how did we become this dumb?

and, if you're making minimum wage and you voted conservative, you're a fucking idiot.

he's going to reduce your salary and then send you a $14 credit on your tax bill to make up for it. i might advise him to send you a shit sandwich in the mail, along with the refund.

the numbers were not there. i'm kind of shocked. but if i have to spend the next four years marching then so fucking be it.

see, this is a part of why i like the liberals in power - it's relative peace, because the bourgeoisie just pays us off. call me a sellout, but i'm just as happy to take the cash.

when conservatives are in power, and they start launching battles in the class war, we have to ensure we're causing havoc. strikes. marches. whatever causes disruption, whatever hurts capital, whatever leads to mayhem and disorder.

let's strive to make the next four years as chaotic and miserable for capital as is possible.

it's a sad day for ontario.

another step in the race to the bottom.

another leap head first into the third world.

& the worst part about is that we're going to have to listen to the fucking idiot talk in public for the next four years. the guy is such a dumbass that he makes dubya sound like a genius.

i don't know what he's going to do. literally. he provided no coherent idea of what his plans are - he ran on cheap beer & cheap gas.

but, generally, these kinds of candidates slash funding for health care, slash funding for education & slash funding for welfare.

we'll have to see what he does before i can figure out how to react in terms of organizing marches & whatnot.

so, this isn't about "voter efficiency" - i was wrong about turnout, and the point they were making about distribution ought to have been irrelevant or wrong due to the swing. when i pointed out that the pcs can't win a majority of seats with 39% of the vote, i was right to do it - assuming that liberals vote one way or the other. if liberals vote conservative, they get over 39%; if they vote ndp or liberal, that's just not enough to win. then they just didn't vote at all. & when the talking heads argued that the ndp vote was poorly distributed, they should have been misinterpreting the evidence - but happened to fluke out because liberals didn't vote at all. i mean, what happened wasn't about the ndp's vote distribution, it was about the evaporation of liberal voters altogether. if the argument was that the conservatives can win via vote suppression, i would have agreed with the point, even if i guffawed at the numbers required to do so.

and is this believable?

i have no evidence regarding voter suppression, but would encourage others to explore the situation.

but, i mean....

there's a pattern.

toronto liberals will vote for the liberals, or they won't vote at all. we saw it federally in 2011 & in 2008...and now we're seeing it provincially...

too busy watching the fucking hockey game, or what?

i need to be clear: if all you toronto liberals would have voted, for either party, this wouldn't have happened.

i didn't vote ndp, either. but the ndp won this riding by 10,000 votes. it was maybe a little more intense than i thought, but not unexpected in the general outcome.

if i was in a swing riding?

it turns out the strategic vote was liberal after all in most of these areas. but, the ndp numbers didn't go up, or not by a lot - the vote wasn't split. that argument's not going to work, here.

it's liberals that just didn't vote, and in huge numbers.

as for the outcome, i'm embarrassed.  - not because i was wrong, but because of what the province just did.

we just elected an absolute buffoon who promised to do stupid things, and is going to hurt the province dramatically. i can't believe that the people of this province could be so stupid; we don't have a history of this.

but, now, it's time to organize & fight.

i'm going to tell you what i'm surprised about.

the range was 34-43, so i wasn't arguing that the polling was wrong so much as i was arguing that the analysis was inaccurate. if the conservatives ended up with 36, that wouldn't mean the polling was wrong, as it was correctly in the range. and, at 39-40%, that doesn't mean the polling is more right: it's a range. i was just pointing out that the conservatives usually poll at the bottom of the range. they did federally in 2015, 2011, 2008 & 2006 - as well as in every provincial election i can remember.

if they end the night in the middle of the range, that is unusual. it's not more right, it's just not consistent with the general trend. & that's what i'm surprised about. this election is consequently an outlier in terms of how results line up with polling measurements.

i haven't seen turnout numbers yet, but what it suggests is that turnout was probably quite low. this is what the models suggested, and that's fine. but, we're used to low turnout, and it's never affected the analysis before. this must have been really low turnout - so low you might want to wonder about it.

so, that's the first thing i'm surprised about - that the conservatives polled in the middle of their range rather than at the bottom of it, like they usually do. and, that would have to be because turnout was low.

the second thing i'm surprised about is that the liberal numbers are as low as they are, and that's the other side of the equation. they could still end up a tad over 20%. but, i was expecting that this is where the error would wash out, and they'd get to 22 or 23.

the end result is the outcome i feared: liberals just didn't vote at all. mostly in the gta. so, you're going to hear people talk about the conservatives swinging liberal votes, but if you look at absolute numbers, that will come out as false: conservative numbers likely stayed flat in the gta, while liberal numbers crashed. so, the conservatives ended up winning seats as a consequence of liberals staying home, the result of voter suppression through media assassination.

my analysis was rooted in rejecting the idea of equally distributing undecideds, which were clearly disproportionately historical liberal voters, and correcting the distribution of liberal voters to account for their ideological leanings. i continually pointed out that if these voters don't vote at all, the pcs would split the vote - but i didn't think that would actually happen.

had all of those liberal voters voted...

alas.

i got my huge swings in downtown toronto, but as soon as you get out of the core, those liberal voters stay home rather than vote liberal or ndp.

so, give the election to the media: it succeeded in suppressing the vote.

