Historical Summary of Canadian Elections

In reading the comments to this post by Ezra Levant I came across yet another disingenuous talking point about the Conservatives not getting a clear majority in the recent election. Such stupidity falls under the category of "If you repeat B.S. enough times, Sheeple will accept it and no longer challenge it."

I pride myself on being a stickler for facts so such comments spur me on! Here's what I wrote to the fellow who made it:

Would you and your ilk please stop with your stupid, phoney talking point that the Conservatives only got "xx %" of the vote. This disingenuous comment has been false from the first time it was uttered and is even more so today. If you're so ignorant that you don't actually understand what I mean then please look back at the popular votes of every government where there have been at least 3 [significant] parties. It's how our system works and is basic math. So just cut it out as it's really boring us all.

When I wrote this I knew anecdotally that I was accurate but didn't know all the details. It being a miserable evening in Vancouver, I decided to do a little research. Here are some results that I think you'll find as fascinating as I did (click on the image to see it larger) :

Note: The # of Parties is based on those achieving at least 5% of the popular vote.

For those so inclined, you can download a copy of the Excel spreadsheet, complete with additional footnotes, by clicking here. The sources I used can be found here and here. If you find any errors, please let me know!

Here are some interesting facts:

1. The lowest popular vote that resulted in a minority government was 35.89% by Joe Clark's Conservatives in 1979. Note: There were three major parties at the time.
   
2. The largest popular vote that resulted in a minority government was 46.13% by Arthur Meighen's Conservatives in 1925. Note: There were three major parties at the time.
3. The lowest popular vote to win a majority government was 34.84% by John A. Macdonald and his Conservatives in 1867 (Canada's first parliament). Note: There were only two major parties at the time.
4. In a 2-party race, the largest popular vote ever achieved was 56.93% by Robert Borden's Unionists in 1917.
5. In a 3-party race, the largest popular vote ever acheived was 53.66% by John Diefenbaker's Conservatives in 1958.
6. Even at the height of his popularity, Pierre Trudeau only won only 45.37% of the popular vote [in a 3-party race in 1968].
7. Only 6 times in Canada's 40 federal elections has a party ever achieved more than 50% of the vote. Four of these times were when 2 major parties were running, the remaining two times were when 3 major parties were. The most recent of these was in 1984 when Brian Mulroney just squeaked over the half-way mark with 50.03%.
   
8. Four times in Canada's history the winning party has had a lower popular vote than the 2nd place party [1896, 1926, 1957, & 1979].
9. Those who believe that a government only has legitimacy if it gets the majority of the votes [ie. 50% + 1] thus must believe that only 6 of Canada's 40 governments had any legitimacy.
   
10. Perhaps the only consistent statistic is that since 1988, the voter turnout has been on a steady decline downward. :-(
    

Canada's French-Canadian Quagmire

With the Bloc Québécois consistently winning a large majority of seats in Quebec (50 out of 75 in the recent election) it has become almost impossible for any other party to win a clear majority.

Listening to Norman Spector this morning he indicated that Yolande Brunelle, who is the wife of Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, recently said that part of the strategy of the Bloc is to block any federal party from ever achieving a majority. She feels that this will eventually alienate other Canadians so much that they'll eventually want Quebec to leave.

Frankly, I think this has already occurred. To be clear, I don't believe that most Canadians want Quebec to become independent but they're tired of Quebecers never being satisfied enough.

And make no mistake, Stephen Harper has gone out of his way to give Quebec an endless stream of goodies that no other province received. But in the end, it was all for naught. The Globe & Mail's Jeffrey Simpson has an excellent, detailed take on all of this.

The way out of this quagmire may occur when extra seats are assigned to Ontario, Alberta, and B.C. to reflect their increased populations. Until then, we're likely stuck with permanent minority governments.

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Further to Canadian majority governments, on the most recent CBC Sunday Edition show there was a discussion of the aftermath of the recent election. One of the 3 guests was Michael Byers, the failed NDP candidate in my riding of Vancouver Centre.

Byers is a bitter, almost creepy little man. He perpetrated the myth that Canadians don't want Harper's "neo-con" agenda. Precisely what about the Conservative platform is extremely right-wing Lil' Byers did not choose to illuminate us on.

Later on in the discussion the host said to Byers: "Jack Layton kept saying that I'm your next prime minister. He kept saying that we're the only national party to be a possible opposition to Stephen Harper. And yet that didn't play in Quebec or outside of your base either."

Byers responded with this: "But Jack Layton did stop a Conservative majority by winning a number of new seats in Northern Ontario and holding onto a core of seats in British Columbia. And that difference was what kept Mr. Harper to a minority and has enabled us to continue to find ways forward to cooperate and make parliament work rather than having a dictator essentially for the next 4 years...." (The emphasis is mine.)

