With elections being held in Tunisia and Egypt, sites of successful popular uprisings which overthrew dictators, it is interesting to note the role of Islam in the Arab Spring movement. The actual protests that made up the Arab Spring in these countries were remarkable in that the Islamists had virtually no role in them. They were popular uprisings by people whose frustration with dictatorship finally boiled over. The fact that the Islamists were not involved is particularly striking because Islamism has for the last 20 years or so been the primary social force opposing the dictatorships. Most of these dictatorships had successfully eliminated, through murder, torture, and imprisonment the various left wing movements (with US help of course) back during the Cold War, thus leaving Islam as the only social opposition.
The fact that the protests were not organized by the Islamists, and that the Islamists did not join in and try to hijack the protests is then one of the most interesting aspects of the whole Arab Spring phenomena. The reason that the Islamists were not getting involved is precisely because Islam, like all religions, is by nature anti-political. The street protests, which were disorderly and turbulent as all good popular uprisings are, were a fundamental outbreak of politics. Islamism is deeply suspicious to the point of being hostile to anything political, and thus refrained from taking part.
Now that the popular uprisings in these two countries are over, and the political outbreak has fallen back into the regular situation of anti-political statism, it is interesting that the Islamists are now all of a sudden the major player in shaping how these countries will now be run. They are winning the elections, amid the continued weakness of left wing and secular organizing, and now rather than the potential for a flourishing of political involvement and new found freedom in Egypt and Tunisia, the best we can hope for is that the elected Islamists will be soft Islamists, like Turkey's Justice and Development Party, rather than hard Islamists like the Iranian or Saudi regimes.
So Islamism with its anti-political outlook shuns the actual political moment of people coming together to overthrow the dictator, but as soon as we are back to a normal situation where the people are alienated from politics, this time in the guise of electoral democracy as opposed to dictatorship, Islamism jumps in and posits that these societies should be run according to anti-political Islamic principles. What we learn from this is not that we should be suspicious of popular uprisings for fear that religious fanatics will end up taking over once the political moment has subsided, but that there needs to be some kind of organized secular left political program that can be adopted by the revolutionaries. Islam won out because there was no other organized option, the protesters were saying we want the dictator gone, but had no coherent program to put in place once he was gone.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Ideology, Capitalism, and Science
The function of science and technology as an ideological support for capitalism has fundamentally changed in recent years. While previously, as pointed out by the Frankfurt School, science and technology under the guise of objective neutrality, would be constantly evoked by the bourgeois as justification for capitalism. The argument operated in that capitalism was seen as scientific, a natural system based on the observation of natural interaction between human beings, and that capitalism facilitated technological development.
Today science and technology now longer plays the role of an ideological support for capitalism. It has become virtually impossible to rationalize the dominance of capitalism by appeals to science and technology. Science is increasingly critical of capitalism, with the best example being global warming. Science here runs up head on against capitalism, as science demands the economy be altered to deal with this problem, while capital is weary of change since it is driven by short term profit. Technology is increasingly becoming an obstacle to capitalism rather than its product, the digitialization of media makes distributing content over the internet a simple process. Thus we have the big media corporations, such as the music industry, waging a continued war against technological change since it threatens their profit.
The interesting aspect of this reversal of the role of science and technology as ideological supports for capitalism, is that it needed to look elsewhere for such support and found it in the realm of religion. Today's neoliberal form of capitalism everywhere in the world aligns itself with religious movements in order to maintain hegemony. In the United States it is evangelical Christianity, in Turkey it is Islam, in China and Singapore it is traditional "Asian values", in India it is Hinduism. This alliance between religion and capital is then harnessed to attack science and novel technologies as not just undermining capitalism, but as undermining moral values. Climate change is then not simply an inconvenient truth which requires political and economic change, but a competing world view which is inherently irreligious and immoral.
For this reason leftist activists need to align themselves with science and technology and explicitly oppose the resurgence of religion. Unfortunately due to the continued popularity of postmodernism among the left, there remains a hostility to the grand narrative and universality of science, in favour of the particularized local truth claims of religion. In this way the postmodern left is operating as a de facto ideological supplement to capitalism, and this is why the left is failing as a truly oppositional movement in recent times.
Today science and technology now longer plays the role of an ideological support for capitalism. It has become virtually impossible to rationalize the dominance of capitalism by appeals to science and technology. Science is increasingly critical of capitalism, with the best example being global warming. Science here runs up head on against capitalism, as science demands the economy be altered to deal with this problem, while capital is weary of change since it is driven by short term profit. Technology is increasingly becoming an obstacle to capitalism rather than its product, the digitialization of media makes distributing content over the internet a simple process. Thus we have the big media corporations, such as the music industry, waging a continued war against technological change since it threatens their profit.
The interesting aspect of this reversal of the role of science and technology as ideological supports for capitalism, is that it needed to look elsewhere for such support and found it in the realm of religion. Today's neoliberal form of capitalism everywhere in the world aligns itself with religious movements in order to maintain hegemony. In the United States it is evangelical Christianity, in Turkey it is Islam, in China and Singapore it is traditional "Asian values", in India it is Hinduism. This alliance between religion and capital is then harnessed to attack science and novel technologies as not just undermining capitalism, but as undermining moral values. Climate change is then not simply an inconvenient truth which requires political and economic change, but a competing world view which is inherently irreligious and immoral.
For this reason leftist activists need to align themselves with science and technology and explicitly oppose the resurgence of religion. Unfortunately due to the continued popularity of postmodernism among the left, there remains a hostility to the grand narrative and universality of science, in favour of the particularized local truth claims of religion. In this way the postmodern left is operating as a de facto ideological supplement to capitalism, and this is why the left is failing as a truly oppositional movement in recent times.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Proposal for Online Voting in Canada
Elections Canada is finally proposing to do a test of internet-based voting for a byelection sometime around 2013. Being able to vote over the internet seems like a no-brainer. It will make it much easier and more convenient to vote. Online voting is especially needed in order to get youth to vote. It would also help in rural areas where people may need a car to drive to the nearest polling station kilometres away. There are also many people who intend to vote, but are just plain to busy that day to go out to the polling station, voting over the internet could be done from anywhere and would take less than five minutes.
Despite these benefits, reaction to online voting in the comments sections of the various news article is quite hostile. I find this surprising, so I will go ahead and counter some of the common themes.
1. Online voting will trivialize the democratic process.
This complaint is first of all based on a flawed premise, that elections are somehow monumental acts of democracy not to be tampered with. In reality elections are only minimally democratic, and due to the electoral system in Canada, chances are your vote will not even matter anyway. However the thrust behind this complaint stems from seeing all these trivial polls on news sites or blogs where you click your answer, get the results right away, and if you want simply refresh the page or clear your cookies and keep voting again. Obviously this would not be how an election would be run. Furthermore there is an inherent anti-technology bias in the idea that voting through the medium of the internet is somehow less serious than voting in person. The same kind of attitude is behind the sentiment that acting like a jackass on the internet is perfectly acceptable because "it's not real life!". This of course is a ridiculous notion, like if I went into work and acted like an idiot, and told them it's ok because this is not real life, my real life begins at 5pm each day.
2. Online voting puts the secret ballot into question.
This complaint stems from a basic lack of understanding of computer programming. You can have two separate databases to store the information, one will have a list of all eligible voters, and will simply put a true once they have cast their ballot. In another database the candidate who was voted for will be saved, with no link to the other database. The only way someone could figure out who you voted for would be if they could intercept the packets going from your computer to the Elections Canada server (albeit a trivial task) and then crack the encryption, which is not feasible for anyone without a supercomputer, and even then it would take much more time than its worth to know that information.
3. Lack of a paper trail/susceptibility to hackers
Here we have kind of the opposite of above, internet voting is too secret. Here we have the paranoid idea that since the results are stored in computers they are somehow less real, and could disappear or be changed easily. The databases storing the results would obviously need to be extremely secure to prevent being targeted by hackers. Ensuring security should be the highest priority and could be accomplished. The advantage is that the data collected is really only sensitive for one day. As soon as the results have been announced, the data results are made public, and any compromise is irrelevant.
4. Lack of security, possibility for fraud
This complaint is by far the strangest, as voting through the internet would dramatically enhance security and minimize fraud. The current system has multiple avenues for fraud, the first being the ease of voting multiple times. Let's assume you have lived in 3 different ridings within the same city over the past 3 years. You have a driver's licence with address 1 on it, a health card with address 2 on it, and a hydro bill with address 3 on it. Show up to the appropriate polling station in each of those ridings and you will easily be able to vote in each one of them. Let's say your parents live nearby in another riding, show up to the polls with them when they vote, have them declare the oath vouching that you live with them and you can vote there. Let's say your partner lives in 5th riding, show up to the poll and again get them to vouch, you've now voted in 5 separate ridings. If you live in a large city you could do this in a space of an hour or two. If you vote through the internet, you will only get one vote. Furthermore at the old fashioned polling stations they would have computers to check the central database as to whether you have voted or not, thus eliminating this rather simple means of fraud altogether. Considering the efforts political parties take to get people out to vote on voting day, this sort of small scale fraud is likely commonplace in the current system.
