Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is an honorary associate at The University of Melbourne. His work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
Wednesday 10:16am Back to Brexit, and the government lost a crucial vote on Tuesday that means it is unable to guillotine the Brexit bill through the Commons by Thursday. The second reading of the Brexit bill passed by 329 votes to 299, with 19 Labour and most independents voting with the Conservatives. However, the guillotine motion failed by 322 to 308, along similar splits as Saturday’s Letwin amendment. In both cases, opposition from the ten DUP MPs was critical in swinging these two votes against the government.
A long delay to Brexit is now very likely. Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour will agree to an election once such a delay is in place. Polls currently give the Conservatives a large lead.
Wednesday 9:56am The final seat result was as below. The final popular votes were 34.4% Conservatives, 33.1% Liberals, 15.9% NDP, 7.7% Quebec Bloc and 6.5% Greens. Turnout was 66.0% of eligible voters (down 2.8%).
6:23pm The Liberals lead in the last two undecided seats, and are likely to win 157 of the 338 seats, losing just one net seat in Ontario. The Conservatives have 121, the Quebec Bloc 32, the NDP 24, the Greens three and one independent.
5:57pm So Canada is likely headed for a Liberal government supported by the more left-wing NDP.
5:55pm Antony Green has an overall summary of vote and seat changes since the 2015 election. Currently Liberals and NDP have 180 seats combined, easily exceeding the requirement for a majority (170 seats) (post modified).
4:50pm Assuming current figures are near final, here’s how they compare with the CBC Poll Tracker (in brackets)
Libs 156 seats, 33.0% (137, 32.0%)
Con 122, 34.5% (124, 31.6%)
Quebec Bloc 32, 7.9% (39, 7.0%)
NDP 24, 15.9% (35, 18.4%)
Green 3, 6.4% (1, 7.5%)
So the Conservatives exceeded their polling in popular vote terms, beating the Liberals by 1.5% instead of losing by 0.4%. But they lost the seat count by 34 instead of 13. Far too many votes wasted in Alberta and Saskatchewan, while the Liberals won Ontario easily. And probably some tactical voting.
3:28pm It greatly helps to be regionally concentrated if you’re a minor party in a single-member system. The Quebec Bloc currently have 32 seats on 8.1%, the Greens just three seats on 6.3%. The Bloc won 33.0% in Quebec, the only province they contested.
3:14pm Not much change in the results. 156 Liberal leads, 121 Conservative, 32 Quebec Bloc, 25 NDP, three Greens, one independent. Conservatives lead Liberals by 1.3% on popular votes; could also be some tactical voting by left-wing supporters. If these results hold, Liberals plus NDP will have a majority (170+ seats). I hope the NDP will push the Liberals to electoral reform.
2:25pm I’m going for a walk on a (rare) sunny day in Melbourne. See you in 30 minutes.
2:24pm The Conservatives currently have a 0.6% lead over the Liberals in popular votes despite trailing by 35 in seats leading. It’s possible that there are big vote sinks for the Liberals in the cities still to be counted, or that the Conservative vote was too inefficiently distributed (see Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan).
2:14pm Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, voted for a right-wing government at the June 2018 provincial election, but the Liberals are currently leading in 77 of the 121 seats from that province. Another example of state elections not correlating strongly with federal results.
2:00pm Maxime Bernier broke away from the Conservatives to form the far-right People’s Party during the last term. CBC says he’s lost his seat.
1:53pm 152 Liberals, 118 Conservatives, 35 Quebec Bloc, 24 NDP, three Greens seat leads. Called elected are 82 Liberals, 75 Conservatives, 18 Bloc, three NDP, one Green
1:31pm A big problem for the Conservatives is massive vote wastage in Alberta. They currently have 72% of the vote there, but there are only 34 seats in that province.
1:22pm 140 Liberals, 107 Conservatives, 30 Bloc, 20 NDP, one Green seat leads. 22 losses for the Liberals, enough to cost them their majority.
1:11pm CBC News calls a Liberal government, probably a minority but we’ll see!
