Yep, I’ve been trying to keep up with the last couple days of posts, to understand the “was it a repudiation of him or not” factor that I read about in Facebook memes, but I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the conversation in this thread.
Hopefully once this all slows down we can bring this thread in for a landing with a “Canada Election For Dummies” summary.
I would say that there were two major campaign themes in this election that were ships passing in the night, and each was successful to a certain point.
The Liberals campaigned on Canadian sovereignty. That was a strong campaign point that attracted some segments of the electorate, particularly older voters, so the election can be seen as an anti-Trump vote
But the Conservatives ran a different campaign, on economic issues, including housing costs and inflation. That resonated with the voters as well, particularly younger voters who are worried that they won’t have such good life styles as their parents. That campaign wasn’t really about tariffs and Trump.
The NDP ran a traditional campaign for them, focussing on things like health care, but it wasn’t nearly as attractive to voters as the Liberal and Conservative campaigns. Their vote share collapsed in a big way, but split between the Liberals and Conservatives, depending on which argument was of more importance to them.
The Bloc lost seats to the Liberals, which is an interesting development. The threat to sovereignty posed by the US may have had some resonance there, but that’s just speculation on my part.
Indeed. As I said somewhere before, back in the Camelot era of JFK, a very young me thought that being part of the US might actually be a good idea. Today, Trump is the living proof of why we will fight to the death to avoid it.
There seems to be a general consensus amongst the CBC talking heads (including map guy) that the advance polls tend to break for the Liberals.
Is that because:
older voters tend to vote at advance polls, and
older voters in this election voted for the Liberals?
If not, why do advance polls break for the Liberals, rather than being the same proportions as election day votes?
CBC promising full results likely by 6 pm - they said “this afternoon”.
Take a look at the chart for the change in their share of the popular vote.
Liberals went up by 10.9% of the votes cast, the NDP went down by 11.6%. Add in the 1.1 and 1.3% votes that the Greens and Bloc lost, and there are lots of votes missing. CPC went up by 7.6%, while the PPC went down by 4.2%, so that doesn’t cover all the CPC gains. The rest had to come from the NDP, Greens or Bloc.
Or the Liberals. The most likely answer in most cases is that those votes were Liberal in the last election, and they switched to Conservative. But their numbers were made up by NDP/Bloc/Green switching to Liberal.
I do, and happy to use it! I’ll be even happier if the Liberals gain a few more seats…
Is advance polling available everywhere? Early voting breaks Democratic in the US, but it’s somewhat misleading because the states with the most opportunities for early voting are (unsurprisingly) more Democratic overall.
Yes. Canadian elections are run by Elections Canada, which is an independent department of the Federal Government. They set the rules for the entire country. There’s local offices for implementing everything, using a mix of paid workers and volunteers, but they’re all working from the same set of rules.
Yeah, it seems clear that there was a big move away from the Liberals some time ago, mainly benefiting the Conservatives - there are projections from a few months ago with the conservatives getting 250 seats and the liberals finishing fourth. Then once Trudeau resigned and Trump directed his idiocy towards us, there was another big movement from all the parties towards the liberals.
Liberals have just gone ahead of BQ in Terrebonne by 35 votes, now with all polls reporting in that riding, taking the seat count to 169.
Note: this is mandatory recount territory. A judicial recount must occur where the difference in votes is less than 1/1000 of the votes cast, which in this case is ~59k
Such good news. Congratulations to all my Canadian friends! If there’s anything good Trump has done since Jan. 20, it’s playing an aggressive, insulting, clumsy part in bringing about a Liberal victory up there.
Here’s CNN’s coverage:
Well, looks like it is essentially all over. The CPC still has a slight leads in the one remaining riding that has yet to be called, but even if the Liberals end up reversing that and taking it they’d still be two short of an absolute majority.
So, looks like 169(170) Liberals, 144(143) Conservatives, 22 BQ, 7 NDP, 1 Green.
Now question for the Canadian insiders - any advantage in terms of unity in inviting all the non-Conservative parties to form a government? Or are they likely to just stick to one or two so as not to dilute control?
Politically impossible. Elizabeth May would be seen as a sell out and just bring one seat, the NDP have a caretaker leader now who can’t really cut a deal, and the Bloc basically don’t care about anything that doesn’t involve Quebec getting an outsized share of whatever is on the table.
The whole thing is only stable because no one wants another election now.
Does Canada even form governments in the coalition sense of, say, Germany, or do they just muddle along and work together?
The last parliament had a Supply & Confidence Agreement, which is formalized but is not a coalition government. I don’t know when we last had a coalition.
ETA, there was a plan for a coalition government in 2008 but Parliament never convened before dissolution so it never happened.
I think the current threats from Trump may have the Bloc and Liberals aligning a little more than usual. Québec sovereignty wouldn’t work in a world where Trump would just conquer it, so there’s mutual interest in getting through these next 4 years together.
That’s fascinating, I hadn’t heard of it before.
In parliamentary democracies based on the Westminster system, confidence and supply is an arrangement under which a minority government (one which does not control a majority in the legislature) receives the support of one or more parties or independent MPs on confidence votes and the state budget (“supply”).
still no decision on close races 