As for security, the current system relies on humans to run the process. Humans make mistakes, and humans can have agendas and be corruptible. Considering the decrepit old, and quite often confused senior citizens that make up the bulk of Elections Canada's polling day staff, there are likely countless errors of oversight. Last election I witnessed someone being sent to the wrong polling station while the polling staff were busy chatting to other people. Then the polling staff have to count the ballots. Computers without a doubt are infinitely better counters than humans are. In close races there are automatic recounts because the counting abilities of the returning officer and poll workers are considered to be inherently flawed. Interpreting markings would also not be an issue, and there would be fewer questionable ballots that would need to be looked at to determine whether it is a spoiled ballot or the voter is just really bad at marking an X.
Human error is the most likely case for mistakes in the voting and counting process, but someone with fraudulent intent could clearly distort the results by preventing certain people from voting or purposely skewing the count. Such people would be entirely taken out of the process in a computerized system.
5. Online voting would make it too easy to give away your vote
Here the fear is that if your idiot neighbour doesn't intend on voting, you convince them to give you their voting access number (if such a system would even be used) and then you can vote for them. A secure system would require some sort of personal identification to go along with your vote, a social insurance number, driver's license number, or other such things to be used as a password. It's unlikely your idiot neighbour will be willing to give you his SIN along with his vote, since this opens up identity theft issues. Besides up until the last two elections which required you to show ID at the poll, you simply needed to show your voter registration card you got in the mail. Anyone could simply go around, collect up all their neighbour's registration cards, and then literally vote early and vote often. The fraud potential inherent in the current system is again much greater than with an online voting system, but because people are used to it, they do not even think about it.
Despite these baseless complaints, I would argue that the real fear is that online voting could set a dangerous democratic precedent. If voting is a simple process that is in no way a hassle, and results in quick and efficient election results, why not allow more input from citizens on other issues? The internet has the potential to radically reinvigorate politics, because it makes the cause for representation obsolete. The old idea that political democracy does not work because people are too busy with their lives to go to townhall meetings, listen to speeches, argue their positions, and vote on issues all the time, thus we need representatives is rendered moot by the internet's ability to compress time and space. The resurgence of politics and the breaking of our anti-political deadlock where we are administrated by elected dictators is the real threat behind this fear of online voting. You would expect this kind of paranoia from capital, political elites, and the media, but it is surprising coming from regular people. However due to the sheer hegemony of the anti-political ideology of the neoliberal state, it is no wonder that people have both adopted this idea that politics is bad and that anything that may allow more participation is bad.
Despite these benefits, reaction to online voting in the comments sections of the various news article is quite hostile. I find this surprising, so I will go ahead and counter some of the common themes.
1. Online voting will trivialize the democratic process.
This complaint is first of all based on a flawed premise, that elections are somehow monumental acts of democracy not to be tampered with. In reality elections are only minimally democratic, and due to the electoral system in Canada, chances are your vote will not even matter anyway. However the thrust behind this complaint stems from seeing all these trivial polls on news sites or blogs where you click your answer, get the results right away, and if you want simply refresh the page or clear your cookies and keep voting again. Obviously this would not be how an election would be run. Furthermore there is an inherent anti-technology bias in the idea that voting through the medium of the internet is somehow less serious than voting in person. The same kind of attitude is behind the sentiment that acting like a jackass on the internet is perfectly acceptable because "it's not real life!". This of course is a ridiculous notion, like if I went into work and acted like an idiot, and told them it's ok because this is not real life, my real life begins at 5pm each day.
2. Online voting puts the secret ballot into question.
This complaint stems from a basic lack of understanding of computer programming. You can have two separate databases to store the information, one will have a list of all eligible voters, and will simply put a true once they have cast their ballot. In another database the candidate who was voted for will be saved, with no link to the other database. The only way someone could figure out who you voted for would be if they could intercept the packets going from your computer to the Elections Canada server (albeit a trivial task) and then crack the encryption, which is not feasible for anyone without a supercomputer, and even then it would take much more time than its worth to know that information.
3. Lack of a paper trail/susceptibility to hackers
Here we have kind of the opposite of above, internet voting is too secret. Here we have the paranoid idea that since the results are stored in computers they are somehow less real, and could disappear or be changed easily. The databases storing the results would obviously need to be extremely secure to prevent being targeted by hackers. Ensuring security should be the highest priority and could be accomplished. The advantage is that the data collected is really only sensitive for one day. As soon as the results have been announced, the data results are made public, and any compromise is irrelevant.
4. Lack of security, possibility for fraud
This complaint is by far the strangest, as voting through the internet would dramatically enhance security and minimize fraud. The current system has multiple avenues for fraud, the first being the ease of voting multiple times. Let's assume you have lived in 3 different ridings within the same city over the past 3 years. You have a driver's licence with address 1 on it, a health card with address 2 on it, and a hydro bill with address 3 on it. Show up to the appropriate polling station in each of those ridings and you will easily be able to vote in each one of them. Let's say your parents live nearby in another riding, show up to the polls with them when they vote, have them declare the oath vouching that you live with them and you can vote there. Let's say your partner lives in 5th riding, show up to the poll and again get them to vouch, you've now voted in 5 separate ridings. If you live in a large city you could do this in a space of an hour or two. If you vote through the internet, you will only get one vote. Furthermore at the old fashioned polling stations they would have computers to check the central database as to whether you have voted or not, thus eliminating this rather simple means of fraud altogether. Considering the efforts political parties take to get people out to vote on voting day, this sort of small scale fraud is likely commonplace in the current system.
As for security, the current system relies on humans to run the process. Humans make mistakes, and humans can have agendas and be corruptible. Considering the decrepit old, and quite often confused senior citizens that make up the bulk of Elections Canada's polling day staff, there are likely countless errors of oversight. Last election I witnessed someone being sent to the wrong polling station while the polling staff were busy chatting to other people. Then the polling staff have to count the ballots. Computers without a doubt are infinitely better counters than humans are. In close races there are automatic recounts because the counting abilities of the returning officer and poll workers are considered to be inherently flawed. Interpreting markings would also not be an issue, and there would be fewer questionable ballots that would need to be looked at to determine whether it is a spoiled ballot or the voter is just really bad at marking an X.
Human error is the most likely case for mistakes in the voting and counting process, but someone with fraudulent intent could clearly distort the results by preventing certain people from voting or purposely skewing the count. Such people would be entirely taken out of the process in a computerized system.
5. Online voting would make it too easy to give away your vote
Here the fear is that if your idiot neighbour doesn't intend on voting, you convince them to give you their voting access number (if such a system would even be used) and then you can vote for them. A secure system would require some sort of personal identification to go along with your vote, a social insurance number, driver's license number, or other such things to be used as a password. It's unlikely your idiot neighbour will be willing to give you his SIN along with his vote, since this opens up identity theft issues. Besides up until the last two elections which required you to show ID at the poll, you simply needed to show your voter registration card you got in the mail. Anyone could simply go around, collect up all their neighbour's registration cards, and then literally vote early and vote often. The fraud potential inherent in the current system is again much greater than with an online voting system, but because people are used to it, they do not even think about it.
Despite these baseless complaints, I would argue that the real fear is that online voting could set a dangerous democratic precedent. If voting is a simple process that is in no way a hassle, and results in quick and efficient election results, why not allow more input from citizens on other issues? The internet has the potential to radically reinvigorate politics, because it makes the cause for representation obsolete. The old idea that political democracy does not work because people are too busy with their lives to go to townhall meetings, listen to speeches, argue their positions, and vote on issues all the time, thus we need representatives is rendered moot by the internet's ability to compress time and space. The resurgence of politics and the breaking of our anti-political deadlock where we are administrated by elected dictators is the real threat behind this fear of online voting. You would expect this kind of paranoia from capital, political elites, and the media, but it is surprising coming from regular people. However due to the sheer hegemony of the anti-political ideology of the neoliberal state, it is no wonder that people have both adopted this idea that politics is bad and that anything that may allow more participation is bad.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
2011 Canadian Election Results and Analysis
The Conservatives have got their majority, and Stephen Harper will be able to operate a "benign dictatorship" (his own description of majority governments, circa 1997) for the next four years. The rise of the NDP is awesome, as is the death of the Bloc Quebecois. The Liberals are where they deserve to be, way back in 3rd place. It seems that with Ignatieff as leader, someone who represents the right side of the party, the usual Liberal strategy of pretend to be the NDP during the election, only to become the Conservatives once in power, was finally seen as transparent by voters.
