Like most Canadians, I am disappointed at the results of yesterday’s election.

But wait! Didn’t the Conservatives win a large majority? How can I say that “most Canadians” don’t support this?

1. Seats vs. popular vote.
The parliamentary system plus first-past-the-post contests in each riding means that a majority government (more than half of the available seats) can easily be obtained without gaining a majority of the popular vote. What matters is how the votes are spread among the ridings and especially whether there is splitting of votes allowing candidates of one party to win in many ridings.

Here is a breakdown of the national results (from Elections Canada):

Conservative popular vote: 39.6%
NDP popular vote: 30.6%
Liberal popular vote: 18.9%
Left (NDP + Liberal + Green) popular vote: 53.4%

The difference between the Conservatives with a large majority of seats vs. the NDP with 65 fewer seats was 9% in the popular vote. The percentage of voters who support right-wing policy is less than 40% whereas the percentage supporting left (including far left) is over 50%.

Also, consider how little popular support for the Conservatives has changed even after 5 years in power and through 3 elections.

2006: 36.3% (minority)
2008: 37.6% (minority)
2011: 39.6% (majority)

NO MAJORITY in terms of popular vote.

2. Riding-by-riding in Ontario.
The Conservatives, like everyone besides the NDP, fared quite poorly in Quebec. As expected, they did very well in the western provinces. What really made the difference was their success in gaining seats in Ontario. Does this signify a major shift in political leanings in Ontario toward the right?

Again, here is the popular vote breakdown for Ontario (from Elections Canada):

Conservatives: 44.4%
NDP + Liberal: 50.9%

But our system doesn’t work by counting the popular vote. What matters is the number of individual seats won. That’s why I looked at the raw data riding-by-riding for Ontario and compared the total votes for victorious Conservative candidates versus the sum of their NDP and Liberal opponents.

Number of ridings that would have been won (quite handily in most cases) by NDP+Liberal in Ontario: 28.

One of the Conservative candidates who would have lost (by 3800 votes) is John Baird.

Taking just this result from Ontario and leaving everything else the same elsewhere nationally, the seat breakdown would look like this:

Conservatives: 139
NDP + Liberal: 164

In other words, changing nothing at all except considering the total votes received by NDP and Liberal candidates together in each riding — only in Ontario — would have been a majority parliament of left-wing members.

NO MAJORITY in terms of riding-by-riding support.

The electoral system needs to be fixed. Proportional representation would go a long way towards providing a proper reflection of actual support regionally and nationally. A merger of the NDP and Liberal parties is another option (“Link the Left!”) to lessen the huge discrepancy between popular support and number of seats. For the moment, however, we — meaning a majority of Canadians — can only hope that the Conservatives look at more than just total seat count when they move ahead with their new “mandate” from the population.

Hey young people of Canada: Vote! It really, really does matter.

Over the upcoming 6 weeks of the election campaign, Canadians will no doubt hear the Conservative Party talking point about a “coalition” being bad and scary and undemocratic. Here’s a quick reminder of recent history, which the Conservatives seem to have forgotten.

1. The Conservative Party of Canada formed from the merger of two parties, the Canadian Alliance (a derivative of the Reform Party) and the Progressive Conservative Party, in late 2003. The decision to merge was announced in October 2003 and was ratified in December 2003.

This merger occured while the 37th Parliament was still in effect, having been elected in 2000 when the two parties ran separately. The results of the 2000 election for the formerly distinct parties were as follows:

• Canadian Alliance: 66 seats, 3,276,929 votes, 25.5% of popular vote
• Progressive Conservative: 12 seats, 1,566,998 votes, 12.2% of popular vote

The 37th Parliament of Canada was dissolved on May 23, 2004 and the subsequent election occurred on June 28, 2004. This means that MPs who had been elected as Alliance or PC candidates became members of a merged party in parliament for about 6 months. It should be obvious that the merger of two formerly separate parties into a new party is much more significant than a temporary coalition among distinct parties.

In the 2004 election, the newly formed Conservative Party of Canada won 99 seats (more than in 2000) but received only 4,019,498 votes or 29.6% of the popular vote — less than the combined totals of the two separate parties in 2000.

