“Splits” Decisions: A Closer Look at Vote Shifts in Greater Toronto
Some election post-mortems are making assumptions about vote shifts that are probably wrong, and which may lead to some incorrect strategic decisions in the aftermath of Monday's election.
The basic conclusion (much of it coming from Liberal quarters and more than one different columnist) goes like this: "the NDP split the Liberals' vote, thereby allowing the Conservatives to win seats in the Greater Toronto Area … [under breath: *bad* NDP, bad]".
But, is that what happened across Toronto? A look at the preliminary results suggests several other possible explanations worth testing as well, something we won't be able to do until poll-by-poll results come out in three months, and the Canadian Election Study data starts to be analyzed.
But I'll lay down my guess now: I bet that because many of the people doing the theorizing live in the south of Toronto and saw Liberal-to-NDP switching amongst their neighbours, they erroneously assumed that the same vote-switching pattern applied across the region (it didn't), and that it therefore must have caused the loss of Liberal seats to the Conservatives (I don't believe that's the case).
Here's the methodology I used for this analysis:
- take each party's raw vote in a riding, and express it as a percent of eligible voters (I call this measure the "percent of the electorate" or "Pct Elec"; in order to distinguish it from the "percent of the vote" or "vote-share" which expresses raw vote as a percent of valid ballots cast)
- take the number of eligible voters in that riding who did not cast a ballot, and express it as a percent of eligible voters as well (I call this measure the "non-voters" or NV for short), allowing us to treat non-voters as another political party for this analysis
- in each case, compare that value with the same value for that party (and the NVs) in the previous election, and note the difference
- take the average of the differences across each riding in the defined "Local Regions" in the GTA/905 area
- enter into a table, plot on a chart, et voilà !
[Click on image to open a full-size version]
Here were the changes in seats:
Seat Changes by GTA/905 Region
| Seats | Lib | NDP | Cons | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GTA-Etobicoke | 3 | -2 | +2 | |
| 905 North | 6 | -2 | +2 | |
| 905 East | 4 | -1 | +1 | |
| 905 West | 8 | -7 | +7 | |
| GTA-TO North | 7 | -5 | +1 | +4 |
| GTA-TO South | 7 | -3 | +3 | |
| GTA-Scarborough | 6 | -4 | +2 | +2 |
Every riding studied followed exactly the same general pattern (except Don Valley West which only very slightly varied from it, in that the Liberal vote increased by a hundred votes or so):
- Conservative vote was up as a percent of eligible voters
- NDP vote was up
- Liberal vote was down
- Green vote was down
- Non-voting was down (i.e., people came back to the polls, raising turnout)
What differed between the regions was the relative magnitudes of those changes.
Average Change in Percent of Eligible Voters 2008-2011, by Party (including Non-Voters as a Party), by GTA/905 Region
| Pct Elec | Cons | Lib | NDP | Grn | NV | C+L | N+G+NV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GTA-Etob | +3.53% | -3.46% | +4.98% | -1.81% | -3.17% | +0.07% | +0.00% |
| 905 North | +7.67% | -6.75% | +4.21% | -1.69% | -3.31% | +0.92% | -0.79% |
| 905 East | +4.93% | -3.95% | +4.81% | -2.46% | -2.93% | +0.98% | -0.58% |
| 905 West | +5.58% | -3.61% | +5.21% | -1.77% | -5.06% | +1.97% | -1.62% |
| GTA-TO N | +5.78% | -3.77% | +5.04% | -2.07% | -5.30% | +2.01% | -2.33% |
| GTA-TO S | +3.64% | -5.20% | +11.11% | -2.95% | -6.29% | -1.56% | +1.87% |
| GTA-Scarb | +4.14% | -7.25% | +8.71% | -1.53% | -3.75% | -3.11% | +3.43% |
Note the right-most two columns in the above table, the first of which shows the net difference between the Conservative and Liberal vote, and the second which shows the net difference between the NDP vote and Green and non-voters. This allows us to categorize the regions into three groups:
- Etobicoke, and the 905 North and East, where hikes in the Conservative vote match drops in the Liberal vote almost exactly, and where the hike in the NDP vote is close to the decline in Green support and the number of non-voters. The Liberals lost 5 seats here, all of them to the Conservatives. It might have been vote switching from the Liberals to the NDP that triggered these losses, but that requires us to assert that the increase in Conservative vote came from out of the Greens and previous non-voters. That might be true, but Liberal-to-Conservative switching seems like the more likely explanation here.
