Election Day is my Super Bowl. I love watching election results and the terrible graphics networks use to show them. Incredibly formulaic and this year, I expect that touch screen technology will play a huge role (way to be behind the Americans by 3 years Canada) and that network news anchors will be throwing up results on the screen a la Tom Cruise in Minority Report.
Here are my seat predictions for tomorrow:
| Province | # | Cons | Lib | NDP | BQ | Gr | Ind |
| NF | 7 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| NB | 10 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| NS | 11 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| PEI | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| QC | 75 | 10 | 10 | 33 | 22 | 0 | 1 |
| ON | 106 | 54 | 29 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| MN | 14 | 8 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| SK | 14 | 10 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| AL | 28 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| BC | 36 | 24 | 2 | 10 | 0 | 0 | |
| YK | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| NWT | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| NV | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| TOTAL | 308 | 147 | 57 | 82 | 22 | 0 | 2 |
| Before Diss. | 305 | 143 | 77 | 36 | 47 | 0 | 2 |
| Gain(+) Loss (-) | 4 | -20 | 46 | -25 | 0 | 0 |
Sadly, we won't see an end to minority Parliaments, instead, we'll have our 4th in 7 years. The big sea change will be the NDP taking over as Official Opposition and the Liberals delegated to 3rd party status, the first this has ever happened for them. The Bloc will be half its strength and if there's any credit I'll give the NDP, it's helping to destroy a regional, sovereignist party.
Conservatives will see a small seat increase in Ontario (expect GTA ridings to turn from red to blue) and Newfoundland (no more Danny Williams to be a thorn in Harper's side) as they will also lose some to the NDP in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. A gain of four will not be enough and will be a big black eye for Harper.
The NDP will gain big time - mostly in Quebec, and a couple of seats in provinces like Manitoba, Saskatchewan (which has a long legacy of NDP governments), BC and New Brunswick. One must applaud the NDP for not losing their gains this week, although, coverage of the royal wedding helped effectively move the attention away from the election for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Big losers are the Liberals and BQ. Good riddance I say. The Liberals need to re-evaluate what they stand for, and the BQ just need to crawl back into their separatist hole.
As for the party leaders, don't expect Jack or Harper to go anywhere. While most will think Harper will resign if he cannot make a majority mandate, he's effectively used his overbearing control to make sure there are no possible candidates at the moment to replace him as leaders. Even the possible candidates - Flahrety, Baird and McKay, don't have enough national presence (especially Western support) to take the reigns.
Depending on how badly he fails (and I expect it'll be big), Michael "Rise Up" Ignatieff will be FedEx-ed back to Harvard on the overnight. Expect him to resign post-consession. This time, the Liberals should really have a leadership race worth watching as this will give them a chance to regroup and elect a leader that is inspiring, rather than everyone's second choice (Dion) and "well, I guess we have to" (Ignatieff).
Expect Gilles Duceppe to fall by the wayside and announce his resignation. Expect also a quick and easy leadership convention for the BQ as they'll likely boost Pauline Marlois from provincial party leader to federal leader - they really don't have any other choice.
Many wonder how the NDP got the momentum that they did. Looking back, they did a lot of things right including:
- having a likeable leader: I'll admit it, if Layton wasn't running under the NDP banner, there would be a 75% chance I would vote for him. He campaigned while still recovering from health issues and didn't sink to the levels of mudslinging as Iggy and Harper did.
- did well at the debates: Jack had a couple of lines at the debates that were highlights. No other leader could claim the same.
- best use of social media to encourage young people to vote: I couldn't watch one video on Youtube without fucking NDP ads playing as pre-roll. And an overwhelming number of my friends on Facebook had more orange on their profiles than the Dutch. They electrified the youth vote (my brother even voted for them - to my dismay) and didn't turn them away like the Conservatives did
Some other factors helped including:
- Quebec - duh, they've had one party "working" for their interests for so long that after two decades of no results, people are over it. Quebec has always had more socialist roots (influenced by their more European point of view) so naturally, what the NDP was pitching, they were buying.
- people not liking Iggy or Harper - seriously, Iggy just has little to no leadership appeal. He always sounds condescending - likely because of his academic background. Harper, while he has proven to provide stable economic leadership, is bullish in his way of dealing with people. He rubs people the wrong way and rules with a top-down mentality.
- Conservatives vs. Liberals - these two parties brought out all their ammunition at each other and scoffed that they needed anything for the NDP. Even as the NDP surged, the two camps didn't care to respond or didn't have anything ready. They were late to respond to the NDP's rocketing success and lost out big time on hitting them back in the last weeks of the election
- Royal Wedding - there goes 3 full days of news coverage giving the NDP an opportunity to keep their recent gains
Well, no matter what, some change will happen, which after $400 million dollars, at least we can be happy that it wasn't all for nothing. However, I'm pretty sure Ignatieff will wake up Tuesday and do a hand palm to face while muttering, "I shouldn't have called an election."