1:09pm 122 Liberals, 95 Conservatives, 21 Bloc, ten NDP, two Greens. Liberals shown losing 16 seats, enough to cost them their majority (had 184 of 338 in 2015)
1:00pm 93 Liberals, 69 Conservatives, 18 Bloc, nine NDP, one Green
12:53pm 71 Liberals, 44 Conservatives, 12 Bloc, eight NDP, one Green leads
12:51pm 58 Liberals, 40 Conservatives, 12 Quebec Bloc, eight NDP, one Green seat leads.
12:46pm 48 Liberals, 29 Conservatives, eight Quebec Bloc, six NDP and one Green seat leads.
12:03pm Will have lunch now, so I’m back in time for the 12:30pm deluge!
12:02pm In Atlantic Canada, the CBC Poll Tracker had voting intentions of 37.1% Liberals, 26.8% Conservatives, 20.0% NDP and 12.1% Greens. Results so far are 41.3% Liberals, 29.7% Conservatives, 16.7% NDP and 10.1% Greens.
11:57am One seat in Quebec closed at 10:30am, and that puts the Quebec Bloc on the board (very termporarily). Seat leads are 26 Liberals, five Conservatives, one NDP and one Green. Called seats are 17 Liberals, three Conservatives, one NDP
11:45am Greens are on the tally board, leading in one seat. 25 Liberals, six Conservatives, one NDP, one Green. In 2015, all Atlantic Canada seats went Liberal.
11:35am 24 Liberals, seven Conservative, one NDP leads. Ten Liberals, two Conservatives, one NDP called elected.
11:27am Antony Green tweets that these provinces are showing a 12% swing from Liberal to Conservative, but the Liberal vote was huge in 2015, and it may not carry to the rest of the country.
11:22am 24 Liberals, six Conservatives, one NDP seat lead, including eight Liberals called elected
11:09am 22 Liberals, six Conservatives, one NDP seat lead, including five Liberals called as elected.
11:03am Now 16 Liberals, nine Conservative and one NDP seat lead. Polls in most of Canada do not close until 12:30pm, with British Columbia (42 of 338 seats) closing at 1pm.
10:50am Welcome to a live blog of the Canadian election results by Adrian Beaumont. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has up-to-date figures. Polls closed at 10:30am AEDT in four eastern provinces (32 of 338 seats), and the Liberals have leads in 12 seats, to two for the Conservatives, and one NDP. These eastern provinces are pro-Liberal compared to Canada overall.
In the latest on Brexit, Commons Speaker John Bercow did not allow the government to bring back its meaningful vote motion after it had been amended on Saturday. The government will now attempt to ram the Brexit legislation through the Commons by Thursday, but even if it succeeds, and the legislation is not unacceptably amended, the House of Lords is a big problem.
The Lords is far more pro-Remain than the Commons, and does not like to be rushed. As the Letwin amendment states that approval of the deal is delayed until all legislation passes parliament, it is likely that the government will need to accept at least a short Brexit extension.
For the numerically inclined, if you define a bias (B) as the percentage of seats a party wins (S) in excess of the percentage of votes (V) you could calculate it using a simple formula.
B = (S/V) – 1
A positive value is a bias towards you.
A negative value is a bias against you.
A zero value is no bias.
Expressed as a percentage this gives the Canadian result the following outcome (on current counting).
SEAT BIAS
39% Liberal
5% Conservative
18% Bloc Québécois
-53% New Democrat
-86% Green
The NDP and Green account for 22% of the total vote.
Racking up the vote in one or two states to win the popular vote… Hilary Clinton would know a thing or two about that. Tories will viciously oppose any kind of electoral reform, as under on any kind of preferential system they pretty much be locked out of government permanently.
Its why Labor UK were so dumb to oppose the referendum in the UK on the alternative vote in 2011 or whenever it was… they would have pretty much permanently been in government had that succeeded.
For what it’s worth, as a multi party FPTP system, net percentage vote figures will be potentially misleading due to tactical voting.
AngoraFish, hmm, thanks. I have no feel for how tactical voting works practically or how you’d measure it. And to further muddy things, there is also regional bias (Alberta and Quebec) and seats/votes contested.