- The 905 West and Toronto North, where the Conservatives gained more than the Liberals lost, some of it therefore coming out of either previous Green support or earlier non-voters. The Liberals lost 12 seats here, one of them to the NDP (York South-Weston, which shares more characteristics with the ridings in Toronto South), and 11 to the Conservatives. It will be key for the Liberal Party to understand where their votes here went, but I suggest to you that most of it went to the Conservatives, as did previous non-voters (probably the famous Liberals who stayed home in 2008).
- Toronto South and Scarborough, where the Liberals lost more than the Conservatives gained, and meanwhile the NDP posted above average increases in support, suggesting that Liberal support bled off to the left as well as the right. The Liberals lost 7 seats here, 5 of them to the NDP and 2 to the Conservatives.
If this analysis of the numbers bears out, the conclusions are straight-forward:
- Where the Liberals lost votes mainly to the Conservatives, they lost seats to the Conservatives.
- Where Liberals lost votes to the NDP as well as the Conservatives, they lost seats mainly to the NDP.
Another point to notice is that turnout was up in every single riding across the region, meaning that the Conservatives won these seats largely by actually converting Liberal voters, rather than "suppressing" them. Large numbers of either new voters or previous non-voters showed up at the polls, which seems to have been mainly to the NDP's benefit, and even to the Conservatives' benefit in certain areas as well.
We could hypothesize that they might have been in part the famous Liberals who stayed home in 2008, but who didn't come back for them (to coin a phrase), and instead chose the NDP or the Conservatives.
Also, the Greens were down everywhere. Given that much of the increase in the Green vote in 2008 came from former Liberal voters, in 2011 it seems to have gone over to the NDP. This could be conceived of as a different two-step process as well.
Now, we can't know any of this for sure from the macro-level analysis, only rule out implausible cases (like NDP-Conservative switching in Toronto; it does happen, but more so in western Canada and in the Maritimes; or that the Conservative vote held steady, when in fact it increased). Further confirmation (or disproval) will come with the detailed poll-by-poll results and statistical examination thereof, alongside the Canadian Election Study data.
And we also know that in real life the situation is more complex, and that the gross macro-level changes represent the averaging out of thousands of individual decisions which don't in every case match the overall trends.
But it is clear that the kneejerk explanation of first resort – that Liberal voters switched to the NDP in 2011, causing seats to fall to the Conservatives – is not the only one that fits the data, and may not be the explanation that fits it best.
Meanwhile, I wonder if there's ever been any study comparing people's reported second choices to pollsters against their actual vote-switching behaviour. It could be that second choices shift across elections, along with vote intentions.
[UPDATE: Brian Topp gives a strategic answer to the same overall question.]
[UPPERDATE: Missed this Paul Wells assessment of the numeric claims.]
[UPPESTDATE: This iPolitics.ca analysis is so wrong for all the reasons that have been enumerated over and over and over.]
————
Since I now seem to have (a) gotten most of the preliminary results in to the database and caught most of the manual data entry typos, and (b) caught up on my sleep, we'll now be able to get back to more regular blogging.
I can’t say if your formula works for all ridings, but I can say with certainty that Scar-Pickering Libs lost because of the vote split of the NDP. I have lived in the riding for 22 years and have been active and interested.
Deb, here are the raw results from Pickering-Scarborough East. You’ll note that between 2008 and 2011, *both* the Conservative *and* NDP results increased. Do you know for a fact that it wasn’t your supporters switching to the Conservatives that caused the seat to change hands?
The Liberals dropped 4,800 votes, the Greens dropped 1,250 votes, the Conservatives went up about 4,300 votes, and the NDP went up by 5,000. There were also 1,000 more voters showing up at the polls, and 1,000 new electors added to the rolls.
You will need to do a poll-by-poll analysis before you draw firm conclusions either way, but it looks like the Liberal vote could have gone either right or left.
{hope this table is readable}
Prty || 2000Tr || 2004 || 2006 || 2008 || 2011
-----------------------------------------------
Lib || 25005 || 27312 || 27719 || 22874 || 18053
NDP || 1394 || 5392 || 6090 || 4875 || 8972
Grn || ----- || 1809 || 1869 || 3023 || 1746
Cons || ----- || 13417 || 16693 || 14940 || 19220
CA || 8719
PC || 5829
Ind || ----- || ----- || 176
Oth || 627 || ----- || 70 || 321
This is about delegitimizing Harper’s victory.
Its ugly, undemocratic, and it needs to stop.
So far i’ve noticed it come in three variations.
1) A focus on FPTP and vote splitting. The idea is that quirks in our system gave Harper a victory he didn’t deserve.
