Don't be too quick to put Clement in the 'Winners' column. He's only up by 21 votes (out of over 46,000 cast), so one imagines that there will be a recount. The error rate would only have to be 0.05% in favour of Mitchell to flip the riding.
Posted at 2006-01-24 09:04:16 [PermaLink]Damian,
I think that a lot of the Conservative blogs (yours and Andrew Coyne in particular) have to be humble and consider themselves as partial loosers. We all thought the Liberals would get their ass kicked but it didn't happen. As well, most predictions made by Conservative "pundits" (man, do I hate that word) turned out to be cocky and self-serving. Conservatives did not come even close to a majority. They were too weak in the Maritimes, in Quebec and in Ontario to be real contenders at a majority. Yet, we all thought this might be the right time for it. Yes, lots of people were worried that Ontario would change its mind at the last minute, but many (including Steyn etc...), said "not this time". We tried to wish that Canadians would punish the Liberals for being the crooks that they are and for being so open, arrogant and even proud about it, but we now realize that many Canadians, especially Ontarians, not only expect politicians to be corrupt, they actually reward them for it with renewed confidence. Simply incredible.
I only hope that the RCMP is now given a free hand to start digging through the Liberal mud, both the party and the former government, and that we start seeing people from "Canada's natural party" going away to jail for a long long time.
You mentioned Atlantic Tories, how about the province of PEI as a whole? Shut out of the cabinet. Far be it for me to lament not having a conservative elected here, but it is unfortunate in a way, and being part of the only province to be swept by the Liberals isn't exactly something to be proud of this time around...
Posted at 2006-01-24 09:47:08 [PermaLink]What's lamentable is the number of seats PEI has with a population of only 135,000.
Posted at 2006-01-24 10:00:02 [PermaLink]Any idea how many of the Liberal winners were among the somewhat sizable "anti gay marriage" contingent?
Posted at 2006-01-24 10:12:05 [PermaLink]Indeed, the Greens were not elected and we'll keep "playin" until we are. We did rise in the number of votes we got in total so, that's progress.
Next time Gadget. Next time.
Stephen
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One thing I see here is demographics. French-Canadians have a terribly low birth rate. Is Quebec separatism a spent force? Certainly didn't work in 1995.
Posted at 2006-01-24 10:29:35 [PermaLink]The # of total votes isn't important, it's the share of the vote that matters.
Simply "getting more total votes" would only be impressive if the population was shrinking.
Metropolitan Canada--Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver--was a loser (no Conservative caucus or cabinet representation) but also a winner in the sense of preventing any sniff of a Tory majority.
The media seem unaware that "urban" is not synonymous with Toronto, Vancover and Montreal, as they keep harping on an urban/rural split. There is no such split; there is however a metro/Canada split.
In our next three most populous cities--all nearing the million mark--Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton the Conservatives took all the seats but three (all in the Ottawa urban core; the CPC swept the suburbs). The CPC also took four out of six Quebec City seats.
So there was no urban failure by the Conservatives, there was a metro one. And it is to the metros that three quarters of all immigrants go each year.
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And both Toronto and Vancouver have foreign-born populations, 43.7 and 37.5 percent respectively (2001 census, even higher now), that are almost double the percentage in any other city.
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Mark
Ottawa