Canadian Election 2019

[politicallefty]

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.

It still looks to me like the Liberals are likely to come out of the election with a strong minority. Western Canada doesn't look good for them right now, but their seats in more left-wing enclaves. If the Tories are running up the score in rural and even some suburban areas, it won't net them much apart from maybe Saskatchewan and maybe the Liberal Calgary seats. If they sweep AB and SK, they're probably making inroads into urban areas and probably in strong minority territory (like 2008). If the Liberals come out of the election with a minority government, it'll be a result of holding the fort in Ontario and Atlantic Canada. If they are denied a majority, it's almost certainly because of Quebec (or at least 80% of the reason).

[politicallefty]

This is looking better than expected for libs, but not absurdly so. I'm thinking mid 140's for libs, mid 110's for cons, others stagnant

PS- where are yall getting seat flip results?

It's pretty easy to figure out for Atlantic Canada since the Liberals swept everything in 2015.

[politicallefty]

It seems like strong Liberal minority is most likely at the moment, but obviously still crazy early.

[politicallefty]

I definitely don't think you can rule out a Liberal Majority. They're holding up quite well in Quebec at the moment. The NDP numbers are hideous.

[politicallefty]

CBC also projects Liberal Minority. Should still be a very strong minority when all's said and done.

[politicallefty]

Lib+NDP>170 for the first time tonight.

[politicallefty]

Alberta and Saskatchewan are coming in extremely strong for the Conservatives, even stronger than under Harper. Liberals shutout and only Edmonton-Strathcona for the NDP stopping a full sweep.

[politicallefty]

A couple of noteworthy things:

It looks like the Liberals will come first in Quebec in both seats and popular vote, albeit vary narrowly in both.

Ontario is actually interesting because it's not interesting. Hardly any change in the bottom line in terms of seats. Liberals and Conservatives both losing vote share (about 4% and 2% respectively). NDP vote share is actually up very slightly, but they're down 2 seats to 6 overall.

The thing about the popular vote is that there is no Liberal analogue to the sheer Tory dominance of Alberta and Saskatchewan (and the latter only recently lurching hard-right). It seems like in the past Quebec was the closest thing to do that most of the time.

[politicallefty]

Just curious, does anyone have a breakdown of the PV per province in 2015? Because the Cons are REALLY running up the score in AB rn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Canadian_federal_election#Results_by_province

Not just Alberta, but SK as well.

[politicallefty]

I think it's interesting how divergent the traditional grouping of Manitoba and Saskatchewan has become. For future elections, it probably makes more sense to group SK with AB or at least poll SK and MB separately. Winnipeg clearly is a larger influence in MB than any city by itself in either SK or AB, with the Winnipeg region electing 8/14 ridings. Only 5 ridings in MB are truly rural small-c conservative, compared with 8 in SK (not to mention Regina and Saskatoon combined aren't even close to Winnipeg). Each province has a northern riding which I think can have very strange politics. With that said, I'm still surprised Ralph Goodale lost by the margin that he did and that the NDP couldn't salvage anything out of SK.

I guess it shouldn't be too surprising the Liberals in Alberta all faced defeat, but Calgary really went back to its roots (pretty sure all majority Conservative wins). I would've predicted at least a hold in Edmonton Centre. It shows how much of a one-off 2015 was for the left in Alberta: NDP provincial majority and the Liberals holding 2 seats in each of Edmonton and Calgary (not to mention the NDP in Edmonton Strathcona).

Also, I'm almost certain Battle River-Crowfoot and Foothills are the first ridings in Canadian history with a winning majority of over 50,000 votes (Calgary Shepard looks to be 30 votes shy of that margin, although I'm not sure if there are any uncounted votes remaining).

[politicallefty]

A majority of fifty thousand has been obtained before, but only once (Maurizio Bevilacqua in 1993). It's now been done four times.

Earlier in this thread I'd listed all the occasions where an MP had won by more than forty thousand; here is an updated list that includes winners from 2019 in bold (there's still one riding on the list that hasn't produced an official count, so I'll amend that number when it comes in).

52544 - Mike Lake (Cons) in Edmonton – Wetaskiwin (2019)
51389 - Maurizio Bevilacqua (Lib) in York North (1993)
50124 - Damien Kurek (Cons) in Battle River – Crowfoot (2019)
50016 - John Barlow (Cons) in Foothills (2019)
49970 - Tom Kmiec (Cons) in Calgary Shepard (2019)
49819 - Earl Dreeshen (Cons) in Red Deer – Mountain View (2019)
47831 - Blaine Calkins (Cons) in Red Deer – Lacombe (2019)
47763 - Bobbie Sparrow (PC) in Calgary South (1984)
47079 - Blake Richards (Cons) in Banff – Airdrie (2019)
46953 - Chris Warkentin (Cons) in Grande Prairie – Mackenzie (2019)
46295 - Dane Lloyd (Cons) in Sturgeon River – Parkland (2019)
44733 - Garnett Genuis (Cons) in Sherwood Park – Fort Saskatchewan (2019)
44586 - Shannon Stubbs (Cons) in Lakeland (2019)
43106 - Martin Shields (Cons) in Bow River (2019)
43052 - Stephanie Kusie (Cons) in Calgary Midnapore (2019)
42928 - Benoit Sauvageau (BQ) in Terrebonne (1993)
42047 - Kevin Sorenson (Cons) in Battle River – Crowfoot (2015)
41691 - Jason Kenney (Cons) in Calgary Southeast (2011)
41425 - Gerald Soroka (Cons) in Yellowhead (2019) (PRELIMINARY ONLY)
40480 - Monique Begin (Lib) in Saint-Leonard – Anjou (1979)
40189 - Don Boudria (Lib) in Glengarry – Prescott – Russell (1993)

From seven times (three in 1993, one apiece in 1979, 1984, 2011 & 2015; three Liberals, three Tories & one Bloquiste) to twenty-one now. Two-thirds of the people on the list are Alberta Tories from this year's election.

