Double Blind

I am happy to report I have been re-elected to another term to the park board:

PARK COMMISSIONER
* Five (5) to be elected 11 of 11 Polls Reporting
1 * SKONBERG, Owen 3,156
2 * McCREA, Bob 2,764
3 * TOEWS, Carlton 2,735
4 * PETER, Sacha 2,261
5 * SHANKS, Malcolm 2,065
6 ALLINOTT, Scott 1,950
7 ROSS, Austin 1,861

Thanks again to the voters of Chilliwack. It is one thing doing the analysis of elections that others are involved in – it is another being involved in your own election.

Bill C-20 will bring a significant addition of seats to the House of Commons, with the net impact that BC will receive 6 more seats, Alberta will receive 6, Ontario will receive 15 and Quebec will receive 3.

If you live in a province that is not on this short-list then your relative power in Ottawa will decline accordingly.

The interesting part of the new formula is that provinces can not lose seats beyond what they have currently, but they can lose seats in the subsequent redistribution in 2021 and beyond if their population fraction declines accordingly.

That said, the legislation will bring the provinces that have higher population percentages relative to seat count closer in line to the average.

One large complaint is that this will cost more in terms of paying MPs and their budgets, and also the cost to hold an election. This indeed is true. I believe the costing will be about $15M/year more for the 30 MPs and their budgets, and about $12M for an election.

One group that should be oddly in support of this change are the proportional representation fans – the more seats you have in a FPTP system, the more proportional the results become.

I am wondering what the following government model would look like:
1. One MP for every 5,000 people (this would be about 6,900 MPs country-wide);
2. The job of an MP is acknowledged to be a part-time endeavour, with part-time pay, UNLESS if you are in cabinet;
3. MPs vote electronically and do not have to show up to Ottawa every time to vote and are not expected to vote on every proceeding, hence you do not need to be in Ottawa too often;
4. Cabinet cannot vote in the House of Commons.

Obviously this system will have flaws, but it is interesting to see how it would evolve.

There is plenty of garbage out there in the journalistic world, but this piece by Josh D. Scheinert is utterly devoid of logic.

Putting a long story short, a bunch of Conservatives made a video in response to the suicide of a 15-year old (Jamie Hubley) that was bullied because he was homosexual. The video has a bunch of well-known Conservatives saying to the camera “it gets better”.

Scheinert then continues in his article to state that the video is hypocritical because some of the MPs in the video were well known to be against same-sex marriage.

How does one make this quantum leap? Teen suicide is completely different than same-sex marriage. One can vigorously oppose the bullying of homosexual teenagers (or heterosexual or bisexual teenagers) while opposing same-sex marriage. They are not mutually exclusive beliefs.

I’m guessing the media always portray LGBT issues at insanely polar extremes because it helps them sell advertising.

Although I don’t think it will happen, I hope the state of journalism “gets better”. I’m not holding my breath.

An interesting result in the Ontario provincial election:

Liberals – 53 (37.6%)
PCs – 37 (35.4%)
NDP – 17 (22.7%)
Greens – 0 (2.9%)

The PCs and NDP got very, very lucky by virtue of the fact that the Liberals are 1 seat short of a majority government (54 seats required). The clear analysis is that the political winds in Ontario will be very volatile – the Liberals will be gunning for an election when they sense they can get a majority, while the PCs will be gunning for the Liberals if they can get a plurality of seats. I can’t see it lasting longer than 18 months before they have another election. Every resignation and by-election would become quite significant in such a knife-edge situation.

The other option for the Liberals is to catch an NDP or PC floor crosser. I don’t know enough about Ontario provincial politics to know who would be on the likely list to switch sides for a cabinet position (and a subsequent guarantee that their political career will end at the date of the next provincial election).