Who the next leader of the Liberal party will be could decide their fortunes. If it is Bob Rae, the party will continue to flounder. It seems like Justin Trudeau is the natural choice. The party desperately needs a fresh face, and Trudeau is it. His politics are also completely wishy-washy, which makes him the perfect Liberal. It would be a big risk for them to go with Trudeau, but they really have no one else who wouldn't be considered old guard, and part of the same tainted collapse. What will really be interesting is what happens with the Bloc Quebecois, which has long been a right-wing nationalist party, with personally popular and likable left wing leader. That odd combination led to the Bloc being popular both with their rural conservative base, and among urban leftists, who make up the bulk of Quebec's population. With Duceppe gone, the party will likely take a sharp right turn, and they could lose the urban majority once and for all.
The real question however is how did the Conservatives manage a majority, when every pre-election poll had them just short? Most polls had the Conservatives in the 36-38% range just before the election, while the Liberals were in the 20-22% range. The Conservatives finished with 39.6% and the Liberals with 18.9%. What this indicates is that there was likely a last minute panic by the right wing of the Liberal Party, who decided to "strategically vote" Conservative in order to block the surging NDP. Of course if you believed sites like projectdemocracy.ca, the Liberals and NDP are interchangeable left wing parties and their voters would do anything to stop the Conservatives. Turns out a lot of Liberals would prefer a Conservative majority to an NDP-Liberal coalition led by Jack Layton.
The other major pickup for the Conservatives was with cultural groups. The Conservatives in Canada realized that demonizing immigrants like the European far right parties wouldn't play well here, and that the most insidious form of racism is actually the multi-cultural impulse to treat individuals as mindless automatons defined by their religion or ethnicity. It looks like all their pandering to these groups and their "ethnic costumes" as the Conservatives called them, paid off. This confirms what I have been saying for awhile, that the left needs to stake out a thoroughly anti-culture position, one that is cosmopolitan and treats people as unique individuals, not as parts of groups defined by their heritage or religion. When people self-identify as part of a cultural group, this generates an inherently conservative mindset, it puts up walls between us and them, and personal interests are sacrificed in favour of the inherently conservative group interests defined by religion or cultural tradition. Being on the left means breaking down cultural walls and helping people escape from the status of being a minority, not playing to it. This should be part of the NDP's strategy over the next 4 years, unfortunately however, due to the continued influenced of the failed academic trend of postmodernism on much of the left, culture is still seen as something that is inherently good.
This election also demonstrated how the Tellurian economy generates an inherently conservative outlook. The oil regions of Alberta and Saskatchewan in combination with the farmland of Southern Ontario have gone solidly Conservative. It looks like capitalism still needs to make some progress in saving us from the idiocy of rural life.
The election has also demonstrated how little engagement there is with what is actually going on in parliament, and confirms my continued assertion that the average person is extremely opposed to politics. Another meagre turnout of 61%, second lowest in history demonstrates that with all this talk of youth voting. Secondly the Conservatives started the campaign complaining about how elections are unnecessary, and how they should be given a majority so that the populace would not have to be saddled with the horrors of another election for 4 years. Considering how thoroughly disenfranchising and alienating electoral democracy is, elections are the sole time anything political actually takes place, and that people voted for a party which ran a message-track which was explicitly anti-political, it seems a good 40% of Canadians would be quite happy being rid of politics altogether.
On top of this general antipathy towards anything political itself, we have the shocking ignorance or direct disregard of what actually happens in parliament by voters. Voters in Durham, Ontario re-elected Cabinet Minister Bev Oda in a landslide victory. She garnered 54% of the vote, and won by over 19,000 votes, despite the fact she was found in contempt of parliament for lying. No one has ever been found in contempt of parliament in Canada, or even in any Commonwealth country before, but she is rewarded with a massive victory. This just goes to show that most people who vote are completely ignorant of what they are actually doing, and do not pay attention to anything that actually goes on in parliament. Being disengaged but actually voting is certainly much much worse than being disengaged and not voting.
Then there is the electoral system. Again through a trick of the first past the post system, a party in which 60% of the population votes against, end up with 54% of the seats in parliament and gets to rule unconditionally for the next four years. First past the post only works when there are two parties, and is completely unsuited to Canada. Hopefully now that the Liberals have experienced the pain of being massively underrepresented by the electoral system, they will come around and start to favour electoral reform. Probably not though. At least the NDP and Elizabeth May will provide a voice for this issue.
Now as I promised in previous posts, here is what things would like like today, if instead of using the current first past the post system, we used a preferential mixed member system. To recap, in such a system, we had have the same 308 ridings, but you would be able to rank candidates in order of preference, thus ensuring vote splitting is not an issue and the preferred candidate would actually win. There would be an additional 105 seats (the same number as the abolished Senate) which would be distributed according to popular vote, and would be allocated to candidates according to a biggest loser system, thus meaning that dense underrepresented urban ridings with large populations, may end up with multiple Members of Parliament to better represent them and deal with local constituency level backlogs.
Under the current system, the results were as follows:
Conservatives, 167 seats, 39.6% of the popular vote, and winning 54.2% of parliament.
NDP, 102 seats, 30.6% of popular vote, 33.1% of parliament.
Liberals, 34 seats, 18.9% popular vote, 11% of parliament.
Bloc Quebecois, 4 seats, 6% popular vote, 1.3% of parliament.
Green Party, 1 seat, 3.9% popular vote, 0.3% of parliament.
Now under my proposed system of PMMP (Preferential Mixed-Member Proportional) we would get:
Conservatives 145 riding wins + 19 PR seats = 164 total = 39.7% of parliament
NDP 116 riding wins + 11 PR seats = 127 total = 30.8% of parliament
Liberals 44 rinding wins + 35 PR seats = 79 total = 19.1% of parliament
Bloc Quebecois 1 riding win + 24 PR seats = 25 total = 6.1% of parliament
Green Party 1 riding win + 16 PR seats = 17 total = 4.1% of parliament
As you can see, the totals in parliament actually line up with what people voted for, and the Conservatives certainly do not get a majority government with less than 40% of the votes.
Ridings which would change hands based on preferential voting (second choice numbers from the May 1st EKOS poll are used):
Newfoundland
Labrador: Liberal Todd Russel preferred over Conservative Peter Penashue
Nova Scotia
South Shore--St. Margaret's: NDP Gordon Earle preferred over Conservative Gerald Keddy
New Brunswick
Moncton--Riverview--Dieppe: Liberal Brian Murphy preferred over Conservative Robert Goguen
Quebec
Ahuntsic: NDP Chantal Reeves preferred over BQ Maria Mourani
Lotbinière--Chutes-de-la-Chaudière: NDP Tanya Fredette preferred over Conservative Jacques Gourde
Papineau: NDP Marcos Tejada preferred over Liberal Justin Trudeau
Bas-Richelieu--Nicolet--Bécancour: NDP Krista Lalonde preferred over BQ Louis Plamondon
Richmond--Arthabaska: NDP Isabelle Maguire preferred over BQ Andre Bellavance
Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup: NDP Francois Lapointe preferred over Conservative Bernard Genereux
Westmount--Ville-Marie: NDP Joanne Corbeil preferred over Liberal Marc Garneau
Ontario
Bramalea--Gore--Malton: NDP Jagmeet Singh preferred over Conservative Bal Gosal
Don Valley East: Liberal Yasmin Ratansi preferred over Conservative Joe Daniel
Don Valley West: Liberal Rob Oliphant preferred over Conservative John Carmichael
Etobicoke Centre: Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj preferred over Conservative Ted Opitz
Kitchener--Waterloo: Liberal Andrew Telegdi preferred over Conservative Peter Braid
London North Centre: Liberal Glen Pearson preferred over Conservative Susan "Koopa" Truppe
