Your First Stop for By-Election Analysis

(The Links Probably Don't Work, This is Imported From Another Blog - Links available here: )

That's right, baby! Last night the final votes were tallied in the by-elections for the Quebec riding of Repentigny, which was vacated when its MP was killed in a car crash, and the Ontario Riding of London North-Centre, whose MP resigned to run as Mayor of London, Ontario. Oh, and if you continue reading, you'll read how I disagree with Adam Daifallah.

Final Results for Repentigny here.
Final Results for London North-Center here.

Repentigny: No Surprises and No Liberal Revival
In this riding we see Bloc candidate Raymond Gravel winning with 66.3% of the vote. Not a huge surprise there, considering the Bloc have won this riding in every election with around 55% - 70% of the votes since the riding's inception in 1997. The Conservatives placed in second with 18.8% of the vote, up .62%, which is a decent result considering how much of a hold the Bloc supposedly has over this area. It shows that, at the very least, the Conservatives aren't losing headway in Quebec and will continue to be a presence in Quebec in the next federal election, barring any major crises. The NDP failed to make significant gains, losing .74% of their votes from the elections in February. The most interesting figure to note is the Liberals, who have traditionally been the runner-up in this riding (at least until the sponsorship scandal cast its mark on Canadian elections this past February) and are usually in the 18%-26% range. In the by-election, the Liberals bled a further 2.5%, ending up with 6.2% of the popular vote. This suggests that for now, we can put down any discussion of a Liberal revival in Quebec, at least until this weekend when the Liberal Party leader is chosen.

London North-Centre: Liberals Win and I Disagree With Daifallah
In LNC, the big story of the night is not who won (Liberal Glen Pearson, with 34.85% of the vote), but who placed in second. Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, took second place with 25.9% of the vote. This is a 20% jump over the February election results. May narrowly edged out Conservative Dianne Haskett (24.4%), a former mayor of London, in what Adam Daifallah sees as a sign that the "Green Party is now a serious force to be reckoned with". Every party but the Green Party lost here, with the Liberals and Conservatives both losing around 5% each and the NDP hemorrhaging 10% of their votes. Is Daifallah right? I don't think so. May is the leader of a national party, and it would make sense that she garners a huge amount of votes. The jump in votes is strictly because voters feel that they wanted to capitalize on having a party leader represent their riding. This riding will not be representative of ridings across the country, and I'm certainly not worried about the Green Party winning seats across the country left and right. The fact of the matter is that May didn't even end up winning the riding. From a Conservative standpoint, I'm not concerned - 15% of the new votes came from the left, and even if she had won the riding, it would be doubtful that similar results would be seen in ridings elsewhere in the country. Nation-wide polls, though obviously flawed, provide an interesting indicator: the green party has about 10% support across the country. Their highest ever percentage of popular vote nationwide is around 4.5%, however, and given that they haven't been especially innovative lately with new policy suggestions, I don't see this as anything more than a flash in the pan. I'm not convinced that the Green Party has enough appeal to be able to concentrate its votes in any ridings in the next federal election, and when the electoral machines of the Liberals and Conservatives rev up in the next election, I'm certain that the Green Party will continue to be marginalized.

And, because I want to:
"Harper Spends $3 Billion on bombing hospitals"
Saw Harper in Montreal on Friday, but the real story is how protestors (who claimed to be invited by Conservative McGill) started yelling and handing out flyers in the conference room, effectively hijacking a funding-for-cancer platform. They were thrown out, but it was disconcerting that one of the protestors actually was able to touch Harper's car's window (anyone seen 'Death of a President'? If not, I suggest you do). Frank, Adrian and I ran into a couple protestors on the way back to McGill, where after a few verbal exchanges the protestor tried to endow us with an interesting tidbit of information. Aparently, Harper spends $3 billion dollars in Afghanistan bombing hospitals.