Segacs’s World I Know

Ugh. ‘Nuff said.

The Green Party once again managed to get over a half a million votes with no elected representatives. They were far and away the most successful “other” party, but it’s hard to think where they might go from here. If they were unable to elect a candidate in an election that pretty much encouraged protest voting due to widespread disgust with the mainstream, it’s hard to imagine how they might build on their current level.

As for the other parties, none fared particularly well. The ultra-right Christian Heritage Party won 28,000 votes, and the ultra-left Marxist-Leninist and Communist parties combined for only 12,000 votes. The Marijuana voters must’ve been too busy smoking up to bother to vote; only 9,000 of them turned out. The Libertarians picked up a mere 3,000 votes, and the Canadian Action Party had 6,000 supporters.

None of them takes the prize for least-supported party, though. No, that award goes to the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada, which obtained a whopping 72 votes – mostly, I suspect, from monkeys trained to mark Xs on ballots. Someone might’ve pointed out to these guys that the constituency to which they were pandering – the four-legged one – doesn’t tend to have a high turnout at the polls.

Still, you gotta kinda admire someone for being crazy enough to collect signatures, pay a registration fee, get their name on a ballot, maybe even knock on a few doors or put up a few posters, all to get a mere 72 votes. It speaks to the heart of our democratic process that anyone, no matter how nuts, can run for election.

Just announced during his concession speech, Paul Martin is stepping down as party leader.

No surprise there.

The final results (barring recounts) stand as follows:

124	103	29	51	0	1
36.3%	30.2%	17.5%	10.5%	4.5%	0.6%

Update: Results updated as of 11am Tuesday morning.

The official results are more or less in: It’s a minority government for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, albeit a shaky one.

The real questions are, what now? Will Harper be able to govern? Will the NDP and the Tories combine for 155, or will they just miss? Will Harper work with Duceppe? How long can this crazy mess possibly last?

The good news:

• The Bloc lost both popular vote and seats in Quebec. They can spin all they want, but this was a big blow to them, and is good news in the leadup to the next provincial election and sovereignty referendum.
• Paul Martin is finished as Liberal leader. The party will now be jolted out of corruption and complacency, and will have to reorganize and revitalize itself in preparation for the future.
• The Tories have a win but not necessarily a mandate. Their small minority will not allow them to do all the scary things that the Liberals accused them of wanting to do (and that they probably didn’t want to do in the first place).
• Svend Robinson was defeated in Vancouver. Whew.

The bad news:

• The Bloc Quebecois lost seats but gained power. They’ll now hold the balance of power in government, and they can exact a steep price to keep Harper’s government alive.
• Minority government or not, Stephen Harper is now the Prime Minister of Canada. He has made a number of promises that I’m extremely uncomfortable with, and I suspect, many Canadians are too. (The silver lining here is that politicians are very good at breaking promises).
• Had the Conservatives lost, Stephen Harper would surely have been forced out and the party might have had a chance to elect a more moderate, centrist leader and move to the left. Instead, Harper will keep his job and the Tories will remain socially conservative. Depending on your take on the situation, this is either good or bad. Regular readers here ought to understand how I feel about that one.
• If you’re gay and planning to get married, you might want to move that date up a bit.

And yes, for posterity’s sake, I’ll say it again: I was wrong in my prediction of no gains for the Tories in Quebec.

10:01pm: Polls are closed everywhere now and results are legally allowed to be posted online. As of right now, the results are (elected or leading) 85 for the Tories, 70 for the Liberals, 28 for the Bloc and 23 for the NDP, with one Independent (in Quebec). The Conservatives have started to pull away a bit in the last few minutes, but it’s still a lot closer than a lot of people thought it would be. A Conservative minority is probable but a majority looks unlikely if these numbers hold.

10:02pm: With a bunch of cheesy fanfare, CTV just predicted a Conservative minority government.

10:08pm: CTV has Brian Mulroney on TV, from West Palm Beach, Florida. I’d kinda like to be there right now, personally.

10:09pm: The Bloc Quebecois is actually down from the last election in popular vote so far. This could be a good sign for us federalists. If the Bloc doesn’t make big gains tonight, it won’t be the springboard for sovereignty that Duceppe hoped for. Oh, I’m sure they’ll play the spin game regardless, but I’m hoping this is a sign of things to come.

10:14pm: Am I disappointed? Not really. Despite holding out hope, I didn’t really expect the Liberals to pull off a miracle tonight. And I’m not convinced by the scare tactics that the Conservatives are going to turn the country upside-down. Especially with a minority government that will need support from elsewhere in order to govern, I can’t imagine Harper doing anything to dramatic. This ought to give the Liberals a chance to get rid of Paul Martin, revitalize and move forward. One hopes, anyway. As for how the politicking will go, it’s a wait-and-see game at this point.

10:15pm: The NDP camp seems disappointed. So far their gains are very modest, if any. I can’t say I’m too upset by this news.

10:20pm: The Conservatives just officially won their first Quebec seat, in Louis St-Laurent. Judging by the results so far, there will be several more. Yes, I’ll say it, I was wrong.

10:30pm: If CTV’s projections hold, the Conservatives may even cross the double-digit seat threshold here in Quebec. I admit I never saw that coming. More of the seat gains seem to be coming at the Bloc’s expense than at the Liberals’, though, which is quite something when you consider that the Bloc was expected to sweep the province outside of Montreal just a month ago.