Mississauga East--Cooksville: Liberal Peter Fonseca preferred over Conservative Wladyslaw Lizon
Nipissing--Timiskaming: Liberal Anthony Rota preferred over Conservative Jay Aspin
Pickering--Scarborough East: Liberal Dan McTeague preferred over Conservative Cornelius Chisu
Sault Ste. Marie: NDP Tony Martin preferred over Conservative Bryan Hayes
Scarborough Centre: LIberal John Cannis preferred over Conservative Roxanne James
Willowdale: Liberal Martha Hall-Findlay preferred over Conservative Chungsen Leung
Manitoba
Elmwood--Transcona: NDP Jim Malloway preferred over Conservative Lawrence Toet
Winnipeg North: NDP Rebecca Blaikie preferred over Liberal Kevin Lamoureux
Winnipeg South Centre: Liberal Anita Neville preferred over Conservative Joyce Bateman
Saskatchewan
Palliser: NDP Noah Evanchuk preferred over Conservative Ray Boughen
British Colombia
Vancouver Island North: NDP Ronna-Rae Leonard preferred over Conservative John Duncan
Yukon
Yukon: Liberal Larry Bagnell preferred over Conservative Ryan Leef
The 105 seats assigned by popular vote would go to the following candidates in the specified ridings, thus these ridings would be represented by the preferred candidate plus the following:
Vancouver Island North: Conservative John Duncan
Kitchener--Waterloo: Conservative Peter Braid
Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca: Conservative Troy DeSouza
Saanich--Gulf Islands: Conservative Gary Lunn
Nanaimo--Cowichan: Conservative John Koury
Don Valley West: Consevative John Carmichael
Lotbinière--Chutes-de-la-Chaudière: Conservative Jacques Gourde
Willowdale: Conservative Chungsen Leung
Etobicoke Centre: Conservative Ted Opitz
Louis-Saint-Laurent: Conservative Josee Verner
Kingston and the Islands: Conservative Alicia Gordon
Welland: Conservative Leanna Villella
Vancouver Quadra: Conservative Deborah Meredith
New Westminster--Coquitlam: Conservative Dianna Dilworth
Burnaby--Douglas: Conservative Ronald Leung
Bramalea--Gore--Malton: Conservative Bal Gosal
Edmonton--Strathcona: Conservative Ryan Hastman
Ottawa South: Conservative Elie Salibi
London North Centre: Conservative Susan "Koopa" Truppe
Nanaimo--Alberni: NDP Zenaida Maartman
Kamloops--Thompson--Cariboo: NDP Michael Crawford
Lévis--Bellechasse: NDP Nicole Laliberté
Oshawa: NDP Chris Buckley
Pitt Meadows--Maple Ridge--Mission: NDP Craig Speirs
Essex: NDP Taras Nadyshak
Edmonton East: NDP Ray Martin
Brant: NDP Marc Laferriere
Toronto Centre: NDP Susan Wallace
Fleetwood--Port Kells: NDP Nao Fernando
Lac-Saint-Louis: NDP Alain Ackad
Oak Ridges--Markham: Liberal Lui Temelkovski
Ottawa--Orléans: Liberal David Bertschi
Brampton West: Liberal Andrew Kania
Ajax--Pickering: Liberal Mark Holland
Mississauga--Erindale: Liberal Omar Alghabra
Halton: Liberal Connie Laurin-Bowie
Vaughan: Liberal Mario Ferri
Nepean--Carleton: LIberal Ryan Keon
Etobicoke--Lakeshore: Liberal Michael Ignatieff
Mississauga--Streetsville: Liberal Bonnie Crombie
Eglinton--Lawrence: Liberal Joe Volpe
Mississauga--Brampton South: Liberal Navdeep Bains
Mississauga South: Liberal Paul Szabo
Carleton--Mississippi Mills: Liberal Karen McCrimmon
Oakville: LIberal Max Khan
Ottawa West--Nepean: Liberal Anita Vandenbeld
Richmond Hill: Liberal Byron Wilfert
Glengarry--Prescott--Russell: Liberal Julie Bourgeois
North Vancouver: Liberal Taleeb Noormohammed
Brossard--La Prairie: Liberal Alexandra Mendes
Parkdale--High Park: Liberal Gerard Kennedy
London West: Liberal Doug Ferguson
Papineau: Liberal Justin Trudeau
Bramalea--Gore--Malton: Liberal Gurbax Malhi
West Nova: Liberal Robert Thibault
Vancouver South: Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh
Kitchener Centre: Liberal Karen Redman
Westmount--Ville-Marie: Liberal Marc Garneau
Trinity--Spadina: Liberal Christine Innes
Dartmouth--Cole Harbour: LIberal Mike Savage
Beaches--East York: Liberal Maria Minna
Ancaster--Dundas--Flamborough--Westdale: Liberal Dave Braden
Honoré-Mercier: Liberal Pablo Rodriguez
Pierrefonds--Dollard: Liberal Bernard Patry
Newton--North Delta: Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Verchères--Les Patriotes: BQ Luc Malo
Montcalm: BQ Roger Gaudet
Repentigny: BQ Nicolas Dufor
Chambly--Borduas: BQ Yves Lessard
Bas-Richelieu--Nicolet--Bécancour: BQ Louis Plamondon
Joliette: BQ Pierre Paquette
Sherbrooke: BQ Serge Cardin
Beauharnois--Salaberry: BQ Claude Debellefeuille
Richmond--Arthabaska: BQ Andre Bellavance
Laurier--Sainte-Marie: BQ Gilles Duceppe
Vaudreuil-Soulanges: BQ Meilli Feille
Laurentides--Labelle: BQ Johanne Deschamps
Rosemont--La Petite-Patrie: BQ Bernard Bigras
Terrebonne--Blainville: Dianne Bourgeois
Argenteuil--Papineau--Mirabel: BQ Mario Laframboise
Berthier--Maskinongé: BQ Guy Andre
Montmorency--Charlevoix--Haute-Côte-Nord: BQ Michel Guimond
Saint-Jean: BQ Claude Bachand
Marc-Aurèle-Fortin: BQ Marie-France Charboneau
La Pointe-de-l'Île: BQ Ginette Beaudry
Saint-Bruno--Saint-Hubert: BQ Carole Lavallee
Abitibi--Témiscamingue: BQ Marc Lemay
Rivière-du-Nord: BQ Monique Guay
Châteauguay--Saint-Constant: BQ Carole Freeman
Vancouver Centre: Green Adriane Carr
Dufferin--Caledon: Green Ard Van Leeuwen
Victoria: Green Jared Giesbrecht
Calgary Centre-North: Green Heather Macintosh
Calgary West: Green Anna-Lisa Wagner
Okanagan--Shuswap: Green Greig Crockett
Calgary Centre: Green William Hamilton
Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca: Green Shauna Salsman
Kelowna--Lake Country: Green Alice Hooper
Bruce--Grey--Owen Sound: Green Emma Hogbin
Nanaimo--Cowichan: Green Anne-Marie Benoit
Okanagan--Coquihalla: Green Dan Bouchard
West Vancouver--Sunshine Coast--Sea to Sky Country: Green Brennan Wauters
Nanaimo--Alberni: Green Myron Jespersen
Wild Rose: Green Mike MacDonald
Calgary Southeast: Green Brett Spencer
As you can see, most of the close races would give both candidates a seat, and large ridings will get more than one MP.
Clearly this system would produce a much more accurate representation of how Canadians actually voted. Today on CBC the NDP expressed support for electoral reform, while the Liberals remain skeptical, despite being grossly underrepresented in this parliament.
Who the next leader of the Liberal party will be could decide their fortunes. If it is Bob Rae, the party will continue to flounder. It seems like Justin Trudeau is the natural choice. The party desperately needs a fresh face, and Trudeau is it. His politics are also completely wishy-washy, which makes him the perfect Liberal. It would be a big risk for them to go with Trudeau, but they really have no one else who wouldn't be considered old guard, and part of the same tainted collapse. What will really be interesting is what happens with the Bloc Quebecois, which has long been a right-wing nationalist party, with personally popular and likable left wing leader. That odd combination led to the Bloc being popular both with their rural conservative base, and among urban leftists, who make up the bulk of Quebec's population. With Duceppe gone, the party will likely take a sharp right turn, and they could lose the urban majority once and for all.
The real question however is how did the Conservatives manage a majority, when every pre-election poll had them just short? Most polls had the Conservatives in the 36-38% range just before the election, while the Liberals were in the 20-22% range. The Conservatives finished with 39.6% and the Liberals with 18.9%. What this indicates is that there was likely a last minute panic by the right wing of the Liberal Party, who decided to "strategically vote" Conservative in order to block the surging NDP. Of course if you believed sites like projectdemocracy.ca, the Liberals and NDP are interchangeable left wing parties and their voters would do anything to stop the Conservatives. Turns out a lot of Liberals would prefer a Conservative majority to an NDP-Liberal coalition led by Jack Layton.
The other major pickup for the Conservatives was with cultural groups. The Conservatives in Canada realized that demonizing immigrants like the European far right parties wouldn't play well here, and that the most insidious form of racism is actually the multi-cultural impulse to treat individuals as mindless automatons defined by their religion or ethnicity. It looks like all their pandering to these groups and their "ethnic costumes" as the Conservatives called them, paid off. This confirms what I have been saying for awhile, that the left needs to stake out a thoroughly anti-culture position, one that is cosmopolitan and treats people as unique individuals, not as parts of groups defined by their heritage or religion. When people self-identify as part of a cultural group, this generates an inherently conservative mindset, it puts up walls between us and them, and personal interests are sacrificed in favour of the inherently conservative group interests defined by religion or cultural tradition. Being on the left means breaking down cultural walls and helping people escape from the status of being a minority, not playing to it. This should be part of the NDP's strategy over the next 4 years, unfortunately however, due to the continued influenced of the failed academic trend of postmodernism on much of the left, culture is still seen as something that is inherently good.