Minority governments are very tricky – the fact that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was able to navigate through 2006 to 2011 relatively unscathed was the exception to the rule. The two notable minority governments in recent history which had a much more volatile fate was Liberal Paul Martin’s 2004-2006 government (who succumbed to the sponsorship scandal) and Jean Charest’s 2007-2008 minority government in Quebec (who pulled off a near-miracle by getting re-elected in a slim majority while the ADQ imploded).

As a side note, 9 out of 11 of my political predictions that I made in January of 2011 appear to have come true.

According to the popular vote polling (Conservatives 34, Liberal 33, NDP 26) there is bound to be a minority government elected in Ontario. This will be a rather interesting test of the parliamentary-style system with respect to coalition governments, and the so-called “coalition of the losers” that was encountered in hypothetical federal scenarios since if the Liberals come second in seat count, they still have the first chance to form government.

Also, this election is a great opportunity for pollsters to actually put their reputations on the line and with respect to predicting the translation of popular votes into seat counts. There will be quite a few three-way races.

The interesting dynamic here is that while the Liberals have a lock on the 416 area code (Central Toronto, 22 of 107 seats), the PCs have a slightly less diffuse plurality of support in the 905 area (the ring surrounding Central Toronto, 33 of 107 seats). Since the Metro Toronto area is about half the seats in the Ontario legislature, it is an intense battleground.

I haven’t done any professional analysis of the province as of yet and I will not be either – just not enough mental time. A minor consideration is that I also haven’t spent any time in the province other than in Ottawa. Getting an intuitive feel for the geography is an intangible asset with respect to looking at electoral districts but sometimes gives valuable insight.

I really enjoy reading court case verdicts. The level of analysis that goes into case law is something that makes for very interesting reading. Whether it is about the motor vehicle act, criminal cases, civil cases, etc., it is always a fascinating insight on how our judicial system works (and indeed, the judiciary is the most functional branch of the three in government).

A headline is making the news – B.C. judge tosses ecstasy case for rights violations (CBC, CTV, National Post). I spent about 90 minutes reading the case (R. v. Ho, Hou, Huang, Li and Zhou) from end to end – and this should be read before any media summaries.

Essentially the Richmond RCMP that were conducting a 14 month investigation on an ecstasy production/distribution scheme by a bunch of mainland Chinese immigrants badly bungled the search warrant operation on the suspects. The method the RCMP obtained the warrant was flawed (violated the Criminal Code) and the execution of the warrant was flawed (violated the Charter).

It is pretty clear, however, that these people were completely responsible for the manufacturing and distribution of ecstasy, but the RCMP will not have any evidence from this search warrant, which will make prosecution of these individuals much more difficult.

I completely agree with the line of thinking by the justice (P.R. Meyers). The only line of defense people have against improper police action are through the courts. A violation of rules concerning unreasonable search or seizure must not be rewarded, otherwise it will yield further erosion of our fundamental rights.

Some 21-year old parliamentary page managed to stick a “stop Harper” sign up during the Throne Speech in the senate.

Now her name is going to be linked to this event on Google for probably the rest of her life, so you can be assured that this will compromise certain future employment options.

Based off of the preliminary results of the election (I will update the numbers of this post if the results change), my absolute error in seat count was 62.

Party – Actual – Predicted – Error
Conservatives – 167 – 160 – 7
Liberal – 34 – 39 – 5
NDP – 102 – 79 – 23
Bloc – 4 – 28 – 24
Ind – 0 – 2 – 2
Green – 1 – 0 – 1

Provincial Split – Actual vs. Predicted (CON/Lib/NDP/BQ/Ind)
BC: 23/1/12/0/0 – 21/2/12/0/0 and one GRN
Alberta: 26/0/1/0/1 – 27/0/1/0/0
Saskatchewan: 13/1/0/0/0 – 13/1/0/0/0
Manitoba: 10/0/4/0/0 – 11/1/2/0/0
Ontario: 70/16/20/0/0 – 73/11/22/0/0
Quebec: 5/9/32/28/1 – 6/7/58/4/0/0
New Brunswick: 6/2/2/0/0 – 8/1/1/0/0
Nova Scotia: 3/3/5/0/0 – 4/4/3/0/0
PEI: 1/3/0/0/0 – 1/3/0/0/0
Newfoundland and Labrador: 2/3/2/0/0 – 1/4/2/0/0
Territories: 1/1/1/0/0 – 2/0/1/0/0

