[promoted by BooMan]
Is it true? Did Canada take a swerve to the right? Did the media dialog carry the day? Well, no, not really. Things actually aren’t looking half-bad. At this point, it would probably require some major results tampering to wind up with a Conservative majority. The most likely result looks like a Conservative minority, with the balance of power resting with the Liberal party and the Bloc Québécois.
Detailed election results can be found on the CBC website. They have all sorts of interesting breakdowns and statistics. Most notable: the popular vote projections match the latest polls almost exactly. Looks like either Strategic intentionally over-estimated conservative support, or they really did peak too early.
If current projections hold, we Canadians are going to have a very interesting year ahead of us. The Conservatives are projected for 120 to 125 seats, well short of a majority and even worse off than the Liberal government last time. Harper’s going to have a tough time pushing through anything questionable, especially since another election’s likely in less than a year, so the leaders of the other parties are going to be waiting for him to do something stupid they can pounce on. Unfortunately, he’s probably between a rock and a hard place, and governing as a moderate won’t endear him to his base.
The Liberals are down to about 100 seats. Not good, but not as bad as many projections showed. It’s hard to say what will happen there, but given how badly Martin flubbed the campaign, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him out on his ear the next time the Liberal party has a leadership convention. The only real questions are whether that will be before the next election… And who will replace him. He’s spent the past 15 years purging competition, leaving his party weakened. Comparisons to the Progressive Conservatives after Mulrooney are probably going to be inevitable.
The NDP had a massive surge of support this election. They’re my party of choice, so I’m quite pleased about this. They went from 19 seats last time to an estimated 30 seats, possibly as high as 32. Despite the CW about Layton running a poor campaign, he appears to have delivered the goods. It’ll be interesting to see what he does with this. His party probably won’t have the balance of power, but he has shown them to be a viable alternative to the Liberals.
The Bloc appears to have done about as well as they always do.
Depending on how a few hotly contested seats play out, we may wind up with a very interesting situation: a minority government where any of the opposition parties can push the government over the magical 155 vote threshold. I’m not sure that’s ever happened before…
Update [2006-1-24 0:31:6 by Egarwaen]: Wow, two front-paged diaries in a week. I’m honoured! Thanks, Boo! Things just got even more interesting: Martin’s stepped down as leader of the Liberal party. I really don’t know what to make of that. None of the prominent Liberals really seem primed to step in as leader. Which leaves us with either a poor leader come next election, an outsider, or a backbencher.