Lib 135
Con 99
BQ 54
NDP 19
Ind 1
With a hair over 29.5% of the popular vote, down from 37.7% in 2000 for the combined parties of the right, the Tories have some lessons to learn even as the Liberals slipped into a minority position in the Canadian Federal election last night.
The Liberals were expected to lose and less than two weeks ago, the Tories were saying they were going to get a majority. They missed that by, um, 56 seats. The NDP added seven percent to their popular vote and the Bloc Quebecois tied thier all-timer seat record. The Greens even grabbed 4% of the popular vote. For me, this is the best of all outcomes and so close to my original prediction, I scare myself:
Lib 134I don't really scare myself. I am too tired for that - plus I weasled away from those numbers later on. So, Martin has to make a deal with the NDP and pick up one or two seats on every vote. That is great. An independent monitoring of Liberal decisions in Parliament who does not believe dinosaurs roamed the earth 6,000 years ago.
Con 100
BQ 55
NDP 18
Ind 1
Lets look at that popular vote question I raised a few days ago.
40.8% Libs2004 polling numbers:
37.7% Cons/Alliance
8.5% NDP
10.2% Bloc
Greens 0.8%
Libs 31-34%2004 actual popular vote:
CPC 29-30.5%
NDP 18-20%
Bloc 10-11%
Greens 4-6%
36.7 LibsThe Liberals kept 90% of their popular vote, the Tories kept 78.5%, the Bloc increased 121.5%, the NDP increased their vote 184.7% and the Greens increased their vote by 537.5%. In 2000, 12,857,773 Canadians voted or 61.2 of the eligible. In 2004, 13,484,260 (or 60.5% of the eligible) voted.
29.6% CPC
15.7% NDP
12.4% Bloc
4.3% Greens
So the Tories lost. They lost popular vote 8.1% of the popular vote. They increased by 16 seats but only won 20 seats out of a possible 213 east of Manitoba and actually losts four seats west of Ontario. No righteous Tory tide. They merged, they groomed, they promised moderation as they kept their hands almost successfully over the mouths of their wingnuts. They lost.
Check my math. I am tired but, like Canada, not hungover.
Comments
Alan - June 29, 2004 8:07 am
One poster over at Blogs Canada Election Blog made an excellent observation:<p>Proportional Parliament 2004:<p>Liberal - 115<br>CPC - 92 <br>
BQ - 40 <br>NDP - 49 <br>Green - 12<p>That would work, too.
Wayne - June 29, 2004 10:18 am
Waiting for your November numbers...
Alan - June 29, 2004 10:48 am
Do you mean for a 2004 Federal election? Here are a few reasons why that won't happen:<ul><li>Ontarians have voted three times in the last ten months - provincial, federal and municipal. The only place the Tories can make up votes is here.</li><p><li>The Tories need to fix their own house. They need a policy convention and need to shake out the hard line social conservatives. No one will vote for them who have not without those things happening.</li><p><li>The Bloc will never do better than it has - it cannot gain anything from getting rid of the Liberal minority government.</li></ul>For better or worse, we are in this for a while or the Liberals will be better off. I think we are all enjoying the fact that they have no free hand at the moment.
Kim - June 29, 2004 1:21 pm
Alan, that was your prediction? Wow! You did put money on it somewhere didn't you? LOL
Robert Paterson - June 29, 2004 2:38 pm
I think that the country will punish a party that forces an early election and so we have have a minority for longer than you think. I also suspect that the loonies in the conservatives will not be able to keep their mouths shut and that their women hating, immigrant hating American loving side will become more clear. I think that they may have shot their bolt
Arthur - June 29, 2004 9:24 pm
Proportional Parliament 2004:
Proportional representation, yes (recursive self-links, beware)?
Wayne - June 30, 2004 7:50 am
The NDP doesn’t get it?they got hammered, yet Jack Layton has the audacity to claim that “Canadians support the NDP policy” on things like missile defense. I did not vote for him, yet he still claims to speak for me. Christ, I hate that.
What bugs me is a separatist party like the Bloc escaped without shedding a drop of blood while hiding behind the hidden agendas and scandals of the major contenders.. The Conservatives were not an option to Francophones, and the Liberals shamed them in the scandal. Voting NDP was a vote for the Liberals, so the Bloc picked up the pieces, especially after looking so good in the debate, and doing a good job of hiding their agenda. Instead, we got a Martin government reeling from the last laugh of a corrupt Chretien mandate, a Conservative brain-dead idea of dropping taxes and hinting at 2-tier healthcare, and several more years of life for a party full of Anglophobes, communists and otherwise creepy characters in Quebec.
How long will it last? How long will Harper last? Maybe quite awhile, but I doubt it. Really, the Atlantic Provinces mean nothing to the Federal Tories, so lack of support in this part of the country means nothing to them.