[BRIEF NOTE] On vote-splitting in Ontario
May. 5th, 2011 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldMacLean's Paul Wells pointed me to a Globe and Mail article by Éric Grenier talking about the ways in which vote-splitting--described by Grenier as rising NDP voters siphoning votes from Liberal candidates and ensuring the election of Conservatives by slim numbers--helped some Conservative get elected in Ontario and elsewhere.
In Wells' post, "On the impertinence of the NDP: a Liberal analysis", he disagrees strongly with this premise.
Especially given the Liberal Party's rejection of a coalition agreement with the NDP that might have seen the two parties agree not to run candidates against each other in certain ridings, instead opting to open combat with the NDP, blaming the failures of the Liberal Party to secure seats has most to do with the party's lack of appeal. Had the Liberals been more popular, would the NDP vote have surged in those ridings outside Québec where the Liberals lost seats? Had the Liberals chosen to enter into a coalition with the NDP that could easily have seen agreements not to run candidates against each other in certain ridings, would the Liberals have collapsed so much? Those dozen ridings hit by vote-splitting wouldn't have been hit had only the Liberals been a better party.
(Also, a commenter at Wells' post notes many of these Liberal voters may have gone to the Conservatives: there is a Liberal right, you know. Or was.)
The Conservatives won 12 seats in the province in large part due to vote-splitting on the centre-left. Had the NDP surge fizzled on ballot day – and the votes cleaved to the Liberal camp – Stephen Harper’s majority would have been a bare-minimum 155.
Had vote splits in other parts of the country also been avoided, the Conservatives would have won 151 seats – four short of a majority.
[. . .]
The Tories made a breakthrough themselves in Ontario, winning 44.4 per cent of the vote, according to Elections Canada’s preliminary results. That is a growth of roughly five points for the party, and is solely responsible for about half of the seat gains the Tories made in the battleground province.
The New Democrats placed second in the province with 25.6 per cent, a growth of more than seven points. The Liberals, meanwhile, dropped more than eight points to 25.3 per cent. The result was that the Liberals were reduced from 37 to only 11 seats in the province, while the NDP went from 17 to 22. That is an increase of only five seats for the New Democrats, despite gaining more new support than the Conservatives, who made a 21-seat gain.
[. . .]
Vote splits in Ontario were not responsible for every Conservative gain, however. In a riding like York Centre, the NDP candidate only gained about 2,200 new votes – not nearly enough to bridge the 6,400-vote gap separating Liberal Ken Dryden from the Conservative challenger and newly minted MP Mark Adler.
The 12 ridings that the Conservatives won in Ontario in large part due to vote-splitting would have reduced the Tory national total to 155 seats, the bare minimum for a majority government. But had vote splits in other parts of the country also been avoided, the Conservatives would have won 151 seats, four short of a majority.
In Wells' post, "On the impertinence of the NDP: a Liberal analysis", he disagrees strongly with this premise.
Fun fact: 155 is a majority. The Conservatives picked up 22 seats in Ontario on Monday, so blaming the NDP for running still leaves the Conservatives with 10 more seats than they had walking in. Give the dozen “split” seats to the Liberals and they would still have only 23 seats in Ontario.Had vote splits in other parts of the country also been avoided, the Conservatives would have won 151 seats – four short of a majority.
…and the Liberals would have had 60 seats. Whee. What good would that have done? None, unless the Liberals had teamed with… the much larger NDP caucus… to form a cooperation agreement to replace a Conservative government. So the basis of the whole analysis is a kind of exquisitely balanced wish: “If only the NDP had stayed out of our way, while continuing to beat BQ and Conservative MPs by the dozen from coast to coast.” Liberals who are whining about vote splits don’t even wish the NDP would go away: they just wish it would go away from a dozen and a half targeted ridings while going gangbusters elsewhere.
Especially given the Liberal Party's rejection of a coalition agreement with the NDP that might have seen the two parties agree not to run candidates against each other in certain ridings, instead opting to open combat with the NDP, blaming the failures of the Liberal Party to secure seats has most to do with the party's lack of appeal. Had the Liberals been more popular, would the NDP vote have surged in those ridings outside Québec where the Liberals lost seats? Had the Liberals chosen to enter into a coalition with the NDP that could easily have seen agreements not to run candidates against each other in certain ridings, would the Liberals have collapsed so much? Those dozen ridings hit by vote-splitting wouldn't have been hit had only the Liberals been a better party.
(Also, a commenter at Wells' post notes many of these Liberal voters may have gone to the Conservatives: there is a Liberal right, you know. Or was.)