2) The myth that 60% of voters don’t like or support Harper because he only got 40% of the vote. But just as Reform + PC bled votes to the Liberals so would NDP/Liberals/Greens/BQ. Some of those 60% are sympathetic to Harper even though they didn’t vote for him this time.
You can just as easily say 70% of Canadians don’t approve of the NDP. Or 80% don’t approve of the Liberals.
3) 40% of Canadians didn’t vote. Therefore Harper only has the support of 40% of 60% of us! (Nobody ever stops to reflect what this means for the other individual parties who got less votes…)
One thing that will be a certainty is we will not have to worry about vote-splitting in the 2015 election because the Liberal party will cease to exist once their $2 per vote subsidy is eliminated.
The only question will be where will the Red and Blue Grits go … to their natural political homes or just stay home and mope with the old federal PCers?!
Your amazing, Alice, with all those numbers … are you a fringe Aspie ..??!!! …;-)
Excellent analysis, thank you so much for this. I’ll likely link it a lot, heh.
Shadow:
It isn’t just about delegitimizing Harper’s victory, accusations of vote splitting are insulting to voters in general as it second guesses their intentions and tells them they voted against their own interests.
I’m not trying to delegitimize the election results, Shadow. Just trying to put certain assertions to the test against the actual results.
Careful not to gloat and get too drunk and so forth. Politics moves in cycles and karma has a long memory.
Glad you liked it Iccyh.
Apparently a similar wailing and nashing of teeth is going on in Vancouver, so I may take a look-see at the Lower Mainland results as well.
Yeah, it’s arguable that a split in the “left” vote caused Scarborough Centre to fall. It’s just as arguable that *not enough* split in the “right” vote cemented Tory support in Oshawa. (Where the NDP earned 37.9% of the vote. Cf. Ed Broadbent entering Parliament w/33.6% in 1968. And where Ivan Grose of the Chretien Liberals ranged btw/37.7% and 42.9%.)
Alice, I do not think it is ever as simple as `The Supporters of Party A moved over to Party B`. A true picture would emerge if you were somehow able to aggregate the individual decisions made, which I know is expensive, but…I suspect that there was a fair bit of churn, with people splitting to the left, or right or jumping on bandwagons etc. Everybody made their individual choices, and once the tea leaves all settled, the aggregate was counted at the ballot box. The point I am making is similar to my arguments about strategic voting. Withdrawing candidates, merging the left, (or right for that matter) will mean that the vote will split in several directions. You cannot aggregate Liberal and NDP and Green supporters and label them the `left`. Some of them will move their votes to the CPC if you remove their first choice from the ballot. Same arguments about the Reform-PC merger. The sum of the parts was definitely greater than the actual combined result.
I was struck during the campaign that the polling data (mostly, on this issue, from EKOS)suggested that Liberals preferred the NDP to the Tories as their second choice by a margin of 4-1 or so. Intuitively, that didn’t feel right, and it doesn’t seem to fit the results, which suggest that a rather larger number of Liberal voters swung to the Tories. I wonder if Liberal voters feel embarrassed to admit that they’re thinking of voting Tory? In the ’90s in the UK they used to talk about “shy Tories” who voted Tory but wouldn’t admit to it in a poll; is something similar going on here, I wonder?
Superb post. The bottom line is that the main reason for the Conservatives gaining some 20 seats in Ontario, and their majority, were Liberals voting Conservative.
No data prior to the Reform/PC merger and the last distribution should be used. With 4 elections being held in the same seats there is lots of data to compare.
Next March all this will not be to used for projections forward as 20 new Ontario seats will cause a radical change of seats as will happen in BC and AB and somewhat in the rest as pop shifts within a province will cause a redrawing.
And as I wrote in the past unless you toss in where in the spectrum within their party the candidate comes from, you cannot properly assess how votes change from party to party.
North Van 2004 – a Ref, fiscal conservative lost a Blue Lib by about 3000 votes.
In 2006, a heavy Social conservative lost to that Blue Lib by 5500 votes.
In 2008, that Blue Lib lost to a Red Tory by 2300 votes.
In 2011, that Red Tory beat a Red Lib by over 11,000 votes. The NDs were not a factor here at all gaining a slight increase and the Greens were cut in half.
I’ve always rewritten a Von Clausewitz quote on war to best explain politics.
“Politics, like war, is an art not a science and like all art, it’s sublime cannot be taught or quantified.”
Most swing voters are emotional irrational beings where you cannot distill a rational formula to predict their actions.
Excellent post.
The vote splitting arguments rely on the (largely) false premise that voters for the NDP would have supported Libs otherwise (and vice versa).
