Canadian Election results


bigger turnout



Well, that went better than I had hoped.

The opinion polls were off the mark again. That 18% lead the Globe and Mail gave the Conservatives not long ago turned out to be a more modest 6 per cent. They received 124 seats and 36% of the votes to the Liberals 103 (30%), Bloc 51 (10%) , NDP 29 (17%) and 1 independent. So it's a Conservative minority government that must compromise with the other parties to pass legislation.

Despite our crazy first past the post voting system the result roughly reflects the divisions within the country. It's worth noting though that the Bloc Quebecois got 51 seats while the NDP, with a much larger number of votes, only got 29. The unfairness of this is why I favour proportional representation or run-off elections, if we are going to have a multi-party (as opposed to direct) democracy.

The NDP did improve their seat count by 10 and their voter percentage by a couple of points. They had hoped to do much better and failed to get enough to provide the Conservatives with the balance of power.

The Liberals did much better than expected. Paul Martin's decision to step down as their leader opens up the possibility for their return to power, suitably chastened, if the Conservatives screw up or simply don't impress. I was very happy to see Michael Ignatieff win as a Liberal for Etobicoke Lakeshore in Toronto. His name keeps being mentioned for the leadership and now that race will be sooner rather than later.

I was also glad to see the cabinet's principal apologist for Haiti, Pierre Pettigrew, go down in defeat.

Locally, Conservative Jeff Watson soundly defeated the Liberals' Susan Whelan, with Taras Natyshak, NDP a respectable but distant third. All three candidates actually got more votes than last time, so I think Buzz Hargrove's plea for NDP voters to go Liberal was pretty much ignored.

That was the other big surprise. The national turnout was up about 4 per cent. It helped that the weather was unusually mild across the country.

Posted: Tue - January 24, 2006 at 08:37 PM          

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