Terribly worried
I'm as glad as anyone that the Green Party managed to quadruple its support in this election, but some people's post-election comments made me begin to wonder at what cost. One guy in particular was claiming that the NDP could have grabbed another 10-5 seats. I emailed him to ask for details, and he got me some:
"Go take a look at the election results on the CBC web page.
Just looking through the results in BC alone, I counted 8 (!) ridings where the NDP + Green vote would have produced a victory; almost all of those seats went Conservative. There were about 3 more seats where the combined vote would have put the NDP within 1% of the winning total. Just off the top of my head, I can think of Oshawa, Northwest Territories and Trinity Spadina (Toronto) which would have gone NDP but for the Green split. I'm sure there are several more. What was truly amazing is how many seats the NDP lost by a handful of votes. If you distributed an extra 1000 votes among a number of ridings, the NDP would have won a dozen more seats. By contrast, there were only a couple seats that the NDP won by the same razor thin margins.
For all the talk about 'unite the right' in Canada, we now have an increasingly fractioned left. In addition, I'm sure that thousands of NDP voters were scared into voting Liberal because of the fear of a Harper government (which now seems so implausible). I thought that this election was very poorly served by the media, which - much like the US - played up the 'horse race' element of the election over substantive issues. For all the talk of the Conservatives 'surge' in the middle of the election, I didn't see a single poll ever give them more than 34% - which was only about 5 points more than they started the election with (they finished the campaign at 29% - exactly what the polls had them going into the campaign with); the real story wasn't the Conservative gains, but the Liberal fall.
I realize that it is much more speculative to try to attribute Liberal votes to the NDP, but I would guess that there were at least another half dozen or so seats that the NDP was deprived of because of NDP supporters voting Liberal (which may have produced the opposite effect - see some of the close races in Saskatchewan, where it is clear that the Liberal vote was much higher than normal, and which produced Conservative seats).
Anyway, let's hope that the price the NDP demands is proportional representation (which the Liberals would be had pressed to support, since they gain the most in a first past the post system."
And also:
"Sorry to follow up, but my curiosity go the better of me. I counted 2 more seats in Saskatchewan and 3 more seats in Ontario where the Green split cost the NDP seats (that's on top of the ones I already totalled).
That's 16 seats in total.
As I mentioned, it is a lot more problematic to guess the impact of NDP supporters voting Liberal out of fear, but I would venture that at least an extra half dozen seats were lost to the NDP because of this (these are not seats where the Green split would have cost them - I don't want to double count). This includes some seats where the incumbent Liberal won (likely due to NDP support), as well as some where the Conservatives won because enough NDP supporters voted (mistakenly - given the result, since it did the opposite of what was intended) Liberal instead of NDP. Remember, in the last week of the campaign, Martin rather aggressively courted 'progressive' voters using the bogeyman of a Harper government."
Now, I'd be the last person to slate someone for voting Green, especially considering some friends and family of mine probably did, but 35 seats for the NDP certainly would have been nice. I'm aware that you can't actually take 100% of the votes for the Greens and map them onto the NDP, but this is rather distressing information in any case, and it's the sort of thing that should be widely disseminated. Note that "widely disseminated" does NOT equal "used as a stick to beat Green voters over the head with".
"Go take a look at the election results on the CBC web page.
Just looking through the results in BC alone, I counted 8 (!) ridings where the NDP + Green vote would have produced a victory; almost all of those seats went Conservative. There were about 3 more seats where the combined vote would have put the NDP within 1% of the winning total. Just off the top of my head, I can think of Oshawa, Northwest Territories and Trinity Spadina (Toronto) which would have gone NDP but for the Green split. I'm sure there are several more. What was truly amazing is how many seats the NDP lost by a handful of votes. If you distributed an extra 1000 votes among a number of ridings, the NDP would have won a dozen more seats. By contrast, there were only a couple seats that the NDP won by the same razor thin margins.
For all the talk about 'unite the right' in Canada, we now have an increasingly fractioned left. In addition, I'm sure that thousands of NDP voters were scared into voting Liberal because of the fear of a Harper government (which now seems so implausible). I thought that this election was very poorly served by the media, which - much like the US - played up the 'horse race' element of the election over substantive issues. For all the talk of the Conservatives 'surge' in the middle of the election, I didn't see a single poll ever give them more than 34% - which was only about 5 points more than they started the election with (they finished the campaign at 29% - exactly what the polls had them going into the campaign with); the real story wasn't the Conservative gains, but the Liberal fall.
I realize that it is much more speculative to try to attribute Liberal votes to the NDP, but I would guess that there were at least another half dozen or so seats that the NDP was deprived of because of NDP supporters voting Liberal (which may have produced the opposite effect - see some of the close races in Saskatchewan, where it is clear that the Liberal vote was much higher than normal, and which produced Conservative seats).
Anyway, let's hope that the price the NDP demands is proportional representation (which the Liberals would be had pressed to support, since they gain the most in a first past the post system."
And also:
"Sorry to follow up, but my curiosity go the better of me. I counted 2 more seats in Saskatchewan and 3 more seats in Ontario where the Green split cost the NDP seats (that's on top of the ones I already totalled).
That's 16 seats in total.
As I mentioned, it is a lot more problematic to guess the impact of NDP supporters voting Liberal out of fear, but I would venture that at least an extra half dozen seats were lost to the NDP because of this (these are not seats where the Green split would have cost them - I don't want to double count). This includes some seats where the incumbent Liberal won (likely due to NDP support), as well as some where the Conservatives won because enough NDP supporters voted (mistakenly - given the result, since it did the opposite of what was intended) Liberal instead of NDP. Remember, in the last week of the campaign, Martin rather aggressively courted 'progressive' voters using the bogeyman of a Harper government."
Now, I'd be the last person to slate someone for voting Green, especially considering some friends and family of mine probably did, but 35 seats for the NDP certainly would have been nice. I'm aware that you can't actually take 100% of the votes for the Greens and map them onto the NDP, but this is rather distressing information in any case, and it's the sort of thing that should be widely disseminated. Note that "widely disseminated" does NOT equal "used as a stick to beat Green voters over the head with".
