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(photo: Finding Josephine)
Today is election day in Canada, so to all our Canadian readers: go vote! To our non-Canadian readers, today’s election could be a truly historic event worth keeping an eye on.
The center-left Liberal Party has ruled Canada for much of its history and been a major party for over a century. That makes it not only one of the longest, most successful parties in Canada’s history, but among one of the most successful political parties in any modern democracy.
However, today, the polling indicates that the Liberal Party will have one of their worst showings ever. They are almost assured to fall to a distant third behind a surging left-wing New Democratic Party and the right-wing Conservative Party.
This election could be the tipping point that pushes Canada towards one of several different possible major political re-alignments. In the long term the raise of the NDP could make it the new major party of the left and the beginning of the steady decline for the Liberal Party. With its third place status Liberals could find it difficult to getting new voters excited about a centrist party that would have trouble winning enough seats to govern.
There is also the remote possibility the election could produce a NDP-Liberal coalition. If that happens, such a coalition might decide to try to move Canada to a fairer election system, such as proportional representation. This would radically change the politics of the country and would the end weird conditions that currently allow the Conservatives to win a governing majority in parliament with less than 40 percent of the popular vote.
While the long- term and short-term outcomes of this election are uncertain, the chance it could be bring historic political change is huge.
32 Comments
Please send your version of Dubya and Dick – Stephen Harper – packing. He’s propped up by America’s Republicans.
Save yourselves. Don’t end up like us.
Keep the Tories under 150 seats, and they’ll be forced to deal with either the Liberals or the Bloc Quebecois. Hard to say which option they’d find more distasteful.
Not just Stephen Harper, hackworth1. My riding’s home to one of his favourite attack dogs, John Baird. I don’t think I’ve ever seen footage of Baird where he isn’t shouting someone down in the House of Commons.
But I’ve voted, and I think I’ve even convinced a person or two in the last month. Today is a chance for Canada to look forward instead of back.
Oh, and any Tory minority is still dangerous – look what the Poltroon-who-would-be-King has managed in the last five years/two minorities. This has not been a happy or a proud time for Canada.
Here’s hoping that our first-past-the-post system lets us eke out a win. I have hope, but I’m still nervous because things could go any way tonight.
Hey Quinn; hey Canuck! Tell the NDP they’d better be doing some great GOTV and giving folks rides to their polling places!
We’re all cheering for you, you Socialist bastards! Sort of a reverse-Schadenfreude thing. ;o)
We Can Do It!
I know of at least two votes going the way of the NDP from good friends of ours who were nearly apoplectic when the Conservatives took office and have worked tirelessly to remove the “Gop’s” Harper. He was antithetical to everything Canadian and was, hopefully, an anomaly and, as you say, supported by the American gangsters. We can only hope that that era of Canadian politics is over and will never again seethe light of day. Harper can go and join the rest of the right wing dictators living in Miami.
“long-term,” not “lon-term” (last sentence of OP).
Just another helpful comment from your friendly neighborhood copy editor.
An election eve message from The Tra La Las in Kitchener-Waterloo. Get Out and Vote, Canada! (video)
I have my fingers crossed for you and Canada. Go vote again!
Thank you bluewombat
Heh. Dad always told me: “vote early, vote often.”
Free poutine for voters, eh!
How left is the NDP? Enough to matter?
In Chicago even the stelae vote.
Far enough that the US MSM will be screaming Communist :-)
For those of us north of the border they are center left. Our Liberals have become like the Dems, center right. Our Conservatives are just northern Rethugs.
Hey wendy: Nice unicorn. Or is it a sparkle pony? The NDP looks to be doing fine in Montreal proper, and even in Quebec City. Finding drivers for GOTV in remoter Quebec ridings is more problematic. Still, I think the snowball effect will carry the party to victory in ridings where they never imagined they had a snowball’s chance.
punaisette starts at McGill University next fall (Political science). Should be interesting to follow…
eCAHNomics @ 12: Here are some examples:
Getting out the vote: Rise Up Canada! (video)
Importance of all voter participating: “Battle for minority vote in Canada elections” (Apr. 27, 2011 ; with video)
More open criticism of the media: “Canada at War: Ghost Issue of 2011 Election” (TheTyee.ca, by Katie Hyslop, May 2, 2011)
punaise @ 16: Congratulations to punaisette!
I wish I could go vote! I’m 60 years old and have never voted in my life. That’s because I’m a Canadian citizen living in the United States. As a resident alien here in the US, I’m not eligible to vote in any election (So much for “no taxation without representation!”), but as a non-resident Canadian citizen, I’m not eligible to vote in any Canadian elections either. You have to be a resident. Non-citizens who are Canadian residents can vote in Canada, unlike here. So I’ve never been resident in Canada and of age to vote in an election, and though I’ve lived and paid taxes here for more than 20 years and will most likely die here, I’ve never been able to vote in an election because I’m not an American citizen.
