The polls are coming to a close in the western-most reaches of Canada right about now, where voters have gone to the polls to decide the fate of the first Conservative (minority) government since 1993.
Canadian PM Stephen Harper figured that he could squeeze out a majority government with this fall election call, but he hasn’t had the smoothest campaign. In his favor, the Liberals aren’t exactly burning down the house, either. If I were a betting man, I’d say he retains his minority — with losses in Quebec and a few modest gains elsewhere. But we’ll see.
Wikipedia has a good list of races to watch here.
Results are available at CBC.ca and Elections Canada.
UPDATE: Yup, it’s another Conservative government — but it’s not yet clear whether he’ll have enough for a majority or not.
UPDATE (12:41AM): Well this is something — in my home riding of Edmonton-Strathcona, the NDP candidate has pulled ahead of the longtime Conservative incumbent by 1 vote with 200 of 223 polls counted. It would be stunning if the Conservatives lost a seat in Alberta.
12:46AM: Wow, NDPer Linda Duncan is up by 164 votes now with 18 polls outstanding.
1:34AM: Duncan wins! Oh man, what an amazing finish. And you have got to love this:
Shortly after Conservative incumbent Rahim Jaffer gave his victory speech Tuesday evening, his campaign handlers yanked him from the party as it became clear the race wasn’t over, that New Democrat Linda Duncan had pulled ahead in the polls.
Haw-haw!
James put this thread up at the special request of you Canada-philes. Where’s the chatter? 🙂
I live in Toronto and am not surprised at this minority government. Harper cost himself the majority by pissing off the Quebecers.
Looks like lots of turncoats are getting ousted like Turner and Khan.
James – Sorry about the Grits getting shut out in Alberta yet…again. sigh.
We need to find our Barack Obama dammit.
Conservatives have 144 seats, with 155 needed for a majority.
Liberals have 76, Bloq Quebecois 49, NDP 36, Independent 3, Greens 0.
Conseratives only have 37% of the vote, compared with 52.7% combined for the Liberals, NDP and Greens. So, if there was proportional representation or some form of IRV in Canada, there would be a very different result.
Is there any chance that Libs, NDP, and Queb might form a coalition? I really hate seeing another Harper admin!
People who reported today (IIRC)
NJ-03 (R+D)
IN-09 (R)
PA-10 (D)
PA-04 (D)
LA-04 (D)
FL-13 (D)
NE-02 (D)
ID-01 (D)
NC-08 (R)
MI-07 (R)
Big numbers all around really. It’s pretty nuts. I only record total raised & Cash on hand, so I’d have to look through all of them again. Biggest surprise was Minnick (ID-01) though. I’ll copy down his numbers here.
3Q = $641,883 (+300K Personal Loan = 941K)
CTD = 1,992K (Including 300K personal loan)
COH = 177K
Thanks for putting this up. Disappointing. Do the Liberals and NDP have enough seats to form a coalition?
What does this mean now? Will Dion and Layton get kicked out out the leadership of their parties?
3Q report says…
3Q = $557K
CTD = $2,593K
COH = $749K
HA! Thank you C4G
James,
When the dust settles can you give us non-Canadians some seat by seat analysis and an overview of the impact of the election on Canadian politics post-election.
Back in 2002 I drove across Canada from Vancouver to Nova Scotia stopping at almost all of the Provincial capitols (I missed Toronto and St. John’s). Though I learned a bit talking to people all the Provincial capitol tours my knowledge is a little rusty and I am sure if you were to do what you do for US elections for the Canadian elections I and all your neighbors to the south would learn a lot.
Thanks,
Evan
Unfortunately I was out celebrating at my local Liberal candidate’s headquarters, where she managed to unseat a floor crossing Conservative incumbent. Please join me in congratulating Bonnie Crombie (www.bonniecrombie.ca). And it’s great to hear that in Alberta the Tories DIDN’T make a total sweep!
But overall these results are disappointing, and I noticed the voter turnout was much lower than the last election. Hopefully, you Democrats will do much better in November, which you are obviously going to do.
Aren’t the three opposition parties all left-leaning? And if that is the case why wouldn’t they just form their own government?
I second the request above for an explanation of this from James later on, particularly as the demographics look interesting.
I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of Canada is pretty rudimentary, but it seems like the NDP have a peculiar demographic base. They seem to have most success in compact districts that appear to be large cities, or in much larger and more rural districts out west. Is this based on monopolising the native vote, or do they also have some kind of rural populist appeal?
I also find it interesting that Labour seems to monopolise Toronto and suburbs (I’d have guessed that such areas would either go Tory or NDP, depending on wealth) and that whereas in competitive Western seats only one of the Libs and the NDP runs strong, in Ontario there appears to be many more three-way marginals.
For that matter, I’m also intrigued by NDP weakness in the east, conservative weakness in Newfoundland and a whole host of other things.
The United States will be the only one of the three major North American countries to have the left-wing party controlling government. Weird stuff.