Canadian voters will go to the polls on 2 May for their fourth federal election in seven years.
The centre-left Liberal Party governed in majority for eleven years from 1993 to 2004, easily brushing away divided conservative forces alongside a popular sovereignty movement in Quebec. Between 2000 and 2004, the right-wing Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party merged to form the Conservative Party of Canada.
At the 2004 federal election the Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Paul Martin, lost its majority, but maintained power as the largest party in a hung parliament. The Conservative Party, led by new leader Stephen Harper, and the left-wing New Democratic Party, led by its new leader Jack Layton, both gained seats.
In 2006, the government fell, and Harper’s Conservatives formed a minority government in another hung parliament after gaining the largest number of seats. Yet another election in 2008 saw Harper’s government increase its numbers, but still fail to form a majority.
The Conservative government is currently polling strongly, and may have a chance at winning the twelve remaining seats it needs to form a majority government. In most of Canada, however, the Conservatives have already reached as high as they can do, with large majorities of seats in Western Canada, the Maritime Provinces, British Columbia and those parts of Ontario outside of Toronto. Forming a majority has become so difficult due to the domination of the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec. The only remaining strongholds for the Liberal Party are in the major cities of Toronto and Montreal.
I will post in the coming weeks about the campaign in the different provinces, with very different party matchings competing for seats in different parts of the country. Meanwhile you can read the first two posts I ever published on this blog during the 2008 election campaign: on Canada’s political parties and the peculiarities of Canadian politics, as well as a number of other posts I wrote during the 2008 campaign.
You can also download the electoral map of Canada, used for the 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2011 elections.
Good stuff Ben.
Recent polling can be found at http://www.electionalmanac.com/canada/polls.php
It’s by and large considered that if a party polls in the low 40s in Canada that they can win a majority Government.
A chilling vision of things to come, if a “Westralian Party” ever takes off?
Um, Ben, correction, the Conservatives don’t have a large majority of seats in the Maritime Provinces, the Liberals have the most seats there.
The Conservatives and the Liberals have 11 each. I was talking more about that overall the Conservatives dominate outside of Toronto and Quebec.
Sorry, I was counting the 6 Liberal seats in Newfoundland & Labrador as well.
My understanding is that Maritime Provinces is only Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Atlantic Canada, on the other hand, is the Maritimes plus Newfoundland.
Ah, Election Almanac is back on board (stopped being updated for a while there). I’ve been using 308 of late coz it includes a bit of commentary as well: http://www.threehundredeight.blogspot.com/
Thanks Ben, yes I realised my mistake after posting, but it sounds like you probably meant to write ‘a large majority of seats’ rather than ‘large majorities of seats’?
Anyway, the regional polling has a couple of interesting points. Liberals appear to be up from last election in western Canada, and down a touch in Quebec. NDP are down significantly in the Prairies.
And folks, if you’re not watching CPAC’s 24 hour election campaign coverage, you’re dead to me.
http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=watch&hl=e&watchID=1e
Only chilling if you live over east. 😉 The WA secession movement has most recently been bound up with fringe right-wing loonies like the CEC, which isn’t palatable to me, but if we had a serious nationalist party in WA more like the Bloc Quebecois, or the SNP (Scotland) and Plaid Cymru (Wales) in the UK, I’d think seriously about voting for them. To me, it ain’t about mining royalties or the division of GST revenue, it’s more about becoming a country that’s about as close to the Canberra govt as New Zealand, ie: still fairly close.
Although, comparisons with Canada break down when comparing states and provinces. Quebec is one of the larger provinces of Canada, more like Victoria than WA. If there was a Victorian nationalist party that won most of the seats there, then it’d cause Canadian-style issues. As any WA-based party can win a maximum of 10% of the seats, they’d just have to get lucky with a hung parliament. (Strangely enough, the 2008 WA election was like that in miniature, thanks to the very bolshie WA Nats.) WA is more comparable to somewhere like Alberta (far from the eastern cities, resource-rich), and they formed their own party which won big in the 90’s, Reform. After a few twists and turns, that became the current Canadian Conservative Party – Stephen Harper is even from there. I don’t think the Libs or their precursors have ever had an Aus PM from WA (John Curtin was Labor).
Hmmmm, BoP, I think John Forest is the closest West Aussie conservative to being PM (he was acting PM at one point).
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