This election also demonstrated how the Tellurian economy generates an inherently conservative outlook. The oil regions of Alberta and Saskatchewan in combination with the farmland of Southern Ontario have gone solidly Conservative. It looks like capitalism still needs to make some progress in saving us from the idiocy of rural life.
The election has also demonstrated how little engagement there is with what is actually going on in parliament, and confirms my continued assertion that the average person is extremely opposed to politics. Another meagre turnout of 61%, second lowest in history demonstrates that with all this talk of youth voting. Secondly the Conservatives started the campaign complaining about how elections are unnecessary, and how they should be given a majority so that the populace would not have to be saddled with the horrors of another election for 4 years. Considering how thoroughly disenfranchising and alienating electoral democracy is, elections are the sole time anything political actually takes place, and that people voted for a party which ran a message-track which was explicitly anti-political, it seems a good 40% of Canadians would be quite happy being rid of politics altogether.
On top of this general antipathy towards anything political itself, we have the shocking ignorance or direct disregard of what actually happens in parliament by voters. Voters in Durham, Ontario re-elected Cabinet Minister Bev Oda in a landslide victory. She garnered 54% of the vote, and won by over 19,000 votes, despite the fact she was found in contempt of parliament for lying. No one has ever been found in contempt of parliament in Canada, or even in any Commonwealth country before, but she is rewarded with a massive victory. This just goes to show that most people who vote are completely ignorant of what they are actually doing, and do not pay attention to anything that actually goes on in parliament. Being disengaged but actually voting is certainly much much worse than being disengaged and not voting.
Then there is the electoral system. Again through a trick of the first past the post system, a party in which 60% of the population votes against, end up with 54% of the seats in parliament and gets to rule unconditionally for the next four years. First past the post only works when there are two parties, and is completely unsuited to Canada. Hopefully now that the Liberals have experienced the pain of being massively underrepresented by the electoral system, they will come around and start to favour electoral reform. Probably not though. At least the NDP and Elizabeth May will provide a voice for this issue.
Now as I promised in previous posts, here is what things would like like today, if instead of using the current first past the post system, we used a preferential mixed member system. To recap, in such a system, we had have the same 308 ridings, but you would be able to rank candidates in order of preference, thus ensuring vote splitting is not an issue and the preferred candidate would actually win. There would be an additional 105 seats (the same number as the abolished Senate) which would be distributed according to popular vote, and would be allocated to candidates according to a biggest loser system, thus meaning that dense underrepresented urban ridings with large populations, may end up with multiple Members of Parliament to better represent them and deal with local constituency level backlogs.
Under the current system, the results were as follows:
Conservatives, 167 seats, 39.6% of the popular vote, and winning 54.2% of parliament.
NDP, 102 seats, 30.6% of popular vote, 33.1% of parliament.
Liberals, 34 seats, 18.9% popular vote, 11% of parliament.
Bloc Quebecois, 4 seats, 6% popular vote, 1.3% of parliament.
Green Party, 1 seat, 3.9% popular vote, 0.3% of parliament.
Now under my proposed system of PMMP (Preferential Mixed-Member Proportional) we would get:
Conservatives 145 riding wins + 19 PR seats = 164 total = 39.7% of parliament
NDP 116 riding wins + 11 PR seats = 127 total = 30.8% of parliament
Liberals 44 rinding wins + 35 PR seats = 79 total = 19.1% of parliament
Bloc Quebecois 1 riding win + 24 PR seats = 25 total = 6.1% of parliament
Green Party 1 riding win + 16 PR seats = 17 total = 4.1% of parliament
As you can see, the totals in parliament actually line up with what people voted for, and the Conservatives certainly do not get a majority government with less than 40% of the votes.
Ridings which would change hands based on preferential voting (second choice numbers from the May 1st EKOS poll are used):
Newfoundland
Labrador: Liberal Todd Russel preferred over Conservative Peter Penashue
Nova Scotia
South Shore--St. Margaret's: NDP Gordon Earle preferred over Conservative Gerald Keddy
New Brunswick
Moncton--Riverview--Dieppe: Liberal Brian Murphy preferred over Conservative Robert Goguen
Quebec
Ahuntsic: NDP Chantal Reeves preferred over BQ Maria Mourani
Lotbinière--Chutes-de-la-Chaudière: NDP Tanya Fredette preferred over Conservative Jacques Gourde
Papineau: NDP Marcos Tejada preferred over Liberal Justin Trudeau
Bas-Richelieu--Nicolet--Bécancour: NDP Krista Lalonde preferred over BQ Louis Plamondon
Richmond--Arthabaska: NDP Isabelle Maguire preferred over BQ Andre Bellavance
Montmagny--L'Islet--Kamouraska--Rivière-du-Loup: NDP Francois Lapointe preferred over Conservative Bernard Genereux
Westmount--Ville-Marie: NDP Joanne Corbeil preferred over Liberal Marc Garneau
Ontario
Bramalea--Gore--Malton: NDP Jagmeet Singh preferred over Conservative Bal Gosal
Don Valley East: Liberal Yasmin Ratansi preferred over Conservative Joe Daniel
Don Valley West: Liberal Rob Oliphant preferred over Conservative John Carmichael
Etobicoke Centre: Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj preferred over Conservative Ted Opitz
Kitchener--Waterloo: Liberal Andrew Telegdi preferred over Conservative Peter Braid
London North Centre: Liberal Glen Pearson preferred over Conservative Susan "Koopa" Truppe
Mississauga East--Cooksville: Liberal Peter Fonseca preferred over Conservative Wladyslaw Lizon
Nipissing--Timiskaming: Liberal Anthony Rota preferred over Conservative Jay Aspin
Pickering--Scarborough East: Liberal Dan McTeague preferred over Conservative Cornelius Chisu
Sault Ste. Marie: NDP Tony Martin preferred over Conservative Bryan Hayes
Scarborough Centre: LIberal John Cannis preferred over Conservative Roxanne James
Willowdale: Liberal Martha Hall-Findlay preferred over Conservative Chungsen Leung
Manitoba
Elmwood--Transcona: NDP Jim Malloway preferred over Conservative Lawrence Toet
Winnipeg North: NDP Rebecca Blaikie preferred over Liberal Kevin Lamoureux
Winnipeg South Centre: Liberal Anita Neville preferred over Conservative Joyce Bateman
Saskatchewan
Palliser: NDP Noah Evanchuk preferred over Conservative Ray Boughen
British Colombia
Vancouver Island North: NDP Ronna-Rae Leonard preferred over Conservative John Duncan
Yukon
Yukon: Liberal Larry Bagnell preferred over Conservative Ryan Leef
The 105 seats assigned by popular vote would go to the following candidates in the specified ridings, thus these ridings would be represented by the preferred candidate plus the following:
Vancouver Island North: Conservative John Duncan
Kitchener--Waterloo: Conservative Peter Braid
Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca: Conservative Troy DeSouza
Saanich--Gulf Islands: Conservative Gary Lunn
Nanaimo--Cowichan: Conservative John Koury
Don Valley West: Consevative John Carmichael
Lotbinière--Chutes-de-la-Chaudière: Conservative Jacques Gourde
Willowdale: Conservative Chungsen Leung
Etobicoke Centre: Conservative Ted Opitz
Louis-Saint-Laurent: Conservative Josee Verner
Kingston and the Islands: Conservative Alicia Gordon
Welland: Conservative Leanna Villella
Vancouver Quadra: Conservative Deborah Meredith
New Westminster--Coquitlam: Conservative Dianna Dilworth
Burnaby--Douglas: Conservative Ronald Leung
Bramalea--Gore--Malton: Conservative Bal Gosal
Edmonton--Strathcona: Conservative Ryan Hastman
Ottawa South: Conservative Elie Salibi
London North Centre: Conservative Susan "Koopa" Truppe
Nanaimo--Alberni: NDP Zenaida Maartman
Kamloops--Thompson--Cariboo: NDP Michael Crawford
Lévis--Bellechasse: NDP Nicole Laliberté
Oshawa: NDP Chris Buckley
Pitt Meadows--Maple Ridge--Mission: NDP Craig Speirs
Essex: NDP Taras Nadyshak
Edmonton East: NDP Ray Martin
Brant: NDP Marc Laferriere
Toronto Centre: NDP Susan Wallace
Fleetwood--Port Kells: NDP Nao Fernando
Lac-Saint-Louis: NDP Alain Ackad
Oak Ridges--Markham: Liberal Lui Temelkovski
Ottawa--Orléans: Liberal David Bertschi
Brampton West: Liberal Andrew Kania
Ajax--Pickering: Liberal Mark Holland
Mississauga--Erindale: Liberal Omar Alghabra
Halton: Liberal Connie Laurin-Bowie
Vaughan: Liberal Mario Ferri
Nepean--Carleton: LIberal Ryan Keon
Etobicoke--Lakeshore: Liberal Michael Ignatieff
Mississauga--Streetsville: Liberal Bonnie Crombie
Eglinton--Lawrence: Liberal Joe Volpe
Mississauga--Brampton South: Liberal Navdeep Bains