Like an all-star wrestler, Tasha Kheiriddin, the Conservative pundit on the panel, bitch slapped Bitter Byers down with this immediate and calm response: "I want to know why it is that when a Conservative is threatening to get a majority, one calls him a dictator. If Stephane Dion got a majority, Michael, I don't think you'd be complaining about a dictator being in parliament. Our parliament works best when there is a majority government, which is able to put forward a clear agenda. That is our tradition and while we've had some successful minority parliaments but also some very disastrous ones. And in this case our country is facing a major worldwide financial crisis and we have a minority parliament and it's not clear how efficient or effective a government is going to be now dealing with this."

Aftermath of the 40th Canadian Federal Election

Jonathan Kay has the most brilliant take of all, asking why the 4 left of centre parties refuse to bond together for a common purpose. Here are the killer parts of his piece:

With a few notable exceptions, Stephen Harper’s opponents agree on just about everything. The NDP, the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals (in their leftist Dionista variant, at least) are all pro-Kyoto, down-the-line socially liberal, anti-American, weak on crime, culturally nationalistic, and fiscally redistributionist.

There are differences, too, of course. The Bloc wants to break up the country. The Liberals want to impose a carbon tax, while the NDP would achieve the same customer-soaking effect though carbon cap-and-trade. Dippers are explicitly anti-corporate in their tax platform, while Liberals at least talk the language of the free market (except when it comes to oil companies). But putting aside the Bloc’s separatist pipe dream, the vision all these parties have -- and which they could be expected to act upon as part of a coalition -- is more or less the same: a left-wing, hyper-environmentalist, multilateral, culture-subsidizing, prisoner-coddling, Ameriphobic welfare state.

Scary stuff. And here’s the scariest part: About two-thirds of Canadians voted for this vision on Tuesday.

David Frum and Mark Steyn also offer their thoughts. As does the National Post, in this editorial.



If you want to see some real sour grapes, visiting the comments section of this CBC story.

Canadian Federal Election 2008: Live Blogging

My predictions are these:

1. The Conservatives will win, but only with a minority government.
2. The Liberals will primarily do well in the Toronto 416 area code.
3. The NDP will get a fairly close popular vote to the Liberals.
4. The Green Party will not win any seats.
   

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Background
With 308 seats in total, the Conservatives need 155 seats to achieve a majority.

In the 2006 election, the breakdown of seats was as follows:

• 124 - Conservatives
• 103 - Liberals
• 51 - Bloc Quebecois
  
• 29 - NDP
• 1 - Independent
  

Real-Time Blogging
6:57pm: I searched some blogs and it appears that the results from the 4 Maritime provinces have leaked out, with the Liberals ahead of the Conservatives 17 - 10. I await confirmation of this in a few minutes.

7:03pm: The CBC advertised live video on their website but it's not working; probably overloaded. So I'm listening to the coverage on CKNW instead. I do confess that there'll be a certain pleasure in listening to super-Liberal, Christy Clark try to twist & turn if Stephane Dion's party goes down in flames.

7:06pm: Here are the early results (leading or elected) :

• 118 - Conservatives
• 71 - Liberals
• 34 - Bloc Quebecois
• 27 - NDP
• 2 - Independent
• 0 - Green

7:08pm:

7:22pm:
7:33pm: I just heard Province columnist, Michael Smythe, say something really stupid on 'NW and decided to send the host, Jon McComb, this e-mail:

IMHO Michael Smythe's comment that the election results reflect Canadians' desire for a minority parliament begs the question: "When & where did all the voters confer to agree upon this decision?!?"

The electoral map more conveys to me that the Canada is actually like several countries in one. This is especially true with the very different economic issues facing the various regions of our nation. I'd love to have Michael Levy comment on this.

Robert Werner
Vancouver Centre
Almost certain to be disappointed once again with the most useless MP in our nation's history!


7:38pm: The Conservatives are approaching the magic number of 155 and things may come down to B.C.:

7:53pm: They're getting closer:A Canadian friend, Mike, just called from Seattle. One thing I pointed out to him was that even with a minority government, Harper will have a pretty strong mandate to push through any bills he wishes. The Liberals will be in a pretty difficult situation if they bring down the government, especially in the first year.

By the way, Stephane Dion is history. If he doesn't resign tonight, the knives will be out for him tomorrow.


8:21pm: Blogger had a scheduled outage for 10 minutes. There are some swing ridings but it seems pretty much impossible for the Conservatives to get a majority. All the fear mongering down by our leftist "friends" seems to have worked (even though they all claim innocent on this front). But Harper clearly has a much stronger minority than before.

