This majority is not the NDP's fault

I think I will start a website selling "Don't blame me, I voted NDP" t-shirts and bumper stickers.

I look at the Ontario results and see that the NDP won some ridings in downtown Toronto that they might not have won otherwise without the transfer of right wing Liberal votes to the Conservatives.  Unfortunately, the Liberal meltdown also caused the Conservatives to vault from third to first in some instances as well. 

The NDP vote went up in those parts of Ontario that knows the party through its MP's.  Incumbents, by and large, were elected to stronger majorities (the exception being Sault Ste. Marie) and the ridings near where our incumbents went up as well.  In most cases, the Liberals are now in third place in those ridings.  The right wing Liberal vote going behind the Conservatives prevented NDP wins in a few ridings.

The NDP vote going up did not cost the Liberals seats in the 905.  Liberal vote bleeding to the Conservatives put the Conservatives over 50% in many of those ridings.  Our vote did go up a bit and I think that there was no strategic voting on the part of NDP voters in those ridings because of the negative Liberal advertising directed at our platform in the dying days of the campaign.  That dove-tailed nicely with Harper's message for right wing Liberals to vote for him to keep the NDP out.  This worked great in the 905 where the NDP had no chance to win seats.  It caused Liberal vote to go Conservative and the NDP vote which had strategically gone Liberal in past elections not to do so this time. I can't say that I'm unhappy that Liberal negative advertising back-fired on them.  I do wish that it would have benefited us rather than the Conservatives.

The Liberal vote in Western Canada went down to nothing with the exception of a few ridings (Wascana, Winnipeg North, Quadra, Vancouver South, Vancouver Centre).  Here in the Western Arctic, I believe the aboriginal leadership changing their "vote Liberal" rhetoric in the last couple of days of the campaign to what a good guy Layton is made a big difference.  I will look at the results more closely once the poll by poll results become available.

Anyone who thinks the NDP is responsible for the Conservative majority is an idiot, pure and simple, and they can't do basic math.  We have a Conservative government because of the Liberals.  They stood for nothing, did nothing to attract voters.  And in the end it was their supporters who switched to the Conservatives in such a way as you have to think they were strategically voting in many places to stop the NDP.

Goddess I hate Liberals.  They still don't get it.  THEY are the problem.

It's really the mainstream news media's fault, for never reporting the truth about events, never explaining policies, legislation, budgeting or the consequences of political actions. Even during the campaign, they contributed to the NDP surge by reporting, ad nauseum, on the phenomenon - not on its causes. While privately owned media obviously serves its masters' interest, 'national' media should have been serving the public. I've just decided they deserve to be defunded and consumed.

Iggy started the campaign with an unfair strike against him, due to the damage from the Cons' negative ad campaign.

The next two were all his own:

Being unprepared for the coalition question on the first day of the campaign, and allowing Harper to trap him into rejecting the possibility. I'm rather certain that many Canadians abandoned the Liberals because they once again weren't willing to step up and replace Harper if given the opportunity.

And the coup de grace, of course, was the revelation about Iggy's Parliamentary attendance record.

A somewhat curious description of what Iggy had on offer.  We're to believe that in the later stages a leftist presence of mind emerged which compelled him to toss health care atop the smouldering pire of his campaign, and for that he become too much of a salesman for the left that it scared those red on the outside, blue on the inside constituents to flock beneath the Harperite banner?  The Liberals were finished when they followed up after Martin by presenting Iggy and Rae as their most viable leadership contenders.

They have been the walking dead since 2008 they just didn't want to believe it.  

Thomas has responsiblity for the Harper Majority then the NDP because durimg the election he tried to undermine the NDP. Thomas should take some of the personal responsablity he has for dampening the Orange wave in Ontario. People like Thomas stopped the antiharper vote from consolidating behind the NDP. Hopefully people will have learned thier lesson from listening to him.

Walkom's whole thesis fails because of a faulty premise.  It wasn' t vote splitting in Ontario that was responsible; it was Liberals voting Conservative.

Layton is also a known commodity.  Iggy wasn't.  Not to say they won't try, though.

I hope the Liberal MPs just split into NDP and Tory Caucuses. It would be neat to see who chooses what.

Andrew Coyne gives us a rightwing POV on why the Liberals are responsible for their own failure:

This is true. Liberals seem to believe they are "entitled" to the support of NDP voters in close races with the Cons.

In my riding, Etobicoke Centre, the incumbent Liberal lost to the Conservative by 26 votes (there will be a recount). The Liberal blames the NDP, who ran third. In actual fact, the Conservative vote increased by 2,822 and the Liberal vote decreased by 2,902; those Con votes didn't come from the NDP, but from the Liberals.

Personally, I blame the Marxist-Leninists for the Con win. Their 149 votes exceeds the Conservative margin of victory! 

This one goes in the "Hall of Fame".

Cons received 39.6% of the vote. That's not a true majority. And it's only a little more than 23% of the eligible vote.

I heard at least one political commentator on TV last night saying things like a majority of Canadians voted for the Harpers. Technically, grammatically, logically, scientifically, religiously, philosophically and mathematically speaking, it's simply not true.

Its all Ryan Dolby's fault!

Seriously, why don't these jerks say that its the Liberal Party's fault harper won because they had the nerve to exist and run candidates in every riding when they shold have simply recognized that the NDP was a better party and not have contested the election!

The Liberals deserved this. The country didn't.

That makes sense. The Libs were also trying to go left to crush the NDP.

All that does is split the center votes. I know lots of people who are center-left who have always voted Lib, as it was perceived as socially progressive and moderate.

And his chosen candidate got 13.5% to the NDP's 24.64%, ha ha

Damn straight.  The  Marxist-Leninists always have been a Mickey-Maoist organization.