2. After the 2004 election, which gave a minority government to the Liberal Party of Canada, Stephen Harper (Conservative Party Leader and Leader of the Opposition) signed a letter along with Gilles Duceppe (Leader of the Bloc Quebecois) and Jack Layton (Leader of the NDP) that sugggested to the Governor General that these parties could form a government together if the Liberal minority government were to fall soon after the election. In other words, Harper was fully prepared to form a coalition government with the Bloc Quebecois and NDP right after the results of the election were known.

3. The Liberals and NDP did attempt to form a coalition in late 2008. They had the support of the Bloc Quebecois in this effort. However, rather than allow his minority government to fall, Harper asked the Governer General to prorogue parliament so that a vote could not occur in the House of Commons. (Parliament was prorogued again in late 2009). This led to protests and criticism that the Harper government was subverting democracy.

4. In response to the attempt of the Liberal Party and NDP to form a coalition, the Conservative Party claimed repeatedly that this was undemocratic and ignored the will of voters. As noted in a previous post, if the Liberals and NDP had run as a single party (as the Conservatives did in the 2004 election), they would have won by a wide margin.

I doubt any of these facts will deter the Conservative Party from using the scary coalition campaign tactic ad nauseum, but hopefully most voters won’t be fooled.

September 9, 2004

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson,
C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D.
Governor General
Rideau Hall
1 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A1

Excellency,

As leaders of the opposition parties, we are well aware that, given the Liberal minority government, you could be asked by the Prime Minister to dissolve the 38th Parliament at any time should the House of Commons fail to support some part of the government’s program.

We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all of your options before exercising your constitutional authority.

Your attention to this matter is appreciated.

Sincerely,

Hon. Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P.
Leader of the Opposition
Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada

Gilles Duceppe, M.P.
Leader of the Bloc Quebecois

Jack Layton, M.P.
Leader of the New Democratic Party

Listening to current Prime Minister Stephen Harper repeat the Conservative talking point that the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois will form a coalition if the Conservatives earn only a minority government yet again after the election in May. It’s amazing how on-message the Conservatives have become already: “reckless coalition”, “illegitimate coaltion”, “unstable coalition”, “undemocratic coalition”.

First of all, a coalition government is perfectly legitimate within a parliamentary system. Second, remember that Harper prorogued parliament to prevent his party from losing power, which is unprecedented in Canadian history.  Third, let’s look again at the results from the previous election and ask, would a coalition between the Liberals and NDP go against the votes of the Canadian electorate?

As indicated by the popular vote totals, there is little support for the claim that a coalition government between the Liberal and NDP parties in Canada would be undemocratic.

However, this represents a very rough analysis because the Canadian system, like many others, is a first-past-the-post process in which the candidate with the most votes is elected regardless of the margin.

In order to reveal the desire of the electorate more realistically, it is necessary to consider the total votes in each riding rather than at the national scale. I decided to see what would have happened in the latest election had the Liberal and NDP candidates run jointly in each riding from the outset by summing their respective votes on a riding by riding level. I compared only the major parties, meaning that I did not include any votes from the Green Party, independents, or fringe parties in the new totals. Data were acquired from Elections Canada and only verified final results were analyzed.

The actual election results were (number of seats):

• Conservative: 143
• Liberal: 77
• Bloc Qubecois: 49
• NDP: 37
• Independent: 2

Now, taking each riding individually and adding the Liberal and NDP votes received, we note the following changes:

• Conservatives would have lost 30 ridings to Liberal+NDP and retained 113.
• Bloc Quebecois would have lost 9 ridings to Liberal+NDP and retained 40.

The new election results, if we count each riding by itself but combine the voters who chose either Liberal or NDP, are then:

• Liberal+NDP: 153
• Conservative: 113
• Bloc Quebecois: 40
• Independent: 2

We can’t assume that the election would have turned out exactly like this with combined parties (it would depend on the candidate, party leader, etc.). Nevertheless, this gives a reasonable estimate of what voters wanted in terms of representation. In other words, the election results, whether analyzed by popular vote nationally or riding by riding, clearly refute the claim that a coalition of the Liberal and NDP would contradict the expressed will of voters.