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Final numbers look to be 22 Liberals to 5 PCs. That is actually better than I thought the Tories would do and a marginally better result than Pat Binns got in 2007. Since PEI is a straight two-horse race these types of lopsided majorities are typical.
Popular vote and seat count are almost identical to 2007. The NDP actually improved its vote slightly (hard to believe, I know) as did the Greens. Looks like the NDP did pretty miserably in Charlottetown and only bested the Greens for third in one riding. James Rodd only managed an anemic 7% of the vote in his home riding.
Lots of work to do on the Island.
The PEI NDP leader tried to wiggle out of the job a few months before the writ drop. What was sown has now been reaped.
Read the link, and it didn't read to me that he was trying to wriggle out-I think the guy just wanted to be sure the party was still behind him.
If he'd wanted out, he could just have resigned.
Perhaps the visit of Prince William and Kate this summer was a boost for the Premier.
The unofficial results are in:
Lib 51.4%
PC 40.2%
GRN 4.4%
NDP 3.2%
The only province in Canada where the Greens poll better than the NDP and they both don't do much better than the Christian Heritage party in many western conservative strongholds. They are the fringe in PEI. Why is that?
Well, for one thing - how is the NDP to have a larger % of the vote with so few candidates? In 13 of 27 ridings it was impossible to vote NDP. Sharon Labchuk (Green leader) ran 22 candidates and was VERY visible and outspoken.
The NDP for some reason screwed up royally in my opinion. The election date was known THREE years ago. Check their website. Between June 2011 and two weeks ago there were NO UPDATES. Not one. If they are short on funds, the leader himself could manage this. Why were they not selecting candidates, getting their message out, capitalizing on national NDP momentum?
I am at least happy that we a few more opposition members to try and hold this government o account.
To give you an idea of Robert Ghiz's arrogance, two minutes into his live TV interview after hearing he was re-elected with a majority, he promised an appointment to his just-defeated cabinet minister, Alan Campbell! He has no shame.
Ghislaine, I'm the news editor at rabble. Would love to talk to you about the PEI election result. Would it be possible to email me? cathryn@rabble.ca. Cheers.
Well, that most delightfully named politician, Bush Dumville, was reelected. (Whenever I see his name, I think of Crawford, Texas)
The turnout for the P.E.I. election Monday, at 76.4 per cent, was the lowest since at least 1966, and perhaps the lowest ever.
Monday's numbers from Elections PEI are still unofficial, but if the numbers hold up it will be the lowest turnout since the agency started keeping records in the May 1966 election. In that year 85.65 per cent of registered voters cast a ballot.
The lowest turnout recorded before Monday was 78.20 per cent in 1982, also the only election in which the number was below 80 per cent.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2011/10/04/peiv...
In BC the voter turn out is just above 50% and the NDP gets close to half of the votes. At 3% I am astounded at how little support the NDP has on PEI.
It makes me chuckle in relation to a suggestion in another thread that the NDP leadership should be on the basis of riding weighted equality. In my riding alone the NDP got over 20,000 votes not the 12,000 total for the four ridings in the province of PEI. Can someone explain why the NDP can get 12,000 votes federally but under 2,400 in a provincial election.
Jack might be one explanation. The second would be they only ran candidates in half the ridings, and third the election became a referendum on the Ghiz government.
I guess that the 2,400 number is in reality the NDP base. In BC people who vote NDP generally vote NDP both federally and provincially. Our base of people who would never vote either Lib or Con is around 35% of the vote and we fight to win over the other 15% required to win elections in a two way race. Apparently the PEI base of similar voters is 3%. I guess social democrats have some work to do on PEI.
It's also easier to organize in 4 ridings (federal) than 27 ridings (provincial).
The base in the constitueucies that they ran in.
I was looking at overall numbers and the federal election had over 108,000 votes cast while the provincial only had just under 75,000. Maybe the federal NDP voters just stayed at home. That would make more sense to me than them voting for the other parties.
