Canadian Election 2019

[Filuwaúrdjan]

'Cape Breton by the Sea' is hilarious given a) rather obviously all of Cape Breton is by the sea and b) that the riding covers some of the most horrifying postindustrial dystopia in all North America...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Who will succeed Singh?

Sven Robinson is outspoken and probably could get media attention and visibility.

Excellent idea, if the idea is to actually kill off the NDP for real this time.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Right, and to not even have candidates in place for an ordinarily scheduled election in two months?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

From what I gather in rural Quebec, people see Justin as a victim of mudslinging by opportunistic politicians.

An On Brand response, one must admit.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Always be careful with surveys of minorities, particularly ones that are highly internally diverse.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Constituency polling is something to be highly cautious of (as I believe it is traditional for me to say), but Brosseau somehow being re-elected once more would be very Banter Era.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I mean if the NDP does do very badly (hardly certain yet of course), then that would presumably be a reflection on Singh's failure to make any impact on the public consciousness before the election? There's no virtue in making excuses for poor leadership out of sentiment.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Strategic voting has *always* happened; it's just that in this age of social media, people speak of it as if it were a new invention (oh!  gee whiz,I gotta vote strategically).  It's why the NDP has *always* been the third party, much like the Libs/Lib Dems in Britain since their "strange death".

The one exception of an election actually proving the rule - the moment it became clear in 2011 that the NDP were in the stronger position, all of that logic turned on its head and flowed the other way. A salutary reminder that most voters make a calculation based on the options presented to them, rather than use the ballot as a means of expressing fundamental identity. Less and less do that, in nearly all countries, with every passing year.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For instance, Labor in the U.K in 2005 won 35.2% of the vote but won a comfortable majority of 366 of 646 seats. I don't know that anybody expected that to happen.

That was a very unusual election in that the party that won polled poorly - really badly - in a lot of its usual strongholds, but held up well with swing voters.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I would be more interested to see whether he can boost the party with what we might call a non-traditional blue collar electorate. Brampton et al being very working class by any definition that makes sense in 2019.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It isn't something that one could ever prove, but there might be practical - governance, discourse - implications to less and less detailed information like that. I do sometimes wonder if some of the more bizarre and inexplicably stupid political blunderings seen in this country over the past decade might have been... if not averted then maybe lessened... if our politicians actually knew who was voting for them. Uniquely, of course, they have no real idea at all.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

In purely functional terms (and Bagehot was right: really, what else matters in politics?) the Liberal Party of Canada has spent most of the the time since the 1980s operating to the right of all significant German parties other than the AfD and not always that much more to the left of the British Conservatives.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The best comparison for the Canadian federal Liberals is the UK Conservative party. They are the party of old money and the well connected, reluctantly embracing change and more concerned with power than policy at the end of the day. Unlike the UK Tories, however, the Liberals have never found common cause with any truly radical right wing politics (nor left wing, really, notwithstanding the Liberals' right-leaning opponents tiresome insistence to the contrary).

Neither party would welcome the comparison, but it is accurate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In this analogy, would Liberal historic dominance amongst voters from visible minorities be analogous to the surprising success Conservatives had with working class voters in the decades after 1867?

Yes, that's an excellent parallel actually.

For that matter, why have the Liberals been so good at keeping the support of those voters (with the partial exception of the Chinese)? In principle you would expect them to be a much stronger demographic for the NDP.

A lot of this is related to Canada's lack of a real municipal socialist tradition: local government has tended to be 'non-partisan' and dominated by business interests, and reformist challenges to the conservative local government establishment have usually been decoupled from organised labour. So the key entry point for working class minorities to enter Left politics directly does not exist. Minority politics, instead, tends to be driven to an even greater degree than in most Western countries by community leaders, and who is better at playing the ensuing game of arbitrage than the Liberals?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A relief for the Liberals but still not good; the majority is gone, they trail in votes and the pattern of the victory of sorts is not very healthy. Poor for the Conservatives: they have just blown an election they could have (and should have) won because they scared urban Ontario. A catastrophic set of results for the NDP, even if is a lesser catastrophe than looked likely earlier this year. An unwelcome return for the Bloc and on one of the darkest campaigns they've ever run: nasty stuff. A missed opportunity for the Greens. And, happily, a major flop for Bernier.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A relief for the Liberals but still not good; the majority is gone, they trail in votes and the pattern of the victory of sorts is not very healthy. Poor for the Conservatives: they have just blown an election they could have (and should have) won because they scared urban Ontario. A catastrophic set of results for the NDP, even if is a lesser catastrophe than looked likely earlier this year. An unwelcome return for the Bloc and on one of the darkest campaigns they've ever run: nasty stuff. A missed opportunity for the Greens. And, happily, a major flop for Bernier.

So terrible for everybody?

Good for the Bloc, which is terrible for everyone else.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What *I* find depressing is how the Cons just keep getting more stratospheric in the West, i.e. all the 75%+ and even 80%+  mandates with opposition all in single digits--and really, that should be depressing to *them*, too, in a dumbed-down "why bother having elections?" way...

Between that and a few other things, I'm starting to think that for the health of the Canadian polity (if not necessarily the party) it would be a good idea for the NDP to have a Westerner as leader for a while.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Should I not be surprised the NDP picked up Nunavut? Seemed a bit unexpected.

Plenty of reason there to be dissatisfied with the status quo and they had a strong young candidate in Mumilaaq Qaqqaq
https://aptnnews.ca/2019/09/21/nunavuts-ndp-candidate-in-federal-election-is-25-just-like-the-inuit-who-founded-the-territory/

It's an interesting shift from normal voting patterns there, but they have a lot to be cross about, so...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But really; is there any end in sight?  These Western Con seats are looking like cartoons of electoral democracy.  They're...electoral swamps, like provincial Liberal seats in Anglo Montreal or "urban" Dem congressional districts in the US.  That.  Is.  Not.  Healthy.  

I mean, I might be fine with the Cons getting 2/3 of the vote in such ridings--but 4/5 or 5/6, sheesh.  *No wonder* this election's been followed by rekindled talk of Western separation...

Yes, this is pretty clearly not ideological voting in any sense, but sectional and... that's really not good or healthy.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

NDP share of seats 1962-present

1962 - 7.2
1963 - 6.4
1965 - 7.9
1968 - 8.3
1972 - 11.7
1974 - 6.1
1979 - 9.2
1980 - 11.3
1984 - 10.6
1988 - 14.6
1993 - 3.0
1997 - 7.0
2000 - 4.3
2004 - 6.2
2006 - 9.4
2008 - 12.0
2011 - 33.4
2015 - 13.0
2019 - 7.1

NDP vote share 1962-present

1962 - 13.6
1963 - 13.2
1965 - 17.9
1968 - 17.0
1972 - 17.8
1974 - 15.5
1979 - 17.9
1980 - 19.8
1984 - 18.8
1988 - 20.4
1993 - 6.9
1997 - 11.0
2000 - 8.5
2004 - 15.7
2006 - 17.5
2008 - 18.2
2011 - 30.6
2015 - 19.7
2019 - 15.9

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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

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

[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.

[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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Appearances can be deceptive. There is nowhere in the United States that is that like Ontario. New England and Upstate New York would have been had they been blessed with better soil, perhaps, and had the lure of, well, the Middle West not existed from the mid 19th century.