Back to Brexit…
https://xkcd.com/2218/
sprocket_ @ #48 Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019 – 3:47 pm
Political Compass plotted Canada’s political parties on its graph – the one with a Left to Right X-axis and a Libertarian to Authoritarian Y-axis. Interestingly, only the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois are in the bottom left quadrant. Even those two parties are only centre-left, not genuine left. The Greens and the Liberals are centre-right. The Conservatives and the People’s Party are right-wing.
https://politicalcompass.org/canada2019?fbclid=IwAR3Q6h3QlFEM5-1Jyvw_tBSTn4Nadi6qX-bUYETKq__IrhO8hz1Z81Qoji8
I know little about Canadian politics; is that very large Conservative vote in Alberta normal, or are they particularly upset at the Liberal Government about something?
Thank you Nicholas. For comparison the Australian and Canadian Elections.
https://politicalcompass.org/aus2019
https://politicalcompass.org/canada2019
If the scales on both charts are the same, Canadian Liberal and Australian Labor are at about the same place.
Matt, it’s probably something to do with the urban/rural split widening. Oil is likely a factor in Alberta, with people there angry about any proposal for climate change reform, see the swing to our LNP in seats around Adani.
Liberal and NDP have a combined 180 ridings (170 needed).
So it is not a bare majority when the two are added.
And what was the first thing the Canadian Conservatives were going to do if they won the election?
The Conservatives’ pledge to repeal the country’s carbon tax failed to resonate with voters in the electorally important suburbs of Ontario and Quebec.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/justin-trudeau-wins-second-term-as-canadian-prime-minister-20191022-p5332k.html
Canada has the policy Australia used to have and should still have.
Cameron,, sorry my mistake. I’ll fix it now.
The Canadian Liberals policies are not that different to what Labor took to the last election here. A bit simpler perhaps and clearer messaging; not attempting too much tax reform in the one go. But the spending side was very similar.
See
https://2019.liberal.ca/our-platform/
And policy comparisons here
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/federal/2019/party-platforms/
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/election-2019/canadian-federal-election-2019-results-justin-trudeau-liberals-andrew-scheer-conservatives
Andrew Coyne: The Liberals didn’t win the 2019 federal election, they just lost less than the Conservatives
The story of this election is likewise not of any surge in support for the Conservatives, but of the restlessness and rootlessness of voters on the left
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/election-2019/canadian-federal-election-2019-quebec-bloc-quebecois-win
Huge Bloc Québécois win shows a major shift in the province
The Bloc Québécois’ surge was one of the most unexpected twists of the 2019 election campaign, and likely played a part in the Liberals losing their majority
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-federal-election-2019-a-liberal-minority-is-what-the-energy-industry/
Federal election 2019: A Liberal minority is what the energy industry feared most
Knowing next to nothing about Canadian politics, I note what seems to be some, on the surface, similarities between the Canadian situation as we in Oz. Out West, Alberta, where it is all oil, mining the the like, the Canadian Liberals could not get a vote to bless themselves with………..and here in Oz, Queensland and WA did no favours for Labor at the last election. Luckily for the Liberals in Canada the wheat provinces do not seem to have the impact of the hayseed Nationals have here in Oz – harvesting 10 seats, or more, for the Coalition with around 800,000 of the vote.
5:57pm So Canada is likely headed for a Liberal government supported by the more left-wing NDP.
Sounds very much like the Gillard disaster.
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/
If you look at the polls, I have to wonder what the story is for the NDP after October 8, going from 14% to 18%, and to a lesser extend the BQ from 5% to 7%, when the rest (including Green) went down.
taylormade @ #68 Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019 – 7:09 pm
Gillard was awesome. Tony Abbott was the disaster. 🙂
@taylormade
A Liberal minority government, supported by the NDP will probably mean that the electoral system for Canada is changed. I believe if the electoral system is changed, it will be changed to either Mixed Member Proportional Representation (with Provincial Party List seats) or Single Transferable Vote. Justin Trudeau promised electoral reform back in the 2015, however reneged on that promise. I am bit disappointed in the poor performance for the NDP, since Jagmeet Singh seems like a pretty decent guy, what I have read.
