what the liberals need to do is define an actual ballot question - a reason for people to put down the bong and go vote - and then call an election as soon as possible.

if there was any other reason to vote yesterday besides the fact that it had been four years since the last time, they would have gotten enough people out for the majority.

quebec was ahead of the curve on this.

the rest of the country has to stop being politically correct about it and start asking these questions. this is a valid, real concern: do we want a person of faith holding the balance of power in this country?

i don't.

what do i think about the results of the election, as a canadian rather than a mathematician?

this isn't the worst case scenario - but it's close to it, and more or less exactly what i was trying to avoid. the ndp lost 2 of it's three seats here (which wasn't projected by anybody), but kept the one i'm in. the liberals won the seat next to me, and the conservatives won the seat below me. i was hoping the liberals could take this seat, but they lost to an ndp candidate that is now more useless than he ever was.

walking around the riding yesterday, it was clear enough where the class divisions exist. i didn't see any signs on my street, or even really in my little area. but, the liberal signs were lined up and down the single homes, while the ndp signs were lined up on the row houses. in this particular race, this is actually backwards - brian masse was the more bourgeois candidate, with more conservative values and with less of a history of doing real activism, on top of less of a history of actually governing. unlike her, he's really demonstrated little interest in the actual well-being of the actual people that live in this riding, which is one of the least wealthy in the country. as mentioned: sandra pupatello was clearly the better candidate, on any potential meaningful metric. but, those party affiliations can sometimes die hard, i guess, leading people to make decisions that are simply not supported by the evidence. in an election where the area rejected the ndp, this riding bucked the trend, held to friendship over logic and made the wrong choice. *shrug*.

but, i got out and voted because i was hoping to prevent a minority with this specific configuration of power and i got more or less what i was trying to stop.

it's not as bad as it could be because the ndp don't really have any meaningful leverage. and, let us all dispel with the ridiculous notion that the ndp - who just lost half their caucus, and are led by a thirty-something year old with no executive experience at all - are going to actually play any role in governing over the next four years. they're not. if you thought that electing the ndp would hold the liberals accountable, that they'd threaten the liberals with an early election if they didn't stop the pipeline, then you've got this backwards - the liberals will be ordering the ndp to vote for the budget, or else. the ndp will not want an election; next time could be even worse.

but, that doesn't change the fact that we now have a dangerous religious extremist holding the balance of power, a man who has no meaningful life experiences to draw upon, and who interprets the world through a filter of faith and belief rather than through evidence or logic. that puts the country on a dangerous path towards backwardsness and ignorance. the liberals may find him easy to manipulate, but manipulating him means playing into his perceptions, which is going to bring out the worst elements and instincts in the liberal party. if my intent was to vote for the secular left as best as i possibly could, to try and block the increasing influence of religion in government in the most effective way available to me, the existing configuration of power is just about as bad as i could imagine it. singh & trudeau aren't going to see eye-to-eye on much of anything else - this is going to be a government that is oriented towards faith as a governing principle, due to the fact that it's what's on the actual table.

i would plead with the liberals to resist this, to put reason over passion in their deliberations with the government, and to not be afraid to go back to the polls.

the liberals are at a crossroads here. they are the country's (indeed, western culture's) historical secular political movement, but they've been toying with moving away from that for quite a long time, now. unfortunately, i'm not sure that they realize the importance of their secular history in terms of their actual existence, or in defining the separation of the new democrat and liberal political traditions, anymore. and, powerful people in the liberal party even seem keen to jettison liberalism in favour of "progressivism" - an error that would decimate the party forever.

but, here we have it in front of us, in the starkest terms possible: it is going to be the task of the liberal party over the course of this minority parliament to resolve it's identity crisis. will it re-embrace it's history as a secular party, or will it align with the religious left in an attempt to redefine itself as an extension of the "progressive" movement?

my vote next time around may very well depend on the answer to this.

but, let's understand what happened.

in the east, the liberals were only down by amounts proportional to turnout, and it didn't hurt them because their opponents were down, too. but, the ndp were nearly obliterated as a consequence of their rejection of secularism - even losing parts of their base to the conservatives. what is the obvious lesson for the liberals, here? is the religious left a path to victory in canada?

in the west, they lost large amounts of support as the price of not being the conservative party. if the answer to holding support in the west is being the conservative party, how sustainable is it for the liberals to use that as a path to hold power?

if turnout had not decreased, they would have probably won seats in ontario and not lost as many in quebec. and, how do you maintain turnout in canada? the answer is by appealing to the secular left, and getting serious about policies that get us out to vote - the policies that were abandoned in 2015.

if the liberals interpret this as a need to move right, that's a shot in the foot. and, if they get lost in a faith-based coalition with the christian left, they'll end up destroying their own brand.

i would have had - excuse the language - faith in the old liberal party to figure this out right.

but, i half expect the younger trudeau to choose passion over reason.

we know he's his mother's, at least.

so, i argued the conservatives were going to get spanked in ontario because they were way down there from 2015.

and, they did lose quite a few suburban and exurban seats. do they have any left?

but, they were only down a little rather than a lot, and they seem to have gotten an assist by rural ndp voters that helped them make up for the losses.

so, their numbers seem flat, but they're actually inflated - they will likely lose some of those seats pretty fast, while there's less evidence that they'll be competitive in the 905 again any time soon.

i was expecting those ndp votes to swing green, and maybe they would have if ms. may prioritized these areas a little more strongly.

i was tired last night, i'd been up since before sunrise and had done a lot of walking, so let's try to get this across again.

i got the west almost perfect - i claimed ndp-15, liberals-15, greens-4, conservatives-rest. if jwr joins the greens, i almost nailed it.

