So, Stephane Dion has announced he’s quitting … eventually. There’s lots of speculation as to why he’s staying, but one popular theory is that he’s sticking around until the party crowns a new leader in order to pay off his lingering leadership campaign debt, estimated to be over $200,000. I thought it might be useful to quickly review the law over leadership finance to understand how daunting Dion’s task is. When the Liberals changed the party finance laws in 2004, they put in a $5,000 cap for a number of kinds of donations, including to leadership contests.
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If the Liberals thing replacing Dion will solve all of their problems, they’re delusional. Or stupid. Or both.
For most of the parties on election night, there was some good news. The Conservatives and NDP both have larger caucuses, the BQ was revived againm and the Greens increased in votes and dollars from the annual state subsidy. For the Liberals, however, you had to look hard for good news. The party earned its lowest share of the popular vote in its history, had one of its lowest seat totals ever, and was down in almost every region of Canada. The bright spots? Well, Quebec was bit kinder to the Liberals than most people expected. Also, despite a pretty ineffective campaign, the party still has a significant degree of support. The Liberals may have reached bottom and the only way to go is up.
Considering the 2008 Election Results: Canada’s Electoral System Needs to be Replaced
I’ve been thinking over the election results since Tuesday night and I keep coming back to one thing: Canada’s electoral system needs to be replaced. I need to point out first of all that I’m not an electoral system ideologue. I don’t think there’s one abstract, theoretically derived system that works best in all countries and at all times. Canada currently has a single member plurality electoral system (often misleadingly labelled the “first past the post” system).
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Quick Thoughts on the 2008 Election
We’ll be talking about the results for a few days to come, I’m sure, but here are a few quick election night thoughts.
Things to watch on election night
Election night is always interesting. There are lots of things to watch and it’s easy to get lost in the flurry of numbers that will fly at you while watching the results come in. Here are a few things to watch for.
Best and worst campaigns: and the winners are…
As we’re in the dying days of the election, it’s time to look back and see who had the best and worst campaigns in this election. It was an odd election, with events overtaking the best laid plans of political strategists and consultants. Just to be clear, this doesn’t have anything to do with how these parties will do on election day. This evaluation looks at how well the party did, based on the resources they had and the goals they needed to accomplish.
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