Nanos has some good data on his site which shows second preferences by first party preference (and how this shifted between Week One and Week Five – important given the NDP surge). This shows NDP first preference voters splitting about 35%:65% between Cons and Lib (ignoring other parties). Libs show a similar 35:65 split between Cons and NDP.
Undoubtedly there are a handful of seats (even fewer than Eric Grenier’s 12 in Ontario by my estimates) that would have gone to another party had we had an alternative vote system, which could be genuinely said to be “lost by vote splitting” but largely we have to say that the Ontario swing was caused by the Cons increasing their share of vote in the province from 39.2% to 44.4%.
I wish we had an Alternative Vote system (such as the one being put to a referendum in the UK) which would seem to be a patently “fairer” system for single member constituencies – doing away at a stroke with all this tactical voting nonsense. However, I can’t see any incumbent majority government of any hue voting for such a reform.
Alice sorry I should have been more clear.
Its the people advancing the vote splitting narrative who are attacking Harper’s mandate by disrespecting the choices of the voters.
As someone who’s trying to debunk that you were not the intended target of my ire.
I’m just so sick of hearing people get lectured about the value of strategic voting.
Its what they already saying about the new BC Conservative party. Ie. If you don’t vote Liberal the NDP will take over!
In a democracy you should vote your values. It sends a signal to the parties about where the center really is.
Voting Liberal instead of NDP to stop the CPC just moves the center to the right and damages your long term beliefs.
Shadow – “In a democracy you should vote your values.” I couldn’t agree more.
But I still believe that the current electoral system doesn’t encourage people to do that. We just as often vote against the people we dislike most as we vote for the party we like. I think you’re absolutely right that the assumption that 80% of Liberal voters’ second choice was the NDP was dead wrong… I happen to think plenty of people who’ve voted Liberal in the past (especially in Ontario) voted Conservative in this election as an anti-NDP vote! Strategic voting goes both ways!
I support electoral reform precisely so people will no longer feel the need to vote strategically, but can indeed vote their values, and have that vote actually affect the outcome. To know that a vote for a party that might have less than 20% of the votes in their particular neighbourhood can still help that party get a seat.
Ajb, I wrote a post awhile back, which you’ll have to Google since I’m not at my computer right now, which used second choice data from the Canadian Elelction Study to ask the question whether “second choice” was in fact independent from “firmness of vote intention”. It could be that the firmest Liberals were the ones with the NDP aas their second choice, while the softer ones were the Liberal-Conservative switchers. The post was “A Second Look at Second Choices”.
The only way to make any definitive claims about the distribution of the vote is to phrase it as a truly verifiable hypothesis. Any other claim is baseless, meaningless and entirely misleading. This post does a great job of laying that out: it is extremely difficult to know what actually happened without sampling actual voter behavior.
To those like Shadow who see questioning the vote as undemocratic – what a joke! We live in a system where 24% of eligible voters elect a majority government and that government acts illegally on a regular basis. This majority may be legal – but, to be frank, it is neither just nor democratic.
How many times do you people have to be reminded that you have a majority government as a result of winning more seats. You didn’t come even close to winning the votes of the majority of Canadians. The opposite is true: more than 60% of Canadians oppose you.
Those are very simple facts that require no statistical deliberations.
You told Deb that you can’t tell yet where the votes were transferring to and from, so your conclusions are just as much guesses as hers. It is possible that both factors were in effect in all ridings: (1) vote split between Lib/NDP and (2) switch from Lib to Con, with both NDP and Con benefitting from new voters.
As for Shadow’s comment about “delegitimizing” Harper’s victory, first, vote-splitting is exactly how the CPC strategists planned to take Ontario and I even saw an admission that they knew they couldn’t do it any other way, like say, on Harper’s appeal to anyone outside his base.
But ultimately, what first-past-the-post generates is undue electoral gaming on the numbers, not policy – that is what most people are complaining about.
To the others on the left who are moaning about vote splitting (and I say this as a person on the left if anything), I would say too bad. The left knew ahead of time that this was going to be problem. They had the example of Reform/PC to demonstrate it. They could have merged prior to the election, or made explicit agreements for co-operation, and they should have done so before they went off and forced an election.
And the dominant culprit in this “they” I would say is the LIberals.
Stephen this is flat out wrong:
“The opposite is true: more than 60% of Canadians oppose you.”
Voting for another party does not mean you oppose the Conservative government.
Public opinion polling shows that 1/3 of Canadians don’t care or don’t know much about politics one way or another.
Of those that do the split is usually around 50/50 when given a binary Y/N choice on how you rate Harper’s performance.
