Parliamentary cakewalk

"I'll see your liar, liar, pants-on-fire," the Honorable Minister Peter MacKay told the House of Commons yesterday, "and raise you an easy peasy lemon squeezy."

"Neener, neener," added Steve.

Canada Votes 2011 - Margin of Victory

Updated Feb 23, 2012 - Steve's majority holds by 14 12 seats, or  5184 votes


Below are the 12 margins of victory for the Cons in the 2011 Election

There's been some recent interest in this post due to the Con robocall election fraud / vote suppression story so I've updated the post to include the final corrected vote tallies long since adjusted by Elections Canada since I first posted these figures three days after the 2011 election. 

New version directly below, with the corrected figures in the original post blue.
Data source : Elections Canada -Official Voting Results of the 41st General Election, Table 12 

I've included the Line # from the EC Tables so you can verify the numbers for yourself.

Corrected Con Margin of Victory : 5184 votes

EC Line # / District Name/ Candidate/Votes Obtained/ % of Votes Obtained /
Majority votes & Percentage


1)Line 855 - Nipissing-Timiskaming/ Jay Aspin CPC :15495 votes / 36.7% of vote /
 majority of 18 votes or 0%

2)Line 677 - Etobicoke Centre/ Ted Opitz CPC : 21644 votes / 41.2% of vote /
 majority of 26 votes or 0%

3)Line 16 - Labrador/ Peter Penashue CPC : 4256 votes / 39.8 % of vote /
 majority of 79 votes or .7%

4)Line 1576 - Yukon / Ryan Leef CPC : 5422 votes/ 33.8% of vote /
majority of 132 votes or .8%

5)Line 1127- Elmwood-Transcona / Lawrence Toet CPC :15298 votes / 46.4% of vote /
majority of 300 votes or .9%

6)Line 1215 - Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar/ Kelly Block Con: 14652 votes / 48.7% of vote /
majority of 538 votes or 1.8%

7)Line 593 - Bramalea-Gore-Malton / Bal Gosal CPC: 19907 votes / 34.4% of vote /
majority of 539 votes or .9%

8)Line 647 - Don Valley West/ John Carmichael CPC : 22962 votes / 42.9% of vote /
majority of  611 votes or 1.1%

9)Line 811 - Mississauga East-Cooksville/ Wladyslaw Lizon CPC:  18796 votes / 40% of vote/
 majority of 676 votes or 1.4%

10)Line 1170 - Winnipeg South Centre/ Joyce Bateman CPC : 15506 votes / 38.8% of vote /
majority of 722 votes or 1.8%

11)Line 1192 -Palliser  Ray Boughen CPC : 15850 votes / 47% of vote /
majority of 766 votes or 2.3%

12)Line 354 - Lotbini�re-Chutes-de-la-Chaudi/ Jacques Gourde CPC : 22460 votes / 39.9% of vote /
majority of 777 votes or 1.4%

~ ~ ~ End of Feb 23, 2012 corrected post ~ ~ ~ 

Steve's majority holds by just 14 12 seats

Below Matt Peters and Ryan Boldt look at 14 12 of the most closely contested Conservative ridings where the margin of victory was less than 800 votes- and in one case in Ontario - just 14 18 votes.
In that riding the combined opposition vote was 11,357 11,299 and the Cons took it by just 14 18 votes, while 27,887 registered voters didn't vote at all.

Nipissing-Timiskaming (Ontario) Line 855
Cons                 Liberals        Margin of Victory         NDP/Green Combined
15,495              15,477                      18                               11,299
15,507              15,493                      14                               11,357


Labrador (Newfoundland & Labrador) Line 16
Cons                Liberals         Margin of Victory         NDP/Green Combined
4,256                 4,177                        79                               2,259
4,234                 4,003                       231                              2,235


Bramalea-Gore-Malton (Ontario) Line 593
Cons                 NDP            Margin of Victory         Lib/Green Combined
19,907              19,368                    539                              18,150
19,907              19,369                    538                              18,149


Etobicoke Centre (Ontario) Line 677
Cons                Liberals          Margin of Victory         NDP/Green Combined
21,644              21,618                                                         9,112
21,661              21,635                     26                                9,185


Saskatoon Rosetown Biggar (Saskatchewan) Line 1215
Cons                 NDP             Margin of Victory        Lib/Green Combined

14,652              14,114                     538                                1,323


Elmwood-Transcona (Manitoba) Line 1127
Cons                 NDP             Margin of Victory        Lib/Green Combined
15,298            14,998                       300                                 2,677
15,280            14,996                       284                                 2,678


