We'll be talking about the results for a few days to come, I'm sure, but here are a few quick election night thoughts. Read More »

Election night is always interesting. There are lots of things to watch and it's easy to get lost in the flurry of numbers that will fly at you while watching the results come in. Here are a few things to watch for. Read More »

As we're in the dying days of the election, it's time to look back and see who had the best and worst campaigns in this election. It was an odd election, with events overtaking the best laid plans of political strategists and consultants. Just to be clear, this doesn't have anything to do with how these parties will do on election day. This evaluation looks at how well the party did, based on the resources they had and the goals they needed to accomplish. Read More »

It's the last weekend of the election and it's time to look back at the campaign. I've also looked back at the blogging we've been doing. I went back to the post where I argued that the election wouldn't make much difference in the campaign. Obviously, I was wrong. The election has come to dominate the campaign in a way no one could have foreseen. In that post, I argued that the economy wouldn't make much difference because there's a lag between economic changes and voters' perceptions of the economy. As a general statement, I think that holds true. But my argument that voters in Canada wouldn't yet perceive the economic downturn turned out to be incorrect. In my defence, what we've seen in the markets is almost unprecedented. But obviously panic has set in and people have become very concerned with the economy. Read More »

One of my favorite TV critics, Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star, was vacationing in Canada during the Canadian debates. He talks about our media situation and our debates in a short podcast that you can find on his website. Canadians often compare their politics with those in the United States, especially when we're both in the midst of elections. It's unusual and refreshing to hear an American perspective on the same comparison. Read More »

I was going through various interest group web sites, looking to see what they had to say about the election when I came to the website of the Canadian Family Action Coalition, a group of Christian social conservatives. They don't endorse any particular political party, but they identify five key issues for the election: abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriage, human cloning and stem cell research. What struck me about this list is how absent these issues have been from the campaign. Read More »

With just a week or so to go to the election, we're about to run into a part of Canada's election law that always irks me. Section 329 of the Elections Act prohibits the publication on election results while the polls are still open locally. As someone who grew up in Alberta, I understand the reason for this. We're better served by not knowing what is happening out east. In 1980, I remember turning on the TV at 8:00 PM (poll closing time back then) and being informed that there would be a Liberal majority government. At that point, they had not counted a single vote from Alberta yet. It's a nice reminderof why your vote doesn't matter. It's hard enough to get people out to vote now; more disincentives are not useful. Read More »

It's been interesting listening to the post-debate analyses. One theme keeps coming up and that is that Elizabeth May impressed a lot of people. As Andrew Coyne pointed out in the CBC's post-debate "At Issue" panel, the debate cemented the Greens' place on the national stage. Talking to people around here, I'm surprised to hear the chord that the Greens seem to be striking with a lot of people. Some of this is a "none of the above" vote; the Greens have never been in power anywhere and are fresh and new, so people see this as a way of registering dissatisfaction. Other people find their policies refreshing: it's pro-environmental and socially progressive without without the baggage of the traditional NDP. Read More »

The Engish debate was actually pretty entertaining. I took a few peeks at the replay of the US Vice-Presidential debate and I actually thought the Canadian debate was more interesting. I actually thought all five party leaders were reasonably effective and the debate clarified a few things in the election. I'm not going to talk about Gilles Duceppe: he's a good debater, but basically irrelevant for the English debate. Read More »

Tonight is the big show: the English language debate at 9 Eastern/6 Pacific. The dynamics here are a little different than in French. The Conservatives are in a stronger position outside of Quebec, so Harper mainly has to stay out of trouble. I imagine we'll see the relaxed prime-ministerial sweater vest version of Stephen Harper again. All four leaders will be gunning for Harper again. I don't expect we'll see the NDP and Liberals squabble too much over who is the real opponent to Harper. The way the Conservatives are poised to break through in British Columbia means they both have to dump on Harper big time. Harper just has to weather the storm. It's pretty much impossible for an incumbent prime minister to "win" the debate; you win by not losing, which is about the best you can hope for. Read More »

A CanWest/Global National poll of francophone voters found that Dion won the debate, Duceppe finished second, and Harper third. The sample size (637) was fairly small, but that's still an interesting and somewhat surprising finding. I didn't think Harper was that bad, but perhaps the "sit back and look prime ministerial" approach didn't play as well in French as it did in translation. Read More »

I watched the French debate tonight (in translation; I'm an Albertan!) and thought it wasn't bad. I really liked the table: I thought it was a lot better than the stuffy podiums and made it feel more intimate and interactive. I usually hate the questions from "average" Canadians, but my favorite moment was actually where the leaders had to say something nice about the leader to their left. It was different and caught my attention. Read More »

In an hour and a half, the French language debate will be starting and it will be interesting to see how it unfolds. This really is the contest between Dion, Duceppe and Harper. Although the NDP is making some gains in Quebec, I don't see Mr. Layton as particularly relevant and Ms. May's struggles in French mean she'll be marginal for much of it. Read More »

As I've watched the Liberals sputter through this and the previous two elections, I've reached a conclusion: it would be good for the Liberals to lose this election. And I mean really lose it, as in a Conservative majority government. This is not a judgment about whether the Liberals would do a good job in government. That might or might not be the case. But for the Liberal party as a party, it would be healthy to have a break where they aren't in government and have no prospect of getting there for four years. Read More »

In my last post, I noted that Wilfird Laurier's Barry Kay had the Conservatives just a couple of seats away from a majority. His latest projections put the Conservatives right at the magic number of 155. This has led Gilles Duceppe to call for support for the Bloc in order to deny the Conservatives a majority. It will be interesting to see whether those calls have any resonance with the electorate. Stephen Harper has worked hard to put a moderate face on the Conservatives (often to the dismay of the more ideologically inclined members of his party). Read More »