I know Shadow knows this, but to other new readers and commenters: welcome. We try very hard to keep comments here focused on data and factual matters, and how they affect strategies of one or more parties. This is done in the spirit of maintaining a bipartisan discussion about the craft and science of electoral politics, and frankly out of disgust with the comment boards of most blogs and news sites.
Remember that in the days following an election, the nerves of participants can be especially raw. The purpose of this site is to encourage the maximum participation of everyone in our democracy (except maybe the strategic voting sites ;-)), so let’s just all bear that in mind.
Yes polling may have shown that by 4:1 Liberals supporters preferred the NDP to the CPC. But evidently, among those who actually did flee the LPC, this ratio did not apply. In my “lefty” riding of Parkdale-High Park, it seems the 4000 votes Kennedy lost went about 2,000 each — 1:1 — to the NDP and CPC. The anti-NDP Liberals fled, the NDP-friendly LPCers mostly stuck it out.
I am curious about the dynamic in the Prairies. At first glance it appears that the Liberal collapse, in ridings like Elmwood-Transcona and Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, generally benefitted the Conservatives more than the NDP. I would have expected the opposite. I always had the impression that on the Prairies vote movement followed Conservative-NDP or Liberal-NDP patterns. Perhaps Toronto is not as, metaphorically, distant from the Prairies as some of us suppose.
Robin,
You have hit on the very point I have been trying to make at this website since I started it.
This is precisely why the Ontario-based strategic voting websites were often disastrously wrong, because they believe that the vote-switching patterns of south Toronto applied universally. They don’t, and they never did. They might be downtown core-riding vote-switching patterns, which is what makes the confusion: for example, strategic voting advocates always pointed to Edmonton-Strathcona. But what worked there did not work in urban-rural ridings in Saskatchewan, or suburban Winnipeg ridings.
In BC last time, for example, the collapsing Liberal vote handed seats the NDP hoped to win to the Conservatives. The NDP saw that trend, but also saw the opportunity in going after the Conservatives over the HST and Senate, for example, two populist issues they hoped to use to bring back some right-to-left swinging populist voters.
But this time, the remaining Liberal collapse again went Conservative — for example in a riding like Kamloops where the NDP even increased its vote again, the Liberals collapsed further, all to the Conservatives’ benefit. No different than what happened in Sault Ste. Marie.
So, I hope this gets the media pundits to stop falling back on Poli Sci 100 in terms of what they think happened, and actually look at the hard data. Once they do, the conclusion is inescapable.
As to the legitimacy of a government that was elected by “only” 40% of the voters, it’s worth noting that, since 1945, in only four elections (1949, 1953, 1958, and 1984)did the winning party get more than 50% of the popular vote. Two were LIB, two PC. In every other election since 1945, the governing party was elected with most of the voters voting for another party (or “against” the elected government). This ought to put to rest this silly notion that a government is not legitimate if it gets less than 50% of the votes cast.
Bear in mind that the reason a lot of Liberals may have gone Conservative is the same reason they opted for the Liberals in the first place: “stability”. The stability of good government in practice: a concept that’s beyond all ideology. The Conservatives as a solid incumbent government, much as the Liberals once were. By comparison, the NDP were untested. No, not “socialist hordes”. “Untested”. Otherwise, they might have scooped up more non-Quebec votes in accordance w/Jackmania–even those momentarily parked Conservative, whether ex-Liberal or not.
Maybe next time, now that they’re in Stornoway country.
Shadow, I’ve been very vocal in many forums since these election results were announced. My issue isn’t with the fact that it played to the benefit of the Conservatives; I didn’t think it was appropriate when it occurred for the Liberals, nor is it in any provincial election regardless of the party benefiting from it.
The reality is, it’s not about who benefits, it’s about the fact that we have a system that creates false majorities and neutralizes the voice of each voter who didn’t cast a ballot in favour of the candidate who was victorious in their riding.
I also feel that all these “creative” solutions are farcical. MMP. AV. STV. Gives me a headache and makes me nauseous that these eggheads are complicating something which can be done simply.
Step 1: Amalgamate ridings on a 3:1 basis, with a 4th riding added in at one or two places where the number a province currently has isn’t divisible by 3.
Step 2: Count each and every vote correctly.
Step 3: The candidate with the most votes in the riding gets a seat. Then the remaining candidates across the province are ranked based on the votes they received and the province’s other seats are assigned accordingly.
Now, here’s the kicker: Those MPs do not have merely one vote in Parliament. They have votes equal to the number of votes that were cast for them.
What does it mean for the average voter? Well, as long as you don’t “throw it away” on a fringe/joke candidate, you are represented in Ottawa. It also ensures that the candidates remember that they are beholden to the voters who supported them, not the party with which they’re affiliated.
