Another Conservative Minority, Garth Gets the Boot

Once again, I'm on a roll predicting election results. The Conservatives managed to not only obtain another minority government but also strengthened their standing from the previous parliament. It's not the result that conservative supporters wanted but the election worked out extremely well in their favour. The Harper Conservatives gained 19 seats from the previous election, just missing a majority by 12 seats. They hold 143 seats in parliament. According to the popular vote, the Conservatives lead the Liberals by eleven points holding at 37%. NDP leader Jack Layton also has a lot to be happy about. The New Democrats increased their number of seats by eight and now hold 37. Despite this, their popularity in terms of the popular vote is only up slightly.

The Liberals, however, don't have much to celebrate. As predicted, Stephane Dion pulled a John Tory with his highly controversial Green Shift. As I had said before, people are totally willing to care about the environment until it starts to inconvenience them. This likely swayed a number of people away from the Liberal party. During tough economic times, people do not want to hear they'll be paying more for something that will give them little to no personal dividends. Liberal support has plummeted. The Liberals lost 27 seats. While the other parties have held steady popular support, the Liberals dropped an astounding 4% in the polls. This just proves that the pre-election polls are not reliable as they had indicated we would see a vary close race. In reality, it was far from it. My guess would be that the Greens had been stealing a lot of Liberal votes. It's not surprising since both party platforms were almost identical. Elizabeth May has nothing to be happy about either, loosing the one seat they had illegitimately held in Parliament before the election. Their popular vote is up a mildly impressive 2.47%. Even without a Liberal candidate running against her, May was still unable to gain her own seat.
Voter turnout for the election, according to Elections Canada, was quite low. Only 59.1% of Canadians voted. There are approximately 23 million registered to vote. The low turnout could also have contributed to the Liberals drop with people simply not voting, or spoiling their ballot.

Another thing worth noting is that the saga of Garth Turner finally has ended. The rouge MP who betrayed his voters by crossing the floor of Parliament after promising he would not is no more. Garth took a pounding in his home riding of Halton, loosing out to handpicked Conservative candidate Lias Raitt. Garth lost by over 7000 votes, trailing Raitt by 12%. Halton riding had a voter turnout of 60%. Turner had become extremely arrogant during his term in office and in my opinion had done little for Halton other than embarrass us. This represents a major defeat for him. Other recent turncoats such as Wajid Khan (Streetsville) and Blair Wilson (West Vancouver) were also handed defeats. Khan lost to Liberal candidate Bonnie Crombie by 10%, or 7000 votes. Voter turnout in Streetsville was well below the national average at 53%. Recent Green party hero Wilson, who gave the Greens their first seat in Parliament by crossing the floor from the Liberals, was also given the boot. I think it's fair to say Wilson had his butt handed to him. Wilson lost by an incredible 14,000 votes to Conservative candidate John Wetson. Wetson beat out Wilson by a whopping 30 percent. Wilson did manage to narrowly beat out NDP candidate Bill Forst by 0.1%. Turnout in Vancouver West was higher than the national average at 63%. Not one of the recent floor crossers managed to retain their seat. (Belinda Stronach did not run in this election) I think this shows that Canadians have become vary intolerant of this act and the election results prove it. I believe it to be an affront to democracy. This process should be banned.

The next big question after this election is what will happen to Dion. The Toronto Sun is raising this question. Tom Axworthy, former principal secretary to Pierre Trudeau and chair of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen’s University, said: “The Liberal party has always given its leaders two chances. It never has not.” However, no Liberal predicted that they would loose so many seats, let alone suffer a huge drop in the popular vote. I am still predicting a leadership race within the Liberal Party in the near future, despite Axworthy's comments. Dion has proven himself not to be the right leader of the party. He hasn't exactly instilled a lot of confidence with Canadians. Dion is basically the Federal government's John Tory. He goofed with a hugely unpopular campaign promise combined with weak leadership and it dragged him down. The Liberals have far better candidates they could field as leader so it's a mystery why they choose Dion.

You can get the full official 2008 Election results on the Elections Canada website.