2021 Canadian general election - Election Day and Results

[beesley]

Thanks Ishan!

[beesley]

Well my predictions were dogsh**t lol (I got a few things right, but the important stuff wrong).

Fun but irrelevant fact: the NDP aren't winning any of the ridings of their former leaders, minus the two BC ridings held by Tommy Douglas. York South, Oshawa and Ottawa Centre, Yukon, Halifax, Toronto Danforth and Outremont all stayed with their respective parties. (They only held four of these in 2011, for what it's worth).

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1440315632893845507?s=19

https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1440161338332835842?s=19

This should be of interest to some of you (but hopefully no more than just interest).

[beesley]

Another fun fact: for all the talk about MPs losing their pensions, only seven did: the Liberals' Deb Sculte, Bernadette Jordan, Neil Ellis and Maryam Monsef, and the Conservatives' Bob Saroya, Kerry Diotte and Leona Alleslev.

[beesley]

I think you're right that the bulk of the LPC base in Belleville is probably more "white-collar Laurentian" than "working-class small town" at this point. I was thinking more 2015 when it seemed like class was a major dividing point. More well-off parts of the GTA (along with ethnic factors for the Chinese and Jewish votes in some ridings) had a great Tory showing in 2015 - note how Eglinton-Lawrence was the CPC's second-best 416 riding, probably a combination of the Jewish vote, Joe Oliver, and the wealthy demographic. Meanwhile, more rugged smaller cities in Southern Ontario went hard for the LPC.

This also fed into a lot of the missed seat projections - far from the Liberals solely being resilient in Ontario, it was assumed in 2019 and this year that seats like Richmond Hill, Newmarket-Aurora and Whitby had to go back to the CPC because they were close in 2015 - when there were other dynamics at play. Of course the CPC did return to that somewhat it seems this year but not in the same numbers.

Another thing was that we weren't wrong to question why the Liberals were spending their time in seats like London West, Halifax and Mississauga-Lakeshore - they needed to win them after all and they were too close to comfort. As a result conclusions were made that every seat before London West was also competitive. We just assumed that the Liberals weren't spending time in Richmond Hill because it was gone for them - rather, their internal polling had them stronger. So we were right to pay attention, but were wrong to make sweeping interpretations.

[beesley]

One interesting observation is Madawaska area of New Brunswick.  It seems like Canadian and American sides which are closely connected and many have family on both sides moving in opposite directions.  A decade ago, Tories held Madawaska County both federally and provincially, while now getting clobbered at both levels.  By contrast on US side, Obama was winning this area by massive margins, around 2/3 of vote.  On other hand Trump both times either won many communities on American side or came very close.  Any reason why they are going in exact opposite direction as while US different country it seems most border states following similar trends to Canadian counterparts?

Would it not be because of the unique identity - that area is 90% Francophone I believe and the same applies across the rest of Francophone New Brunswick. Whereas that part of Maine is just a more Conservative part of rural New England, and the equivalent conservative (small c) part of New Brunswick is the area covered by Tobique Mactaquac.

[beesley]

The largest swing was in Gatineau, at 37.8% NDP-Liberal.

The Tory swings out west were generally in NDP/Conservative ridings where the Liberals rose but stayed third.

I remember how angry the former Liberal-then NDP MP Francoise Boivin (who lost and beat the Bloc) was about that, saying that none of the work she did for her constituents mattered because she wasn't re-elected. But the large swing probably has as much to do with her smashing victory in 2011 than anything else.

[beesley]

Also looks like Tories despite not gaining, did see swings in their favour in parts of country they need to gain, namely Ontario, some parts of Quebec, Atlantic Canada, and even some areas in BC.  By contrast seems strongest swings away from them were Prairies where they could afford to lose lots of votes with few seats.  Interestingly enough in Ontario, race was closer than 2006 when Harper came to power and that election it was a 4.8 point spread between two parties with Liberals ahead while in 2021 it was a 4.3 spread.  Yet in 2006 it was 54 Liberals to 40 Tories out of 106 seats while in 2021 it was 37 to 77 out of 121 seats.  So seems results vote wise similar in Ontario to 2006, but Liberals way more efficient in 2021 than 2006.

The actual two seat loss may as well just be 'bad luck' or turnout given how close some ridings were - Kitchener-Conestoga, Trois-Rivieres etc. Though perhaps because of that triviality the narrative wouldn't have changed much at all had O'Toole got 125 seats (more than that probably requires a bit more) since it would still be close to the status quo. The only difference would be that the CPC/O'Toole camp would've heavily emphasised this.

A lot of it is just expectations - I don't think the CPC ever believed the narrative put out by some Liberals that this was a more winnable election than in 2019, and I certainly don't believe it.

[beesley]

https://twitter.com/MaBlaisMorin/status/1445846284573630467?t=J0zW3lkx5Dbv_KpBVj...

The Liberals have held onto Chateuguay-Lacolle after a recount. So not a single seat changed hands in Quebec! Extraordinary.

[beesley]

I heard an anecdote from a friend after the 2019 election which indicated this could have been the case. She worked in Scheer's office at the time and had said that one of her colleagues had basically been drafted to run as a paper candidate in one of the rural Newfoundland ridings (I think either Long Range Mountains or Coast of Bays--Central--Notre Dame) because they couldn't find a local candidate in time. Whichever one it was, apparently he did little-to-no campaigning there, instead helping out candidates elsewhere in the Atlantic provinces, but on election night the CPC vote share with him on the ballot increased by over 15%.

Yes - that was Josh Eisses in Long Range Mountains.

[beesley]

Sure, but they were struggling to make an impact even in the Layton years, when the NS NDP was stronger across the board than it is now.

Probably because in this case, the Alexa years were more pertinent than the Layton years.  And even provincially, the NDP struggled in Cape Breton through this period--in part because the Libs and PCs were more prone to having high-profile regional leadership figures (Russell MacKinnon, Rodney MacDonald, Cec Clarke, etc), while the NDP tended to have more of a "metropolitan Halifax" profile.  (And in '11, I suspect the federal party was already hampered by Dexter government backlash.)

The Alexa McDonough years during her time as leader of the provincial NDP were marred by divisions with Cape Breton. Her predecessor as leader, Jeremy Ackerman, got in a big fight with Cape Breton NDP MLA Paul McEwen as part of a rift between Cape Breton New Democrats, and New Democrats in the rest of the province. 

I don't believe the NDP won a seat in Cape Breton during her time as provincial leader, and McEwen quit the NDP to form the Cape Breton Labour Party before joining the provincial Liberals.

I actually know Jeremy Akerman IRL. He's a Trumpist now.

Peter Fenwick in Newfoundland and Labrador also went from being the NDP provincial leader and hardline union activist to running for the Canadian Alliance in 2000.

Slightly less of a shift perhaps as it's Newfoundland, but Ryan Cleary, having lost for the federal NDP in St. John's South subsequently ran for the PCs in Windsor Lake in the almost immediate provincial election afterwards. This was not well-received by anyone.

[beesley]

Ottawa was also one of the few places in the province that saw a large (comparatively) swing away from Doug Ford's Tories in 2018.  I've also noticed the NDP has been doing much better in Ottawa, than ever, really (except in Ottawa Centre ) For example, the NDP had its best result ever in my riding of Ottawa South this year.

Also wonder if Ford was a bad fit.  It seems in your white upper middle class areas, O'Toole generally saw favourable swings whereas those were areas where Ford most underperformed. 

Yeah, it would seem as if in Ottawa the Liberals did well without the NDP doing badly - has to come from somewhere. Ottawa W-Nepean seems fairly illustrative.