Jump to content

Canadian Politics : Getting the right jab


maarsen

Recommended Posts

11 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Good grief, Alberta reported more than 2,000 cases today. That’s like 7,000 in Ontario.

eta: 2,020 x 3.33, 6,726

Yeah and the pressure on the health system is there for all to see. Not enough decoupling (if at all).

But to put it in perspective, 35 US states are reporting a higher caseload per capita than Alberta(!)

ETA: Ontario is kicking ass at 50 daily cases per million with the Delta strain the main player. But I don’t want to be overconfident having just seen what happened to Victoria vs. NSW back home.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alberta is a mess. I texted my brother last to ask if the AHS had tried to draft him for ICU duty, but he's working too much already between two ophthalmology clinics. It's that dire though. They're calling everyone. The Calgary Children's Hospital is closing 3/4s of their operating rooms come Monday, iirc. Staffing, I think, but Jesus, worst leadership in the country insofar as squelching data, testing, contact tracing, social restrictions. Everyone with half a brain knew Delta was going to be bad, but Kenney decided all his cuts and scraps with AHS were fine and hey, let's just throw caution to the wind and pray for vaccine + herd immunity. Or something.

Fucking idiot. It'd be nice to see some government heads roll in the next few years. Criminally.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Singh's problem this election has been constantly maintaining an attack on Trudeau without really justifying the NDP's vision (and I say this as someone who voted NDP). Of course, you have to attack whoever's in power, not to mention your closest rival for votes, but it starts getting a little ridiculous. It's also about as far from 2011's campaign strategy as possible, and that's the one they should be trying to replicate.

The Liberals have maintained their lead over the past few days in many polls, and they do tend to have better voter efficiency than the Conservatives, but the election is still scarily close. Especially with the surge in Bloc support since the English debate. It's going to come down to a lot of very close ridings, I think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’m expecting the PPC to do worse than the polls. But maybe not. I think their presence and Bernier’s hyperbolic ranting about “tyranny” and “revolution” are harmful and laughable at once. Not sure where we’ll go with it, but I don’t see their association with the so-called Frontline Nurses and hospital protests helping come Monday. 
 

Our local PPC candidate had one of his signs vandalized the other day and has had a ridiculously over the top reaction (offering a $5000 reward for information and calling it “tyranny”). 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

48 minutes ago, Aemon Stark said:

I’m expecting the PPC to do worse than the polls. But maybe not. I think their presence and Bernier’s hyperbolic ranting about “tyranny” and “revolution” are harmful and laughable at once. Not sure where we’ll go with it, but I don’t see their association with the so-called Frontline Nurses and hospital protests helping come Monday. 
 

Our local PPC candidate had one of his signs vandalized the other day and has had a ridiculously over the top reaction (offering a $5000 reward for information and calling it “tyranny”). 

To be honest, I think it's going to be the opposite, unfortunately. I think we'll see a Trump effect with the PPC, where many people who support their party won't say so in polling, whether due to not wanting to admit it or for the sake of trolling (the PPC candidate in my riding is essentially a right wing Youtube troll). I hope you're right, but if they do well in this election and if they win even one seat... I will not be happy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the one hand, I would love to see what would happen if the CPC had to deal with serious vote splitting. On the other the 1.62% of the vote the PPC got last election was way to much for me to feel comfortable, so the fact that most polls have it at more than double that is actually frightening.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Fragile Bird To answer your question in the last thread, I suspect that mail in vote will be good for both the Liberals and NDP, but since tight races are generally LPC vs CPC or NDP vs CPC rather than LPC vs NDP both the LPC and NDP stand to gain, but not at the expense of each other.

@Varysblackfyre321 There have been some attempts at the mail in votes are fraudulent narrative here, they haven't been as successful at taking hold though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the tight races where the mail-in vote may be important is in Wilson-Raybould’s old riding. Last night the NDP and the Liberal candidates were trading the lead every half hour. People were wondering how her vote would split, and it seems to have gone evenly between the two parties.

In “how dumb can they be” news, Peterborough area voters elected the Conservative candidate who wasn’t fully vaccinated but went electioneering to nursing homes. A friend of mine up there said on the bright side of things, maybe she won’t be around for very long.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting that neither Bernier nor Paul were even elected in their own ridings.  I know that Paul's leadership was being heavily challenged in the late summer to the extent the Green's were considering replacing her.

