(Updated) Harper wins majority, CBC projects (Canadian election)

[UrbScotty]

Source: CBC

Canadian voters have delivered Conservative Leader Stephen Harper his first majority government after five years of governing in a minority situation, CBC News projects. Meanwhile NDP Leader Jack Layton was set to become Official Opposition leader.

The NDP, according to projections, made a major breakthrough and appeared to have nearly tripled their seat count, while the Liberals — often touted as Canada's "natural governing party" — were poised to suffer a stunning historic electoral loss and place third.

As of 10:49 p.m. EST, the Conservatives were elected or leading in 164 seats, followed by the NDP with 103, Liberals with 32 and the Bloc with four. A party needs to capture 155 seats to win a majority in the House of Commons.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff trailed in his Toronto riding, based on early reports that also showed several prominent Toronto Liberals behind NDP or Tory candidates.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/05/02/cv-election-main.html#

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Livestream here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/features/electionlive/#

CBC called it a Conservative majority at about 10:50 PM Eastern Time.

[Paradoxical]

1. I've heard that the Conservatives in Canada are almost as bad as in the US.

[Dave From Canada]

14. You heard wrong.

[Paradoxical]

25. They are anti-choice, anti-gay rights. They preach small government and lower taxes...

Sounds pretty close to me.

[applegrove]

31. They've been pretending to be neocon lite in order not to alienate the middle of the road vote which

put them over the top tonight. Watch for them to pull a Mike Harris (former neocon premier of Ontario) and start with the social engineering right away. I'm devastated.

[Endangered Specie]

26. Well, we will find out soon enough...

the Conservatives have had to tread very lightly since theyve always been a minority gov't.

they can let their true colors (whatever those may be) loose now.

[DumpDavisHogg]

2. So Canada has rigged elections too? (n/t)

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[canuckledragger]

12. you betcha..

The students at the University of Guelph cast their votes early, using 'special ballots', the use of in itself not exactly a controversy:

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20110415/guelph-university-vote-mob-legitimacy-dispute-110415/

'Special ballots are sometimes set up ahead of elections to facilitate voting for those who face barriers of casting a ballot on election day or in advance polls, such as "snowbirds," aboriginals and those with physical disabilities. Using one for students – who are typically under-represented in elections – is also legitimate.'

Not sure when college/Universities let out in the States but this is a hectic time for students, last day of the semester usually being around April 26th, with the week or 2 after full of students packing up to go home, etc. Issues with residence arise for those not going to school in their home cities. These are few reasons that seem legit to me to vote ahead of time

'Asked about the matter at a morning rally in Thornhill, Ont., Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the party was not trying to discourage voting by special ballot, but wanted to ensure that Elections Canada rules were followed.

"Our concern is simply that the rules for advance polling, that all the rules of the election be respected and that is our sole concern in this particular matter," he said.

But Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says the Tories' request to annul the 700 votes cast at the special ballot is another example of the party's contempt for the democratic process.'

here's the interesting part:

The Guelph Mercury newspaper, citing several students who attended the vote, reports that the communications director for the Guelph Conservative candidate, Marty Burke, turned up at the balloting site and claimed the vote had violated the Elections Canada Act.

The communications director reportedly tried to snatch the ballot box away, but left empty-handed. The Conservative Party denies that any of its supporters touched a ballot box.

[stockholmer]

32. what is wrong with you?

:thumbsdown:

[bigworld]

4. NDP doing better than was even expected

CON 40%
NDP 30%
LAB 20%

The NDP seems to have even ousted the Bloc Quebecois party head from his riding. This is all very embarrassing for Labour.

On edit, I mean Liberal, of course.

[brooklynite]

5. Canada doesn't have a Labour Party...

It has a Liberal Party.

[bigworld]

7. That's what I meant.

Bleh, not enough sleep over the past four days......!!!!!

[Imajika]

6. Sounds like the conservatives won an outright majority...

At least from what is being reported at this moment it seems like the conservatives won a crushing victory.

Seems like it was quite a miscalculation to bring the government down when so many polls were predicting this would be the likely outcome.

[Dawson Leery]

8. With a mere 39% of the vote too.

:puke:

[iandhr]

15. when there are four

parties thats an impressive result

[Endangered Specie]

21. Thats the way it works in any first-past-the-post system

In the U.K. the Labour and Tories get outright majorities with 35-45% of the vote all the time

[arikara]

28. A majority of seats only

over 60% of the country can't stand them. Unfortunately we are stuck with them for the next 4 fucking disastrous years. King fucking Harper. I am sick.

[Freddie Stubbs]

9. The CBC just projected a Conservative majority

[freshwest]

10. Blech.

[iandhr]

11. how can Ignatieff had been so incompetent

as to call for a no confidence motion and give Harper a majority.

[Imajika]

13. I didn't understand this either...

I am no expert on Canadian politics, but virtually every poll showed this would be the result.