Additionally, with the official result for Battle River – Crowfoot in, one can confirm the 85.5% of the vote and 80.4% margin won by Damien Kurek. While not the largest-ever Tory margin (probably the all-time records for both Tories & Liberals will remain in 1917), it is the biggest in a century, breaking the 75.2% margin won by Kevin Sorenson in Crowfoot in 2006. It's also the biggest margin of any candidate for any party in half a century - you have to go back to Pierre Trudeau's 86% majority in Mount Royal in 1968 to find a bigger one.

Although Alberta has been solidly for the Tories (or the Reformers or Socreds) for many years, it's only recently that the kinds of huge, Quebec-Liberal-style margins that we're seeing this time have become a regular fixture there. To wit, the biggest majority in a General Election - no matter what the overall outcome was - was usually a Quebec or Newfoundland Liberal (for decades rural NL was even better Liberal territory than Quebec). The average Liberal margin of victory was also generally larger than the average Tory margin.

However, from 2004 to the present the biggest majority has always been a Tory one. The exception was 2015, when Judy Foote just barely edged out Kevin Sorenson, 71.7% to 71.5%, and the average Tory margin has been bigger than the average Liberal one from 2004 to now without exception. This could be a sign that the Tories will need to get appreciably more votes than the Liberals to win government on a regular basis (just as the opposite was the case for many years due to Liberal dominance in Quebec).

Overall, twenty-five ridings still have not produced official counts. Most are large rural constituencies where you'd expect them to take a while; exceptions are the seats of two party leaders (Beloeil – Chambly & Papineau) as well as Vancouver Centre & Victoria.

I'm sort of surprised I missed Edmonton-Wetaskiwin, either a larger electorate or just significantly higher turnout (I'm assuming the latter as I'm assuming it's a more suburban riding). I'm very surprised the previous record was in 1993. I figured percentage margins haven't been broken this year, but some of those rural Alberta seats are really pushing it and that's with the PPC shaving a 2-3% off the Conservative margins.

I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain the overall Conservative vote percentages in AB and SK are records (at least for the modern era). SK hasn't historically been strongly Conservative, but getting over 69% in AB even exceeds Mulroney's win in 1984.

In Alberta and Saskatchewan there were only 5 ridings the Conservatives received less than 50% of the vote: Edmonton-Strathcona (37.3% - went NDP), Edmonton Centre (41.7%), Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River (41.7%), Saskatoon West (48.3%) and Regina-Wascana (49.6%).

And all were pickups for the Tories.

Let's put it this way: What is the "Calgary" of the USA?

Houston, probably.

Maybe DFW up until very recently?

[politicallefty]

Looking over some of the more apparently anomalous results, what's with the big Conservative wins in Thornhill and Richmond Centre? Obviously very different reasons I'm assuming apart from perhaps incumbent popularity. I'm assuming Richmond Centre has a fairly large Chinese population and I know the Tories have historically done well with Chinese voters, but I'm sure there have to be a number of other heavily Chinese seats that didn't go their way. Also, the lone NDP seat in Montreal was held by a pretty substantial margin as well.

[politicallefty]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm still surprised by Edmonton's reversion to the Tories (Calgary wasn't surprising, but I figured there was a chance in the more urban core ridings). At the provincial level (and yes, I'm well-aware of the differences between federal and provincial politics), Edmonton was still very much a fortress for the NDP. Vote splitting can certainly not be blamed for the Liberals losing Edmonton Centre considering the NDP vote share dropped by almost 4% from 2015. What explains the divergence between federal and provincial politics in Edmonton? I suppose more specifically, what does a federal Conservative/provincial NDP voter look like (particularly in Edmonton)? And we're talking about elections only 6 months apart, so not exactly far apart.

[politicallefty]

I don't think it's entirely fair to compare federal and provincial results. The Western provinces are basically a 2-party system now, very different from the federal multi-party system. I wasn't just comparing the provincial NDP to federal NDP results. I was looking at the collapse of the Liberals as well. Like I said before, I would've figured the Liberals could've at least held Edmonton Centre.

I suppose it makes some sense that if college-educated women are the primary swing voters that someone like Rachel Notley would be a very strong leader for the NDP (not just for the fact of becoming the first left-of-centre government in Alberta in generations) and as evidenced by keeping her on as leader even in defeat. But to be fair though, isn't almost everyone in Alberta pro-oil and pro-pipeline? I read that the new NDP MP for Edmonton Strathcona is willing to work with the Liberals (although apparently not willing to join the Cabinet) and she's not really in line with the federal NDP on those specific issues.

Also, just curious, but is there any precedent in Canada for a government to have an opposition MP in Cabinet?

[politicallefty]

I don't know if it's just me, but Justin Trudeau does seem to be echoing his father in a lot ways. However, it does seem like this Liberal minority is more stable than it might appear. I've heard the NDP is beyond broke and can't realistically contest another election anytime soon. I imagine the Liberals and NDP can probably broker some sort of unofficial accord. I also have to wonder if the fact that the last time the NDP brought down a Liberal minority, it resulted in almost 10 years of Conservative rule under Harper. Obviously any political party wants to increase its seat count, but as far as getting its policies closer to enactment, a Liberal minority is probably one of the most preferable results for the NDP (especially considering they can provide a fairly comfortable majority).