The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    CANADA VOTES 2011: DECISION DAY

    By acanuck on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:00pm |

    Fresh thread. Polls have closed across Canada, and it's finally legal to post election results nationwide. Counting has just begun in the western provinces, and voting in Quebec and Ontario ended only about half an hour ago. Too fragmentary to report for now.

    So we're left to look at results from the Atlantic Provinces, and extrapolate (if we can) from that.
    I know quinn hates poll aggregator ThreeHundredEight.com, But I'm going to use its predictions as an arbitrary baseline, and try to weigh how real-time results vary from them.

    That site called the 32 seats up for grabs in the four easternmost provinces to split as follows:
    Liberals              13    (30.2%)
    Conservatives     11    (32.6%)
    New Democrats    8    (31.6%)

    Initial reporting by the CBC (at 9:31, when the embargo on results ended within Quebec) gives us:
    Liberals               11    (29.1%)
    Conservatives     14    (37.6%)
    New Democrats    7    (30%)

    So the Conservatives are the first to benefit from the Liberal collapse, and vote-splitting, picking up one seat. But realize this: the election is going to be decided first in Quebec and Ontario, and ultimately in B.C.
    As CBC takes a break before coming back with western results, here are the elected-and-leading results:

    Tories 102, NDP 44, Liberals 29, Bloc 4 (a disaster for them!)

    Comments

    CBC's latest nationwide totals:

    133 for the Tories, 70 NDP, 29 Liberals, 5 Bloc.

    Conservatives are just 22 short of a majority government. They may pull it off.

    The Bloc and Duceppe (who came in third in his own riding!) are, however, virtually wiped out.

    And Jack Layton is opposition leader.


    by acanuck on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:08pm

    NDP now at 87 seats, closing in the 90 to 100 quinn was predicting. Duceppe has clawed his way back to second place in his riding vote count, but he's still trailing. His party is now leading or elected in just seven seats. Sovereignists will cry in their beer tonight.


    by acanuck on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:14pm

    Thanks for this AC. Not really good news, seems like there was a lot of vote-splitting, no?

    Let's at least hope the Tories don't get a majority.

     


    by Obey on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:13pm

    They are damn close, because of vote-splitting. 145, just 10 shy. New Democrats are at 97, more than double their previous best showing.

    Percentages: 40% Tories, 30% NDP, 23.5% Liberal.

    I'd predict that, before Canada votes again, the Liberals will merge with the Dippers. Probably call themselves the Liberal Democrats, and they'll sail to victory. Hope the Conservatives don't destroy the country in the meantime.


    by acanuck on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:23pm

    NDP will get 100 plus, but the seat targeting by the Tories is magnificent. They're gonna sneak a majority, but 20 of those seats will be won by a hair. Arrrrrrrrrrrgh.

    by quinn esq on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:27pm

    The most successful party in the Western world just collapsed. They're at 30 seats of 290 so far. Astounding. Bye bye Liberals. NDP at 105.

    by quinn esq on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:30pm

    It's official: Tory majority! 165 seats (10 more than they needed) to 105 for the New Democrats, 30 for the Liberals, and four for the once-invincible Bloc. If Layton had only been a little less successful, the Liberals might have held a few seats that ended up going to the Conservatives. Spilt milk.

    Elizabeth May of the Green Party looks set to take her party's first seat ever! And Gilles Deceppe appears to have lost his seat. Not only that, but his Bloc has fallen far below the standard for official-party status.


    by acanuck on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:57pm

    And Ignatieff is losing his own riding by 1,000 votes. Which makes his decision as to whether to stay on as leader a whole lot easier. Bob Rae, his chief rival for the Liberal leadership is hanging on against a New Democratic onslaught.


    by acanuck on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 11:00pm

    This isn't quiiiite right. The NDP are at 31pc, pretty much precisely where the polls had them. And they've won 105 seats, just above what we'd hoped.

    The problem is that the Liberals fell BELOW 20pc, they're at 18.7pc right now... only got 34 seats or so... and the Tories ate that extra 2pc that melted off after the last polls, and moved up almost to 40pc.

    There was no great Consevative surge here, at all. Up by 2 pc exactly. The surge was NDP, up 12-13pc.

    What we failed on was that tiny, at the margin, last minute shift, almost entirely in Ontario, of former Liberals going Conservative.

