Canadian Federal Election 2015

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Jamfalcon
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Jamfalcon » 12 Aug 2015, 17:45

Master Gunner wrote:Most Canadians don't even know the geography of Atlantic Canada beyond "Halifax is some where over that way, and Newfoundland is up that way-ish".

I can confirm the accuracy of this statement. :P
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby phlip » 12 Aug 2015, 18:01

That's why you really want to make sure your country has large stretches of uninhabitable sand wastes, so you don't have people living all cramped up next to each other, and your states can be nice and big. Half a dozen states and maybe a couple of territories are all you ever really need.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Master Gunner » 12 Aug 2015, 18:46

We do the same thing, we're just bigger - so we had to scale up to 10 provinces and 3 territories instead.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 13 Aug 2015, 08:33

Update: Polls, Polls, Polls!

Image

NDP: +0.5%, +1 expected seat
Tories: -1.5%, -2 expected seats
Liberals: +/-0.0%, No seat change
Bloc: +0.9%, +1 expected seat
Greens: -0.2%, No seat change
Others: +0.2%, No seat change

Not much movement, here. This update mostly just confirms what we saw with the last update. Namely that the Liberals really seem to have come out of the debate ahead.

The Tory drop is also worth mentioning, probably, since this puts them below 30% in the popular vote, and puts the Liberals within spitting distance of them.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby AdmiralMemo » 13 Aug 2015, 09:21

Please please please tell me this is a real candidate.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Jamfalcon » 13 Aug 2015, 09:37

Not only is he real, but he's in my riding. :mrgreen:
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 13 Aug 2015, 09:55

Oh, he's real alright. But he has zero chance of winning - he's an independent. Not affiliated with a party.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby BlueChloroplast » 13 Aug 2015, 17:24

Independents can win, but they have to be well known in the riding. I think a radio broadcaster won as one in Quebec and a quadriplegic guy in BC.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 13 Aug 2015, 17:35

Yep. Honestly, the best way to win as an independent is to 1) be elected as a member of a party, 2) resign from caucus while in Parliament and thus sit as an independent for a number of years, and 3) run in the following election as an independent candidate.

Even then... good luck to you. When I say "zero chance," I really mean "realistically zero chance."
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 14 Aug 2015, 21:22

Update: Polls and Polls and Polls

There seems to have been a few updates to the poll aggregates recently. Here's where we're at:

Image

Tories are back on top in seat count, in a big way. Still, at this point, it's definitely a three-way race.

Also interesting: the Greens are polling above 5%. That's generally the cut-off for inclusion in the leaders' debates. There's no excuse to keep Ms. May out of them, now.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 15 Aug 2015, 14:22

Yesterday's New York Times ran a piece on the Harper Conservatives. It's... not flattering:

Americans have traditionally looked to Canada as a liberal haven, with gun control, universal health care and good public education.

But the nine and half years of Mr. Harper’s tenure have seen the slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government. His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and effectively. He has consistently limited the capacity of the public to understand what its government is doing, cloaking himself and his Conservative Party in an entitled secrecy, and the country in ignorance.

[...]

The Harper years have not been terrible; they’ve just been bland and purposeless. Mr. Harper represents the politics of willful ignorance. It has its attractions.

Whether or not he loses, he will leave Canada more ignorant than he found it. The real question for the coming election is a simple but grand one: Do Canadians like their country like that?


Link

Wooow. Tell us what you really think, why don't you?

Seriously, though, I find it fascinating to see how outsiders view us. And if this is at all indicative of how Americans perceive us (when they think of us at all), that's bad news. And, yes, I'm aware this particular piece was written by a Canadian for Americans... but the fact remains that this is what Americans are seeing about Canada, and thus is going to help inform what they think of the country.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby BlueChloroplast » 16 Aug 2015, 21:32

I should help Harper with that burn. Maybe some of my ghost pepper HOT SAUCE :evil: :twisted: :twisted:

It is interesting how others view us. This comic strip has some good ones (the one I'm linking is more about how we know less about countries far away but I think you will find it funny http://satwcomic.com/world-view)
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 17 Aug 2015, 08:58

Ha. I find it especially funny, in the context of this thread, that the comic artist refers to America as "North America." Canada isn't there at all. Guess we're as invisible as Denmark. :P

(Also, I regularly read Scandinavia and the World - always good for a laugh.)
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 17 Aug 2015, 09:14

Update: New Polls, New Polls

Image


NDP: +0.4%, +3 expected seats
Tories: -0.8%, -5 expected seats
Liberals: +0.3%, +3 expected seats
Greens: +0.1%, -1 expected seat
Bloc: +0.1%, No seat change
Others: +/-0.0%, No seat change

So... not much going on. NDP's back on the top, for the moment. But the three major parties are pretty much circling around the same level of support. I think that's what we're going to keep seeing, unless something big happens to shift things around or until much later in the campaign.

