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Monday, October 19, 2015

Election Day in Canada: seat projections

The CBC poll-tracker website shows the Liberal Party in the lead with 37% of the vote. The Conservative Party is polling at 31% and the New Democratic Party trails at 22%.

In close elections it is extremely difficult to project those numbers into seats because there are many close races and the number of people sampled in each riding is quite small. Nevertheless, ThreeHundredEight and CBC have been making seat projections since the campaign began.

Here's the latest seat projections as of yesterday ...


If these projections are accurate then the Liberals will win the most seats but will be far short of a majority. Justin Trudeau will become the next Prime Minister of Canada and Stephen Harper will be gone.

The main uncertainty is voter turnout. A lot of Liberal voters are uncertain about who to vote for and many of them will be first-time voters, if they vote. The Conservative vote, on the other hand, is pretty solid and Conservative voters are very likely to vote today. Most of the Conservative vote is concentrated in rural ridings that are guaranteed wins for the Conservatives. It is still possible for the Conservatives to win enough close races to finish on top with the most seats.1

The NDP vote is soft and dropping. The biggest change in the past few days is the seat projections in Quebec where the NDP won 59 seats in the last election. (A big surprise.) As of today, CBC is projecting that they will only win 34 seats. All three of the other parties are projected to gain seats but the Liberals gain the most. The battle in Ontario was reduced several weeks ago to mainly a fight between Liberals and Conservatives. (There are a few ridings where the Liberals and NDP are neck-and-neck.)

It's interesting that the three-way race in British Columbia hasn't changed very much in a long time. The latest projections have the Conservatives slightly ahead with 16 seats to 13 for the Liberals and 12 for the NDP. (Plus one seat for the Green Party.) There are several scenarios where the overall winner will be decided by the vote in British Columbia. It could be a long night.

The result in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) was decided weeks ago. The Liberals are going to capture almost all of the seats. The only secure victory for the Conservatives is Thornhill, and the only projected victory for the NDP is Toronto-Danforth. [See the interactive map at: ThreeHundredEight.] Olivia Chou is trailing badly in Spadina-Fort York.

In my area, Mississauga-Brampton, every seat is projected to go Liberal and many Conservative MPs are going down to defeat, including my own MP Bob Dechert. The NDP is not a factor in any of these ridings.


1. This does not mean that Harper will be able to hold on to power but it makes things complicated.

25 comments :

Faizal Ali said...

The result in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) was decided weeks ago. The Liberals are going to capture almost all of the seats.

Ah, but that was before Harper secured the endorsement of Rob and Doug Ford. I know, that looked a like a pathetic act of desperation on Harper's part. But it wasn't. Doug himself said so.

Larry Moran said...

Hummmm ... I forgot about that. Maybe that Thornhill seat isn't secure after all. :-)

DGA said...

So I guess the Fords will have helped Harper if the crack vote is high ~

Capt Stormfield said...

Well if nothing else, it would be a nice change for B.C. voters not to turn on the TV when the polls close and immediately be informed who the new government will be before our votes are even counted.

Jass said...

Was anyone here eligible to vote when Pierre Trudeau, the father of current liberal party leader in Canada-Justin Trudeau became the Prime Minister of Canada from 1968-79?

Steve Watson said...

I think Larry was. I was eligible a couple of elections later.

Robert Byers said...

I don't follow politics anymore except I know the leaders and poltical parties are bad guys.
Truedeau is worse then Harpur but Harpur did so many things I don't like.
Right now there is not a patriotic social conservative/conservative party like Republicans in America. Problems there too.
I didn't hear if creationism/free speech in public institutions came up.
Either way Canadian ancesters are betrayed about what they prayed, built, fought for in making Canada the second best nation in human history.
with the Supreme court dictartorship its not actually a vote for leadership and governing. its , in important matters, just administrators of the true rulers called Judges.
It doesn't matter who wins today.
Yjr people don't get ot fail to get their way. They don't matter anymore. Or rather its back to the 1800's.
If the PM loses then its a deserving reward.
If Pierre's loses its a deserving reward.
Canada doesn't deserve to lose but will. HMM. Maybe Canada deserrves this but can do better in the future.
God has blessed Canada, relative to others, so he may continue and a wee bit more.