Sure sounds like democracy to me!
I’m glad for the debunking of simplistic vote-splitting excuses, however there are countless factors to look at.
I seem to remember having a last name early in alphabetical order made a huge difference in some polls. I haven’t seen that studied in light of results from this election.
Likewise, the ’stability’ sell of a majority government was a draw for many Tory votes, which would likely exist without the Liberal collapse or NDP surge.
Well, I think that what happened in Ontario simply confirms something I have always felt about the Libs. To be honest though, I was pretty shocked when the CBC came on and I learnt how the Tories were on their way to a majority. I wondered to myself, what happened to Ontario?
I have always said that Libs simply are Tories in less of a hurry, and a little less mean. If you look at the actual legislative record of successive regimes both Lib and Tory, there has been a steady rightward drift. From Wage controls, to Martin’s 95 tax cuts, to income trusts, both parties have turned for the most part into “Conservative” parties in one form on another. This simple reason alone is more then enough confirmation for real card carrying New Dems such as myself that neither party shares anything in common with us.
If you look at what Ontario has had for governments provincially, I don’t see how anyone could possibly think that the Ontario electorate as a whole leaned “to the left”. For me, it makes me wonder if Mike Harris wasn’t a fluke, but really what has become the “norm”. I mean how else can you explain Auto Workers voting Tory?
I think Alice has pretty much laid this out in a way that irrefutably points to consideration of the idea that maybe what we saw on Monday really is a better reflection of where the Ontario voting public stands. Given the notion the New Dems were coming on, basically conservative “Libs” chose to vote for real conservatives, rather then hand power off to the “flakely left”.
As a New Dem, I am very, very happy with how things turned out. I am not worried at all. How the New Dems actually do in the future will depend on how well they do in opposition. Given what I have seen provincially, across Canda I am not worried; New Dems seem to be pretty quick studies. Ultimately the electorate will decide and through their votes give proof to all of our postalations one way or another.
One man’s opinion, for what its worth. As I say, very happy with what happened, and excited about the future.
Arthur Cramer, Winnipeg
I primarily vote on candidate merits as opposed to party lines.
I live in a riding held by a Conservative representative who has won with very large majorities.
This election, I had 6 choices on the ballot. 3 out of the 6 candidates I know personally to some degree. The incumbent conservative, an Independent and a Liberal.
I based my choice as a voter on those 3 candidates.
The other 3 in the riding, 1 was a really nutty neo-nazi from Ontario running under a fringe party banner, the NDP candidate was a Union leader from Edmonton and the Green was a student. The last two ran invisible campaigns.
The Liberal candidate is a close family member of someone that I work directly for and was a nice guy. I talked to him during the campaign and he never asked me for my vote.
The Independent is someone I met during a provincial campaign when i was supporting a different candidate. I met him once before and saw him again at a candidate debate where I actually liked what he had to say.
The Conservative incumbent I know very well including his family and gave him my vote in the past.
In the end I made up my mind to support the independent candidate. I felt that the Conservative candidate was in no danger and decided to put my vote to help someone else. Also I wanted to see the Independent candidate beat the neo-nazi candidate.
I may be outside of the 40% of the people who didn’t vote for a Conservative candidate, but I still absolutely support the government.
My second opinion
Also, I believe that pundits miss calculating popular vote. I think its more important to look at the people who voted for House of Commons winners and people who voted for losing candidates. Separating the popular vote by winners and losers better reflects how public opinion decided the make up of parliament
EBrown sorry to give the impression I was going after authentic advocates of changes to our voting system.
I respectfully disagree with such individuals.
My beef is with media types and activists who just suddenly discovered issues surrounding FPTP as if it was some brand new occurence.
People don’t like the results so they’re complaining about the rules.
@Shadow:
Notwithstanding how well the New Dems have done, I am a porportioal rep supporter. I always have been. I think FPTP is inherently, and intrinsicly unfair.
And this comment is aimed at no one in particular. I don’t have a lot of trouble with pointing out that only 40% of Canadians voted in favor of the Tories. I don’t think this is an invaldi observation at all. Over and over again, Canadians when polled, simply do not embrace the neo-con agenda. Further, the Libs and the New Dems, always poll higher then the Cons.
Bottom line, Canadains simply don’t want the kind of radical change that Harper would like to push through. Again though, the electorate has spoken this time around. The next time, the outcome could be different. Ultimately, again, Canadians are the final aribters of things political.
The chips will fall where they do.
Arthur Cramer, Winnipeg
Hey Art since you brought up polling i’ll just correct you with some numbers.
