Election Results

[bjarvis]

As of this moment, the allocations of the 308 seats in Parliament area:
Conservatives: 124 seats
Liberals: 103 seats
Bloc Quebecois: 51 seats
NDP: 29 seats
Independent: 1 seat
It appears as many as 15 seats may require recounts but are unlikely to make significant difference to the overall results: a Conservative minority with Liberals in opposition.

Overall, about 30 seats changed hands, lost by the Liberals and picked up by the Conservatives & NDP. Despite the change in government and the addition of a few new faces, this new Parliament will look an awful lot like the previous one.

The major party leaders retained their seats. In Hamilton East, Tony Valeri, who had a major fight with Sheila Copps two years ago for the right to run as a Liberal, lost to the NDP. Former astronaut Marc Garneau lost to the BQ candidate. Star candidate Michael Ignatieff won his Toronto-area seat. Ralph Goodale, finance minister, won his seat in Saskatchewan. Deputy PM Anne McLellan lost her seat in Alberta. Gay former MP Svend Robinson attempted a come-back but was defeated by Liberal lightweight (IMHO) Hedy Fry. Foreign Affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew lost his seat.

NDP leader Jack Layton will be joined in the House by his wife, Olivia Chow. I think this is the first time a husband & wife team have had seats in the House. Fortunately, they're of the same party.





While I'm disappointed the Liberals didn't win, the writing has been on the wall since prior to the xmas holidays. Staying in power for four consecutive terms was hard enough but winning a fifth term would run strongly against history. A little time wandering in the wilderness may actually do them some good: this is an excellent opportunity to develop some policies which are a little more imaginative than we're-not-Americans and hey-we-balanced-the-budget-eight-years-ago. That, and it's always entertaining to watch governmental novices fall over themselves trying to find their parliamentary legs.

While the Conservatives may form the government, they will have a hard time implementing the far right-wing aspects of their agenda as they will require the support of the BQ or a combination of the NDP and renegade Liberals. Some of the new Conservatives from Ontario are the more extreme elements from the prior provincial Harris gov't, although they may be offset by the more centrist Conservatives from the atlantic provinces & Quebec.

The Senate is still vastly stacked in favour of the Liberals and they will likely not hesitate to lay claim to the philosophical space between a minority and majority status. In their eyes, the Conservatives were not given a majority and therefore were not granted unfettered permission by the electorate to do anything they wished so the deference which might be given to a majority gov't will be lacking.

I'm not too worried about the gay marriage thing at the moment: unless something underhanded is attempted, a free vote in the house will likely cast about 180 votes in favour of the status quo. What kind of underhanded stunt? Convoluted wording of triple or more negatives to obscure the resolution, attaching something evil to the resolution (say, text linking pedophilia to gay marriage and then asking for a vote on the topic), holding the vote at an obscure late hour to ensure the opposition is largely absent, etc.. I can think of a dozen parliamentary tactics which could be employed depending on how the topic is presented. The safest thing for the Conservatives to do, however, may be to either hold & lose a quick non-binding free vote immediately to clear the table or simply not bring up the topic at all until some future time when they hope for a majority so that they can appear to be more centrist in the interim and not piss off components of their neo-puritan religious base.

Prime Minister Paul Martin Jr. has announced he will resign the leadership of the Liberal party but retain his seat as MP. I think he's moved too quickly to announce his resignation. At the very least, he should have waited to see if the Conservatives could actually survive their first budget. The last time a Liberal prime minister was resigned after a Conservative minority took power, there was an election in 9 months: that's just not enough time to have an effective leadership campaign and allow the new leader to establish his credentials before thrusting him/her into an election. While there are candidates who may be jockeying to take Martin's place as leader, there is no heir-apparent or distinct front-runner yet.

Comments

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I remember John Crosby (one-time Liberal) sitting as a Progressive-Conservative, then later taking a run for the party leadership against Brian Mulroney in in 1980-81 after Joe Clark resigned the first time (Crosby came in 3rd). It's not unheard of and not impossible, but it is an uphill battle. I really thought Stronach would not win her seat as a Liberal this time around, but she proved me wrong. Perhaps I'm just as wrong about her leadership chances.

Considering the anger concerning the Gomery Inquiry etc., I'm surprised the Liberals won as many seats as they did, and that the BQ actually lost three. Didn't see that coming.

[pectopah.livejournal.com]

The way the election shook out in Quebec isn't surprising. The Bloc lost two of its seats to Conservatives and one to a controversial radio personality. When Harper started campaigning vigorously in Quebec, ridings that had been traditionally Conservative started registering high numbers for the Conservative Party. The Bloc suffered because many voters who would normally vote Conservative had no one to vote for in a while and the Liberals were just too distasteful. What is more interesting is how low the Bloc's overall voting percentage was--43%. The Bloc doesn't always seem to grasp that votes for them are not automatically also votes in favour of separation.

There was no doubt, despite Gomery, that the Liberals would retain some seats in Quebec. They are all on the Island of Montreal and in ridings that have the largest percentages of anglophones and allophones. That Pierre Pettigrew lost to a Haitian-immigrant running for the Bloc in a riding with a majority-non-Francophone population is interesting.