Observations
Less people voted in 2008 than in 2006 (over 1 million less people).
The majority of these people who did not vote this time were Liberals. See for yourself:
2008
Voter turnout: 13,832,972 of 23,401,064 registered voters (59.1%)
Bloc - 50 seats - 16.2% of seats - 1,379,565 votes - 10%
Conservative - 143 seats - 46.4% of seats - 5,205,334 votes - 37.6%
Green - 0 seats - 0% of seats - 940,474 votes - 6.8%
Liberal - 76 seats - 24.7% of seats - 3,629,990 votes - 26.2%
NDP - 37 seats - 12% of seats - 2,517,075 votes - 18.2%
Independent - 2 seats - 0.7% of seats - 89,524 votes - 0.7%
2006
Voter turnout: 14,908,703 of 23,054,615 registered voters (64.7%)
Bloc - 51 seats - 16.6% of seats - 1,553,201 votes - 10.5%
Conservative - 124 seats - 40.3% of seats - 5,374,071 votes - 36.3%
Green - 0 seats - 0% of seats - 664,068 votes - 4.5%
Liberal - 103 seats - 33.4% of seats - 4,479,415 votes - 30.2%
NDP - 29 seats - 9.4% of seats - 2,589,597 votes - 17.5%
Independent - 1 seat - 0.3% of seats - 76,696 votes - 0.5%
My predictions vs the election results
Prediction - Election
CPC - 115 - 143
Lib - 86 - 78
NDP - 51 - 37
Bloc - 53 - 48
Green - 0 - 0
Ind - 2 - 2
Analysis
Regarding my predictions ...
Regarding the NDP - There were 14 close races I gave to the NDP due to their upward trend in the polls. But, this trend was soft and only yielded a small percentage gain. So, most of these seats went to the other main contestant - in most cases, this was a Conservative candidate.
Regarding the Conservatives. See above.
Also, I, and many others overestimated how the Liberals would do.
If you only look at the seats won or lost, you would think that there were a lot of people who switched their voting preference from the Liberals to the Conservatives.
However, when you look at raw numbers of voters and the turnouts and compare 2006 to 2008, you see that less people voted for each of the major parties. And, whereas for these parties, there was a slight drop in voter turnout, for the Liberals, there was a significant drop of almost 850,000 voters.
Why such a big drop in voter turnout? IMHO voters were disillusioned with parliament, with the leaders, with what they offered, and, most of all, with the performance and lack of leadership (Dion) the Liberals offered. So, Liberals, especially soft Liberals, became un-decided and decided not to vote.
I would say that the Liberals abstaining or being absent from so many votes in Parliament (and not standing up for what they were elected to do), and Dion's lack of leadership resulted in a lot of people becoming exacerbated in the whole political process.
So, the Conservatives end up with more seats. The NDP end up with more seats. The Bloc stay about the same. The Greens pick up no seats since their support is still too low and is not focused enough in any ridings. And 2 very strong independents get in.
New Parliament
What will happen? Much of the same?
If the Liberals intend to gain back the trust of supporters, they will have to get a new leader and start to stand up against the Conservatives in parliament (in other words, return to being an official opposition party). If they don't, they will lose all credibility and really bomb in the next election.
The Conservatives will continue to push their agenda, but it all depends on the Liberals. If they decide to get a new strong leader and be an opposition party, then the Conservatives will either end up forcing another election soon, or, they will tone things down and try to get what they can done in parliament.
The NDP will continue to stand up for their ideals, try to get what they can done for Canadians, and oppose the Conservatives when they disagree with them.
The Bloc will continue to be the Bloc - generally agreeable on things with the NDP and the Liberals, but siding with the Conservatives when it comes to getting things for Quebec (which includes more decentralization of power/transferring power to the provinces).
The Green Party saw a gain of 2.3% in popular vote. They will continue to work at becoming a viable alternative party.
Newfoundland, Toronto and Montreal now all have one thing in common - no Conservatives! You can bet that these places will get nothing from the new government.
Edmonton-Strathcona
With a non-Conservative (NDP - Linda Duncan) winning a seat in Alberta, could this be the beginning of an erosion of the Conservative power in that province?
What Canadians Can Look Forward Too- More Conservative scandals
- More war - Continued killing of civilians in Afghanistan for American oil interests, costing us billions more in tax dollars, and hundreds more Canadian soldiers' lives
- Health and social services reduced and thus costing you more money overall
- More attempts to criminalize women, and outlaw gays
- No new childcare spaces, no new affordable housing, and no help for the poor
- No support for natives
- Increased deregulation of all sorts of things, resulting in a reduction of the safety of our health and our finances
- More attempts to turn our healthcare system into an American style one (where only the rich can afford healthcare, and more and more go bankrupt and are driven into poverty)
- Increased pollution, and embarrassment on the world stage as the Conservatives continue to block progress to reduce pollution
- A further increase of our national debt and increases in the yearly deficit as the Conservatives continue to give our money away to big corporations in the forms of tax breaks
- Increased unemployment as the Conservatives do nothing in our relations to the USA, other countries and big corporations.
- A crumbling infrastructure due to lack of federal funding (because of the Conservatives giving away our money to the big corporations)
- Continued biased news reporting that hides the truth due to the fact that the Main Stream Media, the major media companies, ARE big corporations who stand to gain much money from the Harper government.
- There's lots more bad things I could list here. Feel free to add them on in comments.
The good thing that might come of all this may be that Canadians finally begin to see what a mistake they have made in electing a Harper government (albeit a minority one) twice in a row and turf the bums out next election. Look what happened to the Conservatives after 2 terms of the Mulroney government - and he was popular, with majority governments.