Its simply not true that Canadians reject Harper’s agenda when polled.
Take a look at the last EKOS before the election:
http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/full_report_may_1_2011.pdf
It has a metric called “Direction of Government”.
44.8% say Right direction
45.1 say Wrong direction
9.5% say DK/NR (that’s of respondents, obviously this number is probably higher due to issues with response rate for the entire survey.)
So factor out those who don’t care and you essentially have a 50/50% country when it comes to Harper.
That’s a solid basis from which to govern a country. Its certainly not the 40% support some people suggest Harper has.
I’ll repeat again, its possible to vote for another party and still support the Harper agenda.
The NDP has never even tried to change the electoral system when elected provincially. The people have rejected two different PR systems in provincial referendums. There is absolutely no chance that there would even be a referendum in the fall of 2015.
The budget will be in surplus six months before the next election, after passing all bills the opposition blocked – that will be the only focus.
Another great post Alice.
The pattern by those opposed to the Conservative majority will never be satisfied and will always look for an explanation or a quick fix.
Most of us that cast a ballot are not consumed with the machinations of the strategists and pundits.
We have an outcome that will be revisited in 4.5 years. At that time we can repeat the talking points why our team won or lost.
I am thankful for this majority and look to base my vote on their track record again.
Shadow:
I think that there is always a funny disconnect between what people say regarding polling concerning government, how they vote, and how they poll on specific issues. For example, Canadians consistently poll highest on Health Care, but the issue we always hear about is the deficit. There is a deliberate attempt by the power elite to force an intellectual disconnect between these kinds of results and what people have presented to them as the issues about which there should be politicial debate. Given this truism, it is easy to understand the kind of result you described. However, it isn’t in any way an endoresement of the agenda of the government, and shouldn’t either be seen as such, or as a means for arguing that the government has wide spread support on a myriad of important issues. In short, don’t believe everything you read.
@Canadiansense:
I don’t have any issue with people trying to explain what happened. Clearly, there were a set of very speicific circumstances that contributed to the Tory landslide, and that is what it was. New Dem or not, even I will concede that.
I think your issue is the idea that people are questioning the liegitmacy of the Tory victory. The fact is that the Tories only polled 40%; 40% is not a majority vote. There are a number of factors that contributed to the Tory landslide, and have already been documented here, and in other places, both on and offline.
Call it “talking points” if you like, these are fact, not fiction. If you feel that people are simply scrambling for explanation, fine. But don’t pretend your motivation is anything other then a thinly vieled attack aimed at undermining legitimate debate.
You are right. In time, there will be another election. I will predict here and now, Harper will fall, and Canada will elect a minority NDP government lead by the next Prime Minister of Canada, Jack Layton.
Arthur Cramer, Winnipeg
The actual fact, Arthur, is that our system does not require a majority of votes but a majority of seats. Bringing that up at all is irrelevant.
You have not seen a Harper landslide yet but you will next time. He has four more majority governments to go before he hands it over to Jason Kenny. What is King’s record?
Remember George, by the end King was using seances to contact his dead dog. If that’s the record, I don’t know if Harper wants to beat it.
Frankly, I see the evidence as enormous that in the GTA by far the most important factor was people switching their vote from Liberal to Conservatives, and generally from a Liberal winner to to a Conservative that won, and who those voters obviously wanted to win.
I’ve yet to see any evidence brought forward to support the so called vote splitting ’cause’: votes moving from the Liberals to the NDP that allowed the Conservative canidate in THAT riding to win.
I dont think this is so much ugly and undemocratic, as it is a terrible case of denial… which drives a search for scapegoats.
When you draw out the implications of this search for scapegoats, it certainly does sound undemocratic about respecting the choices of voters. But I think its just the need for denial taking over what people are able to SEE.
Personally, I have the least time for the non-aligned so-called ‘pundits’ that buy into these bogus explanations of ‘vote splitting’. They’re just lazy.
@George Pringle:
“The actual fact, Arthur, is that our system does not require a majority of votes but a majority of seats. Bringing that up at all is irrelevant”
I didn’t say that he didn’t have a majority, and I didn’t question that he won out right. What I was responding to was an assertion that the “facts” supported the assertion that Harper enjoys wide spread support for his agenda, across Canada. Deny it if you want, or take snarky shots at me, those are the facts. Those are the facts, and THAT makes my commentrary relevant. It isn’t MY issue if you can’t see that.
I have never had any issue with people voting as they do. That is what a democracy is about which is why I always hope for a 80% plus turn out of the electorate, regardless of how they may vote. I never vote out of fear, and I don’t care what Harper may or may not do. I vote NDP because I am a Socialist, and that party comes closest to my political philosophy.