I don’t think Gillard was a disaster, but most of Oz cheered when Abbott was squashed. He was not a leader’s bootlace. Liberal supporters often have that nostalgic feeling when thinking about Gough being thrown out, but nothing surpasses Howard losing both his government and his seat on the same night…..that was worth waiting many, many years for. Oh, that could be repeated with Morrison down the track….
I grew up in that area Tricot. Morrison won’t lose his seat. Nouveau rich and wannabes.
Think Sydney’s North Shore transplanted to southern Sydney because it (was) cheaper to buy in.
The working class such as it was is shrinking.
Comparing those predicted results with actual, it looks like the CBC Poll Tracker might not have been taking sophomore surge into account with their seat predictions?
Julia Gillard was not a great Prime Minister but a good one. Her grace and dignity in the face of all the crap thrown at her by a feral Opposition and a feral media was in sharp contrast to the artless, mendacious, graceless, clownish baboon who was her successor, the ineffectual waffler who followed him or the lying, hypocritical spiv who now occupies the Lodge.
@Expat Follower: That is certainly not the case here! We’ve had preferential voting for many years, and the Tories (“Liberal” Party) are typically the Government, even now as they drive off the cliff of U.S.-style evangelical extremism.
But then, we’re Australian. We mindlessly pull the lever for whomever the “better people” (read: Murdick and his propagandists) tell us to.
Late Riser, please, just throw away that crap of Vote Compass…. Labor “right-wing authoritarian”?…. Really?
The Canadian Liberals and the NDP are both progressive parties, none of them wants to get rid of capitalism, but they are both concerned about social justice and the environment. The NDP, however, stands on the left of the Liberals.
“5:57pm So Canada is likely headed for a Liberal government supported by the more left-wing NDP.
Sounds very much like the Gillard disaster.”
It’s more like the case of the Australian Coalition: two similarly minded political parties joining forces.
From Justin Trudeau’s victory speech: “tonight Canadians rejected division and negativity. They rejected cuts and austerity, and they voted in favour of a progressive agenda and strong action on climate change.”
On May 19, Australians voted for division and negativity, cuts and austerity. They voted in favour of a reactionary agenda and inaction on global heating.
A very depressing comparison. Good on Canada for rejecting all the stuff Australia voted for.
Canada appears to be the New Zealand of the northern hemisphere.
Alpo @ #77 Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019 – 9:12 pm
I don’t have any feel for the basis for Vote Compass, let alone where you put the origin. I was more interested in the idea that in Canada the equivalent of the ALP won the election.
Is this the place for Brexit comments?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/22/soft-brexit-tories-might-back-deal-if-wto-loophole-closed
Hmm. That’s awfully close to “My way or else.” Is this democracy, Tory style? (I came to Brexit with an outsider’s ambivalence, but my attitude is shifting.)
Politically though, if Labour prefers a post-Brexit election, this may be Johnson’s best riposte. It forces Labour to present on alternative.
It’s risky though. Labour (et al.) could say that Johnson has given up. It’s too hard for him. Johnson wants to break up the UK. What is Johnson hiding? Like us, Johnson wants a referendum but can’t admit it, so we’ll have an election instead. etc. The counter is just as straightforward. An election is the only way to clean out the obstructionists. etc. (Reinforcing the idea that it is another Brexit referendum in all but name.)
“Late Riser, please, just throw away that crap of Vote Compass…. Labor “right-wing authoritarian”?…. Really?”
***
The Political Compass does a good job of charting how far to the right Australian politics has drifted. They have covered every Australian election since 07. It must be distressing for left wing Labor supporters to see just how strong the Right Faction’s stranglehold on the party is.
It is telling though that the 2007 version of Labor – the only time they’ve won a majority in a very long time – was the closest to being on the left/libertarian sides, even though it was still right of centre.
Thank you, Canada.
The thought of yet another climate wrecker running a major democracy was a bit too much to even contemplate.
Firefox
Yeah. Nah. The axes are in the wrong place.
Vote Compass would have it that Katter is to the Left economically. It’s bollocks. It’s Greenware.
Rudd was no great leftie either. The program put forward by Shorten was decidedly more left-box-ticking than Rudd’s. Shorten suffered from being mistaken for Di Natale.