I saw people cheering this on here on DU and elsewhere and I simply couldn't understand why folks would think forcing an election was a good thing when the result was so clearly going to be nothing but bad. No poll showed Harper in trouble, and many showed he might seize an outright majority which is what has happened.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

16. Just remember to thank the NDP when:

Gay Marriage,
Healthcare,
Capital Punishment,
US Style Drug Laws,
fuck knows what else

Are reopened for debate by the conservative majority,

[quakerboy]

19. Uh.. I think you got that bass ackwards

Thank the Liberals.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

27. The NDP was agressively campaigning against the liberals

Layton is probably completely satisfied with this outcome, he didn't want to contribute to the defeat of the Conservatives - he just wanted to replace the liberals. And from the opposition Layton can now campaign for bike lanes, demand the closure of the Toronto airport and whatever other hipster bullshit happens to stoke his ego.

[Endangered Specie]

29. But from the looks of things, most of the NDP gain was in Quebec

so he took from the Liberals and the Bloc quite heavily

[quakerboy]

33. Nice spin

Perhaps the liberals should have worked harder on campaigning against the conservatives?

To simplify, the left is going to vote for the left. The right will vote for the right. The center may go either way. Its completely unreasonable to blame the left for trying to expand their voter base in a logical way(draw more from the center) but not blame the center for failing to draw from the right or the left.

[iverglas]

40. well somebody had to replace the fucking Liberals, didn't they?

The Liberal Party has let Canada down, and it and its shills and hacks can officially go fuck themselves.

I'm suicidal about a Conservatvie majority, but the fact is that we live in history, not in some eternal fixed point in time, and life is change.

We how have a strong, progressive national party positioned to fight the right wing, rather than a corrupt dishonest bunch of corporate trough-feeders masquerading as Canada, the schtick that finally failed the Liberal Party.

It was time to redraw those lines with the Liberals where they belong, not where they believe they're entitled to be or can fool a load of people into thinking they are.

And hoo boy, did the bleed of Liberal votes to Harper make the Liberal reality clear. When voting Liberal becomes a plainly hopeless project, and the choice is between the Conservative scum and the NDP, what did those Liberals do?

Behave like the Conservative scum in fancy dress that they are, that's what.


Have we all not heard enough whining from the hacks and shills about how nothing that has ever happened or ever will happen is the fault of any Liberal who ever lived?

Liberals made their bed and screwed the country in a variety of ways in the process. Please, will they just go away now?

[Darth_Kitten]

47. I think the Conservatives screwed over Canada and will now get worse.

But let's make this about attacking a traditionally centre/left party, and let's never attack those Conservatives. :sarcasm:

[iverglas]

50. yeah, I never attack those Conservatives.

" :sarcasm: "

You're picking up some bad habits around this place, I think. The sneering, plausibly-deniable false statements about somebody you disagree with ... kinda Harper-esque demagoguery, doncha think?

Did you actually disagree with something I said? Care to say so, and offer your rebuttal?


fyi, from yeserday:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4838120&mesg_id=4838646

Not that what you said actually calls for any kind of response.

[iverglas]

41. You're not even a Canadian!

Would it be too much to ask that you refrain from telling me -- an NDP member since 1969 and a several-time candidate, with rather complete knowledge of what has gone on in my country since well before then -- what to do and how to think?

In this country -- the one where I am -- nobody calls the Liberal Party "progressive", let alone left. That's a fiction that holds up only in places like this. And not very well, I assure you.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

44. No but I live here,

and have some passing interest in not seeing Canada turned into a mirror image of the US by some conservative charlatans who seem to think they have been elected to W's third term while an ineffectual NDP opposition campaigns for bike lanes on the TransCanada Highway or perhaps high-speed rail to Churchill Manitoba.

[iverglas]

51. gosh, are you Rob Ford???

No, wait, that was Don Cherry.

:rofl:


For the neighbours: Don Cherry is the scum of the earth right-wing bigot who is a hero to the hockey-watching crowd. He campaigned for Rob Ford, right-wing "populist" elected mayor of Toronto last year.

http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20101208/don-cherry-pinko-rant-101208/20101208?hub=TorontoNewHome

Cherry, wearing a bright floral-patterned pink suit, appeared at the swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday as Ford's invited guest and presented him with the chain of office.

"I'm wearing pink for all the pinkos out there who ride bicycles and everything," Cherry said on Tuesday.

He later added that "left-wing pinkos" who oppose Ford will "scrape the bottom of the barrel."

... "It was embarrassing. The language in the speech of our guest speaker was inappropriate and unacceptable. It is language that, if any councillor used them on the floor of council they would be asked to withdraw those remarks and give an apology," <Councillor Janet> Davis told CTV Toronto.