Every PEIer had a chance to vote for the NDP in the Federal election. This is not true in the Provincial election since the NDP ran candidates in only 13 of 27 ridings.
I know that but the vote dropped from 12,000 to about 2,500. I would have thought that they would run in their best ridings so the drop should have been to 5 or 6 thousand. I think not being able to field a full slate is problematic and shows that the party in PEI needs organizational help.
Depends what you mean by safe. I suppose it's the "safest", as in it remains solid there provincially and has 3 of 4 federal ridings, but across the country the Liberals remain the most succesful party provincially. They hold the 3 biggest provinces in Canada (Ontario, Quebec & BC) as well as a couple of the other provinces. I'm not aware of the NDP or PC's ever having done that.
In BC and Quebec the Liberals look to be on borrowed time. In BC the provincial Liberals will disappear as a force just like the Socreds before them. Crusty Clark has nowhere to go but down in the polls given her gong show.
By Friday we will know whether Ontario is still in the Liberal camp and if so as a majority government or a minority.
Wow, most jurisdictions in the country would love to see voter turnout that high. Federally, cracking the 60% turnout figure for the first time in over a decade was an improvement.
The BC Liberals are Liberals in name only and the Liberals are the only truly federalist alternative provincially in Quebec. The NDP has held Ontario, BC, Saskatchewan and the Yukon at the same time.
Turnout was over 80% even when Hurricane Juan crossed the island on election day in 2003.
Consider, too, that the federal Libs and Cons carried liabilities that their provincial counterparts didn't. It was the Red Tories and left-Libs who couldn't stomach either Harper or Iggy who opted for the NDP...
In fact, the number of candidates that ran had an important impact on the fact that the Greens came ahead of the NDP, IMHO. If you divide the number of candidates running into the number of votes receieved by each party, the average number of votes received by each party's candidates in this week's election in PEI were:
Liberal - 1,419
PC - 1,109
NDP - 168
Green - 147
Island Party -57
Independent - 15
The overall level of support was less of course -- Joe Byrne running in Charlottetown in the May 2011 federal election alone got almost twice the vote of all of the provincial NDP candidates combined. Simply put, the PEI NDP running candidates in many fewer ridings than the Greens ran candidates in does a lot to explain how the Greens came ahead of the New Democrats in the overall vote in the provincial election.
To give these results some perspective, provincially, PEI is a true two-party system. There has never been a provincial general election in PEI where third parties have exceeded 8.5% of the total vote. The cumulative votes for the NDP, Green Party and Island Party in 2011 barely edge out the NDP results from 2000 as the strongest vote share for parties other than the Liberals/PCs (but not in total votes cast due to the decreased turnout).
The NDP only began running candidates provincially in PEI in 1974. Former NDP leader Dr. Herb Dickieson, elected in 1997, is the lone third party candidate ever elected to the PEI legislature. Dr. Dickieson is also the sole third party candidate to finish second in any PEI provincial general election, that result coming in 2000 when he lost his bid for re-election by 23 votes.
The simple fact is that the NDP did well federally and faceplanted provincially within a span of months. Those results do not square. Especially given the surge that every single NDP provincial section has seen in the last slew of elections. The PEI NDP was a failure.
You'll get no argument from me that the PEI-NDP was a failure in 2011, has generally always been a failure, and will remain a failure for the foreseeable future. The fact the 2011 election date was fixed in 2007 and the party couldn't field anything close to a full slate of candidates (and didn't actively start recruiting candidates until Summer 2011) is illustrative of the problems in the PEI-NDP.
NDP Atlantic caucus carries out consultations in PEI
The NDP has an Atlantic deputy leader now and it is a pretty broad consensus that she is a rising star. Here is a call to all babblers: do you know any progressive maritimers? could you organise a meet and greet? do you have ideas for what Megan or the NDP should be doing better, in Atlantic Canada?
Drop Megan Leslie a line: megan.leslie at parl.gc.ca