Mississauga South: Liberal Paul Szabo
Carleton--Mississippi Mills: Liberal Karen McCrimmon
Oakville: LIberal Max Khan
Ottawa West--Nepean: Liberal Anita Vandenbeld
Richmond Hill: Liberal Byron Wilfert
Glengarry--Prescott--Russell: Liberal Julie Bourgeois
North Vancouver: Liberal Taleeb Noormohammed
Brossard--La Prairie: Liberal Alexandra Mendes
Parkdale--High Park: Liberal Gerard Kennedy
London West: Liberal Doug Ferguson
Papineau: Liberal Justin Trudeau
Bramalea--Gore--Malton: Liberal Gurbax Malhi
West Nova: Liberal Robert Thibault
Vancouver South: Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh
Kitchener Centre: Liberal Karen Redman
Westmount--Ville-Marie: Liberal Marc Garneau
Trinity--Spadina: Liberal Christine Innes
Dartmouth--Cole Harbour: LIberal Mike Savage
Beaches--East York: Liberal Maria Minna
Ancaster--Dundas--Flamborough--Westdale: Liberal Dave Braden
Honoré-Mercier: Liberal Pablo Rodriguez
Pierrefonds--Dollard: Liberal Bernard Patry
Newton--North Delta: Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Verchères--Les Patriotes: BQ Luc Malo
Montcalm: BQ Roger Gaudet
Repentigny: BQ Nicolas Dufor
Chambly--Borduas: BQ Yves Lessard
Bas-Richelieu--Nicolet--Bécancour: BQ Louis Plamondon
Joliette: BQ Pierre Paquette
Sherbrooke: BQ Serge Cardin
Beauharnois--Salaberry: BQ Claude Debellefeuille
Richmond--Arthabaska: BQ Andre Bellavance
Laurier--Sainte-Marie: BQ Gilles Duceppe
Vaudreuil-Soulanges: BQ Meilli Feille
Laurentides--Labelle: BQ Johanne Deschamps
Rosemont--La Petite-Patrie: BQ Bernard Bigras
Terrebonne--Blainville: Dianne Bourgeois
Argenteuil--Papineau--Mirabel: BQ Mario Laframboise
Berthier--Maskinongé: BQ Guy Andre
Montmorency--Charlevoix--Haute-Côte-Nord: BQ Michel Guimond
Saint-Jean: BQ Claude Bachand
Marc-Aurèle-Fortin: BQ Marie-France Charboneau
La Pointe-de-l'Île: BQ Ginette Beaudry
Saint-Bruno--Saint-Hubert: BQ Carole Lavallee
Abitibi--Témiscamingue: BQ Marc Lemay
Rivière-du-Nord: BQ Monique Guay
Châteauguay--Saint-Constant: BQ Carole Freeman
Vancouver Centre: Green Adriane Carr
Dufferin--Caledon: Green Ard Van Leeuwen
Victoria: Green Jared Giesbrecht
Calgary Centre-North: Green Heather Macintosh
Calgary West: Green Anna-Lisa Wagner
Okanagan--Shuswap: Green Greig Crockett
Calgary Centre: Green William Hamilton
Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca: Green Shauna Salsman
Kelowna--Lake Country: Green Alice Hooper
Bruce--Grey--Owen Sound: Green Emma Hogbin
Nanaimo--Cowichan: Green Anne-Marie Benoit
Okanagan--Coquihalla: Green Dan Bouchard
West Vancouver--Sunshine Coast--Sea to Sky Country: Green Brennan Wauters
Nanaimo--Alberni: Green Myron Jespersen
Wild Rose: Green Mike MacDonald
Calgary Southeast: Green Brett Spencer
As you can see, most of the close races would give both candidates a seat, and large ridings will get more than one MP.
Clearly this system would produce a much more accurate representation of how Canadians actually voted. Today on CBC the NDP expressed support for electoral reform, while the Liberals remain skeptical, despite being grossly underrepresented in this parliament.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Polls, Predictions, and the NDP Surge
The election is getting interesting. The NDP have surged in support and are now tied with the Liberals nationally. Furthermore the NDP have moved ahead of the Bloc and are in first in Quebec. In the rest of Canada, the NDP has pulled into second place in every province except Ontario. It will be interesting to see if all those Liberals who for years have told NDP supporters to "strategically" vote Liberal in order to block the Conservatives will now take their own advice and vote NDP en masse. Over half of Liberals say that the NDP is their second choice, and just over 40% of Bloc supporters have the NDP as a second choice. If NDP momentum continues to grow, this could mean a monumental shift in the Canadian political landscape.
With all this talk of polling, I want to comment on methodology and reliability. The major polling firms are EKOS, NANOS, and Angus-Reid. Nanos polls on behalf of CTV/Globe and Mail and runs 3-day rolling polls whose results are published daily. Ekos does a new poll every couple of days, and Angus-Reid seems to be weekly or erratic.
Nanos is by far the most commented on poll due its association with CTV and the Globe and Mail, however it is also the most unreliable. Their methodology is highly suspect in that their random sample is landline based. This makes it extremely hard to get a truly representative sample, and since no one under 40 has a landline these days, is biased toward older people. As a result, Nanos consistently has the Conservatives higher and the NDP and Green Party lower, than in the other polls. This is particularly prevalent with the Green Party, who usually come in under 4% in Nanos polls, while polls conducted in the same time period by the other firms will have them at 7-10%. This discrepancy is well outside of the margin of error, and can be chalked up to the fact that people the bulk of Green Party support comes from people under 25, who are also extremely unlikely to have a landline.
Ekos has a much better methodology, as they are able to call not just landlines, but cell phones as well. For this reason I use Ekos polls for my speculations, in addition to the fact they collect 2nd choice information, and have a larger sample, and therefore less margin of error. Angus-Reid's internet polls have very large samples, and in the 2008 election proved to be the most accurate, however they are too infrequent, and might actually discriminate against older people who are less likely to have internet.
Now since the election is actually turning out to be interesting, in addition to making the usual complaint about the electoral system, I want to try to predict how these polling numbers will translate into actual seats. Usually I just do this by extrapolating poll results and working them into how this would translate to seats in a modern electoral system, and I will do that as well, but I also want to look how things might actually turn out on May 2nd.
So basically I will take Ekos' own seat projections which are quantitative in nature, and look through individual ridings and try to compensate for qualitative factors, like star candidates, local scandals, and things of this nature.
So according to Ekos' quantitative prediction method based on their polling results, they come up with the following make up of the house of commons based on their April 21st poll:
Conservative 134
Liberal 82
NDP 60
Green 0
Bloc 32
Correcting for qualitative factors, I come up with:
Conservative 135
Liberal 77
NDP 58
Green 0
Bloc 36
Independents 2
If the NDP surge continues in Quebec, they could steal 10 or so more seats from the Bloc. They are also within striking distance of a handful of Conservative seats in Saskatchewan and BC.
Now if you factor in second choices, and if Canada had the proposed British system of alternative vote, then, due to the fact that the NDP is by far the biggest 2nd choice you get:
Conservative 114
Liberal 79
NDP 108
Bloc 7
Green 0
Independents 0
If we had a mixed member proportional system with candidate ranking, we would get:
Conservative 142
Liberal 103
NDP 108
Green 33
Bloc 27
With all this talk of polling, I want to comment on methodology and reliability. The major polling firms are EKOS, NANOS, and Angus-Reid. Nanos polls on behalf of CTV/Globe and Mail and runs 3-day rolling polls whose results are published daily. Ekos does a new poll every couple of days, and Angus-Reid seems to be weekly or erratic.
Nanos is by far the most commented on poll due its association with CTV and the Globe and Mail, however it is also the most unreliable. Their methodology is highly suspect in that their random sample is landline based. This makes it extremely hard to get a truly representative sample, and since no one under 40 has a landline these days, is biased toward older people. As a result, Nanos consistently has the Conservatives higher and the NDP and Green Party lower, than in the other polls. This is particularly prevalent with the Green Party, who usually come in under 4% in Nanos polls, while polls conducted in the same time period by the other firms will have them at 7-10%. This discrepancy is well outside of the margin of error, and can be chalked up to the fact that people the bulk of Green Party support comes from people under 25, who are also extremely unlikely to have a landline.
Ekos has a much better methodology, as they are able to call not just landlines, but cell phones as well. For this reason I use Ekos polls for my speculations, in addition to the fact they collect 2nd choice information, and have a larger sample, and therefore less margin of error. Angus-Reid's internet polls have very large samples, and in the 2008 election proved to be the most accurate, however they are too infrequent, and might actually discriminate against older people who are less likely to have internet.
