Can I use a show shovel?
Dammit, there’s a sign right near me on the NY State Thruway that says it’s only about 425 miles to Montreal. Martin and his crazed librul hordes could be here WITHIN HOURS! Milk in bags! Tim Hortons everywhere! Furriners and critters on our money! Half of everything in French!
Oh well, before I die at least I’ll get to see the BBC Have Your Say thread go ballistic as Europeans wake up to what they apparently see as Dubya’s twin brother in power. That’s always fun to watch–oh, God, no, no, not the HOCKEY STIC
all but final results:
conservative: 124
liberal: 103
bloc: 51
ndp: 29
ind. 1
a several ridings are still yet to report final results, but as for seat total changes they will not change by more than one or three. and those few may or may not require recounts.
approximate popular votes are:
con: 36%
lib: 30%
ndp: 17%
bloc: 10%
other (including ind, green, etc.) 5%
in other election news, pm pm has resigned as not only pm, but liberal leader. keep a close eye out for up to a half dozen by-elections within the next six months, as several of pm pm’s cabinet members ponder their futures on the opposition benches.
I’m pretty much content with the outcome, though I’d have preferred that the numbers had come out so that any one of the opposition parties could have propped up the Tories. As it stands, the NDP are a couple seats short of that. I think the fact that the Tories elected several MPs from Quebec is a very good thing for the country. They’ve finally returned to being a national party, and perhaps the extreme regionalism of recent politics might diminish to an extent now. I disagree with Sam about the extent to which the Liberals have become regional themselves. And I just hope that this parliament can be just a little more constructive than the last one.
And at least one big Eastern city with virtually no Conservative representation (did Montreal get any? Toronto didn’t). And Toronto’s NDP seats are smack-dab in the centre. It’s so regionalized.
This government is going to be a nuthouse. I don’t envy any of them, although I have high hopes.
I dunno, I think he’ll be better at it than the Libs would be: at least he’s only fighting on one front, for one thing. I think this opposition could work well together to bring the best out of Harper.
Perhaps I am too optimistic.
All I really want is a stable government for a few years. I’m bloody sick of all these elections.
I have a feeling we’ll be back at it in about March, 2007. The next Liberal leader will want his crack at getting back in (step right up, Brian Tobin!).
How stable this government is going to be will be almost entirely in the hands of Harper and the PCs. If he puts on a good show, doesn’t alienate people, and the PCs maintain their popularity or increase it, no one is going to want to bring the government down, because they’d be risking replacing a minority PC government with a majority.
But if he makes some boneheaded mistakes, throws some bones to the Conservative base that are unpalatable to the rest of Canada, then the other parties will smell blood, and we’ll see a vote of non-confidence.
Just watching Harper’s speech now, I’m pretty impressed. He’s a very good public speaker. He’s a very smart guy, and he’s brought the Conservative party from nowhere to the leadership of Canada. I don’t expect him to make too many boneheaded mistakes. Unfortunately, that may not be true for his cabinet - there’s a lot of inexperience in the Conservative party, and many of the people with experience running government come from Alberta. It will not look good if he loads his cabinet up with westerners, so he’s going to have to bring in a bunch of others. An inexperienced cabinet could make some mistakes.
Well, to be fair I’ll be shopping at Chapters with or without winning the card.
I guess it’s safe to say the results don’t come as a huge surprise to me. It would have been nice to get a result that would give us a bit of stability, rather than a high probability that we’ll be voting again in no more than 18 months or so. The good thing is, even though I don’t agree with the Conservatives on a lot of issues, we get to test drive Harper for a bit and see if he’s really as scary as some would like us to believe.
I was thinking about all the recent elections this morning, and came to the somewhat frightening realization that I’ve been old enough to vote for 9 years now, and I’ve already voted in 4 federal elections.
I agree with this entirely. I’m sure he’ll get some of the new Quebec and Ontario MPs into cabinet - he’s clearly not an idiot. I sincerely hope he doesn’t give Vic Toews the Justice Dept, or Stockwell Day Foreign Affairs. They’ve been critics of those departments for ages, and their stated views on some issues are ones which could torpedo those gains in Quebec. And I really don’t want to see that happen. I’d love to see the Tories make Quebec a 3-way battleground to the detriment of the Bloc.
