Saturday, April 26, 2025

i don't have time to do the kind of in depth analysis i've done previously. i'm going to do this point form.

1) the polling is picking up a big liberal uptick in bc, alberta and saskatchewan. this is probably real, and probably driven half by the fact that mark carney is running to the right of the conservatives and half by immigration to the region, which has been substantive. albertans, particularly, may be waking up to a new demographic reality in front of them. however, doubling or tripling liberal support in the region from the rockies to lake winnipeg won't necessarily result in a single new liberal seat. the primary reason that the models are projecting a liberal majority is due to projections of them winning a dozen or more seats in the west. i would be surprised if the liberals win even two new seats west of winnipeg, but it does look like their vote totals are legitimately going to double in a lot of places, with no actual electoral effect.

2) the liberals might win ndp-liberal races in bc by swinging conservative voters. i think that the idea that ndp voters are swinging to the liberals is an oversimplification, and that a deeper analysis is going to show that potential ndp voters (young voters) are actually voting conservative in large numbers, but the conservatives have had the rug pulled out from under them by carney, who is destroying and dominating polievre amongst conservatives like a tiger eating a goat. carney is just slitting polievre's throat in front of his wife, and eating into the conservative base like a migratory despot. however, this is only going to actually pull itself off if the liberals have an extremely good day. more likely is that the ndp mostly keep all of their seats in bc, but get wiped out elsewhere.

3) this leaves polievre in control of a weird and unstable coalition that will collapse within weeks and carney dominating the centre-right of the spectrum. when the ndp rebound, and they will quickly, unfortunately, it will expose that it's the conservatives that are stealing their base, not the liberals. it's the conservatives that will immediately crash, not the liberals.

4) polievre's projected voters are young and being engaged by their phones. these voters are not high turnout and few will actually vote. polievre may actually have difficulty getting the vote out in ontario, particularly. conversely, the liberals' newfound dominance amongst older voters will result in a strong ground game in ontario and quebec and liberal turnout in these regions will exceed expectations. 

6) while the liberals consequently probably won't win more than a couple of seats west of winnipeg, they could wipe out the ndp in ontario and push the conservatives further out of the cities, and deeper into the farms and forests. but, this is only around ten seats, when you add them up.

7) it looks like the liberals are going to completely dominate montreal. conversely, it also looks like the bloc are set to sweep outside of montreal. i would expect the bloc to exceed expectations in rural quebec and probably get over 30 seats. this is going to give them the balance of power.

8) the polling in atlantic canada is frustrating, but i would not expect the liberals to sweep. the ndp are no longer competitive federally in the east. it's not clear if the liberals or conservatives are the main beneficiary, but eastern conservatives are also the type most likely to embrace carney over polievre. the east has old and young demographics. i actually wouldn't expect the existing map to change much, but the coalitions support the differing candidates are in flux.

i would suggest the outcome then is that the liberals win seats in ontario at the expense of the ndp and conservatives and everything else stays more or less the same. what is going to happen is that ndp voters are going to swing to the conservatives in urban areas, and the result is that the liberals will win those seats more easily, because the seats were two-way races between the liberals and ndp (these are seats the conservatives are not competitive in). however, the accompanying shift from the conservatives to the liberals in rural areas mostly won't have any substantive effect, except in the boundary point between suburban and rural (sometimes called exurban), where the liberals could steal a few ridings.

liberals will win seats in places like carleton, bay of quinte, barrie, peterborough, durham, vaughan, oshawa, hamilton, niagara, brantford, london and windsor, but it won't be enough. the conservatives will be having a very bad day if they lose thornhill.

result:

liberals: around 160 (gains almost solely in ontario, at the expense of the ndp and conservatives in urban and suburban seats)
conservatives: around 140 (gains mostly due to redistribution in rural regions)
bloc: around 30 - hold steadyish
ndp: around 10, almost entirely in bc. they may be shut out east of calgary.
green: exactly 2
there was a speech in the 90s where bill clinton explained that actual quebecois sovereignty, whatever the arguments in favour of it, would be economically moronic and result in a catastrophic outcome.

that's basically my opinion on quebecois nationalism - it's an utterly idiotic idea. it would destroy quebec in a week. in fact, the americans would probably invade quebec, rather than allow it to become a rogue state. there are clear contingency plans. 

clinton had the marines and the air force on red alert in 1995. they were on the brink of going in. they would have.

what happened after in the succession case and the clarity act is that existing canadian law says quebec has the right to declare independence if they can actually do it. this case is poorly understood in media. forget about ottawa - the americans won't let them do it.

it's not a serious issue at the moment. it was previously, and it might be again, but it probably won't be due to attempts by the federal government to reduce the relative number of quebecers in the province by overwhelming them with immigration from french-speaking countries in africa, the carribbean and asia. ottawa doesn't actually deny doing this.

as it is, the bloc are going to be the only social democratic and left leaning party left standing with a substantive number of seats, at least for the next couple of years. whether they like it or not, they're going to be the real opposition and the real left.

carney may find himself more ideologically aligned with polievre than with blanchet, but right-wing parties do not behave reasonably when placed in opposition, they just vote everything down. this is going to give the bloc a tremendous amount of power not just to advance the interests of quebec but to advance the interests of the left, and i'm going to be on their ass from here in windsor to make sure they do this right.
canada is not a nation-state, the way quebec might purportedly be. that is what he meant to say, and he's right - canada is an artificial colonial construction to organize territory conquered by an empire that no longer exists. it's also a failed state waiting to collapse.

but these two guys had better learn to get along, because the ndp is not going to have enough seats to help the liberals pass legislation any more.

what's unclear right now is if the liberals need one, two or three of the opposition parties onside to help them pass legislation, and if the conservatives do get over 140 seats, the answer could be all three. at the least, there doesn't appear to be any other outcome in front of us besides the necessity of a liberal-bloc agreement to pass a budget.

in fact, the bloc would appear to be the most left-wing party in the spectrum at the moment and the party i'd be most willing to vote for, if i could.

i don't plan to vote on monday, but my endorsement is for the green party.