so, i stopped for a second around 23:00 last night and crashed, unexpectedly, instead.  i had a few system crashes over the weekend (i suspect that csis is trying to stop me from spreading russian propaganda about the election at the last minute :\) which forced me to retrace my steps a few times  but, the master is updated and synced, now, and ready to be broken apart.

the sewers never really resolved themselves this week, forcing me to run the water for most of the weekend, and exposing that the p-trap may be a dominant but not a total cause. the temperature seems to have something to do with it. and, i'm increasingly suspecting that the natural gas is wired incorrectly through the piping, because there seems to be excess natural gas in the lines, as well. it's a subtle difference in smell, and i wouldn't have been able to tell the difference even a few months ago. but i'm (unfortunately) gaining the experience to differentiate it. i need a plumber to figure this out. as far as i can tell, he just still hasn't come home yet so the lines are still sitting dry upstairs. i'll need to send him a note when i get back this morning...

i need to pick up an rx balance and get some end-of-the-month grocery shopping in so it does look like i'm going to vote this morning. i haven't seen any last minute voting shifts that change my analysis - i still think the liberals are headed to a majority, and the ndp "surge" is mostly just a bullshit bradley effect, except in bc. and, the conservatives are actually probably headed for the lowest levels in the east that anybody's seen in decades.

so,

- expect the ndp to poll in the 20s in bc and in the low teens almost everywhere else. weak ndp support east of the rockies will be a theme. they may keep most of their seats in bc, but it's going to be brutal elsewhere, and expect calls from the east for jagmeet singh to resign immediately.
- expect the liberals to poll in the 40s in ontario, quebec and the east and the 20s (or lower) in the west. exceedingly weak liberal support west of winnipeg will be a theme. but, it may make little difference in terms of actual seats if they get out the vote in the east. they're essentially set to lose seats they don't have much chance of competing in by even larger margins than they've ever lost them before. justin may turn out to be the less popular trudeau, in alberta.
- expect the conservatives to poll as high as 70% in the west, but as low as 10% in quebec (and in the 20s in ontario and the east). weak conservative support east of winnipeg will be a theme. expect people to be taken aback and surprised by low support levels in ontario. scheer took a hard right turn in the last weeks of the campaign that could have long-term consequences. the narrative over the next few years may be how the conservatives are retreating to their roots as a western protest party, and their decline in ontario may actually just be starting - it could get worse for them.
- expect the greens to poll in the teens in the far west of bc, in rural ontario and in the eastern provinces and lower than that elsewhere. the greens will not get the breakthrough people projected earlier in the campaign, but they have put themselves on the map nonetheless, perhaps unexpectedly (and for some people undesirably) as a primarily rural party that does not do well in the urban cores. i don't know of any other rural green party. but, they seem to be attracting the same kind of rural voters that picked sanders over clinton in 2016 by large margins, and it could throw a serious wrench into conservative support levels here. they ran on jesus, that's what happens when you do that. but, it's good for democracy to give the conservatives a run for the rural vote, too. i'm disappointed in the green campaign, too - they could have and should have run as a secular environmentalist alternative to the liberals, not as a christian left alternative to the conservatives and ndp. greens should be running on the future; maybe it wasn't purposeful, but by picking up ideas like the responsibility to protect and by focusing on christian values, they ran on the past and scared urban people (including me) off. it's not going to win them seats in the rural east, but it may split the vote enough to let the liberals win in unexpected places.
- expect the bloc to poll in the high 20s or low 30s in quebec, and to be shut out of montreal, which will expose the limitations of flirting with running on the right in far left quebec. they seem to think this is a smart strategy; i think the results will demonstrate that it's not. so, expect a moderate increase in bloc support, but also expect them to come up against a brick wall in terms of seat counts and to find themselves with little opportunity to expand further. the bloc may win their core base of constituents back, but the strategy they used is a dead-end, and opens up more questions than answers. it's going to be another four years of soul searching for the bloc...

as it is, my vote is local, not national.

if i were to use a ranked ballot (which is the electoral reform i'd prefer), i'd vote like this:

1. green
2. liberal
3. ndp

the election will be a tight race between an incumbent ndp mp with a bourgeois voting record (he's not a hard leftist new democrat) and a popular former liberal mpp that is known for anti-poverty activism. as an odsp recipient, as well as a secular leftist, my self interest is to vote for the local liberal candidate. she'll be a prominent voice to the left of justin trudeau, but she's also well connected enough to the banking establishment to actually get heard. brian masse will sit in the house as a representative of the wealthy autoworkers, and nobody else, and essentially just get ignored. as mentioned: from a purely local perspective, this is actually not that hard of a choice. she's obviously the better candidate.

the conservatives will probably finish a distant third, but conservative voters in an area like this are also mostly recent immigrants and the fact that upwards of a third of the region (if not the riding, right now) is recent immigrants opens some questions as to the strength of the conservative vote. it's a mostly white riding, with large numbers of international students from india (who i presume mostly cannot vote.) and a muslim (mostly arab) minority of something like 5%+. the conservatives have run conservative muslims here in the past, but are opting for a pro-market east asian this time around in an attempt to key in on the ethnic vote. we'll see which approach works out better for them (i suspect the former). in this election, the conservatives are unlikely to seriously compete, but the trendlines are something to keep an eye on. there's some evidence that the conservatives may be more competitive in the riding next door, which has a larger ethnic voting bloc that would naturally lean to the right.

it will be close - potentially very close. a few votes could swing this. so, i feel compelled to vote.

one last time....

the liberals are supposed to do better than this