Now since the election is actually turning out to be interesting, in addition to making the usual complaint about the electoral system, I want to try to predict how these polling numbers will translate into actual seats. Usually I just do this by extrapolating poll results and working them into how this would translate to seats in a modern electoral system, and I will do that as well, but I also want to look how things might actually turn out on May 2nd.
So basically I will take Ekos' own seat projections which are quantitative in nature, and look through individual ridings and try to compensate for qualitative factors, like star candidates, local scandals, and things of this nature.
So according to Ekos' quantitative prediction method based on their polling results, they come up with the following make up of the house of commons based on their April 21st poll:
Conservative 134
Liberal 82
NDP 60
Green 0
Bloc 32
Correcting for qualitative factors, I come up with:
Conservative 135
Liberal 77
NDP 58
Green 0
Bloc 36
Independents 2
If the NDP surge continues in Quebec, they could steal 10 or so more seats from the Bloc. They are also within striking distance of a handful of Conservative seats in Saskatchewan and BC.
Now if you factor in second choices, and if Canada had the proposed British system of alternative vote, then, due to the fact that the NDP is by far the biggest 2nd choice you get:
Conservative 114
Liberal 79
NDP 108
Bloc 7
Green 0
Independents 0
If we had a mixed member proportional system with candidate ranking, we would get:
Conservative 142
Liberal 103
NDP 108
Green 33
Bloc 27
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
What if Canada used the Proposed British Electoral System?
The UK, the birthplace of the parliamentary system used by Canada, is having a referendum on switching their electoral system from first past the post to alternative vote. With the UK becoming a three party system, the two-party oriented first past the post system clearly produces distorted results, so as part of the coalition government deal between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, a referendum on electoral reform is happening. Of course the real question is why is there a referendum? Why not just do it? No other bill in parliament requires a referendum, so it's clear that when a government does not want something to pass (the Tories in the UK are against electoral reform) they put it to a referendum.
So let's assume the UK adopts this system (current polling has the British public divided, apparently half of Brits are opposed to a more democratic system), then why not speculate that Canada could adopt it?
So using the latest 2nd choice information from EKOS (April 18th), I've extrapolated what parliament would look like based on the latest polls, if we held the election under Alternative Vote, where you could mark your candidates in order of preference, rather than simply putting an X.
EKOS seat projections are currently:
Conservative 146
Liberal 69
NDP 44
BQ 48
Independent 1
Green 0
Using this data, but assuming the use of an AV electoral system, we get
Conservative 132
Liberal 90
NDP 47
BQ 39
Green 0
Independent 0
Obviously a mixed member proportional system that included preferential voting would be vastly preferable, but even with the very modest change of allowing the ranking of candidates, we see the Conservatives and Bloc take big hits in support, as they lose a number of ridings to the NDP and Liberals.
With AV, there is no longer any need for strategic voting. If your first choice is the unelectable Marijuana Party, you can feel free to put them as your first choice, while putting one of the bigger parties as your second choice, allowing you to influence the outcome of the election, without throwing your vote away.
So let's assume the UK adopts this system (current polling has the British public divided, apparently half of Brits are opposed to a more democratic system), then why not speculate that Canada could adopt it?
So using the latest 2nd choice information from EKOS (April 18th), I've extrapolated what parliament would look like based on the latest polls, if we held the election under Alternative Vote, where you could mark your candidates in order of preference, rather than simply putting an X.
EKOS seat projections are currently:
Conservative 146
Liberal 69
NDP 44
BQ 48
Independent 1
Green 0
Using this data, but assuming the use of an AV electoral system, we get
Conservative 132
Liberal 90
NDP 47
BQ 39
Green 0
Independent 0
Obviously a mixed member proportional system that included preferential voting would be vastly preferable, but even with the very modest change of allowing the ranking of candidates, we see the Conservatives and Bloc take big hits in support, as they lose a number of ridings to the NDP and Liberals.
With AV, there is no longer any need for strategic voting. If your first choice is the unelectable Marijuana Party, you can feel free to put them as your first choice, while putting one of the bigger parties as your second choice, allowing you to influence the outcome of the election, without throwing your vote away.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Why ProjectDemocracy.ca is Ridiculous
The website projectdemocracy.ca is being passed around, and is a strategic voting site meant to advise people who to vote for in order to block a Conservative majority. On the surface this seems like a good idea, but if you look at it closely, the site is deeply flawed, and appears if anything, to simply be a means of bolstering the faltering Liberal Party. Let's analyze some surface problems, before looking at their "Key Contests" and who they advise to vote for.
Although the site is useful in that it takes the latest poll numbers and uses them to extrapolate to individual ridings, the graphic on their front page for the overall make up of parliament does not reflect this polling and has yet to change. It remains locked on the threat that if an election were held today the Conservatives would win a majority. None of the current polls reflect this, and most show the Conservatives picking up a few seats, but continuing to remain in minority territory. So this is just a scare tactic.
Secondly the site is meant to advise "progressive" voters on who their best choice would be, and the site's founder Alice Klein claims to be a "post-partisan progressive". I am not sure what progressive is supposed to mean in the Canadian context. In the US it became a popular term for people who opposed the Bush regime, but were squarely within the confines of the Democrats. Now if blocking Harper is such a concern because his policies are not "progressive", then why anyone would advise voting for the Liberals is beyond me. The Liberals, especially under leader Michael Ignatieff, have routinely voted in favour of just about everything the Conservatives put forth in the House of Commons. A vote for the Liberals is a de facto vote for the Conservatives, so long as we have a minority parliament situation. Furthermore the Liberals are notorious for campaigning from the Left and ruling from the Right. Jean Chretien was the master of this. During campaigns he'd propose all kinds of great sounding policies like affordable universal child care, decriminalization of marijuanna, boosting social programs, etc. and in power the government would then forget all about these proposals and proceed to chop away at any existing "progressive" programs.
Then we have the perpetual puzzle that is the Bloc Quebecois. In many ridings in Quebec, Project Democracy actually advises their "progressive" audience to vote for a Bloc candidate. This is possibly even more perplexing than telling progressives to vote Liberal. If we think of Canada as a federation made up of unique and distinct sub-units (ie provinces), then Canada is much like the European Union. And which parties in Europe does the Bloc Quebecois most resemble? Well obviously the anti-EU nationalist parties, such as the very right wing Finnish National Party who just made major gains in the recent Finnish election. These nationalist Euroskeptic parties are all solidly right wing, they think the EU federation is out to undermine their national distinctiveness, and they all think immigrants will somehow erode their national cultures. This could very well be a description for the Bloc Quebecois. While the older members of the party, such as Gilles Duceppe, have their roots in the Left, when back in the 60s and 70s nationalist parties were associated with left wing anti-colonial movements, today nationalism is just parochialism, which is a decidedly non-progressive stance.
Finally the idea of strategic voting, despite its aim, thoroughly prevents change. In the latest poll, released today, it has the Liberals and NDP in a tie for second place. Thus if the NDP continues this momentum they could displace the Liberals as the main opposition to the Conservatives. But if everyone "strategically votes" based on the extrapolated results of the last election, many of these new NDP supporters would simply have to swallow their new found enthusiasm and vote Liberal, thus preventing any actual shift in the Canadian political landscape, and in fact, keeping Canada decidedly less "progressive".
The site also assumes that Conservative-supporters will only support Conservatives, and the voters of the Greens, NDP, Liberals, and Bloc Quebecois, would all prefer each other over the Conservatives. This is frankly ridiculous, especially in places like BC, and polling data on second choices do not reflect this idea whatsoever. I will use second choice data in my analysis of their key contests in order to correct this ridiculous assumption.
Now let's look at their advice for who to vote for in their key ridings. I won't cover all of them, since many of them are legitimate 2 party races where a shift from the other parties could make a difference, while some can hardly be considered key contests anymore given the latest polling numbers (they really should update their site more often to reflect these changes, there is another complaint, old information). I want to point out a few examples where ProjectDemocracy's advice is flat out wrong.
Beauport--Limoilou, Quebec
ProjectDemocracy says: BQ, Voters Prefer: NDP
Conservatives won this last time narrowly, however with the NDP surge in Quebec, it is shaping up to be a 3-way race between Conservatives, BQ, and NDP. Project Democracy claims the Bloc have the only chance of unseating the Conservatives, so you should vote for them. However if you take second choice into account, the NDP are actually the preferred party among the electorate to win this riding. Once the trailing Liberal and Green vote are redistributed, the NDP pulls into 2nd place. Redistribute the Bloc vote, and the NDP pulls off a narrow win.
