UPDATE: Live results coming in at globalnews.ca
See Decision Canada: 170 seats to win, currently projected as Liberals–Trudeau: 156 (down 21 seats), Conservatives–Sheer: 122 (up 26 seats), 5 seats undecided.
Lib: 33.4% Con: 34.25% (as more votes are counted the Conservative vote is rising.)
Called as a minority Liberal govt. Trudeau to stay with support from either the NDP or The Bloc. Canada is divided. The Conservatives won slightly more of the popular vote but it was concentrated in the two oil-rich provinces Alberta and Saskatchewan, so they won fewer seats. In the largest, most populous province – Ontario — the liberals won twice as many seats as the conservatives. The Liberals are the party of the politically correct inner city voters.
Big loser is the NDP (social-democrats) falling from 39 seats to ? 25. Big winner is Bloc Québécois (separatist/centre left) going from 10 seats up to 22.)
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Polls are on a knife edge as the Canadian 2019 election day rolls out
Click to enlarge
In the US, Brexit and Australian elections the pollsters missed the hidden conservative vote. It was so strong some people said they’d vote Labor, but then they voted the other way, and then they left the polling booth and still told exit pollsters they voted for Labor. It wasn’t til the first hour of vote counting that people realized what had really happened.
When a whole side of politics becomes unfashionable, people know what the pollsters want to hear. The Conservative Party led by Andrew Scheer is running on a lower tax, No Carbon Tax platform, so there might be enough there to excite potential hidden voters. But will the voters throw out a one term government? Maybe. The old days of loyalty are over. How much is Canada hurting from political correctness?
According to the Australian ABC the key issues are what the PM wears for overseas trips and what he wore to dress up parties twenty years ago. I feel pretty confident that real Canadians have other concerns.
Conservatives in Canada have had some sweeping wins in a few provinces, and former PM Stephen Harper has said conservatives can win on the carbon taxes alone. In Ontario in 2018 – the ruling greener Liberals were crushed, losing 48 seats and even official party status. In Alberta, Kenney won a landslide in Alberta against carbon tax in April 2019. He vowed a War Room against energy activists. It seems most Canadians are skeptics…
Whatever the main issues are in Canada, you can rely on our ABC to not discover them. The following is the usual ABC vacuum where important policy issues just disappear to be replaced with celebrity political gossip. This snippet tells us nothing about Canada but a lot about the ABC.
Canada’s election is on a knife edge, and Justin Trudeau is closely studying Scott Morrison’s victory
James Glenday, Australian ABC
Our website data suggests Australians don’t care to read a lot about Canada.
Rather, Australians don’t want to read another smug, empty politically-correct lecture from the ABC that contains nothing much of any substance.
In fact, you probably only clicked on this piece because you are interested in what’s going to happen to Justin Trudeau, the country’s famous yet scandal-afflicted Prime Minister, when he goes to the polls for a general election on Tuesday morning, Australian time.
ABC political tragics might be hanging on for Justin-Trudeau-news, but who else cares? (I mean apart from Canadians).
But Australian voters should probably give this tight race more than a cursory glance.
Leading political strategists on the left and right say Canada and Australia have the most similar electoral markets in the world.
They’ve long swapped notes about their successes and failures.
Hopefully our Canadian friends will tell us something more meaningful.