Voting for me was quick and painless yesterday.  I was impressed by the high turnout in my riding (Simcoe-Grey) despite COVID and the potential of voter ennui.   I've been a central poll supervisor, RO and DRO in the past but didn't mind sitting this one out.

My wife is Chinese and like Paxter has her PR.  This was her first election in Canada and she was fascinated by the process.  She can't vote nor be a RO/DRO but would like to get involved more in the process in the future somehow.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only thing I'm really surprised about in this election is that the Bloc stayed strong (and even looks to be gaining seats). I thought that some of those votes might have been protest votes and would flow to the major parties after they had their fun in 2019. But nope. 

Otherwise...no-one can really be surprised that Canada is the same place politically that it was less than two years ago! COVID has, if anything, probably made people even less likely to change their previous positions. 

I still think that the Cons' lack of popularity in Ontario (mainly in the GTA) and throughout Quebec is an almost insurmountable handicap at times, at least under Trudeau. We have a similar situation in Australia, where one major party can win more seats in Victoria and New South Wales...but gets routinely thumped in Queensland and so can rarely form government. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Guess what, Jason Kenney isn’t resigning. But the sacrificial lamb is going to be the Health minister, who’s getting the boot out of cabinet today.

The Conservatives dropped 14% in votes in Alberta. Much of that is being attributed to Kenney’s job as premier.

But who did that 14% go to? If a big part of it went to the PPC, then it's not because people wish there had been more COVID restrictions. I should look into the numbers.

Anyway, here we are, at pretty much the same place. But I'm happy about that; a Liberal minority with NDP backing is what I wanted. However, I'm very disappointed by the NDP showing this election, and also that the Bloc seems to be picking up seats. IMO, Singh needs to go; I know there were a few seats that they barely lost, but they barely got an upswing in popular vote and he has run two very uninspiring campaign.

Now, the PPC: it's always great to see Bernier lose (and lose spectacularly) in his own riding. It's great that they picked up no seats and that their vote share is 5%, rather than the 8-10% some polls were showing. But overall, the PPC is the big winner right now. They're a real party now; they have a solid base to draw on, and next election they'll be allowed into the debates. That's very scary.  If we're lucky, a lot of that support will fade away if it's an immediate reaction to COVID policies. If we're not, the far right in Canada will only grow from here...

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, 8% of those votes went to the NDP, probably a reflection of the fact that Notley has been critical of what Kenney was doing, and a couple of percent went to the Liberals.

Watching the coverage today I see that the NDP were quietly saying they could get 40 seats at the start, then halfway through dropped their expectations to 30 seats, and then finally were hoping they could make some gains. They spent $25 M on the election (twice as much as the last time) and the coffers are empty, so they aren’t going to be very effective with threatening to pull the plug on the government, they have no money. They expected big gains in Quebec that didn’t happen and once again, they found out that any party that pins it’s hopes on the youth vote is going to be disappointed. But the Bloc really made a recovery as opposed to making gains. The English language debate, ironically, shored up their support.

Late last night there were apparently 18 ridings that were too close to call. That number has dropped, but it will take until Wednesday, they say, to count the million mail-in votes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not looking forward to the incessant post mortem and entrails examinations we'll be subjected to over the next while.

Seems clear the volume rise for the PPC didn't all come from the Conservatives [big yikes]; Singh barely moved the needle of national support for the NDP; the Greens are more or less done [I'm reasonably certain most of the Green crank Libertarian type idiots went PPC] and the Conservatives have been on rear guard since 2015. Singh may face a leadership review, O'Toole most definitely will, Paul will resign or be pushed out, and I suspect this will be Trudeau's last term as Liberal leader. 

Ranked ballot might be ok, but I don't see the Liberals doing it as they'd have to share more power with the NDP, then again, if it meant less Conservatives it might be worth entertaining [at least to me] I'm just glad we don't have PR. Imagine Parliament with all those fucking wingnut PPC MPs [driving my girls to school on the Island this morning we saw a PPC election sign defaced with Penis Party. My 13yo choked on her iced coffee and we all shared a snicker]

Bird is right about the NDP though. They went into this election 7 million in debt iirc, mortgaged their downtown Toronto head office and spent 25 million on this election. So... we might actually get a full term minority government.   

    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...