It’s hard to be certain because the NDP have never formed a federal government. Policy-wise they are center-left to left and the NDP governments various provinces have had have led the way for many of the social reforms Canada now enjoys.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Voted Liberal today. Worked on the Liberal campaign in my riding. Have to wait until 1 EST to start getting results – they don’t release results on the east coast until the west coast has finished voting, by law.
If I could vote my heart I’d have voted NDP. But I didn’t want to split the vote, which is how Conservatives have formed governments; our “third-party” because the NDP is relevant and stands to become the second party. Unfortunately, my riding is just a Conservative-Liberal riding, with the NDP not running a real campaign. How many Conservative MPD are elected will determine the NDP’s influence.
Voting Liberal to keep a Conservative MP out helps the NDP though. So there’s that.
This thing could go any which way – it really is brand new territory for us.
This is the second time in this thread I’ve seen the word. What is a “riding”? Is it something like a precinct?
A riding is an electoral district. Each riding sends one Member of Parliament to Ottawa. There are 308 ridings in the country.
And incidentally, I voted.
We’re with ya, canuck! Ah’m ridin’ mah Sparkle Pony in solidarity!
Look, they have them there too.
hey thanks. A less US-centric college experience can’t be a bad thing for a future global citizen.
Aw, shit. Looks like Harper’s going to friggin’ win his 150 seats and then some. Canada gets to keep emulating the US in terms of racing to the bottom.
Fuck, Ontario gave the conservatives the necessary seats to obtain a majority fascist gouvernement…
I am disappointed the Conservatives won, but here is some context.
Stephen Harper could not win a primary in the US; He could not pass the Tea Party litmus test. He is an evangelical Christian, but Canadian evangelicals are more muted than their American cousins.
While he has rabid Members of Parliament that want to end same sex marriage and abortion rights, he knows that he can not enact such legislation. Canadians do not like extremists; we are too nice as a people, and he likes being Prime Minister too much.
He is an authoritarian. He runs his own political party with an iron fist. Now that Canadians have let him off of his leash; he will muck it up bad. He has had a problem with scandals over the last year. Many more will follow now that they have a majority government.
The NDPs surge is very, very good news. Quebecers are very social democratic in their outlook. And a large number of Quebec’s seats went to the NDP.
The NDP is a real social democratic party. They are the heirs to the Canadian Commonwealth Federation, the party that enacted the first universal health insurance program in the province of Saskatchewan IN 1946. (BTW, the CCF was a fiscally conservative party; no one would lend that Red Menace money.)
Until this decade NDP success has been almost solely limited to the western provinces of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. They won one in Ontario in 1990. There has been a recent win in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia in 2009.
Historically, the Liberals had a stranglehold on Quebec and were able to form majority government after majority government because of that base. If the NDP can solidify their presence in Quebec; the future looks very good for Canada.
Condolences, Q.
Well, it is a VERY mixed result!
Harper majority is just awful. I can hardly believe that and it makes me sick. Only hope is it will quicken his race to the bottom and out. In the meantime, less social support and lower corporate taxes so time to get off unemployment and start a business, I guess.
BIG INTERNATIONAL NEWS is we have the very first national Green Party Member of Parliament!!!!!! This should make headlines around the world. The leader of the Greens won her riding in British Columbia. This breaks the ice and she’s feisty enough and smart enough to be heard in Parliament. This is a definite breakthrough and stunning in a first past the post system. She will be assured of a spot in the election debates next time around after being locked out this time.
The NDP has literally taken over most of Quebec which ~ if you know your Quebec history ~ is a HUGE change in the recent (20+-year-long) social dynamics of the whole country. As well as a huge change for the NDP rising as a federal party with real clout, the Bloc Quebecois are gone along with the much-reduced Liberals.
Pierre Trudeau’s son held his own Liberal riding in Montreal which is important to those of us who are sentimental. He’s a very junior MP but he may well represent the future.
The NDP are now the official opposition and could well form the next government if Harper screws up badly enough! And if people are hurting enough over the next 4 years or so. Both highly likely.
There is some possiblity that scandal leaks during the campaign may turn into major embarrassments for the Conservatives once documents are released post-election … people might regret ‘going along’ with Harper. OK, I may be dreaming on that one.
Fascinating times.
I remember my despair last year when the NDP were polling lower than the Green Party who were thought to have little hope of any seats. And now the Liberals are sitting about where the NDP were … while the NPD who looked to be dying are the opposition with higher numbers than the Liberals had. THAT’s how much of a shift has occurred during the space of this 5-week campaign.