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Canada Votes 2008 »

Conservatives Win Election, Landslide Possible

Posted by PATRICK EDABURN in At TMV, Politics.
Oct 14th, 2008 | Comments

No, you are not misreading the headline and I have not entered the Twilight Zone.

Tonight is election night in Canada and the Conservative government of Stephen Harper is headed for a second term, possibly by a landslide margin.

Now understand that in Canada a landslide has a different meaning. There are 4 main parties (Conservative, Liberal, New Democratic and Bloc Quebec). So a landslide is when a party is able to form a majority government with 50% plus one seats in Parliament.

You need 155 seats for a majority, the Conservatives came in with 124 seats so they needed to gain 31 more.

The Canadian Broadcasting Company has already projected that Harper will remain Prime Minister in a minority government. One interesting thing I’ve noticed is the bias in the coverage. Here we had the big SNL parody of the media openly rooting for Obama. In the CBC coverage they are openly for the Liberals and attacking Harper (calling a 20 plus seat gain a ‘major defeat’) and it seems to be no big deal.

As of 7:45pm Pacific time they were at 145 seats to 79 for the Liberals with the BQ at 47 and the NDP at 32 with 2 Others.

It looks unlikely here they will win the needed 155 but they are going to gain upwards of 20 seats and that is a huge gain.

CBC coverage here

Live webcast via C-Span here

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cancon

OK, let's not get crazy there, my moderate friends. First of all, "landslide" here means the same thing it means down there, and "50% plus one seats in Parliament" isn't it. The last Liberal majority held just over 170 seats, just for context.

In fact, the Conservative minority tonight is pretty much a colossal fail on their part, given they called a mid-term election with the hopes of actually getting a majority mandate. That's why the CBC is calling this a "major defeat;" the Cons had pretty much all the pieces lined up to form a majority government, and they blew it.

Now go make sure that Obama gets elected. We'll keep things on the straight and narrow up here.

Marlowecan

Hahahahaha...I was watching the CBC feed, and it was far from a major defeat.

The Conservatives were the dominant party in the House of Commons...and they increased their dominance. They are now . . . as the CBC anchor noted . . . effectively the only national party in the country, with increased presence in almost all regions.

The opposition Liberal vote collapsed (lowest share of the popular vote in history, I believe), and the left is in general disarray.

The Conservatives won an increased minority with about 20 more seats...the Liberals lost about 20 seats...the socialist NDP gained a handful...the separtist Quebec party stayed roughly the same...and the Greens were shut out.

The Liberals will collapse in a feeding frenzy as they search for a new leader, and there is no appetite for another election. As one CBC (the Canadian counterpart to the Beeb) commentator noted, it was a "de facto majority".

The Conservatives won largely because their leader was more trusted on the economy than the Liberal or the socialist. No one seems to much like him - there seems to be a serious charisma deficit - but he was felt to be calm and competent.

Don Quijote

conservatives got 37% of the vote, Liberals got 28% of the vote, NDP got 18,9% of the vote & the Greens got 6.5% of the vote.

Left leaning parties got 63.4% of the vote.

It's truly unfortunate that the Left seems unable to unite behind a single party as they seem to be the majority in most countries.

Marlowecan

Don Quijote... Left & Right are largely a matter of context, it seems.

I was looking at the Conservative platform in Canada, and they promised to extend full unemployment insurance and maternity benefits to the self-employed. In the U.S. that would be denounced as a radical Communist initiative.

Canada also has government run and funded health care for all citizens. Again, far to the left of Obama and most Democrats. The Conservatives have pledged their support for this program, though they have made the radical step of allowing people to pay for some medical services. The UK adopted a similar sort of approach to their state-run system back under Blair.

Canada is in Afghanistan, and both Conservatives and Liberals have supported this . . . and as you know, Obama has called for increased presence in that country. The far left NDP has called for immediate withdrawal and peace negotiations with the Taliban.

Thus, I think Left and Right seem to be matters of context.

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