i argued the models were overselling the bloc, who would get closer to 30 than 40. they got 32. i argued that they'd be shut out of montreal; they were. i claimed the liberals were being lowballed and they would win the province with about 40 seats; they ended up with 35. i argued that the conservatives would get 13 seats in the east (including quebec); they got 14.

i argued that the ndp were experiencing a bradley effect in the polling and would win roughly 5 seats east of winnipeg, all in ontario; they got 8, 6 in ontario. i pointed out the possibility of the greens causing chaos in the maritimes, and they did in fact score an unexpected upset win. i had the liberals at 27 seats in the maritimes; they got 26.

i argued that the liberals would sweep toronto and ottawa and pick up seats in the 905 as well as in smaller urban centres like windsor, and they did.

but, i argued that the conservatives would experience a massive vote split in rural ontario due to everybody moving to the greens, and that did not happen - and that is where i was substantively wrong, and what cost me my prediction. but, i should make the point clearer - it's less that i was wrong and more that the polling was wrong. i can only rely on the data, which had the greens in double digits in rural ontario; that simply didn't happen. if the polling had the greens where they ended up, i would have fallen in line with predictions of a liberal minority.

the thing is that it made sense to me to have everybody move to the greens - racist new democrats (and i don't like singh, but for different reasons than them), scared conservative property owners & pissed off liberals, alike. it was a perfect storm. and the numbers looked like 2000 - i will defend the argument.

but, it didn't happen - the greens got 6% when the polling had them at 16%. so, blame them...

that said, i acknowledged that it seemed like a stretch; i saw the data, but realized it was kind of unusual, too. so, i corrected myself - i claimed the following numbers in ontario were more likely, roughly, and gave myself some room for error on top of it:

liberals - 95
conservatives - 21
ndp - 5

but, i'm still off. why?

i still overshot the effect.

i was looking very carefully at the polling, which had the liberals roughly flat (they finished down about 3 points, which is roughly flat), the conservatives down by 8-10 points (they finished down about 3, which is actually roughly flat), the ndp roughly flat (they were. literally.) and the greens up by like 10-12 points (they finished up by around 3). so, in working this through my bullshit detector, i reasoned that, even if the greens only took 5% instead of 10% from the conservatives, it would still be a good bite, so long as it was localized in rural ridings  - and still enough to let the liberals squeeze through, so long as they polled roughly flat. so, i was essentially arguing that the greens and conservatives would split the vote, and let the liberals up the middle; if it was really bad, it could wipe the conservatives out, but if it was a more moderate split, it would just knock them down on their ass - and leave them with 20+ seats.

but, it just evaporated entirely; it didn't happen at all. the greens were up by a few points, but it didn't pool anywhere, and they appear to have had little effect, whatsoever.

what did happen in the rural areas was a movement from the ndp to the conservatives, which allowed them to make up for their losses in the 905 by stealing a few seats from the liberals and the ndp that they may have a hard time keeping in the long run.

if the greens ever get their break in ontario, my projection for this election may be prophetic - it's what would happen if the greens were to actually get that kind of bump. the results in the east are instructive. and, the polling presented the signal, too. but, it didn't happen this time...

what i actually should have done, the error i actually made, was that i should have given myself a larger error bar - i should have talked about 30 seats instead of 15.

i'm going to make a series of posts before i move on.

i'm sluggish; it's cold in here. at this point, i actually want the temperature to fall so i can turn the heat on. i get tired and unproductive when it gets cold....

but, once i find a way to get the temperature up enough in here that i have enough blood flow to my brain that i can think, we're going to do a detailed analysis this morning and then put this aside.

i do not expect to leave this basement again until at least oct 31st and i want something concrete done by then.

the liberals could get over 160 when the smoke clears, but i'm conceding a minority. what happened?

i had the numbers for the ndp and liberals and bloc pretty close, and my seat counts are pretty good everywhere except ontario, although i don't think i overexaggerated the ontario numbers by more than the models underexaggerated them; i made the right correction but overcompensated on the greens splitting the rural vote, which didn't happen. the bradley effect seemed to be a real thing. it seems like i got the 905 right, but we'll need to wait. i mentioned that if i got something wrong, it would be on the greens not splitting the vote, so it's not like i'm that surprised, but i argued it shouldn't affect the outcome - and was wrong on that point.

i more got nailed on the crumbs.

so, i had the ndp at 20 and the bloc at 30; actual numbers were 23 or 24 and 32. that's 5 or 6 seats i had given the liberals. i had the conservatives at 13 in the east and they got 14; i'm going to be off by a handful out west, too.

these are minor errors, but they made my big error - the greens running low in ontario - matter when i argued it shouldn't.

so, my number was 195, and i pointed out that i might be off by about 15 in ontario. in fact, i was off by about that, then missed a number of seats that the conservatives unexpectedly picked up due to ndp support switching to the conservatives, including in kenora and essex. that was something i didn't factor in - that the conservatives may also benefit from low ndp support.

so, i was wrong about the greens splitting the vote, but anticipated it; i was right about the liberals benefiting from weak ndp support, but i missed anticipating the conservatives also benefiting from weak ndp support. final numbers are not in, but if i lowballed the conservatives by a few points, it's because i had the ndp higher than they actually got. that cost me another few seats in ontario.

i'm sleepy. we'll do this better after i take a nap.

but, of all the claims i made, i got most of them right. and, i think i beat the models, and that my criticisms of the models were correct, even if i went too far, and i didn't always provide a better proposal; i was right to point out they were wrong, but my corrections had problems of their own.