William Spearshake said...

I wish I could say no, but...

William Spearshake said...

Robert, please tell me that you are not Canadian? Pleas, please, please. I had always taken solace in the hope that everyone in my country was smarter than you ( not a stretch).

John Harshman said...

Sorry, bro. He's all yours, eh?

Capt Stormfield said...

Yes, I must confess.

Capt Stormfield said...

I feel your pain, WS.
He's like a Fordyce granule, ectopic and full of icky stuff.
But at least he's from the east.

Capt Stormfield said...

Confess to being old, that is, not to voting for Trudeau.

Capt Stormfield said...

"God has blessed Canada, relative to others..."

This despite our general lack of religiosity. Odd. You'd think he'd bless New Orleans or Pass Christian.

Capt Stormfield said...

OK, so I was an optimist. We still show up when the credits are already rolling. Still, could have been worse. Harper needed to go, and at least a Liberal majority won't have to throw bones to the SJW's of the loony left just to stay in power.

Athel Cornish-Bowden said...

It looks like it has turned out better than anyone could hope, with Stephen Harper consigned to the dustbin of history. Pity about the NDP, though.

Larry Moran said...

I voted for Trudeau's Liberals in 1968.

Larry Moran said...

I think Robert Byers has outlived his usefulness on Sandwalk. Now he's even posting before he takes his meds.

Larry Moran said...

I have supported the NDP in several elections. This time they have no one to blame but themselves. They moved to the centre and got run over by the Liberals. They need a new leader and they need to move back to the left.

Faizal Ali said...

The conventional thinking seems to be that Mulcair's position on the niqab cost him the election. I was unsure how this could be, since Trudeau took essentially the same position, but this is how it was explained to me: The NDP was ahead in Quebec, until the niqab issue came up. That led to NDP support bleeding to the Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois. This, in turn, made it appear to the rest of Canada that the NDP was no longer the most likely option to beat Harper, and so the "anyone-but-Harper" vote then coalesced around the Liberals.

I'm still not sure I'm buying that. But I'm relieved that playing the anti-Muslim card did not work for Harper.

Anonymous said...

I find Robert Byers entertaining, and when I'm not up to reading him (which happens fairly often) his idiosyncratic use of paragraph breaks makes it easy to avoid him. True, Byers is more valuable as a condiment than as a steady diet and he was posting too often for my taste for a while recently, but I kind of miss him when too many days go without his, well, interesting take on things. (Though I'd survive without him, I admit.)

Larry Moran said...

"Conventional thinking" is ridiculous. If the niqab issue cost the NDP votes then it should have shown up as support for Harper everywhere outside of Quebec. If it was an effect confined to Quebec then it should not have benefited the Liberals who had exactly the same stance on the niqab issue.

I think what happened is that Mulcair did not perform well on the niqab issue and on many other issues (e.g. economy) and that caused people to take a second look at the NDP. That coincided with the general realization that Trudeau was up to the job.

Mulcair looked increasingly desperate in the last week of the campaign. When he started to talk about the sponsorship scandal people realized that he was just like the same old politicians that they wanted to replace. Trying to scare people by labeling the Liberals as corrupt was too much like Harper tactics and the people saw right through it.

The NDP has to dump Mulcair ASAP. It can't allow him to lead the party in the House of Commons because his image has been badly tarnished during the campaign.

Steve Watson said...

Heh. The final result puts the Liberals right about where the lone "absolute maximum it could possibly be" dot is on that graphic, and the Conservatives and NDP near the low ends of their respective bubbles. And our local Liberal got elected, breaking a very long streak of Conservatives getting more than 50% of the vote, making even strategic voting rather pointless.

Puffin Watch said...

Most amusingly, the Fords couldn't swing the Ford Nation ridings blue.

Steve LaBonne said...

Congratulations on a wonderful election result, which made many of your friendly neighbors to the south very happy.