Byelection Roundup and 2-Minute Analysis

Posted by Devin Johnston on November 10th, 2009

I've been working on a paper about Canada's Aboriginal Justice Strategy for law school most of the night, but I did stop by Cameron Holstrom's site for some live by-election coverage and discussion. I have a couple of quick comments about what these results mean. But first, the results as of the time of writing.

Now for my 2-minute, scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin analysis for the five biggest parties:

• Conservative
• You've got to hand it to the Conservatives for getting two new seats in the bag.
• The Conservatives will be very pleased to win a seat in Québec even with the gun control issue looming over them.
• With Bill Casey out of the picture, it wasn't clear if the riding would go back into solid blue territory or whether there would be a have of anti-Conservative sentiment. Now we know.
• NDP
• This is a very good night for the NDP. They retained the seat vacated by Dawn Black and finished a strong second in two other ridings.
• The NDP beat the Greens in every riding and beat the Liberals in every riding save one.
• Not only did the party retain New Westminster--Coquitlam, Fin Donnelly increased the party's vote share by 8% versus Dawn Black's win in 2008. We won this race in convincing fashion.
• The NDP had high hopes for Cumberland--Colchester--Musquodoboit Valley, especially in the wake of their historic provincial election win in Nova Scotia. Although we didn't win, we doubled our vote share versus 2008. A historic result for the NDP as our party's fortunes continue to rise in Nova Scotia.
• Hochelaga is another riding where we had hoped to make major gains. Although the result is a bit lower than some were hoping for, we increased our vote share and leapfrogged the Liberals for second place.
• Liberal
• The Liberal message for tonight is that they never had a chance in any of these ridings, so we shouldn't read too much into their four third place finishes. When your message boils down to "we were never even close anyway", you start to lose credibility as a serious political party.
• The Liberals lost vote share in three out of four ridings. This should cause the Ignatieff team to ask some serious questions about their ability to turn things around on a bigger scale.
• The Liberals almost failed to win back their deposit in New Westminster-Coquitlam. Not good for a party looking to rebuild in British Columbia.
• Bloc
• This is a mixed bag for the Bloc. They retain one and lose one.
• Daniel Paillé wins in Hochelaga despite a taking a lot of flack (especially from the NDP) for being too right wing. The Bloc increase their vote share by about 1.5%.
• The loss in Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup is faily significant, with the Bloc dropping about 9% in vote share.
• Greens
• Where were the Greens tonight? They failed to crack 5% in any riding.
• This would appear to be a major setback for the party, especially given that they tend to to better in byelections than in general elections.
• In my opinion, May has been getting a lot less exposure since losing to MacKay in the general election. I wonder if her lack of exposure to voters is causing a drop in enthusiasm for the party?

In summary, the Conservatives were the clear winners tonight. The NDP have a lot to be happy about. The Bloc did so-so. The Liberals should be somewhat concerned about tonight's results. The Greens barely made a blip on the radar.

Spread the word and fan the winds of change: