NB Election-Take Three

Well, FPTP worked its "magic" again.

The Tories win a whopping 42 seats with 48.9 percent of the vote - a mere 1.3% improvement on 2006, when they only won 26 seats, and a full 4.1% behind their 1999 showing, where they won only 2 more seats.

The Liberals crumble to just 13 seats with 34.4 percent of the vote - however they got a better seat result than in 1999, despite winning nearly 3% more of the popular vote in 1999 than they did in this outing.

The NDP more than doubles its share of the vote to 10.4%, its best showing in 20 years and wins - zero seats. Whereas in 1999 and 2003 the party managed 1 seat while winning only 8.8% and 9.7% of the vote, respectively.

The Greens also get shut out despite winning 4.5% of the vote - nearly as much as the NDP won in 2006.

Last night's Progressive Conservative sweep of New Brunswick fails to reflect the diversity of New Brunswick's voters.  

The 34% of the province's voters who voted Liberal elected fewer than a quarter of the members of the legislature, while one voter in six wanted to be represented by a party that elected no one.  

Under the Mixed Member Proportional model proposed by the New Brunswick Commission on Legislative Democracy, every vote would have counted. They proposed a four-region map, where each region would have nine local MLAs and five regional MLAs.

I have prepared a spreadsheet on the New Brunswick election results. Results: PCs 28, Liberals 18, NDP 6, Greens 3.  

In the South West region of the Commission's map, 13 ridings centred on Saint John, Liberal voters were almost all orphaned last night. They elected no one but Rick Doucet in Charlotte - The Isles. The regional MMP model would give them three more MLAs, such as Dan Joyce, Mary Schryer and Abel LeBlanc from Saint John.   

Similarly, in the Central Region of the Commission's map, 14 ridings centred on Fredericton, again Liberal voters were almost all orphaned last night. They elected no one but Bill Fraser in Miramichi - Bay du vin. Again the regional MMP model would give them three more MLAs, perhaps two from Fredericton and one from Victoria-Tobique. 

New Brunswick's NDP voters would have elected their leader Roger Duguay from the Northern Region, along with another Northern NDP MLA such as Pierre Cyr from the Bathurst area. From the South West, they would have elected one MLA such as Saint John's Rev. Wayne Dryer. From the Central region, NDP voters would have elected one MLA such as economics professor Tony Myatt from Fredericton. From the South East region centred on Moncton, NDP voters would have elected two MLAs such as Susan Levi-Peters and Agathe Lapointe.

Green Party voters would have elected their leader Jack MacDougall in the Central Region. From the South East region, Green voters would have elected one MLA such as Margaret Tusz-King, a Municipal Councilor in the Town of Sackville. From the Southwest, they would have elected one MLA such as university lecturer Janice Harvey.  

The PC government would still have a slim majority, but they would have to pay proper attention to the half of the province's voters who did not support them.  

The Commission on Legislative Democracy was appointed in 2003 by former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord. He announced that he personally supported their recommendation for proportional representation, and would submit it to a referendum needing only 50% support for adoption. Before he could do so, he was defeated in, ironically, the "wrong-winner" election of 2006, when the Liberals won a majority of seats while getting fewer votes than the PCs.

The New Brunswick Commission's model is similar to the model recommended for Canada by the Law Commission of Canada. Under the Law Commission's model, voters could vote for their local MP and for their favourite of their party's regional candidates. Unlike some MMP models, under the Law Commission's model every MP has faced the voters and been personally elected.