...if it was the media & not the machines.

no.

the majority threshold for the pcs is 43-44%.

i expect that number to fall over the night.

the cbc is going to look foolish in the morning.

way too early to call it.

calm down.

the cbc site appears to be getting ddosed by legit users.

personally, i haven't had access to a tv to watch an election on since 2002. guess the world's catching up on me...

...but, considering that the site can't handle the traffic, please turn your tv on if you can, so people like me can access the site online.

so, did doug ford blow a huge lead?

no.

his numbers went down as undecideds fell.

the tory base is static. this is a constant in this country.

again: the conservatives, under stephen harper, managed 45% of the vote in ontario in 2011. that was enough for a majority of seats in ontario.

in 2008, however, which is a better comparison over all, the conservatives got 39% of the vote in ontario - which was only enough for a minority of seats in the province.

the data suggests that doug ford will be lucky to match the 2008 totals - and that he is not even close to the 2011 totals.

historically, bill davis also needed 44%+ to run a majority. davis ran at 36 once and at 39 once and ended up with minorities both times. mike harris ran at 45% for both of his majorities.

it is entirely unclear where the narrative of "conservative vote efficiencies" came from, if not from the ford campaign itself. that sounds like the kind of vacuous bluster that would come out of his mouth, not a reasoned deduction from seasoned pollsters who should be well aware that the conservatives need exaggerated numbers province wide to allow for boosts in urban areas.sufficient enough for them to win elections. they've always had the least efficient vote.

the conservatives are up at most 8 points and they lost dozens of urban ridings by way more than 15 last time. if i'm right and they're up more like 3 or 4 points, they're not likely to improve much on their existing seat total at all - especially considering that the liberals are bleeding so heavily to the ndp.

but, even seasoned liberal propagandists are repeating this pablum.

it shows the power of the tory media to control the narrative.

this is a civil war on the left in toronto.

ford is an also-ran...

if he's lucky, the infighting is nasty enough that he wins a minority.

a lot of urban ridings looked like this:

liberal - 60%
conservative - 20%
ndp - 15%

then, they claim the conservatives have a better chance because they came in second in more ridings. right.

that riding could very well end up like this tonight:

ndp: -35%
liberal - 34%
conservative - 26%

you just want to make sure you actually vote.

just whatever you do, don't get overwhelmed and not vote.

to an extent, it even doesn't matter; despite the narrative, ford needs to make up so much ground that as long as turnout doesn't collapse, he doesn't really have a serious chance at a majority.

if you can't figure it out, guess. but don't give up - be confident in your guess.

i mean, the upside is that the tories would need to swing 20% in dozens of ridings to be seriously competitive, and we can be sure that's not going to happen.

this is a good example of what not to listen to today.

"but, the ndp would have to swing 40% of the vote in that riding to win! the liberals are the obvious strategic choice."

i was skeptical until i saw the data, too, but the ndp are swinging 40% of the vote.

or, at least they are in some places.

this is a hard problem; i can't solve it without a lot of data, and i don't have a lot of data. but, don't follow the kind of simplistic analysis presented here. it's just as bad as the projections coming from lispop.

the hard truth is that some of these ridings will swing 45% from liberal to ndp and some of them won't swing at all and it's up to you to guess which is which. good luck. the province depends on it.

don't look at me like that, blame the media for creating havoc.

but, remember: the tories have never won a majority at either level with less than 40% of the vote, and there's not any good reason to think they will this time, either.

https://nowtoronto.com/news/ontario-election-2018-andrea-horwath-kathleen-wynne-doug-ford/

this cannot be allowed to happen.

if you are in the region, i'd encourage civil disobedience.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/councilman-plans-gender-segregated-beach-days-for-religious-1.3963286

you'd have to have lungs like michael phelps to reduce 5 grams to 4 tokes.

that's superhuman. really.

it's actually about 20 joints and 200+ tokes.
 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/senators-marijuana-legalization-abstain-1.4695824

can you come up with a valid argument as to why people should have violent dogs?

i can't.