I think the real story of this election is the rise of a new electoral force in Nunavut : The Marijuana Party, which scored a best ever 8% here. Kudos for remembering the right day, guys!
For further reference, see “Mike Harris’ first provincial cabinet, public gaffes of”. Also, “Bob Rae’s provincial cabinet, total self-immolation of”.
i must admit, as a social democrat and ndp supporter, that stephen harper is on the brink of either a strong breakout, or else a complete meltdown.
his speech tonight was quite prime ministerial, though i’m unsure of how well & how long he can keep the more extreme members of his caucus silent. if he can keep the dogs muzzled, he might well have a significant future in canadian politics. if he can’t, well, he’s history in a time better measured in months than years.
even if he does implement good things like an ethics package & electoral reform along the way.
So let me get this straight… Diebold wasn’t responsible at all?
No, the elections north of the border are run fairly.
Nope - all old-fashioned “mark an X on a paper ballot” voting.
Guess we have to watch out for the armed soldiers on the streets now, right? And what of the Liberal supporters? Are they supposed to threaten to move to Europe, similar to the last US election?
Okay, second prediciton, 14 months. It could be shorter but they’ll want to campaign in the spring this time
I’m pleased with Martin steping down. It’s about all he could do with the way his campaign went. And as I mentioned earlier, he seems to be getting a little flaky to me. It’s time for someone else at the helm of that party.
With the Conservatives campaign, I was most impressed with how solid it was throughout. It seemed that Stephen Harper stayed clear and consistant throughout. This was only strenghtened by his performance during the last debate. I think at that point all he had to do was keep his foot from his mouth and he was in.
Oh, and thanks for the answer, The Flying Dutchman
Unless there is some huge clusterfuck of a mistake by the Conservatives I’d say at the very least they have 18 months. Though the Liberals have a decent number if seats still, they have to reorganize get a new leader and sell that person (God another chance for Belinda… sheesh). They will not risk losing any more seats with a new candidate.
Last nights results actually are probably the best thing to happen. The Liberals are in disarray, Broke and leaderless. The Conservatives can not issue any controversial laws without fear of collapsing the Governement meaning that SSM and Missile Defence are likely not to come up this time 'round.
The West has a Voice, Quebec has a Federal Alternative, and the NDP was given enough clout to keep certain social issues in the forefront.
This term can be used as a healing time to mend the Nation.
Now it is up to the Conservatives to either stand up to the job or screw the pooch.
This is the most ridiculous statement I have ever read from you. It is completely devoid of reality.
Ever since the 70s the liberals have been vastly under representing Western Canada. I remember when the Liberals had only one seat in Winnipeg and completely wiped out in the rest of Western Canada. There is absolutely nothing startling about todays result in Western Canada.
While the Liberals may have 13 seats west of Ontario, how many do the conservatives have east of Ontario? I don’t have the exact results on that yet, but I doubt they have any in the province of our second founding people and a hell of a lot less than 13 in the rest of the country east of Ontario and you claim that conservatives have representation across Canada? I call bullshit.
I can’t be sure at this point, but I wouldn’t be surprised if every province except Alberta secures Liberal representation. Just which region would you say the Liberal representation is confined too? Try as I might I just can’t help you there.
One interesting result of this election is the Liberal success in Canada’s three major cities, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, east,centre and west and the corresponding Conservative failure. It should be no secret that this is where the majority of immigrants from all over the world settle and for whom the Liberal party is their best bet. That may be one aspect of this result, but it is clear that there is a different Canada in the hinterlands than in the cities.
Well yeah, you’re mostly right, minus the hyperbole. I had been thinking that the Liberals had more Western support in the last election, given that they even had 2 seats in Alberta, both of which are now gone. But I went back and had a look at the 2004 results, and they were almost the same. So… Never mind.
Nope. The CBC noted that there was not one Conservative elected in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver.
I get the impression that the Conservatives aren’t a national party in a completely different way.