The Canadian Federal Election

Today is Canada's 41st federal election. Since the previous election in October 2008, Stephen Harper's Conservative Party has lead Parliament as a minority whose budgets have been supported mostly by a Liberal Party that has consistently ridden low in polling and has been afraid of causing a snap election. Jack Layton's New Democratic Party has honestly been the effective opposition to the Conservatives nearly the entire term, and was integral in the decision by the opposing parties to find Harper's government in contempt of parliament and spark a new election.

Since the English and French debates in the middle of April, Layton's NDP has shot up in popularity by some accounts in a two-fold gain, and now hovers somewhere around the 30 percent mark in polls, having surpassed the Liberal Party. Some pronounce one hundred seats going for the NDP in the 308 seat parliament, with 155 needed for a majority. I think this is a long shot. I point to polls in the United Kingdom last year that projected huge gains for the Liberal Democrats, who were/are also a third party juggernaut, but ended up with only one percent popular vote over the previous election and five seats less.

As much as I love the New Democrats and Mr. Layton, I'm going to play it safe and predict that these poll numbers translate into a tiny popular vote plurality for the NDP over the Liberals, with the Conservatives polling still higher than the other parties. I expect the Conservatives to win fewer seats than in 2008, with somewhere around 135 seats, and about 36 percent of the vote. The Liberals will poll even worse than their previous worst showing in 2008, and I'd put their popular vote around 24 percent and some 70 seats. The NDP will do better than they have ever done before, surpassing 18 percent in 2008 and their previous best of 20 percent back in 1988. Layton's party will garner about 26 percent and get maybe 60 seats. The Bloc is expected to do poorly - I'd wager about 7 percent with 40 seats and 5 percent for the Greens with no seats. Notice neither the popular vote nor seat totals add up to 100 percent respectively - this gives me my margin of error of 2 percent popularly and 3 by seats.

What's even more interesting is what might happen after this election. No party in the Commonwealth of Nations has ever been found in contempt of parliament, and Harper might be heading that same government in yet a third minority government with little chance of finding unity with the other parties on the issues. The parties on the left are rumored to be considering a coalition to keep the Conservatives from power. The question is now, what party would lead it as the majority partner and would it be Ignatieff of the Liberals or Layton of the NDP as Prime Minister? And will Layton and the NDP finally break through the decades of Liberal/Conservative rule and manage to become the official opposition or even be able to form the new government?

We'll begin to find out tonight.