Desnethé--Missinippi--Churchill River, Manitoba
ProjectDemocracy says: Liberals, Voters prefer: Conservative
I have no idea why this is a key contest. The Conservatives have a sizable lead which is maintained when the NDP and Green votes are redistributed.
Egmont, PEI
ProjectDemocracy says: Liberal, Voters prefer: Conservative
This oddball riding in PEI is without a doubt a key contest as the Liberals and Conservatives are in a dead heat. But there is virtually no Green or NDP support here, which means there is no need for strategic voting. If anything redistrubting votes from the smaller fringe parties could very well hand the riding to the Conservatives. Strategic voting is definitely not advised here!
Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier, Quebec
ProjectDemocracy says: BQ, Voters prefer: NDP
Here is another 3 way race in Quebec where project democracy goes for the Bloc Quebecois candidate, even though once you redistribute votes, the NDP would actually be the ones to beat the Conservatives.
Roberval--Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec
ProjectDemocracy says: BQ, Voters prefer: Conservative
Here is a 2 candidate race between the Bloc and Conservatives, so Project Democracy says do strategic voting, and don't actually vote for who you want to win. But if people actually did do strategic voting here, and Green, NDP, and Liberals decided to just vote for either Conservative or Bloc, they would end up transferring more votes to the Conservatives! In this riding, strategic voting is counter productive.
St. John's South--Mount Pearl, Newfoundland & Labrador
ProjectDemocracy says: Liberal, Voters Prefer: Liberal
Last election this was a close race between the Liberals and NDP, with the Conservatives a very distant second. It is looking like it will shape up to be another close race between these 2 parties. So if the point is to block the Conservatives, why is this a key contest, and why have they endorsed the Liberal? In similar close ridings between NDP and Liberal they say vote your preference.
Overall the whole notion of strategic voting is flawed. Project Democracy perpetuates the idea that "vote splitting" between all other parties is what gets Conservatives elected. Meanwhile the Liberal Party is saying that in the last election nearly 1 million traditional Liberal voters simply stayed home as a protest against their party. Liberal voters have been staying home in droves ever since the sponsership scandal, and this is a major factor in many ridings where the Conservatives pulled out narrow victories over the Liberals. The idea that Green and NDP voters somehow owe it to the Liberals to vote for them in order to beat the Conservatives, when traditional Liberal Party voters would rather stay home then support their party, is a ridiculous premise that Project Democracy rests their whole flimsy apparatus on.
Although the site is useful in that it takes the latest poll numbers and uses them to extrapolate to individual ridings, the graphic on their front page for the overall make up of parliament does not reflect this polling and has yet to change. It remains locked on the threat that if an election were held today the Conservatives would win a majority. None of the current polls reflect this, and most show the Conservatives picking up a few seats, but continuing to remain in minority territory. So this is just a scare tactic.
Secondly the site is meant to advise "progressive" voters on who their best choice would be, and the site's founder Alice Klein claims to be a "post-partisan progressive". I am not sure what progressive is supposed to mean in the Canadian context. In the US it became a popular term for people who opposed the Bush regime, but were squarely within the confines of the Democrats. Now if blocking Harper is such a concern because his policies are not "progressive", then why anyone would advise voting for the Liberals is beyond me. The Liberals, especially under leader Michael Ignatieff, have routinely voted in favour of just about everything the Conservatives put forth in the House of Commons. A vote for the Liberals is a de facto vote for the Conservatives, so long as we have a minority parliament situation. Furthermore the Liberals are notorious for campaigning from the Left and ruling from the Right. Jean Chretien was the master of this. During campaigns he'd propose all kinds of great sounding policies like affordable universal child care, decriminalization of marijuanna, boosting social programs, etc. and in power the government would then forget all about these proposals and proceed to chop away at any existing "progressive" programs.
Then we have the perpetual puzzle that is the Bloc Quebecois. In many ridings in Quebec, Project Democracy actually advises their "progressive" audience to vote for a Bloc candidate. This is possibly even more perplexing than telling progressives to vote Liberal. If we think of Canada as a federation made up of unique and distinct sub-units (ie provinces), then Canada is much like the European Union. And which parties in Europe does the Bloc Quebecois most resemble? Well obviously the anti-EU nationalist parties, such as the very right wing Finnish National Party who just made major gains in the recent Finnish election. These nationalist Euroskeptic parties are all solidly right wing, they think the EU federation is out to undermine their national distinctiveness, and they all think immigrants will somehow erode their national cultures. This could very well be a description for the Bloc Quebecois. While the older members of the party, such as Gilles Duceppe, have their roots in the Left, when back in the 60s and 70s nationalist parties were associated with left wing anti-colonial movements, today nationalism is just parochialism, which is a decidedly non-progressive stance.
Finally the idea of strategic voting, despite its aim, thoroughly prevents change. In the latest poll, released today, it has the Liberals and NDP in a tie for second place. Thus if the NDP continues this momentum they could displace the Liberals as the main opposition to the Conservatives. But if everyone "strategically votes" based on the extrapolated results of the last election, many of these new NDP supporters would simply have to swallow their new found enthusiasm and vote Liberal, thus preventing any actual shift in the Canadian political landscape, and in fact, keeping Canada decidedly less "progressive".
The site also assumes that Conservative-supporters will only support Conservatives, and the voters of the Greens, NDP, Liberals, and Bloc Quebecois, would all prefer each other over the Conservatives. This is frankly ridiculous, especially in places like BC, and polling data on second choices do not reflect this idea whatsoever. I will use second choice data in my analysis of their key contests in order to correct this ridiculous assumption.
Now let's look at their advice for who to vote for in their key ridings. I won't cover all of them, since many of them are legitimate 2 party races where a shift from the other parties could make a difference, while some can hardly be considered key contests anymore given the latest polling numbers (they really should update their site more often to reflect these changes, there is another complaint, old information). I want to point out a few examples where ProjectDemocracy's advice is flat out wrong.
Beauport--Limoilou, Quebec
ProjectDemocracy says: BQ, Voters Prefer: NDP
Conservatives won this last time narrowly, however with the NDP surge in Quebec, it is shaping up to be a 3-way race between Conservatives, BQ, and NDP. Project Democracy claims the Bloc have the only chance of unseating the Conservatives, so you should vote for them. However if you take second choice into account, the NDP are actually the preferred party among the electorate to win this riding. Once the trailing Liberal and Green vote are redistributed, the NDP pulls into 2nd place. Redistribute the Bloc vote, and the NDP pulls off a narrow win.
Desnethé--Missinippi--Churchill River, Manitoba
ProjectDemocracy says: Liberals, Voters prefer: Conservative
I have no idea why this is a key contest. The Conservatives have a sizable lead which is maintained when the NDP and Green votes are redistributed.
Egmont, PEI
ProjectDemocracy says: Liberal, Voters prefer: Conservative
This oddball riding in PEI is without a doubt a key contest as the Liberals and Conservatives are in a dead heat. But there is virtually no Green or NDP support here, which means there is no need for strategic voting. If anything redistrubting votes from the smaller fringe parties could very well hand the riding to the Conservatives. Strategic voting is definitely not advised here!
Portneuf--Jacques-Cartier, Quebec
ProjectDemocracy says: BQ, Voters prefer: NDP
Here is another 3 way race in Quebec where project democracy goes for the Bloc Quebecois candidate, even though once you redistribute votes, the NDP would actually be the ones to beat the Conservatives.
Roberval--Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec
ProjectDemocracy says: BQ, Voters prefer: Conservative
Here is a 2 candidate race between the Bloc and Conservatives, so Project Democracy says do strategic voting, and don't actually vote for who you want to win. But if people actually did do strategic voting here, and Green, NDP, and Liberals decided to just vote for either Conservative or Bloc, they would end up transferring more votes to the Conservatives! In this riding, strategic voting is counter productive.
St. John's South--Mount Pearl, Newfoundland & Labrador
ProjectDemocracy says: Liberal, Voters Prefer: Liberal
Last election this was a close race between the Liberals and NDP, with the Conservatives a very distant second. It is looking like it will shape up to be another close race between these 2 parties. So if the point is to block the Conservatives, why is this a key contest, and why have they endorsed the Liberal? In similar close ridings between NDP and Liberal they say vote your preference.
Overall the whole notion of strategic voting is flawed. Project Democracy perpetuates the idea that "vote splitting" between all other parties is what gets Conservatives elected. Meanwhile the Liberal Party is saying that in the last election nearly 1 million traditional Liberal voters simply stayed home as a protest against their party. Liberal voters have been staying home in droves ever since the sponsership scandal, and this is a major factor in many ridings where the Conservatives pulled out narrow victories over the Liberals. The idea that Green and NDP voters somehow owe it to the Liberals to vote for them in order to beat the Conservatives, when traditional Liberal Party voters would rather stay home then support their party, is a ridiculous premise that Project Democracy rests their whole flimsy apparatus on.
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