My Election Prediction...

OK, so, I haven't written anything in a while, but I have been paying attention. So, I'm gonna roll the dice and give some actual numbers for an electoral prediction.

Here's how I figure the House of Commons will look tomorrow:

Conservatives: 129
Liberals: 88
Bloc: 52
NDP: 37
Independent: 2

There'll probably be an independent or two nominated, I don't know who, but I threw in two for the sake of argument. However, there'll be no Greens elected, I don't think.

So, basically, VERY little movement from the last election, and once again our cabinet and government generally will be made up by a party that roughly 62-66% of Canadians voted against (and this time, the Tories having been in power for the last 2.5 years, I think we can say that a SIGNIFICANT majority of Canadians will vote AGAINST them).

We'll see how long THIS minority lasts.

Frankly, I just don't know what the Tories can do going forward. I mean, sure, I disagree with almost everything the Conservatives stand for, but even I can acknowledge that two and a half years of Tory government wasn't THAT bad. And the Liberals, politically, were pretty darned inept under Dion. And Layton's pulled about as many votes as possible from the Liberal ranks. And the Greens, while they're not going to win a seat, are polling at HISTORICALLY high levels, and May was actually IN THE FEDERAL LEADERSHIP DEBATES this year, and didn't do badly at all.

What more can the Tories ask for? Reasonably effective experience at governing. A weak, money-tight Liberal party with a good, but many would say ineffective leader. A historically strong NDP. Pressure on the Libs from the Greens and a surprisingly resilient Bloc. Is the Tory strategy going forward basically going to be "just watch, Dion will get even WORSE!"? 'Cause I don't buy that. Or do they think they're going to govern so effectively, and impress Canadians so much that they can turn things more to their advantage through the strength of their governance (and wasn't that the plan in the LAST minority? And didn't it utterly fail?)

I just don't see where the Tories go from here. They've hit their ceiling. In their best dreams they'll get 40% of the vote in some future election, and get a TINY majority. But as far as I can see, things just can't get better for the Tories then they have been. There's just nowhere to go but down. Don't get me wrong, the prediction above would be pretty bad for the Liberals too, but at least they can look at it as having found their basement. They can console themselves with "we've hit rock bottom, what do we do to turn this around?". For the Tories, it seems to me that this is the high. This is it. Maximum altitude achieved. Nowhere to go but down.

It'll be interesting to see how many more minority govenrments we'll have until that downward trend begins in earnest.

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