Apr.29

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

F Trump, Eh?

Yes, that headline is a little on the crude side. However, Canadians are both very polite and very angry right now. We thought about it all day long, and decided that headline best captured the dynamics of the situation.

As expected, Canada's Liberal Party, along with its leader PM Mark Carney, had a very good day in yesterday's federal elections. As of 2:00 a.m. PT, the breakdown of the ridings is as follows:

An outright majority requires 172 seats. At the moment, the Liberals don't seem like they're quite going to make it, though it looks like they'll be able to form a government in partnership with just one of the minority parties, presumably the NDP. The current government is made up of 151 Liberals along with 24 members of the NDP and 2 Greens. In the new government, the Liberals will thus be an even more senior partner than they were previously, largely as a result of having taken seats from the NDP.

The Conservatives' results were mixed, but will largely leave Party members unhappy. In the current Parliament, the Tories have 120 seats, so they are going to improve on that, largely at the expense of opposition partners Bloc Québécois. And the Party is going to take roughly 41.5% of the vote, which is better than the 39.6% in 2011 that allowed the Conservatives to claim their most recent majority. However, these successes are pretty small consolation, as Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre did not win the premiership, despite that outcome appearing inevitable just a few months ago. Further, Poilievre is in danger of losing his own seat, representing Carleton. With roughly 95% reporting, Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy has 50% of the vote, as compared to 47% for Poilievre.

And Poilievre isn't the only party leader to have a bad night. The left-wing NDP lost "official party" status, which means they lose certain federal funding, as well as the guaranteed right to ask questions during the prime minister's question time. And NDP leader Jagmeet Singh not only watched many of his colleagues get tossed out on their rears, he himself finished a distant third in his riding, Burnaby Central. Singh is a victim of both the electoral shift, as well as redistricting that made his riding less lefty.

But wait, there's more. The Greens have two members in the current parliament, and they serve as co-leaders of the Party. We suppose it would be pretty hard to have any other arrangement. But now, Jonathan Pedneault is also out on his rear, having finished fifth in his riding, Outremont, which is part of the Montreal suburbs. As a result, the only Green left standing is Elizabeth May, who represents Saanich-Gulf Islands in southern British Columbia. It is now going to be very easy to organize meetings of the Green Parliamentary Caucus.

Of course, the leader who got the biggest poke in the eye isn't even Canadian. That would be one Donald John Trump, whose tariffs and strange, stupid threats to annex the Great White North remade yesterday's election. As Canadians prepared to head to the polls, Trump sent this out on his strange, stupid social media platform:

Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!

Is he tone deaf? Clueless? Does he think this makes him look strong for the MAGA base? Carney and the Liberals couldn't have asked for more of an assist than this—you know, just in case Canadian voters needed a reminder of what they are so angry about.

While we were thinking about our headline yesterday, we were also trying to think of any case where the leader of one country had such a profound impact on the elections in another country. But for Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt would not have stood for a third term in 1940, so there's that. But for Ho Chi Minh, Lyndon B. Johnson would likely have run again, and won, in 1968. However, in those two examples, Hitler and Ho's impact was supplemented by global trends (the response to World War I/the Great Depression in one case, and the Cold War in another), and besides, it took years for their impacts to manifest. By contrast, Trump conjured Canadian anger out of thin air, and he did it in less than 100 days. There are probably a few precedents for that, across all the nations of the world, and all the millennia, but they must be pretty rare.

An interesting question is what the result would have been yesterday if Justin Trudeau had not resigned as PM back in March. The Conservatives invested all their energies in tearing him down, and struggled to recalibrate when he suddenly stepped down. Were he still the PM, a lot of Canadian voters would have been compelled to decide who they dislike more—Trudeau or Trump. We would guess that resentment of Trump would still have carried the day, but that's just a guess. And because Trudeau took one for the team, and fell on his sword, we will never know. In any case, barring very surprising developments, Trump will now face a Liberal, largely hostile administration in Canada for the rest of his term. (Z)