Canadian Politics

In high school I wrote a paper on the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) a progressive Vancouver municipal political party.

Vancouver has municipal elections every three years. The elections feature a wide variety of political parties. This past election had two major parties (30-50% support), two minor political parties (10-20% support) that got seats, and two completely new "more minor" parties (5-10% support) that didn't get seats.

Voting Hours
Canada has staged voting hours. Most of the seats are decided at 9:30pm EST.

Newfoundland Time 8:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m. (ends at 7pm EST)
-Newfoundland

Atlantic Time 8:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m. (ends at 7:30 EST)
-PEI
-Nova Scotia
-New Brunswick
-possibly one seat in very east Quebec

Eastern Time 9:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m. (ends at 9:30 EST)
-Ontario
-Quebec

Central Time 8:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m. (ends at 9:30 EST)
-Manitoba
-half of Saskatchewan

Mountain Time 7:30 a.m. – 7:30 p.m. (ends at 9:30 EST)
-half of Saskatchewan
-Alberta

Canada has a federal election scheduled for May 2, 2011.

I'm not sure what the opposition was thinking, but they decided to vote down the government even though the government has been doing well in the polls - so well that they might turn their minority into a majority. Last time they voted it down, the government was returned with a larger minority.

Recommended Websites
308 - predictions with poll averaging.
Democratic Space - another prediction site.

For the first time, the Canadian Green Party stands a realistic chance of winning a seat in current federal election.

It looks like they, after two elections of stagnated support (4.5%), they have intentionally embraced a strategy of vote-concentration. They've done this by forming a non-agression pact style alliance with the Liberals, allowing Green Party leader Elizabeth May to have a strong chance at winning her Central Nova riding in Nova Scotia.

Recently an assembly of Ontario citizens, convened by the Conservative government, recommended 80% in favor of mixed-member proportional system for voting.

The second place option - single transferable voting - only got 8%.

See the following excellent blog on Canadian politics (also features election result prediction):
Democratic Space Blog

In the last BC provincial election, a referendum to change to Single-Transferable-Vote (really not as good as proportional, but at least a change) got 57%, falling 3% short of what it needed to pass. Kind of strange that the referendum came from another rightwing government and a Citizen's Assembly. Strange also that they went with STV, whereas Ontario chose MMP.

Canadian election is today. You cannot get the results on the internet until everyone has finished voting (7pm EST), however people in Newfoundland finish voting 3 hours before.

6160 khz, shortwave, relays Newfoundland news and is covering the election. Unfortunately they have serious interference from 6165khz, so you need a good radio and to listen to it in LSB mode (ECSS - enhanced carrier selective sideband) or perhaps in AM with a really selective bandwidth with tight curves.

So far I've heard the Liberals are ahead in 4 seats, Conservatives in 2, and 1 didn't have results. But that's about all I can make out on my Sangean 909a due to 6165's interference.

Very strange polling. The SES polls consisently show a 3-5% bias in favor of the Liberals compared to those of Strategic Counseling, which is pretty serious because that can be the margin between the Conservatives or Liberals getting the most seats (if the Conservatives are only behind 3%, they might get more seats because their vote is more strategically concentrated), or the margin between a Liberal minority and majority (if the Liberals were stronger, more in the 41% area).

Election Polls

The bias seems to come from the remaining four parties rather equally (1-2% from the Greens, BQ, Conservatives and NDP -- hard to measure all that precisely with a good degree of precision).

Vancouver (Canada) has municipal elections every three years. These elections include mayor, ten city councilors (elected at-large), school board, and parks board.

Canadian municipal politics differ from the US notably in the proliferation of local parties that often lack direct ties to their provincial and national counterparts.

Thie time the rightwing NPA (badly named "Non Partisan Association") won a small majority. The previous election COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors) won its biggest
majority in a long time. After getting in power, COPE had a
left/right split with the larger right (which included the mayor)