Be happy with the GOOD things that happened tonight!

All too easy for political activists who get caught up in the competitive side of electoral politics to lose sight of the fact that a lot of vulnerable people on the margins of society are going to have a far harder time living a decent life over the next four years than they would have if a few selfish people at the top of the NDP and the Liberal parties had been able to set vanity and ego aside and do what was best for the people they claim to represent by cooperating with each other to beat Harper and obtain a workable majority..

The NDP came within 53 seats of forming a majority government.

I cant stop crying from fear and disappointment. My scarborough riding has a newly elected Conservative MPs. I dont think I will last another 4 years of G W Bush and Jeb Bush in Ontario.

well as a transgendered woman, I am even more excited that my majority leader is never going to give me human rights because it might lead to freaks like me entering and assualting real women in washrooms.  I love being considered a freak for the next 4 years, and never being able to live with dignity and i will be enjoying my underpaid telemarketing work even more, because corporations need more tax reliefs.

And I also love bondage, after all, I will be silenced or suffer the consquences of a conservative majority, um like going to jail or being homeless (yay) I love kissing asses of people who hold absolute contempt for me , nothing turned me on more  than those evasive blue eyes and face of ignorance and arrogance. GOOOO BLUE!!

The cons aren't all powerful. Victory has a price and that is if he wants to maintain his TO ridings he will have to moderate his more extreme policy such as on Healthcare, Abortian, Gay Marriage. My prediction on Healthcare is that Harper will increase transferes to provinces and he will not touch the Canada Health Act although he will not defend it either. Social conservitive issues he will be careful around as he made a pact with blue grits and that is the price he has to pay for that, he doesn't want them to flee back to the liberals.

longtime lurker wrote:

All too easy for political activists who get caught up in the competitive side of electoral politics to lose sight of the fact that a lot of vulnerable people on the margins of society are going to have a far harder time living a decent life over the next four years than they would have if a few selfish people at the top of the NDP and the Liberal parties had been able to set vanity and ego aside and do what was best for the people they claim to represent by cooperating with each other to beat Harper and obtain a workable majority..

Yeah. I told my three opposing candidates to unite and they all declined, each basically saying that the other two were unacceptable, all the while knowing full well that none of them, alone, could unseat the reform/alliance fathead. Hubris, triumph, ultimate downfall... seen it before, but won't see it again, cose i won't be looking. Fed up. Done.

BTW is it four years, as everyone keeps saying, or five? Not that it matters, really.

The Cons can rule for five years before the Charter guarantees an election, but majorities generally start testing the waters sometime in year 4.

Anonymouse wrote:

Things to be grateful for:

NDP had great results in Saskatchewan but didn't win seats. At some point, something has to give. The party came soooo close to winning in three ridings. I think Nettie Wiebe is great, but without a split on the right, she does not have enough cross spectrum appeal to win. She is, for all her virtues, a polarizing figure. Very disappointed that Noah Evanchuk didn't win. He was the hope for the party this time around. I don't think this will be the last we hear of him. Also Ralph Goodale won't be in politics forever, he will retire at some point and that seat could go orange.

SK is gerrymandered to hell and back. Give me a Saskatoon West, Saskatoon East, Regina West, and Regina East, and I'll show you four NDP locks. The Wiebe campaign threw everything and the kitchen sink at the riding, and *still* beaten by a nose. Another bright spot: Lawrence Joseph came within a hair of beating Robby Clarke. I have a feeling that when one of these seats pops for us, all the other close ones will, too.

Jim Pankiw, 679 votes! Ha ha!

Anonymouse wrote:

Things to be grateful for:

Lawrence Cannon (Harper's #2 in command, his leadership ambitions destroyed) defeated by Mathieu Ravignat; check him out 2/3rds of the way through this

Jean-Pierre Blackburn defeated by NDP star candidate Claude Patry

Xenophobe André Arthur was soundly defeated...by the NDP

Almost all of the NDP Québec stars were also elected (e.g. FN Roméo Saganash [he sounds amazing], Alexandre Boulerice, Françoise Boivin, etc)

Randall Garrison replacing Reform-Alliance-Conservative-Liberal healthcare privatisation champion Keith Martin, he will be a star

Jinny Sims & Jasbir Sandhu, two new South Asian NDP MPs from the lower mainland. Jinny in particular will be a star, Sandhu is still green

Linda Duncan winning 54% of the vote in Edmonton Strathcona. Normally in Alberta this would mean the Conservatives wouldn't bother contesting the seat next time. We will see if the federal conservatives follow the example of their provincial cousins and provide the NDP their first "safe seat" in Alberta. Also, by finishing an impressive second in Edmonton Centre, Lewis Cardinal is sitting pretty for a win next time around as the ABC vote will now start to coalesce around him and bandwagon small c Conservatives may jump on as well.

NDP had great results in Saskatchewan but didn't win seats. At some point, something has to give. The party came soooo close to winning in three ridings. I think Nettie Wiebe is great, but without a split on the right, she does not have enough cross spectrum appeal to win. She is, for all her virtues, a polarizing figure. Very disappointed that Noah Evanchuk didn't win. He was the hope for the party this time around. I don't think this will be the last we hear of him. Also Ralph Goodale won't be in politics forever, he will retire at some point and that seat could go orange.

After the NDP gets its druthers in the Manitoba provincial election, I think the federal party will be looking at two more pick-ups there: Winnepeg South Centre and Elmswood Transcona. Should Kevin Lamoureux ever step down, that seat like Wascana, will be up for grabs.

Ontario, the NDP has its work cut out here but it finally got the Toronto surge it was hoping for and shows bright prospects in Scarborough and Etobicoke North, among other isolated pockets. Largest caucus ever from Ontario yet again. Too bad about Tony Martin. Is Ottawa's loss, Queen's Park's gain?

