today are closer to having a friend in Quebec than anytime previously in living memory, but they can't convert voters because they are the Tories and this is Quebec.

[Oryxslayer]

I'm saying Liberal minority, I think polls are somewhat overestimating liberals.


But I don't like any of the party leaders soooooo

I think a lot of people want both Trudeau and Scheer to get punished today, but the window of outcomes where that occurs is rather narrow, unless the NDP/BQ/others surge.

[Oryxslayer]

Wait....if I am reading this right, center right and right-wing parties in canada will barely combine for 1/3 of the vote? That is embarrassing.

It's Canada not Louisana

I get that, but the U.K., Germany, etc are also not Louisiana and center right parties combine for way more there than Canada.

Best way to understand Canada is that ~1/3 of the seats are located in a region comparable to NY/IL, and a majority of the national seats are  in sub/urban areas. That's not a recipe for a strong conservative party, which is why they often have to win 'red-tories' to remain relevant.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/MikeMontrealer/status/1186110065989824512

Forum's last poll's regional breakdown. Seat/Vote -wise it is:

Lib: 140/31.7
Con: 111/29.9
NDP: 38/17.5
Bloc: 48/8.3
Green: 1/9.0
PPC: 0/3.0

[Oryxslayer]

From what I gather, is the likely outcome?
1. Liberals lose a lot of seats but still have a plurality
2. Conservatives make big gains
3. NDP loses a few seats
4. BQ surges massively

Change 3 to: NDP makes gains outside of Quebec, but is offset by their losses in Quebec.

[Oryxslayer]

Can I just say, Canada's election cartogram is bizarre.

it's even weirder when you know, decide not to distort the district size at keep everything uniform like the cartogram should. Urbanization distorts the map.

[Oryxslayer]

Tories win first precinct in Coast of Bays.

[Oryxslayer]

NB/NS/PEI polls close.

[Oryxslayer]

Tories win the  first poll in Egmont, their first real pickup opportunity that has reported so far.

[Oryxslayer]

Tories win the first poll in Mirmichi-grand Lake by 3 votes, the first poll in Fundy Royal, and the second poll in Egmont. Libs on the  board in Central Nova, Sydney Victoria, and Saint John Rothesay.

[Oryxslayer]

First results from mainland Atlantic looking really good for the Conservatives if they hold. But the lead are tiny and the Early vote may be biased. Plus no pre-election vote. Cape Breton Blue bump though?