Montmagny-L'islet-Kamouraska-Riveire-du-Loup (Quebec)
Cons                 NDP              Margin of Victory        Lib/Green/Bloc Combined
17,220            17,110                       110                                14,861


Lotbiniere-Chutes-de-la-Chaudiere (Quebec) Line 354
Cons                 NDP              Margin of Victory        Lib/Green/Bloc Combined

22,460            21,683                        777                                12,183


Don Valley West (Ontario) Line 647
Cons              Liberals            Margin of Victory         NDP/Green Combined
22,962            22,351                       611                                  7,983
22,992            22,353                       639                                  7,983


Mississauga East-Cooksville (Ontario) Line 811
Cons              Liberals             Margin of Victory        NDP/Green Combined
18,796            18,120                       676                                  9,868   
18,782            18,121                       661                                  9,989


Winnipeg South Centre (Manitoba) Line1170
Cons              Liberals             Margin of Victory        NDP/Green Combined
15,506           14,784                        722                                  9,328 
15,468           14,772                        696                                  9,332


Yukon Line - Line 1576
Cons              Liberals             Margin of Victory        NDP/Green Combined

5,422              5,290                         132                                  5,345


Desenthe-Missinippi-Churchill River (Saskatchewan)
Cons              NDP                 Margin of Victory         Lib/Green Combined
10,509            9,715                         794                                  1,704 
10,504            9,715                         789                                  1,706


Palliser (Saskatchewan) Line 1192
Cons              NDP                 Margin of Victory         Lib/Green Combined

15,850         15,084                          766                                  2,892

Total numbers for the 14 12 ridings

Cons             2nd place            Margin of Victory          Rest of the left*
217,196        210,348                      6,848                             105,188
219,939        213,738                      6,201                             103,873

*Rest of left only includes NDP, Lib, Bloc or Green parties. Other parties not counted.


And just to add insult to injury, five of those ridings boast some of the lowest voter turnout in the country :

                                                          Margin of Victory           Voter Turnout   
   
Labrador -                                                       231 79 votes                   52.1%

Bramalea-Gore-Malton (Ont) -                  538 539 votes                  54.3%

Elmwood-Transcona (Manitoba) -            284 300 votes                    56.5%

Mississauga East-Cooksville (Ontario) -    661 676 votes                    56.5%

Desenthe-Miss-Churchill (Sask) -              789 794 votes                    52.2%

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Original source data from interactive tables at SFU.
Updated source data from Elections Canada

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Canada Votes 2011

 

Just a 2% increase in the popular vote took the Cons from 143 seats in 2008 to a 167 seat majority tonight, thanks to our fucked up first-past-the-post system and because of what happened in key ridings in Ontario where presumably the Lib voters moved over to the Cons : ie. in Toronto, the Cons took 31 seats to the Libs 8 and the Dippers 12.

So the Libs and the Dippers change places in seat count compared to 2008, Elizabeth May finally gets a seat while Duceppe and Iggy lose theirs, and the Bloc, the only genuinely social democratic party in the country, is wiped out.

Consider this : Quebec's 59 seats has kept the Cons from an almost total lock on the country this time.

In 2008 the voter turnout was 59%; today it was 61%. So much for Get Out the Vote.

It will be interesting to see how Alice at Pundit's Guide breaks down the efficacy of the various strategic voting guides. In my own riding - West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea-to-Sky - the recommendation from Project Democracy, previously Vote for Environment in 2008, and other strategic voting sites was to vote Liberal. As it turned out, the Dipper came second to the winning Con who would have won anyway.

What hasn't changed since 2008?

60% of the 60% of Canadians who voted still did not vote for Harper, who has been allowed to govern as if he held a majority for five years already now. 

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CBC Interactive Results Map
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Update : Alice is up: “Splits” Decisions: A Closer Look at Vote Shifts in Greater Toronto


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Stephen Harper : Election 1997 2008 2011

In every election now, Stephen Harper's June 1997 speech to a right-wing U.S. think tank in Montreal comes up. You know the one :

"Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term"

"the NDP is simply the left-wing agenda to basically disintegrate our society"

"the PC party were in favour of gay rights officially, officially for abortion on demand. Officially for the entrenchment of our universal, collectivized, health-care system and multicultural policies in the constitution of the country."