    Kill me now.


    by quinn esq on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 12:22am

    Bottomline: Conservative majority. Slim, 165 of 308 roughly, but .... we're in hell. The NDP did great, 31pc, 105 seats. Bloc crushed. The surprise is that a few percent of the Liberal vote appears to have gone Conservative at the wire, seemingly to keep the NDP out. Even Ignatieff the Liberal leader looks likely to lose his seat. Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh. The world of bittersweet. We're now likely in for 4 years or merger talk nonsense... Nasty Tory policies... And given Jack's age and health, insecurity about him continuing. who knows. Lets pray for a late-night win in all 30 too close to call seats.

    by quinn esq on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 11:02pm

    This strikes me as a good concise summary:

    Stephen Harper’s Conservatives surged to a majority government Monday, winning their third consecutive election, as voters dramatically redrew Canada’s political map.

    The New Democratic Party, propelled by the personal popularity of Leader Jack Layton, also scored a stunning success, becoming the Official Opposition, as the Liberal vote collapsed and the Bloc Québécois was all but wiped out. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe were battling for their political lives in their own ridings.

    from The Globe and The Mail, Last updated Monday, May. 02, 2011 10:53PM EDT

     


    by artappraiser on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 11:04pm

    I'm sorry.


    by we are stardust on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 12:05am

    Conclusion: Messy.

    Even though our "good guys" - the NDP - got an incredible growth spurt, from ~15% to ~30%, and from 36 seats to 103 or so, and thus became the official opposition, and are now poised to take government, at some election or other, the intermediate period is just very very... messy.

    1. The Green vote fell, almost cut in half, but they concentrated it in one riding, and now have one seat in Parliament, their first. Which will probably hurt the NDP and the Left, by pulling votes and attention off to a further out protest party. 

    2. The Liberals failed, and failed so badly, they look like toast. Down from an historic low in 2008 to complete collapse this time, at 18.7% and 34 seats or so. Ignatieff lost, Ken Dryden lost, Gerard Kennedy and Dhalla, Volpe, Minna and a lot of other Liberals - gone. And here's the thing. With this collapse, their major name leader is... Bob Rae. A man who used to be an NDP Premier, led them to victory and then collapse provincially. Merger talks are an obvious next step, but I can tell you, the Grand Old Men of the Liberal Party aren't going to want anything to do with the "socialists." Which means, mess mess mess.

    3. The NDP itself will go from NO real French-speaking Quebec content to 60 of its 105 being from Quebec, and many will be very very raw. This is going to be incredibly difficult to manage, as the old guard were often from industrialized/union cities. And Layton... as we play this forward, a Toronto MP, is going to have to take on the role of "Speaking for Quebec."

    Which could mean - not sure - that Harper and the Tories get an awful lot of room to roll out their agenda, and can sit and pick out the moments when things are most chaotic on the opposition benches. 

    And even though I kept mentioning that the Liberals could be destroyed in this election, I couldn't fully imagine just how badly they'd fall apart. And especially, that last 2% that went over to the Tories, right at the tape. 

    Oh dearrrrrrr.


    by quinn esq on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 1:53am

    I looked back to 308's predictions, two days ago, of individual party's best-case scenarios. The Tories' maximum was -- wait for it -- 167 seats. Precisely what they ended up with!

    That scenario gave the NDP 73 seats, the Liberals 45, and the Bloc 23. What it didn't anticipate was that the new Democrats would take 12 more seats from the Liberals and 19 additional ones from the Bloc. Even 308's most optimistic prediction for the NDP (which gave them a whopping 126 seats) still saw the Bloc holding on to 11.

    This ended up being a watershed election for every party. Harper finally got his majority, but he's been put on notice that a solid majority of Canadians (60%) oppose his overall approach. The Liberals have been told that just straddling the middle of the road can turn you into roadkill, the New Democrats (with fully half their caucus coming from Quebec) have been designated as that province's federalist spokespersons in Ottawa; they will very quickly have to learn to play that unfamiliar role. The Bloc, with between two and four remaining seats (down from 47) must learn to somehow justify its existence over the next four years. The Greens, with leader Elizabeth May winning their first seat, have nowhere to go but up.

