With the Libs floundering in an election campaign where they considered themselves entitled to waltz into power and the NDP making a push toward the top of the party standings, commentators haven’t been able to avoid some comparison to 2011. But that’s always come with a caveat – that Justin
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Accidental Deliberations: On history repeating
I haven’t yet commented much on Ontario’s provincial election campaign – and readers interested in the race will find plenty of noteworthy observers on the blogroll. That said, it’s worth noting the parallels between this campaign and a couple of the NDP’s other recent breakthroughs. To start with, Ontario’s 2018
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On changed messages
Paul Wells highlights the major change from the Cons’ messaging in 2011 compared to today, as the party which spent years doing nothing about obsessing over (and demonizing) the possibility of a coalition has suddenly gone mum except in front of the most partisan of crowds. But it’s worth noting
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: The more things change…
Tim Naumetz’ comparison between the NDP’s place before the 2011 federal election and its current position is worth a read. But what’s perhaps more noteworthy is how little has changed. Remember that the 2011 campaign was initially portrayed as a two-party race between the Cons and the Libs. And looking
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Janet Bagnall neatly dissects the Cons’ plan for dismantling public services: The Harper government is nothing if not predictable in how it goes about dismantling a program or service. It starts by denigrating the program and the program’s beneficiaries, and telling Canadians that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Dan Gardner nicely sums up how any Con cabinet shuffles are utterly irrelevant since Stephen Harper prefers ciphers to functional ministers in any event: In the past, parties in power always had factions, and ministers with their own political clout, and these provided
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On timeless recipes
Alice offers a thorough discussion of the ingredients behind the NDP’s Quebec gains in 2011. But the most important part of the story may be that one of the key factors had in fact been in place all along – and may only help the NDP all the more in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – There’s still plenty more emerging on the Robocon election fraud scandal. The reporting combinations of McGregor/Maher and Chase/Leblanc/Mills have both discussed Elections Canada’s latest court filing showing that Con campaign officials openly discussed implementing U.S.-style vote suppression efforts – including exactly the forms
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading.- Alice posts the full party spending numbers from May’s election. And the story in fact looks to have been near-maximum spending by each of the four parties then in Parliament – which of course failed to produc…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Aaron Wherry profiles how some of the NDP’s youngest MPs won a place in office, and the work they’re doing now that they hold the role.- It isn’t the kind of endorsement against type that would have the largest…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: The new baseline
In this year’s federal election, the NDP took 32% of the vote in Saskatchewan – but didn’t win a single seat as other parties dropped off the map and the Cons consolidated public support in all but one riding. And in last night’s provincial election, t…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to start your week.- Once again, the NDP’s popular support is holding up in the face of plenty of predictions to the contrary. But I’m sure we’ll hear all about how the leadership race will do what the scrutiny of an election campaign,…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On improved positions
Last week, I noted the top-line results from Angus Reid’s latest federal polling. But perhaps even more important than the stability in Canada’s party polling numbers is the question of which party is living up to the expectations underlying its popula…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Not quite comparable
Alice notes that all three official parties in Parliament amassed record fund-raising totals during the course of this spring’s election campaign. But it’s worth adding one asterisk to the raw numbers.While both the Cons and the NDP mostly raised money…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Andrew Jackson attacks the myth of expansionary austerity, particularly from a Canadian perspective:(T)here is very rarely any such thing as expansionary austerity, according to IMF staff economists.In a carefu…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Not yet satisfied
Eric highlights Environics’ polling as to how happy supporters of various parties are with last month’s federal election results. And the findings look to bode about as well as possible for the NDP’s prospects of expanding its reach over the next few years:
Conservative supporters felt very positively about the election result – and why not. Their party won a majority. Fully 82% are quite happy.But New Democratic voters aren’t as pleased as you might expect. Their party made a historic breakthrough in Quebec, won the most seats and votes in their history, and are now the Official Opposition. But only 27% of their voters are happy with the results.Though it is somewhat surprising it is as high as it is, 13% of Liberal voters and 10% of Bloc voters feel positively about what happened on May 2nd. Thirty percent of non-voters are also pleased with the result.As for having negative feelings about the election result, only 2% of Conservative voters have some regrets. That is miniscule. Surprisingly, only 21% of non-voters feel the same way (36% are, understandably, indifferent).Despite their historic outcome, fully 42% of NDP voters feel sad or fearful about the election results. And despite being reduced to third party status, only 54% of Liberal voters feel negatively. It is a majority, but you’d expect Liberals to be a little more upset, along the lines of the 73% of Bloc voters.
Now, it’s important enough that a substantial number of NDP voters were hoping for more rather than expressing satisfaction with the party’s position. After it’s surely easier to build a movement when supporters are concerned about the direction of the country and motivated to change it, rather than seeing reason to get complacent.But the level of satisfaction with the election result among the opposition parties is especially significant when paired with the NDP’s post-election polling boost. In effect, it looks like a number of the Lib voters who already looked like promising NDP targets have already made the jump – and are apparently finding a landing pad which fits their own attitudes about the election.[Edit: fixed quote.]
Accidental Deliberations: One of these things is not like the others
One of these things just doesn’t belong. See if you can spot the difference in the following single-election results – and consider what it might mean for each party’s future strategy…
| Vote Share | Seats | Provinces w Seats | Provinces under 20% | High Prov% | Low Prov% | Rebates |
| 30.6% | 103 | 8 | 2 | 42.9% | 15.4% | 306 | 25.5% | 66 | 5 | 5 | 58.9% | 3.9% | 182 | 30.2% | 103 | 9 | 1 | 52.5% | 15.3% | 283 | 29.6% | 99 | 8 | 1 | 61.7% | 8.8% | 251 |
For those wondering, the parties who posted those totals are respectively the NDP in 2011, the Canadian Alliance in 2000, the Libs in 2006, and the Cons in 2004. And of course, each party served as the official opposition following the listed general election.
So let’s ask the rhetorical question: is there an obvious reason why one of those parties might have had both a glaring need to pursue a merger, and an obvious opportunity in doing so?
And conversely, is there an equally obvious reason why the other three might see fit to work from an existing national base, rather than pursuing wrenching structural changes?
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- The McGill Institute’s Election Content Analysis includes plenty of interesting information on how this month’s federal election was covered. But the most noteworthy point looks to be the lag time between dev…
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