Election Day

[bcholmes]

According to the CBC:

Party	Elected	Leading	Total
LIB	135	1	136
CON	93	4	97
BQ	54	0	54
NDP	19	1	20
NA	1	0	1

Highlights:

1. The house has 308 seats. A majority is 155 seats. The Liberals and the NDP together just barely squeak by with enough votes to control the house. (It's an odd thing, Canadian elections. Canadians don't elect the government, they elect the parliament. Whomever can control the house gets to form the government).
2. Jack Layton won his seat in Toronto-Danforth, beating out incumbant Liberal (and socially conservative) Dennis Mills.
3. Sam Bulte won in my riding, beating out my favourite candidate, Peggy Nash.
4. Tragically, Cheryl Gallant (who, I think, caused the Conservatives the most PR problems) won her seat.
5. Olivia Chow, wife of Jack Layton, lost her seat to do-nothing Liberal incumbant, Tony Ianno.
6. Paul Martin's own seat wasn't safe this election. Although he came in with a strong win, it wasn't called until fairly late in the evening.
7. For a brief moment, the Marxist-Leninists were polling in the lead in one riding. Everyone got quite the chuckle out of that.
8. The one independant seat went to a Conservative-wannabe.
9. Ruby Dhalla and Tony Valeri won. Both were people that Martin installed in their ridings. (Actually, CBC called Valeri's riding to the NDP. Their site now says that Valeri won).

Comments

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

CTV is calling 135 seats for the Liberals, but that still delivers a bare majority with the NDP at the moment. And we were watching the results here on the CBC site most of the night, and at one point a seat was called for the Greens, but I see that's gone now, too. And I'm glad to see that Layton won his riding. Of course, if I were up in Canada I would be an NDP supporter, which I'm sure you knew. :)

I don't imagine that Sue and Amanda would have been eligible to vote today, which is sort of too bad. Perhaps next time. And listening to the BBC on the radio, they're saying it was the BQ that cost the Liberals an outright majority. Oh darn, if that's the case. They might have to get dragged away from the centre ground that Martin has been trying to stake out.

Isn't this the first time that party not lead by a Quebecer has "won" since Clarke's Tories back in the late 70s/early 80s?

Okay...enough of my showing of my knowledge of Canuck politics. :)

[thespian.livejournal.com]

No more so than Mulroney having a Quebec riding, though he was about as Quebecois than my left foot. Paul Martin's has a Quebec riding himself.

With the exception of Joe Clark's tiny little 9 month government and the little skipstone pre-election governments of Campbell (5 mos.) and Turner (3 mos.), it's been 36 years since a party ruled that *didn't* have, as it's leader, an MP from Quebec, even when that leader with the Quebec riding was Anglais (and in the case of Mulroney, at least, moved into the riding simply to run. I've been out of the country, so I don't know if Martin's a migrant).

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was looking at the riding-by-riding results and saw that Martin does have a Quebec riding. I totally did not think he did because he hasn't got much of a French Canadian accent, and I swear I recall US television saying he was from Ontario. *shrugs* So, I put my foot in my mouth, c'est la vie. But it doesn't shock me to know that Mulroney migrated to Quebec. He sure doesn't sound much like a native.

[the_axel]

Martin is from Windsor.

PM birth provinces.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

paul martin was born in windsor, ontario and went to university in toronto. he's been in his quebec riding since 1988. brian mulroney was actually born in quebec, left for new brunswick at 14, went to university in nova scotia, transferred to quebec, and then practiced law in quebec city.

chrétien was born in quebec, campbell is from BC, turner was born in england, clark in alberta.

Re: election day

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

it looks even worse now that all the votes have been counted (though there will be recounts in a few ridings):

135 - 99 - 54 - 19 - 1

that means even with the NDP the libs don't have a majority of votes to control the house.

overall it seems to have the liberals done more harm than good that paul martin pushed his candidates into specific ridings. serves them right; that was an asshole thing to do.

yay for the NDP. in fact, yay for anyone leftish out here in BC. the conservatives got shown rather less confidence out here than they expected. my riding went from conservative to the NDP, and overall the battle lines were much closer than in 2000.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I was compulsively hitting "refresh" on the CBC website for most of the night.

And biting my nails. Lots of biting my nails.