    Almost all the leaders struck the right tone in their post-election speeches. Harper wasn't too triumphalist, if not quite humble. Layton vowed to co-operate when possible but hold the Tories' feet to the fire. Ignatieff hailed the noble history of the Liberal Party and said that centrist role needed to continue; he said he'd stay on in whatever position the party wanted. Bob Rae hinted that ex-leader might be an approptiate role.

    Needless to say, I'm not happy that Harper has a 12-seat majority. But in racking up 103 seats out of 308, Jack Layton has managed a tremendous breakthrough. Can he turn the 2011 surge into a solid claim to be the government-in-waiting? It's a tough task. But he has my vote.


    by acanuck on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 3:17am

    Man, this is heartbreaking. Thanks to Acanuck and Q for the analysis.

    On the bright side, it is a good thing that the opposition isn't run by the centrist leadership of the liberals, but now by real leftists. I don't know what that counts for but it can't be nothing. And though it makes Layton's job a bit tricky, it is a good thing that Quebec now is fully integrated into a truly federal left-wing party rather than just being perennially obsessed about its own parochial priveleges and concerns. At this point on the structural level Layton perhaps needs to hive off what he can of the grits, letting the old guard go gently into the night. Or into the Tory party. Or is it just inconceivable that the Liberal party simply dissolve like that?

    The NDP just needs to consolidate these incredible gains. And if they do so, from a long-term perspective this all looks like two-steps-forward-one-step-back. Not the worst thing that could happen.

    Thanks guys. It's been a hell of a ride! Who thought a Canadian election could be so exciting!


    by Obey on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 3:49am

    Not me. That was more excitement (and disappointment) than I'm used to. I'm crashing. G'night.


    by acanuck on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 4:04am

    Let us face the matter squarely

    As a commercial people should

    We have learned no end of a lesson

    It will do us no end of good

    Kipling.

    So the NDP had a great election. Be careful what you  wish for. Harper  now has an impregnable majority. How do you spell Pyrrhic? 

    Believe me I'd have been delighted by an NPD majority. And maybe the long run benefit to Canada of a vigorous opposition is worth the price of five years of what Harper will proclaim ,and treat, as his mandate.

    Acanuck and Quinn when they get up can tell us .It's their country and that's their call. 

    For myself ,  I don't wish   Bernie Sanders to have a great primary run here in 2012 , followed by Paul Ryan bringing  his unattractive  combination of pious platitudes and heartless indifference to the Treasury or where-ever Palin/Trump/Huckabee/Romney/Daniels/Bachman/Gingrich decides to install him.

     


    by Flavius on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 8:07am

    That is looking at it totally wrongly, Flavius. The center-left liberals disintegrated because there is no longer a constituency for their brand of soft-core neo-liberalism. The electorate had moved further left. That may or may not be the case in the US, but if it is the case, the right response is ... to demand Obama move in that direction. The wrong response is to hope as you do that no credible politician who speaks to the needs and values of the people shows up, or that if he or she does show up ... to hope that he or she fails.


    by Obey on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 8:39am

    Flavius is looking at it from the pessimists' (AKA the pragmatics) point-of-view, while I'd argue you're looking at it more from an idealists' point-of-view. I'll throw in my Polly-Anna-ish point-of-view (which I think nonetheless all of us would agree with) and say what we really need is some form of rank-ordering/instant run-off type of voting system where a Bernie Sanders' third-party (I think it would take more than just a primary this time around) wouldn't result in splitting the liberal vote.


    by Verified Atheist on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 8:47am

    Not idealist. Just pragmatic. In 2010 the electorate was on the left - public option, anti-bank, tax hike on the rich. And the Dems stayed stubbornly in the center. ... and got killed! Iggy and the libs' strategy was a carbon copy of the Dems' midterm strategy: lose and whine about the electorate!

    It was a dumb strategy in 2010, it was a dumb strategy in 2011, and it will be a dumb strategy for Obama in 2012.


    by Obey on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 9:00am

    I  don't necessarily disagree with much of the above.I'm considerably to the left of Obama on Health Care, Taxes, Afghanistan and Education. For starterers.

    Accordingly I have nothing whatsoever against his moving left.To the contrary. But what I am completely against is repeating the errors of 1968, 1980 and 2000. when an idealistic challenge to the Democratic establishment was successful.

