Elections '04
Election over, with just about the best result an NDP fan could hope for, as our favourite left-wing wacko party seized 19 votes and thus “the balance of power”. Look, NDP got 15% of the vote and 19 seats, whereas the Bloc got 12% of the vote but 54 seats! That kind of nonsense will change, if Jack sticks to his plan and makes proportional representation the precondition for supporting the liberal minority. In the smaller numbers, the Greens scored big enough to get financing for the next election (which according to the law of averages with minority governments should be less than two years away). Also, more than twice as many people voted for the communist party as for the libertarians – and that’s not counting those who voted “Marxist Leninist”. But votes for the Marijuana party dwarfed all the commies put together.
My left-wing wacko friends and I had a poll-result viewing party last night as we watched the NDP’s seats rise to heights of 27 and then fall back down again… We had a moment of silence for Olivia, however…
Yeah, it’s too bad about Olivia. Also, are a liberal/NDP combo not now one vote short of the 155 needed to pass legislation? Or am I just hallucinating that 155 number?
Shit, Olivia just barely lost. 1200 votes, 42.1% of vote to Ianno’s 43.6%. Greens: 4.2%, 2200 votes.
They are a seat short. But their seats are more than the Cs and BQ combined by 1, 154-153. The last seat is a non-affiliated guy in Richmond, B.C., who was gonna run C. So it’s tight. To be honest, I don’t think the Ls will be as aligned with the NDP as everyone thinks. They can align with whoever they want for any issue, giving conessions where they see fit. In turn, the other parties can align with the Liberals on some issues and the Ls don’t have to sell the farm for any one party. Regardless of the campaigning, the Ls do have some things in common with the Cs and BQs. So the NDP might not have as much power as they think. Could make Martin’s team more accountable, while also seeing some significant changes. Ideally, it’ll see the best of the best plans come forward. But then again, maybe nothing’ll get done.
Any stats on voter turnout this time? It seemed like people were really gung ho.
That was me.
Voter turnout: 13,486,645 of 22,295,670 registered electors (60.5%)
http://enr.elections.ca/National_e.aspx
pretty decent.
Actually, no. Terrible