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Election 2015 Live blog

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I’m temporarily bringing mikel.org out of retirement so that I may live blog with election results of the October 19th 2015 Canadian Federal Election.

I’ll be adding everything in this post and new material will be at the top.

OK so the live blogging never really happened…

I will share some notes and thoughts about the results now that things are pretty much decided in today’s federal election.

  • First of all: wow. What a result! And I don’t mean whether I am happy about it or not – just the magnitude of the victory for the Liberals is very impressive. From coast to coast, in rural ridings, urban ridings, and suburban ridings, the Liberals made huge gains.
  • I think this election has to go into the “polls are really unreliable” file. The polls have been radically incorrect for almost every election in Canada in the past 5 years, and this election is no exception.
  • One of the talking points by the TV commentators so far has been that this has been the best-run and best-designed political campaigns in Canadian history. From my perspective this is a bang-on comment – and furthermore, that that’s what was required for the Liberals to get anywhere.
  • Some individual riding results I find interesting…
    • Stéphane Dion seems to have won in his usual Ahuntsic-Cartierville riding. I have a soft spot for Mr. Dion for many reasons and it’s quite frankly a great testament to a humble public servant that he continues after having reached the highs and lows of Liberal Party leadership over the past decade.
    • It looks like Hélène Laverdière (NDP) will hold her riding in Laurier-Ville-Marie in central Montreal (my old riding for years) over Gilles Duceppe. I am a little sad for Duceppe that he was almost forced to return to the Bloc just to lose in *his* riding. I hope he will be able to retire once and for all.
    • Gutted for Andrew Cash in the Davenport riding in Western Toronto. I didn’t follow his political career TOO closely but he always seemed like a great representative and a hard-working MP. At least Charlie Angus seems to have won his riding in Northern Ontario. (If you don’t know their names, they’re both legendary Canadian musicians).
  • While I understand it, I’m a little disappointed for the NDP tonight. They have really become an important force for good in Canadian politics during this recent period of ascendency. For instance, I believe they had more women candidates in this election than any other party in Canadian history – and this is important. I hope people don’t just write them off now.
  • Personally, I was most impressed by far by Justin Trudeau during this campaign. I was very vocal among my politically-inclined friends that the Liberals seemed to me to be making huge errors, basically shutting up and trying not to say anything on the expectation that they would be once again tapped for form a government by natural Canadian law or something. In fact, though, during this campaign Justin Trudeau clearly annunciated a very human and humane vision for Canada, and was quite forceful about a return to traditional Canadian values that had been lost under a decade of Harper/Conservative leadership. As a referendum on Justin’s ability as a leader, he clearly passed with flying colours.

Today was by-election day

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Today was by-election day

in three Quebec ridings, and it has proven to be as exciting as politics in Quebec have tended to be in recent years. It’s hard to see what has been happening both federally and provincially as nothing less than a sea-change, not a temporary post-scandal correction as many (including myself) feared it might have been.

The results are interesting. In my new riding, Outremont, the winner was Thomas Mulcair of the NDP (and the former provincial environment minister for the Quebec Liberal Party). In Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean, the winner was Denis Lebel, a Conservative (and sitting Mayor). In Sainte-Hyacinthe, the winner was Ève-Mary Thai Thi Lac for the Bloc Quebecois. Most striking is that none of the Liberal candidates were successful, even now that the scandals are behind them and despite (well, maybe) having a new leader.

Some bullet-point reactions:

  • The NDP have to be careful how they interpret their victory in Outremont. If they have any illusions that this is a vote of confidence in the party as a whole or in Jack Layton, I think they’re sorely mistaken. On the positive side of things, Mulcair, and Mulcair alone, is the reason for their victory. If anything he has such personal popularity and universal respect that he won in spite of how the NDP is viewed in Quebec.
  • It is pretty shocking to “traditional” interpretations of Quebec voting tendencies that neither of the MPs in the Saguenay region are sitting for the Bloc Quebecois.
  • Stéphane Dion must be – should be – pretty scared. For the party with the second most seats in Parliament to not win any of three by-elections? Not a comfortable spot for the leader. When he was selected as leader of the Liberal Party, I was cautiously optimistic that he could do a decent job – certainly better than Ignatieff – but so far, it has been nothing but setback after setback. He’ll probably stick it out until the next General Election, but it looks like he’s already finished.
  • Back to the NDP, after years and years of living in Montreal but never having any hope of my candidate winning, I’m kind of amazed that someone has done it. Again, though, if the NDP over-estimate the significance of this victory they’re going to be in trouble. I’ve almost only ever voted NDP, but party had pretty much lost me as a supporter over the past two or three years. The NDP’s foreign policy is nothing more than naive and pandering, and the fact that they have done nothing to truly address their chronic problems in Quebec is more than frustrating – at this point it smacks of a mix of disrespect and fear. I hope they can get over it – and the first step would be a radical re-thinking of their traditional (and idiotic) strong-centralist federalism. It does them no good and a lot of harm.

I watched last weekend’s Liberal Convention

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I watched last weekend’s Liberal Convention

with rapt attention as my (mildly) preferred candidate Bob Rae looked like he was gaining some early momentum only to see it collapse in very short order. The winner, of course, was Stephane Dion, and as Paul Wells has summarized this morning, most of the media reaction is focusing on Dion’s negatives in Quebec.

While they aren’t all wrong – Dion does have significant problems in his home province even among federalists – I think the pundits are, for the most part, making the same error that they have been making for quite a while with respect to Quebec voter behaviour.

In fact, a leader’s or candidate’s positives/negatives on Quebec nationalism are only about half of the story, if that. As important – nah, MORE important, truth be told – is where the candidate stands in terms of policy. And on this front, even a Dion that’s despised for his Clarity Act may be able to succeed in bringing Quebeckers back in his direction. Quebec voters need candidates who are socially progressive in nature, and environmentally conscious, and I predict they’ll overlook a lot of Dion’s negatives on the “unity file” if they hear the right things on other policy issues.

In other words – it’s a non-starter to analyze a candidate’s potential in Quebec by only looking at the nationalism side of things.

I should also say that I have always thought that sovereigntists should welcome and embrace the Clarity Act – which will be their single greatest source of legitimacy should a referendum ever succeed

Handicapping the Grammys

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Handicapping the Grammys at CBS News: “If Radiohead and Beck cancel each other out for the alternative vote and Paul Simon and Steely Dan split the baby boomers, you could very well see Eminem win the Grammy. And if that happens, man, they’re gonna tie that poor silly rapper to the dousing stool. George Will will have his thesaurus out, and the liberals will be blaming the gun lobby, and William Bennett will be wringing his hands till his thumbs fly off.” (Bill Flanagan / Kuralt v2.0).

Thanks to two people

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, Peter Merholz and Meg Hourihan, for pointing out this map of the US election results by county. The additional level of granularity yields some really interesting information – particularly concerning the urban/rural split in US politics.

The same thing exists in Canadian politics as well, with the ruling Liberals electing MPs in most major cities while the upstart Reform/Alliance has otherwise swept the West and is threatening a breakthrough in outlying parts of Ontario. Likewise, in Quebec the Bloc is predominant except in Montreal, and didn’t sweep Quebec City either. An important difference between Canada and the US is that Canada is slightly more urban than the US – though it’s only marginally so.

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