Winners and Losers; the only poll that matters

Well here is a comment from Inside the Queensway, Kady O'Malley's blog. It comes from Scott Reid;

"The country is and always will be decidedly centrist. The seat totals you cite should be of at least equal concern to Conservatives as Liberals. They had the sponsorship crisis and an extraordinary RCMP intervention in 2006 -- still weren't able to consolidate. They had an opponent with constrained skills carrying an unpopular policy proposal in 2008 -- still weren't able to consolidate. If Harper was the genius he claims, or the country were listing so far to the right, they'd be winning by a mile."
-Scott Reid

The numbers- and if you can't express something in numbers it's only opinion- say that most Canadians didn't vote for the Conservatives, and that the increase in votes for the Green party and the New Democrats indicate that the country is less conservative than before. If we had a 'rep- by- pop' system, the Conservatives would have earned about 114 seats, the Liberals about 81, the NDP about 56 seats and the Greens about 20 seats. The Bloc should really have 30 seats.

So the Tories still only have a plurality, and given the low turn-out, 4o% of the electorate didn't really care. So the Conservatives only directly represent about 20% of the electorate. If the Grits fall apart, then many ridings will go to either the Greens or the NDP- or the Grits will rebound and scoop up the pragmatic majority of the Greens and 'dippers. Either way, the Conservatives should feel insecure. They may have pushed the NDP another step on the way to becoming the Natural Governing Party of Canada because progressives will see the 'Dippers as the reasonable party for a fundamentally liberal centrist society, if the Liberals do truly implode.

37.7%

Well, my prediction was low. Still, if voter turn out wasn't so low I suspect the overall number would have been about 34%. This view was shared by most pollsters, at the end.

The Conservatives have 46% of the seats with only 37.7 percent of the vote. The Bloq Quebecois have 16 % of the seats with only 10 percent of the vote.

Check out Fair Vote Canada; I'm tired, like about 6 million other Canadian citizens, of being an orphan voter.

Strategic Voting:British Columbia

In British Columbia ridings many of the races are fairly competitive. Often the Conservatives have won because of a split among progressive voters. Choosing to support the most popular progressive candidate ie Liberal, NDP or Green would defeat the Tories in the ridings of Burnaby- Douglas, Burnaby- New Westminster, Cariboo- Prince George, Esquimalt- Juan de Fuca, Fleetwood- Port Kells, Kamloops- Thompson- Cariboo, Nanaimo- Alberny, New Westminster- Coaquitlam, Okanagan- Shuswap, Pitt Meadows- Maple ridge- Mission, Port Moody- Westwood- Port Coaquitlam, Saanich- Gulf Islands, South Surrey- White Rock- Cloverdale, Surrey North, Vancouver Island North, Vancouver Quadra,and West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast- Sea to Sky Country. Check your riding to see the best bet for defeating the Tories.

Especially important is to defeat Minister Gary Lunn in Saanich- Gulf islands, who strongly supports oil at the expense of the environment and who regards nuclear safety as an after thought.

Until we get proportional representation and one vote really does count, strategic voting and vote swapping initiatives have to be part of the environmentalist's political tool box.

Vote for the environment

The idea of vote swapping- strategically voting so that the worst party wont get in- is the idea behind Votefortheenvironment.ca. This site suggests where it is possible to defeat the Conservative party, by voting for it's strongest opposition. This position is taken because only the Conservative party opposes strong environmental policies.

Facebook has a similar group that advocates vote swapping the Anti-Harper Vote Swap Canada.

These projects are necessary because Canada still uses a first-past-the-post voting system. Candidates can win a seat even though most citizens voted against them. A political party can get a majority government, even though most people voted for other candidates.
Groups who want to see fairer representation, such as Fair Vote Canada, advocate some form of proportional representation. Under such a system a party that gets 36% of the popular vote, gets 36% of the seats in the house of commons. Under the current system, the Conservative party won 36% of the vote but received 40% of the seats in Parliament.

voting reform

The current Government here in Quebec is proposing to create a system of representation by population. Their system would retain a riding system, but provide for an additional list of candidates that would top up the number of MNAs to reflect the popular vote.

My approach is that we should keep the ridings, and assign the winners of each riding a seat in the house. Then additional members are chosen from the strongest runners up. In other words if Joe Smith wins his riding with 51% and Jane Doe comes in second with 48% of the vote, she would be likely to be chosen to fill out the seats for her party. If you vote for someone it helps the party, regardless of the outcome of the riding race. More over it means that voting helps increase the possibility of multiple representatives for a given riding. That certainly should encourage voter turn out.

On the other hand, ridings with low turnout would limit themselves to one representative, as low turn out means that the runners up would be unlikely to be selected. The exception here is that small parties( The Green party, the Christian Heritage party, for examples) might make efforts to get some votes in poorly served ridings. That would encourage the bigger parties to pay attention to all ridings.