10:31pm: They’ve just declared Paul Martin elected. Small consolation for him, though. And Belinda Stronach was just declared officially elected as well, for the Liberals.

10:45pm: Marlene Jennings was just announced re-elected in my home riding of NDG-Lachine. No surprise there.

10:46pm: Current count (elected and leading): Conservatives 122, Liberals 103, Bloc Quebecois 50, NDP 29, and one independent. A small, shaky minority for the Tories, in other words. The good news is that the NDP will no longer hold the balance of power, because if these results hold, the Tories plus the NDP will be just shy of a majority. The bad news is that the balance of power will shift to the Bloc Quebecois, who are so far down from the last election but suddenly find themselves wielding a whole lot more power.

11:00pm: Pierre Pettigrew, who has been in cabinet forever, was just announced defeated. This is a big blow to the “old-guard” Liberals.

11:01pm: The NDP’s numbers keep climbing. I guess Layton’s bid for Liberal votes resonated with a enough Canadians to make some major gains. However, if the current numbers hold, the NDP will be 2 votes shy of holding the balance of power, so Layton can kiss the blackmail power he held with Martin goodbye.

11:06pm: Svend Robinson’s riding is the only one in Canada not yet reporting. If Vancouverites vote him back in, I’m seriously going to consider becoming a separatist, just to separate from them.

11:17pm: Preliminary turnout figures put the number at about 60%, which is historically low and similar to 2004’s numbers. Considering everyone had been predicting high turnout this time around, this is sure to be a disappointment to the parties and candidates. To me, it says that exceedingly negative campaigns, corrupt politicians, the “best of the worst” phenomenon, and the fact that only a few ridings are ever “swing” are in fact encouraging people to get disgusted with the whole process and stay home.

11:25pm: The Liberals lost but they have not been wiped off the political map. Far from it. They’re projected to win between 102 and 104 seats, which will make them a strong minority and well positioned for a comeback, as soon as Paul Martin is out and some new leadership is in.

11:30pm: This sums up the live-blogging for tonight. Of course I’ll post more thoughts later, but it’s pretty clear how things are going to turn out now. I’ll just wrap up by giving my grduging congratulations to Stephen Harper for a well-run campaign. Let’s hope that Harper recognizes he’s been given a shaky mandate, and governs accordingly.

9:28pm: Polls close in the West in a half hour. Legally, nobody can blog any results from Atlantic Canada, Quebec or Ontario until all the polls are closed. Off the record, there are ways of getting updates… but I’m a law-abiding citizen so you’ll have to find those elsewhere, or sit tight for a bit.

9:34pm: Polls are closed here in Quebec. In a few minutes I expect to find out that my riding went Liberal, as it has every election since 1962. That’s not based on any hard numbers, but more on my crystal ball.

9:40pm: Results being posted on TV. I can’t blog them yet, but suffice to say that I’m cautiously optimistic.

9:47pm: The “elected or leading” results are always misleading, when you consider that many of the polls are leading by, say, 3 votes with only one polling station closed out of hundreds in a riding. Still hard to say much of anything, even if I could.

9:50pm: Results are trickling in from as far west as Alberta, now. I’ll give you three guesses what they’re saying.

This morning I went to exercise my right to vote. It was a little more complicated than I thought it would be, though.

My polling station is at an elementary school right around the corner from me, so I walked over and arrived a few minutes after the polls opened.

Firstly, shame on the city of Montreal for failing to salt the sidewalks outside the schools being used as polling stations. This environmentally-friendly gravel-only policy is all very well and good, but there are plenty of senior citizens or other mobility-challenged people in my area who were having lots of trouble getting in and out of the building.

At any rate, when I got inside, it wasn’t too crowded; only about a dozen people were in line in front of me. What I didn’t know then was that all of them were for the same poll number – mine – and that they had been standing there for 10 minutes already. It would take another 25 before I could go in.

All the other polls were empty, and people were being directed straight inside when they arrived. However, at my station, there was an elderly woman with a visual impairment and someone accompanying her, and apparently they were having problems because it took them over a half hour. In the meantime, they weren’t allowing anyone else to vote. Never mind that there were two people at the table, and only one was helping them. Never mind that there were five other completely empty tables with nobody there. No, we all had to wait it out, because they didn’t have any kind of provisions for people with special needs to be taken aside and assisted without holding up the line. Smart, eh?

All I can say is that if the country is being run the same way as this election, then we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.

This season will be the West Wing’s last. NBC announced that it is pulling the plug on the show at the end of this, its seventh season.

The show plunged downhill after Aaron Sorkin left three seasons ago but has recovered a little bit this season. However, its move to Sunday nights has caused the ratings to drop enough that the network feels it’s time.

They’ve promised to give us an election winner – Santos or Vinick – but this means neither of them will actually take office on the show. In a way, it’s fitting; this was about Jed Bartlet’s presidency, and while the transition might’ve been accomplished, things will have come full circle by now. And with John Spencer’s death, the decision makes even more sense.

Still, I’ll be sad to see one of the last remaining intelligent TV shows end. On the bright side, this probably means the 7-season DVD box set will make it to my Amazon Wish List really soon.