Wasted votes

yyc, in comments to an earlier post says:

A 9% margin over the liberals resulting in a 6 seat margin over the liberals. No party has over got over 40% and gotten the low seat count you cobbled together.
The road to 50 a Tory minority

Propose for the moment that the CPC takes 30% of the vote in Quebec and wins zero seats. Basically a million votes in vain. Implausible? Not really. 30% spread evenly across all 75 ridings with a Liberal collapse could easily have that effect.

Equally, propose that the Tories take every one of the seats in Alberta with a 80% share of the popular vote. Implausible. Not really.

Here’s the thing, national polls are meaningless unless they can be mapped to at least the regional level. The super majorities in Alberta and the widely dispersed “strong showing” in Quebec mean that nearly a million and a half CPC votes may well be entirely wasted.

In the last election in Quebec 3,438,255 voted. So 30% is about 1 million votes. In Alberta 1,274,997 voted and 30% off that is 400,000 and change.

Last time out, 13,564,702 Canadians voted which means that 40% is roughly 5,200,000. When you look at the polls and consider how the regional breakouts are likely to fall, the Tories’ 40% this time could well put them in a minority position.

Written by jay on January 16th, 2006 with 8 comments.
Read more articles on CPC and Canadian Politics and Uncategorized.

Laughing…

Proud to be Canadian has been doing sterling video mashups throught out the election. They outdo themselves with the Holy Dumpling explaining the military ad.

In fact, one of the things which is different this time around is that the CPC supporters have managed to bring a sense of humour to the election. Now, admittedly, the Dumpling is a great target; but still, humor goes a very long way when you are trying to win people to your side or appear less than scary.

Maude Barlow last laughed in 1987.

Written by jay on January 16th, 2006 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and Uncategorized.