The accepted wisdom is that "Canadians don't pay attention to politics in the summer," which is, I think, a bit insulting. But both the media and the political parties buy it, so we're stuck with low-key stuff and being condescended to until the leaves turn.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby BlueChloroplast » 17 Aug 2015, 22:07

We'll see how the Mike Duffy trial goes. Could shake things up.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 18 Aug 2015, 09:57

Update: Polls and Hecklers

Updated numbers, first of all:

Image

Looks like more minor churn. Tories back on top in seat count. For now.

Tories: +0.7%, +5 expected seats
NDP: -1.0%, -5 expected seats
Liberals: +0.4%, No seat change
Greens: -0.1%, No seat change
Bloc: +/-0.0%, No seat change
Others: +/-0.0%, No seat change

And on to the heckling... of course Duffy is involved. Of course.

(Side note - BlueChloroplast, I'm not sure the Duffy trial is going to give us any real movement in the polls. I don't think we're going to get anything explosive out of it, and I tend to think that anyone who is going to be turned away from the Tories by this mess has already bolted. As we're about to see, a lot of the people left in the Tory camp are, well... they have an interesting view on the trial and the media's interest in it...)

So, basically, some Tory supporters heckled the media at one of Mr. Harper's campaign event for asking questions about the Duffy trial. Then one fellow got up into a reporter's face and ranted for a bit. He even accused her of tax evasion. For some reason. You can watch the whole sorry, childish affair here:

Link

...charming gent.

Quotes from the CBC piece:

During a campaign stop in Toronto this morning, hecklers tried to shout down journalists posing questions to Harper about recent revelations at Duffy's criminal trial. After the event, one man expressed his frustrations to a group of reporters, calling one journalist a "lying piece of shit."

[...]

During a question and answer session, as CBC News reporter Hannah Thibedeau attempted to ask Harper about Duffy, at least two people yelled over her. One man was heard to say, "Ask questions on the topic at hand!"

He continued to yell until Harper himself eventually asked him to stop and told Thibedeau to "go ahead."

[...]

After, outside the room where Harper appeared, a man spoke with a group that included journalists from CBC News, CTV, The Toronto Sun and The Canadian Press. He said, "You guys and your fantasy scandals amount to zero."

He then accused the reporters of lying on their tax returns and said that the Duffy scandal amounts to the same thing. When asked how he could make such a claim, he answered, "Because you're a lying piece of shit."

When the reporters asked the man for his name, he responded, "Go stuff yourselves."

[...]

Conservative spokesman Kory Teneycke later apologized to the reporters, saying the man's behaviour was unacceptable.


This is not a way to help your party in the polls or in public perception. Frankly... I bet Mr. Harper and his campaign people are livid that this happened.

But, hey... I guess if the Duffy trial isn't going to produce anything substantive, we're at least going to get "good" TV out of it...

*Sigh*
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Master Gunner » 18 Aug 2015, 10:17

Unless it somehow comes out that Harper personally ordered Nigel Wright to bribe Duffy, and that leads to an RCMP investigation into Harper himself, I think what damage the trial could do to the Conservatives has already happened.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 18 Aug 2015, 14:02

I tend to agree - it would have to be something on that level of seriousness to cause any large-scale shift in voting intentions.

Also, because he's been plastered all over national news the whole day, I've been seeing our friend the bellowing Tory supporter quite a bit. And I noticed something:

Image

Which... well... yeah. That scans.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Metcarfre » 18 Aug 2015, 14:24

Master Gunner wrote:Unless it somehow comes out that Harper personally ordered Nigel Wright to bribe Duffy, and that leads to an RCMP investigation into Harper himself, I think what damage the trial could do to the Conservatives has already happened.

Honestly? I think wait until the Liberals/NDP start blowing their wad on attack ads towards the last couple weeks of the campaign. Most Canadians probably still aren't engaged with this election yet.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 18 Aug 2015, 14:27

Thing is, the Tories will be able to afford more and bigger ads near election day. That was the point of calling such a long campaign period.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Metcarfre » 18 Aug 2015, 15:22

Oh yeah, obv
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby BlueChloroplast » 18 Aug 2015, 18:03

Doug Ford is more malicious than his brother, I'm glad he did not become mayor of Toronto.

In other news the NDP put the ex-Saskatchewan finance minister against Joe Oliver in my riding, which surprised me as it is usually Conservative or Liberal. I guess I will use that website that Arclight_Dynamo linked to monitor my strategic voting.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby SAJewers » 19 Aug 2015, 08:21

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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 19 Aug 2015, 10:10

Update: What, More Polls?