"the Liberal party ... enacted comprehensive gun control ... believes in gay rights, put sexual orientation in the Human Rights Act"

"a constitutional package which ... included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things"

And every election, Steve's supporters make the same two objections to bringing it up : . 1) Harper says he was only speaking in jest, and 2) it's an old speech and he's 'evolved' since then.

Let's deal with Steve the funny guy first.

A couple of months after making this supposedly jokey speech, he co-authored a policy paper with Tom Flanagan in which he repeats many of the same points. Celebrating Conrad Black's purchase of the Southam newspaper chain, Steve looked forward to the end of its previously "monolithically liberal and feminist" stance.

"Public policy reflects the growing conservatism of public opinion. Canada is not the same country it was 10 years ago. Almost everyone in public life now takes ... free trade, privatization of public enterprise and targeting of social welfare programs for granted."

And as for 1997 being a long time ago ... well here's Steve on the campaign trail 18 months ago, stumping for a majority with the same old complaints about feminism and gun control and social programs :

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Excellent column from Antonia Zerbisias yesterday on how Harper is 'targeting' women : both in the sense of wooing their votes with an income-splitting "family tax cut" that will only benefit the wealthiest 13% of Canadian families sometime after 2016 if he gets a majority in the next two elections, while in the meantime cutting programs that benefit the rest of Canadian women and enacting policies that don't. A solid read.

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Meanwhile, out here in Manikatchewalbumbia ...

or, as Strategic Counsel likes to call all the provinces west of Ontario - The West - 300 people had their dinners interrupted on Oct 2 to 4 to be asked their federal voting intentions. That's a polling sample of, um, 300-divide-by-4-carry-the-2 = a total of 75 people per 'western' province who gave the Cons a 58% approval rating. Big whoop.

Then again if you assume that 100% of the 75 Alberta voters and most of the Saskatchewan ones polled Con, that overall 58% means a lot of people in BC and Manitoba didn't.

A total of 1000 people were polled across Canada - Quebec: 243, Ontario: 383, West: 300 - leaving Prince Novanewbrunsadorland and Nunayuktories to share the remaining 74 votes at 10 votes apiece.

Harper supporters CTV and the Globe and Mail, who sponsored the poll, were nonetheless very excited by their Canada-wide results :

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which they described as "devastating" for the Libs, although their numbers only seem to show that the Libs, Cons and Greens gained a couple of points each at the expense of the NDP and Bloc since the election a year ago. Trouble is those Con gains, if they exist, are in Ontario.

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John Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail and CTV's Robert Fife both credited Harper's surge to 41%approval (compared to five months ago) to his reluctance to call an election.

Catch 22 #1- he'll lose that advantage if he appears to trigger his own defeat in order to pursue an election while his prospects are good.

Catch 22 #2 - as long as the polls convince the other parties he could get a majority, he'll be able to govern like he already has one.

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Best line of the night on Powerplay at CTV :

"The problem for the Liberals is if the numbers continue to show the Tories in the lead, support for the Grits could continue to decline among federal voters."

Um, yeah. Just keep workin' that voodoo mojo, guys.

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Goodnight, from somewhere out here in Manikatchewalbumbia.

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Behold a Pale horserace

Pale spells out the possible dangers of a Con majority.

Thankfully it seems Canadians don't want Harper to have one.

They don't seem to want an election before 2013 either :

Harris Decima also polled on public support for the various positions of the opposition leaders on confidence votes :

Duceppe : Will support the budget measure because it contained a tax credit for home; after that -all bets are off

Layton : Will support keeping government in power till new EI money starts flowing.

Ignatieff : Will no longer support any government measures.

"Nationally, Jack Layton’s position is the most popular, supported by almost 3-in-4 Canadians.
This position has broad appeal nationwide with no less than 66% in any region indicating they support his position on the matter. Among New Democrats, 81% are supportive of this position, while 13% are opposed. The position of the NDP leader is also supported by 70% of Liberals and 78% of Conservatives."

Huh.

Other horserace results :

Angus Reid (September 29-30, n = 1000 online)

CPC 37% ... Lib 27% ... NDP 17% ... BQ 11% ... Green 6%

Ekos (September 23-29, n = 3216 auto dialed)

CPC 36.0% ... Lib 29.7% ... NDP 13.9% ... BQ 9.8% ... Green 10.5%

Ipsos Reid (September 22-24, n = 1001 phone)

CPC 37% ... Lib 30% ... NDP 14% ... BQ 9% ... Green 9%

Leger (September 22-25, n = 3602 phone)

CPC 36% ... Lib 30% ... NDP 17% ... BQ 8% ... Green 8%

Plus ça change ...

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