9:35pm: Things have pretty much stabilized. We won't know until tomorrow how a few ridings shake-out. My twit of an MP, Hedy Fry, got re-elected. I'd love for someone to tell me what she has EVER done for her riding.

One thing that the pundits at 'NW have downplayed is how much the Bloc Quebecois has caused a stalemate in Canadian politics. Some of them said that Stephen Harper's tenure may be in trouble. Huh?!? I think it's a great credit to those Canadians who voted for him to have cut through the MSM B.S. and focus on which leader and party is the best one for the country. Not quite enough for a majority, but close.

Weekly Radio Appearance

I'll be appearing again on Roy Green's radio program. This time it'll be tomorrow (Saturday) at 1:30pm PDT (4:30pm EDT). I'll be one of 5 voters from across the country on Roy's political panel.

Topics will likely include:

• Spending promises
• Multiculturalism
• Comparisons with the U.S. election
  

You can listen to the show here.

Canadian Federal Election Called

We interrupt our regular scheduled programming to report on another election campaign that has just started in that far off country of Canada. Unlike the American election campaign that seems to have been going on for 2 years, ours will be just 5 weeks long, with the vote held on October 14th.

The only discussion I could find on it this morning was on CBC Radio 1. Of course, they had their usual version of a fair & balanced panel: Left, Further Left, and Extreme Left. It would be fair to surmise that not one of the panelists has ever voted for the Conservatives in their entire life. The discussion mostly centered around two issues:

1. Should the election have been called? (aka Is Stephen Harper wasting everyone's money?)
   
   
2. Will the environment be at the forefront of the election campaign?

#1 would never have been asked of a Liberal prime minister. Proof positive is when Jean Chretien called an election after just 3.5 years into his mandate (June 6th, 1997).

#2 will likely be an election issue, only because Stephane Dion has made it so. His Green Shift policy is nothing more than a massive tax grab at Western Canadians. How anyone in the West could vote for such a thing is beyond me!

Upon dissolution of the current Parliament, here's the breakdown of seats:

• 127 - Conservative
• 95 - Liberal
• 48 - Bloc Quebecois
• 30 - NDP
• 3 - Independent
• 1 - Green
• 4 - Vacant

Total Seats: 308

So to achieve a majority, Stephen Harper's Conservatives need 155 members elected. Can they achieve this? It'll be tough. The keys to success will be these:

• Make Westerners aware of just how incredibly punitive the Liberal's Green Shift plan will be to their bank accounts.
• Work at bringing Quebeckers back into the fold of Canada, hoping they'll realize how pointless their vote for the Bloc Quebecois is.
• Hope that more than a few voters in the '416' Toronto region realize that they don't have to vote Liberal to remain in Canada.

A few final thoughts:

1. The single Green member is a controversial figure in West Vancouver named Blair Wilson. The Liberals booted him out (wisely) and so he made the desperate move to become Canada's first Green Party member. Prediction: He will not win and will lose badly.
2. The NDP's Jack Layton announced that he is running to become Prime Minister this time round. God Bless his optimistic attitude! Prediction: The NDP's only hope is for a complete meltdown of the Liberal campaign. With Dion, anything is possible, but I don't believe the NDP can achieve any more than 50 seats.
3. Lorne Mayencourt, previously a provincial Liberal MLA, is running for the Conservatives in my riding of Vancouver Centre. He is trying to unseat the most useless MP in the history of Canada aka Hedy Fry. But she has traditionally had a stranglehold on the large gay vote in the riding. Mayencourt himself is gay, so perhaps he'll be able to achieve electoral success just like he has done successfully at the provincial level.
4. It'll be most interesting to see if the popularity of Sarah Palin amongst Americans has any side-effect to help the Conservatives here in Canada. Melanie Phillips, a prominent writer in Britain, has suggested that Palin's success in the U.S. may very well help the Conservatives in the UK. Interesting times!
   

An Upcoming Conservative Landslide?

This morning on CKNW (36:05), Bill Good ran an informal poll about who people would vote for if there were a federal election soon. Though not scientific, the results were quite surprising, especially because most of the callers were from Metro Vancouver. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

In the days following today's throne speech in Ottawa, it'll be hilarious to watch Canada's premiere weak cheese, Stephane Dion, twisting and squirming to avoid an election. Let's see how far he's willing to sell out his principles in order to stay head of the Liberal party. For he and everyone else knows that if his party doesn't make a very impressive showing in the next election that he will be tossed out as quick as yesterday's news.