We're really getting piles of polls, here. New numbers for the aggregate:

Image

NDP: +2.2%, +10 expected seats
Tories: -0.6%, -4 expected seats
Liberals: -1.0%, -5 expected seats
Greens: +0.2%, No seat change
Bloc: -0.9%, -1 expected seat
Others: +/-0.0%, No seat change

Which seems like a huge shift, especially for the NDP... but it's really not, I don't think. More circling around the same levels of support and seat count.
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Re: Canadian Federal Election 2015

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 19 Aug 2015, 11:30

I thought I'd do a little number crunching here, and present a hypothetical. Given that both the NDP and Liberals have promised to do away with the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) electoral system for some flavour of Proportional Representation (PR) or Runoff system, if elected, I figured it might do us some good to take a look at what that would mean, in concrete terms. So I've taken the most recent polling numbers, and figured out for you what the House of Commons would look like if the election were today, and it were conducted using a PR system. This is what you get for the 338-seat Commons we're going to be getting:

Image

Neat.

There are some things to note with this.

First, a lot of claims about PR involve it somehow magically fixing every problem in the country, cleaning up politics, and saving kittens from trees. Well, no - PR is not wizardry. All it does is apportion seats in the House of Commons according to a different formula.

Second, a lot of PR advocates are in the anti-Tory camp. They claim that PR will get rid of the Tories, for good. Also untrue. You'll note the Conservatives still get the second most number of seats, here. While it's true that lefty parties do better in aggregate, the Tories are still going strong.

Third, I hope you like minorities and coalitions, because that's all you're ever going to get under this system. Forever. Majorities are functionally impossible.

Fourth, look at the Greens and the Bloc. Holy cripitey-cripes! 20 Green MPs?! 13 Bloc MPs when, under FPTP, they're currently projected to win a grand total of none?! "Other" winning 3 whole seats?! That's where you'll see the biggest impact of PR - the smaller parties. Under FPTP, their vote share is spread too thin to win seats, so they just don't. Under PR, there is no spreading, so they do win seats, and are viable.

Fifth, and related to the above, under PR you'll see a whole bunch more small parties, because they'll have a better shot at winning. Which means further fragmentation, with a bunch of parties having only one or two seats. That's terribly unstable, and just not workable. Which is why most places with PR have a requirement that a party win a certain percentage of the vote to be considered at all. It's often set at 5% - any party than wins less than 5% of the vote is not considered.

Let's see what that would look like.

Image

A-ha. That takes care of the tiny party fragmentation problem. And it gets rid of the "Other" category - which is good, since that category includes all other parties and independents. It's not actually realistic to assign it three seats, like we did in the first place, because it isn't a party. Its vote percentage is fragmented.

And it looks like there hasn't been much disruption to the major parties either, so that's really good... oh. Wait. Where's the Bloc? Uh-oh.

I mean, you could argue they shouldn't be included, since they have such a low vote share. And you might even be happy they're not there at all (heck, I'm not shedding any tears)... but, dang it, the point of this was to bring in a fairer system. Like it or not, kicking the Bloc out isn't fair. Especially since it's a regional party tied to the touchy issue of Quebec. They need to be included for both moral and practical reasons.

Fine. How about a 2.5% cut-off, then? That's what I was saying was fair for inclusion in leaders' debates, so why not for the PR system, too?

Image

Ah. Better. The Bloc is included. There's no real disruption to the major parties (in fact, their seat count is a lot closer to a pure proportional assignment of seats). And "Other" is out. Perfect.

Almost.

Because "Other" is still a valid choice, isn't it? I mean... we don't want tiny parties fragmenting the House, but "Other" includes independents. And small parties that might do extremely well in one riding. We don't want to exclude them. What if a local independent wins 90% of the vote in their riding? Or, say, the Marxist-Leninists win 90% in that riding? They'd be shut-out. Totally excluded. Because their share of the national vote would be minuscule. That's not right.

Worse, under a pure PR system, there is no such thing as a riding at all. There will be no local MPs, because they won't be tied to a particular geographical location. Every MP would be national. Which kind of destroys local representation entirely. Which is bad for places outside the big cities, or for regions outside Ontario/Quebec. No good.

Luckily, there's a system for that: Mixed Member Proportional (MMP). It's the system used in Germany and New Zealand. Essentially, you vote for your local MP, and you vote for the party you like best. Each riding elects an MP using the current FPTP system. Then the popular vote is tabulated for each party, and the proper proportional number of seats is determined. The parties are then "topped up" with MPs selected from lists of candidates so that the final House matches the proportional vote.

You end up with local representation, inclusion of locally-popular independents and parties, and a proportional seat distribution. It's the best of both FPTP and PR.

Now, it does have its problems (riding MPs and list MPs may not be considered equal, no majorities, more fragmentation than FPTP, etc.), and I've gone back and forth on whether I like the system or not. In fact, I even campaigned against it when it was being proposed in Ontario (Ah, youth... I've actually had a huge shift in my political views over the years. I even used to be a Tory - now I'm as left as you can get. Ask me about it sometime). But these days, I tend to be convinced that it's the least-bad electoral system, even if it isn't perfect. I'd vote for it today.

In any case, because there's a good chance we're going to be moving away from FPTP following the election, it's good to consider this stuff. It's going to come up, and it's a big deal. It's a good time to learn about it, and form an opinion about which system you like best.

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