I'd say you're equally embarrassing, but one can only be embarrassed by one of one's own. Since you're evidently neither Canadian nor left, you just offend.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

55. Rob Ford is a good cautionary tale for the NDP

The public's patience for hipster bullshit in lieu of governance has its limits. Make yourselves irrelevant to the people who elected you and you or your chosen successor will be thrown to the curb like Toronto's uncollected garbage.

[iverglas]

56. why don't you take your act out for a walk

on an actually progressive forum in Canada?

I wonder where the Liberal Party was when all these dire things were going on ...

Nope. Nothing, ever, in the history of the world, that has happened to the Liberal Party or anyone else, has ever been the fault of the Liberal Party.

Sad, really, to see the once mighty Natural Governing Party reduced to this kind of whining and carping.

[Darth_Kitten]

48. I'm Canadian and think you are being really harsh on the Liberal party.

Even NDPers I know think they should have attacked the Cons more.

[iverglas]

52. and I gather you're a Liberal

since you "know" NDPers and refer to us as "they".

So I'll consider the source of your opinion.

I would have been perfectly content with a Liberal minority government. Too bad the Liberals didn't do something to arrange that.

[irislake]

17. FUCK!

[Newsjock]

18. Jesus, Ralph Nader did it again

:popcorn:

[No Elephants]

42. LOL!

[defendandprotect]

46. Jesus, I'm sure the Supreme Gang of 5 and Diebold appreciate you thinking that--!!!

[Endangered Specie]

20. So the Liberal party basically self destructed?

Almost like the Progressive Conservatives in 1993

[Posteritatis]

35. Not quite as spectacularly, but yeah. The Bloc too. (nt)

[Endangered Specie]

22. Something else of major interest: the Bloc appears to have gotten destroyed

the BQ party leader (Duceppe) lost his riding!

That would normally be thought to help the Liberal/NDP parties, given the Left leaning of Quebec.

[Endangered Specie]

23. Other good news, May (Green party leader) won her riding.

[Odin2005]

24. Dear God Almighty, the Canucks are fucked!

:cry:

[rationalcalgarian]

30. Yep!

Now Baby Bush (or is it Mini-Me?) can push through all the legislation his GOP handlers send to him.

[regnaD kciN]

34. My deepest sympathies to my Canadian friends...

I remember a few years ago, when I thought we might have to move up there to escape right-wingnuttery in our government... :-(

[irislake]

36. Thanks

we need it!

[glinda]

39. I second that. There goes all that is good with Canada.

[legin]

37. Ignatieff eats dirt, life is cool

it would seem that he is 'leading' his party to distruction.

May I make the suggestion that the Liberal Party need urgently to offload the warmongering deadbeat.

[legin]

38. "Ignatieff denies he helped plan Iraq invasion"

"OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff denies he helped prepare the United States military for the 2003 Iraq invasion, despite eight-year-old praise from American military officials he worked with.

In Saint John, N.B., Wednesday, Ignatieff laughed off a question from QMI Agency tying him to the U.S.-led invasion.

“Every single premise in your question is materially and factually false,” Ignatieff said. “I was working on a project to reduce civilian casualties in armed combat operations. I’m extremely proud of the work we did there.

“At no time, in no way, was I ever involved in the planning of any offensive combat operations by any military forces,” he added.

As reported by QMI Agency on Wednesday, Ignatieff — who led Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy — was part of an academic advisory team that worked with U.S. State Department and American military officials to conduct strategy sessions before the invasion."

(snip)

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/CanadaVotes/News/2011/04/20/18046821.html

[Darth_Kitten]

49. Harper? You mean Harper?

:sarcasm:

[Arugula Latte]

43. Gag.

x(

[defendandprotect]

45. Well -- this will be cozy -- US and Canada being taken down together by corps/elites!!

[robcon]

53. Also with Britain, France and Germany controlled by right of center govts...

many of the leading economies are in the hands of conservatives.

Among the largest economies only the U.S. is in the hands of a left-of-center govt. (China, of course, is in the hands of a totalitarian govt.)

[defendandprotect]

54. Right ... and this is only happening because citizens everywhere decided to move everything into

hands of corporations/elites -- foregoing any concerns for themselves or

their families!!!

We'd have to believe that citizens everywhere are have all lost their sanity --

or something else has been going on for more than 50 years!!

Like rightwing political violence and hijacking of elections -- !!

Only Libya and Egypt knew they had stolen elections????


Yikes!!!!

[robcon]

57. Into the hands of corporate elites???? That's a fantasy, IMO.

The right-of-center and left-of-center governments have always played a yin and yang in the established democracies. It's now the turn, apparently, of the right-of-center. It'll turn the other way around soon.

[defendandprotect]

58. Yes -- and we'll turn around Global Warming, as well -- !!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_severe_weather_flooding


:eyes:

We have corporate fascism which has bought out our government and elected officials --

i.e. -- Government by Gansters --