    In electing  Nixon, Reagan and Bush

    While I'd be delighted if  all of  my positions were his positions , in November 2012 I'll be ringing door bells on his behalf even if he remains stubbonrly in the center.

    The no end of a  lesson  we learned yesterday is that a ruthless  right wing minority will win every time if its running against a divided opposition. 


    by Flavius on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 2:42pm

    I tend to think of those 'successful' left-wing challenges you mention as symptoms of strategic failure on the part of the incumbent rather than the causes. 1968 - Johnson had approvals stuck around 35%, and it was pretty clear that he was going to lose, no matter who he was up against. McCarthy was no genius campaigner, he was AWFUL. Go back and read the contemporary accounts But even though he was awful he drew massive support because of the pent-up opposition to Johnson.

    1980 I don't know much about, so I'll leave that aside. As for 2000, Gore won a solid majority of the popular vote so losing in the Electoral College can ONLY be pinned on piss poor electioneering - bad campaign priorities as regards where to invest time and money. Nader had nothing to do with it. It's more likely that Nader just raised turnout than that he turned any serious number away from the Dems. He was after all just a protest candidate. If his voters had been denied the possibility of protest, they wouldn't have voted for the Dems. The only reason they DID vote was to signal a protest to the Dem party neoliberalism.

    In short, I think these historical "lessons", about the unequivocal evil of left-wing challenges, have been over-learned. There is a paranoid aversion on the left when it comes to making demands, especially when their demands indisputably align with the party leadership's self-interest. And so they make no demands and get ignored. It hurts the left, it hurts the party, it hurts the country.


    by Obey on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 3:02pm

    I'm well aware of the McCarthy campaign. I heard him speak in  peraib on several occasions during the preceding decade and on TV with his outstanding nomination of Stevenson in 1960. And for years afterward I heard Paul Gorman's discussion of that campaign on WBAI..

    There was certainly pent up opposition to Johnson. And support. He decided not to run and Nixon won. So we know that what happened didn't work. We'll never know what would have happened if he ran. I simply list him as one of the uninterrupted series of occasions when the Democrats mounted opposition to a sitting President who then lost.

    I'm sorry I think Nader's 97,000 florida votes had a lot to do with Gore's defeat.


    by Flavius on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 5:26pm

    Once the tide unexpectedly turned two weeks ago, everybody knew this election was going to be a wild ride -- a crapshoot. An NDP majority looked out of reach, but everything else was on the table.

    The key problem: The right was united in a single party, and the center-left was split two ways (three in Quebec). The Conservatives never moved much beyond the 40% support they had going in, so the question was how the remaining 60% would get split. Our first-past-the-post electoral system compounded the vote-splitting problem; ridings were won or lost by margins of a few dozen votes. (The Liberal candidate in my riding conceded defeat just after midnight last night, only to pull ahead half an hour later; that seat is headed for a recount.)

    Already, people on the center-left are calling for a fix to both parts of the problem. The NDP has long backed a transferable-vote or instant-runoff system, which would have denied Harper a majority. And respected voices from both parties are calling for a Liberal-NDP merger. Interviewed last night, Bob Rae (Ignatieff's likely successor) pointedly declined to rule that out.

    I favor both an instant-runoff (but single-riding) system, and a merger of the center-left parties. And over the next four years, the New Democrats are going to have to work like hell to consolidate their hold on Quebec.

    Of the party's 103 or so MPs, more than half are now from that province -- and all but one of those Quebec MPs are rookies. Most were nominated as cannon fodder, with no hope -- much less expectation -- they might be elected. There was a joke during the campaign that some of the younger candidates could use their legislative staff to research their term papers. Some might do just that, as they put their studies on hold and head to Ottawa.

    At some point, I'll try to lay out how a Tory majority could affect the next four years, especially in foreign policy. Shorter version: Canada will follow the U.S. lead in whatever military intervention it undertakes.


    by acanuck on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 3:20pm

    Quinn, Canuck; you may like this upbeat video from Democracy Now!   ;o)

    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.democracynow.org/embed_show_v2/300/2011/5/3/story/the_right_a..."></script>

     


    by we are stardust on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 10:52pm

    Thanks. stardust.


    by Flavius on Wed, 05/04/2011 - 10:55am