The point I will make is only 60% of the populace participated, and as a result, we have a NATIONAL GOVERNMENT (no, I WON’T DENY, they are the government of Canada) which believes it has a mandate to drastically and permanently change Canadian society.
But, that is what people choose, and we’ll have to wait a while to throw the bums out. You had me up to your commentary regarding successive Tory governments; at that point, your commentary became just plain silly. As for Jason Kenney ever being PM, won’t happen.
Arthur Cramer, Winnipeg
Art I don’t know if you caught Harper’s news conference but he was very clear that he wanted to run a mainstream, national government that represented all Canadians, including those who didn’t vote for him.
So this notion that he think he has a “mandate to drastically and permanently change Canadian society” is the sort of thing you’d expect to hear from someone like Heather Mallick.
Fellow lefties Tabatha Southey and Margaret Wente wrote two excellent columns taking Mallick and her brand of fear based politics to task.
I’ll direct you to them now:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/fear-and-loathing-among-the-eastern-elites/article2013140/?from=sec368
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/tabatha-southey/the-tories-stomped-us-but-we-shouldnt-make-sour-grapes-into-whine/article2013296/
Art i’ll also just state one more time that the public domain polls all seem to say that when you factor out people who don’t care or don’t know about politics you’ll find Harper gets about 50% support.
So while he may not have broad support for his agenda its equally true that he doesn’t face broad opposition.
We’re a country split down the middle.
People who pretend its 60 to 40 and Harper is on the losing end are deluding themselves.
Agreed.
Shadow, I am familiar with Margaret Wente. She is a frequent quest on Charles Adler’s radio show. To my way of thinking that immediately disqualifies her as anyone to take serioulsy on anything.
I hear what you are saying. I understand the logic. But, my issue is on polled issues, say for example support for Medicare, Gay Marriage, Abortion, etc. Again and again the public states a preference that is inarguably at odds with the belief of the party this PM leades. That worries me, although at this moment, I have no read on which way this is going to go.
I will say that there was a bit of “a tell” on Cross Country Checkup this weekend. Rex Murphy interviewed Preston Manning. Manning moved the discussion to Canadian Medicare, over and over. Manning described Medicare as “badly needing of reform”. It might not be Harper’s goal, but I think its Preston’s, and I am doubtful of this Prime Minister’s ability to resist this kind of pressure from his base. Besides, I believe he would like to introduce a siszeable private aspect to Medicare. From my standpoint, that assuredly lead to competition over access. I am getting older, I am 53. I don’t want myself, or any other fellow citizen having to worry about this, especially as they get older. And to be honest with you, I have some ailments now which I know will only get worse as I age over which I have little control.
The fact that this kind of sentiment is made so unabashedly by someone like Manning is very, very worrisome. I know that the Libs cut the equivalent of 5.3% of total GDP in the Martin Budget, and that the PM’s propsoal is effectively a 3.1% cut. So, I don’t think the Libs are any more trustworthy, and I mean, trustworthy. I believe that this is the reason why Canada is so lucky to have a strong New Dem voice in Parliment now, at what really could be a sea-change in the Canadian social contract.
I have no arguement at all with the assertion that the PM won a majority of seats, legitimately, and very fairly. I said that in a previous post. I also acknowledge that he is my PM as much as he is yours. Given an unknown future, I could even find myself singing some kind of praise of his efforts, who know? But the key point is that, AT THIS TIIME, 60% of the total population that voted, doesn’t share most of the PM’s sentiments. I think that is irrefutable.
I am not questioning the legitimacy of his election as PM of a majority government. But I question whether he has “the right” to make the kind of changes in the Canadian Social Contract that he might be tempted. I mean, citing the Globe and Mail as a source for asserting the PM is a reasonable man is faulty; the Globe is hardly an impartial voice.
Again, I say time will tell what happens. The one good thing about governance is that succeeding governments can change anything done by those who came before, and for me, that is where I vest my hope.
Arthur Cramer, Winnipeg
Art the PM has promised to make no changes to abortion, gay marriage, or the Canada health act.
I agree he has no mandate to make such changes because he didn’t campaign on doing so. As Harper rightly said, Canadians don’t like surprises.
Harper’s budget and platform enjoy pretty good support.
The hidden agenda stuff you’re talking about does not.
I guess all we can do now is wait and see what we get.
Shadow:
That is a fair comment. I willingly concede that, and I hope you are right.
Very reasonable statement, I have no issue with it in any way. Thanks for making that observation.
Cheers!
Arthur Cramer, Winnipeg