Overnight Boris Johnson was once again hit by the bus he threw the DUP and Northern Ireland Unionism under, losing a vote on his attempt to get the legislation enabling his Brexit deal, with the DUP’s votes being critical in defeating it. His position now is that the EU should still not grant an extension, which would mean the UK would leave on October 31 without a deal. Although France and Hungary had previously indicated otherwise, all EU members are likely to agree to a further extension. I note that the UK Government appear to be making a point that it is Parliament, not the Government, who have requested the extension; is this a legal/technical point under article 50 they are trying to use?
M31
Hit by bus. True. But at least Johnson drives his own bus.
“Vote Compass would have it that Katter is to the Left economically.”
***
Maybe because he is? Katter is very unusual in that he supports many left wing economic positions but is also extremely socially conservative at the same time. For example, he is strongly opposed to privatisation, deregulation, as well as showing signs of being opposed to rampant capitalism of the kind that allows the Coles and Woolies duopoly to ruin so many lives. He’s also a paid up member of the CFMEU – he’s a unionist.
Of course, he’s also on the record as being a homophobic dinosaur, to the point where he’s pretty much disowned his own brother from what I can gather. He’s definitely not a nice person at all.
“Rudd was no great leftie either. The program put forward by Shorten was decidedly more left-box-ticking than Rudd’s. Shorten suffered from being mistaken for Di Natale.”
***
Which is why, as I have already pointed out, Kevin 07’s Labor is still correctly positioned to the right of centre on the compass.
So what you’re suggesting is that Shorten was mistaken for, in your warped view, a “Lib-kin”. Gee Labor must have had a cracker of a campaign to allow that to happen!
Or do you now think that the Greens are too far to the left and that Shorten lost because he, in your warped view, was mistaken for a true left winger like RDN? If that was actually the case then Shorten’s attempt at emulating Di Natale was a pathetic failure, considering support for Di Natale’s Greens went up and Shorten’s Labor went down.
This Twitter image from OnyxMaps explains the seat results. Rural W Canada had massive Tory margins, while the Libs won their seats by more modest margins.
Image worked that time!
Canada vs Australia vs UK:
Matt, the reason why Coalition wins in Aus under preferential voting is that they have a primary vote typically in the 40s and not all of the 60 is aligned against them. There’s also no regional epicentre party like the Bloc that can win 50% of the seats in a single state/province. In Canada, for the tories to win a riding with 60% should shut out the tories (that is i would guess 100 currently held tory seats), except Scotland where its LD+Lab+SNP which is every seat. I wonder if pref voting in Nth Ireland would rid the world of the DUP… prob unlikely
Brexit:
With this delay now (surely the EU will grant extension to 31 Jan), does Boris try to force an election to get a majority and drive it through – or does he rely on the indicative majority from the 1st reading not to dissipate as more time is there to hold all the elements of this deal under the blowtorch of rational scrutiny?
Either way, i think Labor is in a crap position – 20 members prepared to support this bill who voted against May’s bill (which is a travesty), and an election with no LibDem non-compete will prob leak so much remain vote which will cost them a bunch of seats to the tories where leave-remain is close.
Any who rejected May’s deal on the soft/remain side but are supporting this deal now are delivering the UK a far harder brexit and worse outcome. Idiots imho.
The former tories who will vote this through as anything but no-deal i think know full well that this could lead to a no deal in 2020 but want their party membership back, at least they not in the above category of idiot.
Its really up to Keir Starmer/Dominic Grieve and the DUP now… the former to convince (i)labor rebels (not the 5 that would be ok with nodeal) that this deal really sucks and (ii) ex-tories that this can easily usher in no deal in 2020, and the latter to convince the spartans that this threatens the union etc. Looks like a difficult accomplishment to me, though we’re talking 20 people +/-.
Would BoJo prefer an election now or after the deal is won? I would guess the latter as the more time spent critiquing it, the worse it surely looks and risks leaking support. either way its hard to see the deal not passing and/or him not gaining a decent majority and 5 unencumbered years to completely trash the place. In that scenario, part of me now hopes he gets his no deal in the end… his legacy will be the end of the UK with both Scotland and N Ireland leaving.
