Even though everyone (myself included) loves to compare by election results to the last election, by elections are not general elections. As such, the more useful comparison is to other by elections. With that in mind, let’s dive in to the numbers from this last round of by elections. Turnout Turnout was 32.4% in Vaughan, […]

In case you missed it, a trio of by elections were called last weekend. 1. Vaughan: Mayor Maurizio has won this riding easily in recent years, and defeated Richard Lorello 49% to 34% in 2008. My seat projection system gives the Liberals a 91.4% chance to hold Vaughan during a general election, but this is […]

1. Bloc MP Carole Lavallée is upset with Stephen Harper: La députée bloquiste Carole Lavallée juge inacceptable que le premier ministre Stephen Harper ait écrit aux élèves du pays afin de les encourager à visiter les parcs nationaux. Dans cette lettre expédiée en mai aux élèves de deuxième secondaire au Québec et de huitième année […]

I hate to toss up yet another by election post because we shouldn’t read too much into them. So rather than look at the results, I’ll just add a final word on voter turn-out. Here’s where it was yesterday: Montmagny 36.6%Cumberland-Colchester 35.7%New Westminster Coquitlam 29.9%Hochelaga 22.3% The average turnout of 31.1% isn’t much worse than […]

Can you feel the excitement! Early twitter reports have the Tories winning back Bill Cassey’s old riding in Cumberland Colchester. I won’t post this until 10 because, well, Elections Canada seems to think BC by election voters (all 12 of them) will see this shocking win and change their votes accordingly. Since, you know, voters […]

With four by elections tonight, the party spin machines are in overdrive, playing the expectations game. The best example comes from this article where the parties trip over each other to lower expectations – “we expect to lose all four” says the Tory spokesman with a smile, “if we beat the Marijuana Party it’s a […]

That was the Star headline this morning. Since they included a question mark at the end, I’ll answer them: no. Putting aside that most of the “senior anonymous insiders” quoted in the story are simply trying to manage expectations, let’s assume for a second the Tories do win St. Paul’s. They won’t, but we did […]

If you want evidence of how quickly the media narrative can turn on you, look no further than Jack Layton. The man was praised far and wide for his historic Quebec breakthrough in Outremont last fall. It was only the second Quebec seat won in NDP history and was a sign that the party was […]

First of all, I’m somewhat disappointed in myself that I couldn’t think up a witty St. Patrick’s day themed post title related to tomorrow’s byelections. Regardless, after the Outremont disaster in the fall, people will be playing close attention to these four byelections. The common media consensus is that the Liberals will coast to easy […]

Full marks to Stephane Dion on this, for reasons I don’t need to go into again. Hopefully Orchard will accept this and find a winnable riding to run in during the general election: Liberal Party of Canada Announces Joan Beatty as Candidate OTTAWA – Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion today announced that Joan Beatty, former Saskatchewan […]