Hacks & Wonks

I don't know. This was Harper's golden opportunity to take a majority, and he fell short. Is he really going to be happy about incremental gains while stuck in a minority position? It's a victory, but "huge"?

Next election will see a stronger Liberal leader, and possibly some consolidation on the left (a Lib-Green merger isn't outside the realm of possibility to me).

I've already seen the "are the Libs a national party" question discussed, along with questions about what it means for the Cons that they have no seats in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.

Andrew Coyne nailed it tonight. The Liberals are DEAD west of Lake of the Woods and all the money and population is heading west. They are still talking about Quebec and after the next review of seats the west together will have more seats than Quebec and they must start to reach out to it instead of dismissing it. If they cannot do that they will be stuck at 75 to 95 seats for years.

I'm not sure that this was a great victory for Harper. He failed to inspire people to show up and vote for him at a time when the votes against were badly split and the leaders of the other parties were uninspiring. And that comes after 2.5 years of proving that he wasn't the fascist monster that he had been portrayed as in past elections.

If parliament was disfunctional before, I can see little to suggest its a different place today. The same leaders of the same parties with the same balance-of-power formulas. Nothing changed there.

The numerical balance of power seems to be similar however the power of the new mandate and the disastrous results for the libs change everything.

The Liberals share of the popular vote is at historic lows and only the concentration in big cities saves them from electoral disaster.

Dion will be forced out once a plan exists to retire his crushing personal debt. The party is broke, and getting poorer as the loss of so many votes translates into inadequate amounts to retire old debt and fund party activities.

Harper has pushed the Liberals to the financial precipice and the snowball will gain steam quickly. My guess is he will rule with a defacto majority for at least another year possibly two with little to no real opposition from the Liberals.

colin

Colin, if the purpose of the election was to destroy the Liberal Party, then Harper won. (Flanagan suggested this is the case)

If, however, the purpose was to gain a stronger mandate, that was not the case. The Conservatives received 168,000 fewer votes than last time, for an all-time record low support among the electorate of 22.22%. This is part of a historic trend down. If these trends continue, we should be very concerned.

Voters are destroying the Liberal party by not voting for them or donating to their cause. Harper is merely giving them lots of opportunity to do so.

The mandate is stronger because the opposition is weaker. Thats how parliamentary democracy works. Dion was sure that his green shift would appeal to voters and indicated that he would bring down the Harper govt in the fall session. He lost seats, he lost almost a million votes, and he lost his already meagre proportion of the popular vote.

The mandate is stronger and Harper can govern pretty freely as there is no real opposition from the Liberal party. They cant afford another go.

colin