Québec...need I say more?

NFLD...need I say more? Actually yes, next time Labrador and Random-Burin-St George's! and woohoo Avalon! As for Labrador, this will help Muskrat Falls happen, which will be good for greener energy. Ryan Cleary will be a passionate voice for NFLD and the NFLD NDP must be pumped now for the provincial elections

Nova Scotia = Robert Chisholm. The NDP has secured another strong advocate and remains on the cusp in much of the province.

New Brunswick, the NDP picked up 10% here without winning a seat, with a better ground game this province could reach a tipping point

PEI, next time Charlottetown! This is also great news for the Island New Democrats as they prepare for a provincial election. With luck and hard work it could be a breakthrough year for the provincial NDP in the maritimes.

As for the North...the NDP is always competitive here. I say, woohoo Dennis Bevington, and until next time!

As for the Harper Majority. F! But at least Canadians will get a real opposition this time...that includes the Green Party!

 

Correction: The NDP did not gain any seats in New Brunswick. You forgot Yvon Godin.

So I went to check on some results and noticed that the Marijuana Party is now the [b]Radical[/b] Marijuana Party!

"This ain't your grandpappy's Marijuana Party!"  LOL!  They still have that one and only platform -- legalize pot -- but now it's all [i]radical[/i], man!

gyor: according to Alice Funke's Pundit's Guide, the NDP had 123 second-place candidates, of which 16 were within 5% of winning (this is apparently how Funke defines close, per a tweet).

Threads wrote:

gyor: according to Alice Funke's Pundit's Guide, the NDP had 123 second-place candidates, of which 16 were within 5% of winning (this is apparently how Funke defines close, per a tweet).

Thanks, I just popped into this thread to ask the same question. I'm almost as thrilled by that as by 102 wins. I'd been looking at some Ontario ridings and was astonished by the number of third place Liberals.

Arthur Cramer wrote:

And one more prediction, Beckie Blakie will run again and bury him. I have lived in the riding all my life, and I have no doubt of this. You can hold me to this. I feel like I just placed the surest bet in the casino!

Really?  I heard a journalist on CPAC explain that she wasn't well known in the riding and that she just didn't have name recognition there;  the journalist said that it would have been better had she run in Elmswood Transcona where her father was known. But I guess she can work on getting better known there.

I'm so glad Nicki Ashton held on (not that I feared she would lose at all).

The results from Sask were bitterly disappointing for me, as for all Saskatchewan New Democrats.  I take some small comfort in that we increased our vote share to 32% and that Noah came within 700 votes of his opponent.

takeitslowly wrote:

Scarborough also elected some new conservative MP. I now have a conservative MP. Yay.

If you need an local MP to help you with something I am sure nearby Scarbrough NDP MP Rathika will be happy to help you. I'm not sure but she may be my closest dipper MP as well or would that be one the NDP MPs in the Toronto core. I live in Oakridges area.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/Cannon+loses+newcomer+major+upset/47...

Snert wrote:

So I went to check on some results and noticed that the Marijuana Party is now the [b]Radical[/b] Marijuana Party!

I noticed that on the ballot when I voted, and thought maybe there had been a schism.

I was pleasantly surprised by NDP strength in Toronto. I did not foresee wins in Scarborough and I figured Beaches-East York, Davenport and York South-Weston were all relative longshots, but the NDP absolutely spanked the Liberals in these seats (Cash won by almost as big a percentage margin as Olivia did). The NDP now has more seats in the entire GTA (8) than the Liberals (7).

Quebec came through beyond my wildest dreams. I figured the NDP had a chance to win the most seats and would likely knock off Cannon, Verner, and Blackburn, but I figured Duceppe would hang on and the Bloc would salvage 25 seats or so. I would never have expected the NDP to win in places like Montcalm, Berthier-Maskingonge, Manicouagan or Saint-Maurice.  One historical footnote that seems to have been overlooked, the NDP has won *four* seats in Quebec once held by former Prime Ministers - Charlevoix (Mulroney), Manicouagan (Mulroney again), Saint-Maurice (Chretien) and LaSalle-Emard (Martin).

Obviously the biggest disappointment of the night was Harper getting his majority. I frankly did not anticipate the scale of the Liberal collapse in Ontario. I figured they would manage to hold off the Tories enough in the GTA to prevent a majority.

I was actually a bit disappointed with the NDP's Atlantic results last night. The NDP has its best national showing ever but fell short of Alexa's Atlantic haul of eight seats in 1997 (out of 21 total). The NDP was not particularly competitive in much of Nova Scotia. Chisholm's win in Dartmouth was a real squeaker and the NDP actually finished third in Halifax West. I had higher hopes for New Brunswick (I know Saint John was a longshot, but still).

The other big area of disappointment for me was the West. The NDP lost two seats in Manitoba (I consider Winnipeg North an incumbent seat since we won it in 2008) that it has held, almost without interruption, for the last thirty years. We were shut out of Saskatchewan again.  We can blame Dick Proctor and the 'rurban' seats all we want (and believe me, I do), but let's not forget that in 1997, when the NDP won only 21 seats nation-wide, we elected 5 MPs in Saskatchewan on essentially the same boundaries (including four wins in the 'rurban' seats and a 200-vote loss in a fifth). The gains in BC were relatively modest (three seats, all won by close margins).

If being a decent human being and "putting in your time" are attributes that deserve reward, then the night of May 2nd was a good night for Dan Harris and Randall Garrison, both committed, thoughtful New Democrats that won election on their 4th and 3rd tries respectively.