Only the arrogant Liberals could claim that it was the NDP's job to save the Liberals from themselves.  If the NDP came in second it wasn't the NDP that gave the seat to the Conservatives, it was the Liberals if you follow their logic.  In a great many other situations it was Liberal switchers going Conservative that lost them their seats.  I really dislike that these so-called experts can't seem to even do simple arithmetic.

And where is the outrage over the Liberals causing the loss of Tony Martin's voice in the House by spliting the vote.  Martin was certainly as important a voice in the House as many of the Liberals the media are mourning the loss of.

Mickey Maoist indeed!

KenS hits the nail on the head. It was clear in the first two weeks of the campaign that the Liberal strategy was to polarize the electorate and squeeze the NDP and Greens for votes. To do that, they had to run to the left, at least at first. The problem was, that after Iggy's stance on Afghanistan, corporate tax cuts, etc, left-leaning voters just weren't buying it. The Liberals also tried to fashion 'contempt of Parliament' and people being thrown out of Tory rallies into a "the Tories are undemocratic" narrative.  While true, the Liberals again had no credibility on these issues with the voters after giving Harper a pass time after time.

Keith Davey used to say that if the Liberals moved too far to the right, they would lose: "When faced with the choice between a Tory and a carbon copy of a Tory, the voters will go for the real thing almost all of the time."  (He famously applied this quote to Turner vs. Mulroney in 1984.) In a perverse sense, the opposite happened in this campaign - the Liberals offered a pale-pink imitation of the NDP, thinking the voters would fall for it again, but this time left-leaning voters saw through it and decided to go for the genuine article.

I know Andrew Coyne's not the most popular guy around here, but he made the observation very early in the campaign to the effect that "if the Liberals run to the left, then this election will be all about them trying to 'solidify the base' and set themselves up for next time. If they run to the right and go after Tory voters, it means they actually think they can win."  I think his analysis is correct, the problem for the Liberals is that the voters didn't play along this time.

Then those who are truly Left will have to push back hard, put forward all kinds of resolutions on the environment and social policy etc.  Perhaps some of the voices from Quebec will inject some left-wing blood into the party.

You're correct about the voters, but in regard to the actual candidates, not so much.

I couldn't agree more with your views, observer.

As it's always difficult to move parties an inch in any direction, the logical way to do it is to have committed people elected to positions on the exec, etc., who, once the party wins, then push hard for progressive values... but only when they gain the power to do it. (Isn't that the advice Tom Flannagan gives in his book on Harper?) Strategy counts a lot.

I don't think we can or should expect it to hold in Quebec. It's a brief opportunity, a platform and maybe a springboard to something more permanent or longlasting, with luck. But that's why the party has a  lot of work to do. The new MPs and other members of the Quebec party need to be building the organization, riding associations, etc, and forging ties with other left-wing groups on the ground there and across the country.

I think communication is also key: over the next few years, NDP can hopefully also evolve a smart and careful platform, with measures that are expressing social principles of compassion and fairness, but with fiscal responsibility at its core.  This will probably be called centrist by the ignorant media.  However, it doesn't have to be.  The party can still advance left-wing goals and promote left-wing voices.

But I also agree that the NDP won't likely win over a lot of Ontario; there will have to be some cleverness, pragmatism and strategy.  Lots of the Canadian population are small c conservative by nature, and there are also plenty of prejudiced and ignorant people out there who like to shout everyone down. 

I couldn't believe the number of calls I heard on CPAC from callers who were condemning the NDP as socialist, communist and dangerous, and who were quite visceral in their hatred and their certainty that the NDP would bankrupt the country, and that they're all selfish parasites etc.  Many railed against the youth too, as lazy and entitled.  It was an infuriating and depressing glimpse of our electorate. 

Of course this type of person can never be convinced reverse position and has to be ignored, but hopefully there are still some more reasonable types -- ex-Liberals, Red Tories etc, people who formerly voted NDP or Bloc -- who can still be persuaded to vote for the NDP if it has a practical message with contains measures for compassion and fairness.

*yawn*

Leave it to the left to somehow think success is really a failure.

and those people calling CPAC, some are certainly media shills, that is the USA tactic, which the cons imported.

I know people, who make a low income, who complain about taxes in their paycheck, and vote conservative! They are duped by the lies and con propaganda.

But humans are emotional and irrational. NDP won't get elected if they hint at raises taxes. Why can't they promote a small tax-cut for people?

But then you open that economic can of worms.

It looks like were screwed. Harper is going to rape Canada for years, and how long before people realize what is going on? 10 years? It could take that long.

Frankly, I predict Harper will do a Reagan, and bankrupt Canada after 2 majorites, then it doesn't matter what the next guy does, as there won't be any money left.

Frankly, its time for a legal tax-revolt. Most of the taxes are going to go to miltary arms companies, and US prison companies anyway. The rest will go to global oil companies. Canada is about to be raped, worse than how the Brits used to do it, during colonialism.

Hundreds of billion of wealth will be robbed from the citizens. Why is there no center-left Think Tank in Canada, with a budget, to constantly release information to the public to get the facts out?

on a sour note, each new MP is going to earn about $750,000 each from this. plus expenses.

150K a year for each NDP MP. 

and the NDP party is going to make a lot of money too.

So the excessive celebration from the NDP, is distasteful, and people are picking up on that. They are going to do just fine, but the country is about to get wrecked.

"excessive celebration"?

Please do indicate what you think is excessive celebration....

Moreover, what is really distasteful and people are noticing is Liberals whining endlessly.

Where do you get your numbers from the phoney baloney, tea bagging Canadian Taxpayers ?  I apologize for implying that you might be a Liberal. The more you post the less you sound like a liberal and the more you sound like Preston.