Adrian
Is there something like a similar pattern in Australia?
The Coalition won 27 out of the 34 large state regional seats in the last election.
Coalition-leaning Indies won 3.
Labor won 4. Of the latter, Fitzgibbon lost most of his previously very high margin, Kelly is now on .8% 2PP margin in Eden-Monaro, and the Mundine imbroglio may well have cost the Coalition Gilmore.
Expat Follower
I agree with the Labour in a crap position bit.
‘Firefox
He’s definitely not a nice person at all.’
Bad Mr Katter!
He has won many more elections in the House of Representatives by himself than has the entire Greens Party put together for the past 30 years.
Two new UK polls, with both having 13-15 pt leads for the Tories.
Britain Elects @britainelects
·
13h
Westminster voting intention:
CON: 37% (-)
LAB: 22% (-)
LDEM: 19% (+1)
BREX: 11% (-)
GRN: 7% (+2)
via @YouGov, 20 – 21 Oct
Chgs. w/ 15 Oct
Britain Elects @britainelects
·
6h
Westminster voting intention:
CON: 37% (+6)
LAB: 24% (-4)
LDEM: 19% (+2)
BREX: 11% (-2)
via @DeltapollUK, 18 – 21 Oct
Chgs. w/ 07 Sep
“Bad Mr Katter!
He has won many more elections in the House of Representatives by himself than has the entire Greens Party put together for the past 30 years.”
***
Sounds pretty successful!
Lets see how large his support has grown, shall we?
House of Reps Primary Votes 2019…
Australian Greens: 1,482,923
Katter’s Australia Party: 69,736
https://results.aec.gov.au/24310/Website/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-24310-NAT.htm
The Greens even had a higher primary vote (193,402) all the way back in 1993 than Katter does today lol
Adrian Beaumont says:
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 at 5:36 pm
Matt, it’s probably something to do with the urban/rural split widening. Oil is likely a factor in Alberta, with people there angry about any proposal for climate change reform, see the swing to our LNP in seats around Adani.
————————————————————–
It’s actually been going on since at least the 1970’s, when the government of Trudeau pere introduced the National Energy Plan as a response to the Oil Shock and established a federal government oil company Petrocan (since privatized) to compete with the multi-nationals.
Albertans, particularly, felt that the NEP was a case of the rest of Canada stealing their resources. The province is regarded as Canada’s “Texas,” and much of the social and economic culture of the province reflects that of the lone star state.
More recently there is a feeling that the revenue equalization policy unfairly takes Alberta’s share of national taxation and distributes it to the more disadvantaged provinces at a time when the oil and gas industries are having a hard time. They forget that until
Alberta struck oil big time in 1947, that the province was an economic basket case propped up by the rest of the country.
There isn’t the same rural/urban split that occurs in the rest of Canada. Apart from occasional success in a couple of urban ridings in Calgary and Edmonton, the Liberals have been shut out in the cities and rural areas by an almost visceral antipathy of Albertans towards Ottawa and the federal establishment. That’s the reason why the Conservative margins go as high as 75 per cent in many electorates.
As neighboring Saskatchewan has more recently begun exploiting its natural resources, a similar right-wing conservative attitude has developed.
This is a bit ironic because the province was once the home of agrarian socialists led by Premier Tommy Douglas some 60 years ago, the first democratically elected government of that stripe in North America. Douglas was one of the founders of the New Democratic Party in the 1960’s.
Douglas is regarded as the father of Medicare, Canada’s single-payer, universal medical and hospital insurance program. He launched it in Saskatchewan and saw it picked up and adopted nationally by the Liberals Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s minority government in the mid-60’s.
@Firefox
Would you agree that the Greens result in the recent federal level was reasonably good once, even in Queensland, especially in Griffith, Brisbane and Ryan. I can see the Greens possibly winning all three, even on current polling for the Greens.
Also at a state level, the Greens could win South Brisbane and maybe a few other Inner City Brisbane seats at the next state election as well. There are already a number of Greens Lower House MP’s in New South Wales and Victoria (both having 3 MP’s).