at least with guns, there's a human on the other side. you can make arguments about how gun control isn't the answer, so much as a change in the culture is. and, that remains true with dogs as well - the real answer is that we need a cultural shift away from the machismo that glorifies the ownership of these breeds. sure.

but, a violent dog doesn't have a safety on it. you can't lock it in a cabinet, where the kids can't get at it. it's an omnipresent danger, with it's own personality.

i don't know exactly how you do this, and i would like to ensure that the science is consulted - because i want it to be effective. if the science says it's not going to work, what's the point, right? but i would like to see stronger action taken, nonetheless.

ok, and it seems like that's what they're doing.

perhaps the laws in ontario could use a similar rewrite to increase enforcement.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/06/06/quebecs-proposed-dangerous-dog-law-ditches-breed-specific-ban_a_23452761/

i understand the point.

but, rather than back off altogether, i was hoping to see action towards banning all large dogs altogether. i don't feel i should be afraid to walk down the street because people want to express their chauvinism through big stupid dogs, and the fact is that i often am.

pit bulls. rottweilers. german shephards. dobermans. get rid of all of them....

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/06/06/quebec-abandons-plans-for-pit-bull-ban-citing-lack-of-science-to-back-breed-specific-laws.html

"the liberals are going to end up with the balance of power!? that's terrible..."

nah.

we just came out of 15 years of liberal government. there's not a lot of evidence that the province has undergone a fundamental shift in ideology, either; the premier's policies are quite popular, voters just hate her. there's no convincing evidence that the province has developed an aversion to debt, either.

wynne's argument is really pretty consistent with the way our system works, which the ndp have never liked; it's a check on power, to allow voters to be sure they're making this choice.

we're not stuck with this for four years; the government could fall on the first budget.

so, a likely scenario is that the ndp decide they want to do something to undo the liberal legacy, and voters need to vote on it to confirm it - or return the liberals to power.

more voting is more democratic; it's a feature, it's not a bug.

i don't see any really good reason to think doug ford will even win his own seat.

that was a crash last night, but it was a healthy one.

i need to pivot starting today.

but, what i'm going to do over off hours is the following:

1) copy the existing music blog into the master music document.
2) copy the master music document into the complete master document
3) carry on with the same process as previously.

today, i need to vote - for the greens. get some salami. get some ventolin. & get to looking for somewhere else to live.

this was a weird election.

but, it demonstrates that splitting the vote isn't necessarily catastrophic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_general_election,_1975

again: i will be surprised if the conservatives poll above 35%. am i ignoring the data? no - i'm just reading it correctly.

the polling data does not suggest that the conservatives will poll at 38-39%. what it suggests, rather, is that there's a ninety some percent chance that they poll in the range of [34, 43]. polling is never an exact number, but always a range. but, we know from experience that the telephone polling has inherent biases that favour the conservatives. so, a prudent reading of the data suggests they should end up near the bottom of it, and that there's a higher chance of them polling polling around 34-36 than there is of them polling around 42-43.

i'll acknowledge a level of intuition in pegging them at the very bottom of this range. this election has been defined by exceedingly nasty media coverage of the ruling party, which is clearly on the opposite side of the broader electorate. further, doug ford is clearly not fit for the job. in electing doug ford, ontario would be suffering a collective experience of mass idiocy that it is not known for. i would consequently assign most of that error to the liberals out of a shy effect, rather than to the ndp.

might i be wrong, though? sure.

so, let's say i'm wrong. let's say the conservatives get 39% of the vote.

look as i may, i cannot find an example of the conservatives winning a majority government in ontario with under 40% of the vote. harris polled around 45% in both wins - numbers that nobody is talking about. bill davis had majorities at 44% and minorities at 36% and 39%. frank miller had a minority at 37%. if we trust the elections bodies to distribute the ridings fairly, we can only conclude that ontario is less rural today than it was in the late 70s, and that it would be harder to win a majority in the high 30s today than it was then.

looking at federal data, stephen harper got 44% in 2011 and 39% in 2008 - which is the difference between a majority and a minority.

so, even if i concede that the conservatives may be running in the middle of their range, i don't concede that that makes a majority government likely. i would rather argue rather forcefully that it makes a minority government likely.

you can come up with whatever theory you want, but i think it is clear that the empirical data suggests that the conservatives need to be running in the 40s to make a majority government an idea to even talk about, and should be running closer to 45 to make it likely.

again: my reading of the data is that the ndp is on the brink of a sweep in toronto. i think we're looking at an ndp majority government.

but, if i'm wrong, this legislature is more likely to end up looking something like the minority government of the 70s than it is to end up looking like the majority government of the 90s - even if we have no real idea of how doug ford would actually govern.