The Mad Professah Lectures

The table below is courtesy Professor Andrew Heard of Simon Fraser University and illustrates the election results of the 2011 Canada federal elections, compared to the 2006 and 2006 elections.

						OTHER
2011 Seats % Votes	4 6.0	167 39.6	1 3.7	34 18.9	102 30.6	0 0.9
2008 Seats % Votes	49 10.0	143 37.6	- 6.8	77 26.2	37 18.2	2 1.2
2006 Seats % Votes	51 10.5	124 36.3	- 4.5	103 30.2	29 17.5	1 1.0

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party won a huge victory last night, outpolling several published pre-election surveys handily to get 39.6% of the vote with the perennial thirds nearly doubling their previous best results to get 30.6% of the vote. Then official Opposition Party, the Liberals, received the lowest vote percentage in their long history, 18.9%, falling below 20% for the first time ever.

With a comfortable margin of a dozen over the required 155-seat total for a majority in the Canadian Parliament, Harper can be assured of being Prime Minister for at least 5 years before he needs to call another election.

Although that's disappointing, real progressives will be having a say in running the Canadian government, although in a parliamentary system, if you have the votes there are very little checks and balances for a majority government to enact its will.

There are two new polls released Sunday which demonstrate that the perennial third party in Canadian politics has a fairly good chance of being first in the Monday May 2nd federal election.

Here is the Ekos poll:

May 1, 2011

National Federal Vote Intention
(committed voters only)

34.8% Conservative Party of Canada
32.4% New Democratic Party
20.4% Liberal Party of Canada
 5.7% Bloc Québécois
 5.6% Green Party of Canada

n=2,988

Here is the Forum research poll:

May 1, 2011

National Federal Vote Intention

35% Conservative Party of Canada
33% New Democratic Party
19% Liberal Party of Canada

However, as social democrat notes at DailyKos.com, this does not mean that NDP will end the election with  enough seats to lead the next Canadian government, due to the vagaries of the first-past-the-post parliamentary system.

Canada is in the midst of their "snap elections: with voters going to the polls on Monday May 2. The current government is run by the Conservative party, with the Liberals being the official opposition. Previously, the Liberals held power in Canada for over a decade, losing power in 2006, with Stephen Harper becoming Prime Minister at the head of a minority government.

But,  now, a week before the next countrywide election, the New Democratic Party (NDP) is outpolling the Liberal party and could potentially form a government in coalition with the Green Party. Conventional wisdom has been that "NDP could never win" so most non-Conservatives outside of Quebec have generally been forced to vote for the Liberal party while holding their nose. This is a similar situation to what happens in the United kingdom with the three parties being the Conservatives (Tories), Labour and the Liberal Democrats. In last year's elections the Conservatives and LDP formed a Coalition government to replace more than a decade of Labour-led British governments. This was the first time in generations the perennial third party LDP had a meaningful role in government. Now it looks like that story may be repeating in Canada.

MadProfessah spent some time in Canada earlier this year and am something of a Canada-phile. I'll be looking at their election results next week with great interest!