Surprises/Analysis this election (only two):
1. The collapse of the Bloc Quebecois, mostly at the expense of the NDP. Conversely, the holding up of the NDP vote in Quebec, which I expected to have been diluted a few percentage points from what the pollsters predicted. Even if the NDP and Bloc vote swung 3% (in opposite directions, so a net effect of 6%), it only would have impacted the result of 2 seats that the Bloc were trailing within 6% or less from the NDP (Montmorency–Charlevoix–Haute-Côte-Nord, Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine) but for the rest of the seats the NDP victories were crushing. This was the biggest mistake that my prediction model made, by far.

2. Elizabeth May. She has absolutely proven me wrong when I incessantly harped about how that along as she is leader of the Green party that the party will never win an elected seat in the House of Commons. She won with 46% of the vote against Conservative Gary Lunn, who lost with 36% of the vote. I would be highly curious to know what happened with the local campaign there during the election. Although I disagree with mostly everything that comes out of May’s mouth, she has to be congratulated for her victory in Saanich–Gulf Islands.

Other pundits out there:
Actual result – 167/34/102/4/0/1
ThreeHundredEight.com (Eric Grenier) – 143/60/78/27/0/1, error: 24/26/24/23/1/1 = 99
DemocraticSpace.com (Greg Morrow) – 155/47/86/20/0/1, error: 12/13/16/16/1/1 = 59
ElectionPrediction.org (Milton Chan) – 146/63/65/33/0/1, error: 21/29/37/29/1/1 = 118
LangleyPolitics.com (Jordan Bateman) – 136/52/79/39/0/2, error: 31/18/23/35/1/2 = 110

I wonder if anybody else has done a comprehensive compilation of pundits out there.

I managed two campaigns in Richmond, in 2008 and now 2011:

Year – Richmond Result / BC Conservative Vote / Outperformance
2006 – 38.7% / 37.3%
2008 – 49.8% / 44.4% / +4.0%
2011 – 58.3% / 45.5% / +7.4%

(Outperformance is measured by the difference between the local result and the provincial vote average)

Our campaign turned in a performance that was the third best in the lower mainland (behind Abbotsford – 64.8%, Langley – 64.1%) and in relative outperformance, we were the best in BC. When you consider our geographical proximity, we absolutely did fantastic. Our campaign team, with our candidate, supporters and volunteers is the best in Canada.

There will be a couple days to relax and dismantle the campaign office, but after this we will continue the work we have been doing in Richmond.

Here is my election prediction. I have tried to do this with as much of a non-partisan analysis as possible, but keep in mind I have been neck-deep in the campaign in Richmond – I’ve only had today to seriously look at the publicly available data (there is no insider information I am basing this on). This has also been a very strange campaign.

Conservative – 160
Liberal – 39
NDP – 79
Bloc – 28
Independent – 2
Greens – ZERO (Elizabeth May, 25%)

Provincial Split (CON/Lib/NDP/Bloc/Ind):
BC: 23/1/12/0/0
Alberta: 26/0/1/0/1
Saskatchewan: 13/1/0/0/0
Manitoba: 10/0/4/0/0
Ontario: 70/16/20/0/0
Quebec: 5/9/32/28/1
New Brunswick: 6/2/2/0/0
Nova Scotia: 3/3/5/0/0
PEI: 1/3/0/0/0
Newfoundland and Labrador: 2/3/2/0/0
Territories: 1/1/1/0/0

Notes: The NDP is suffering from a problem of vote diffusion, similar to the Green Party. This should disproportionately favour the Bloc. Note that all it took for the Bloc to consistently take 50 seats out of play in Quebec was 40% of the vote.

The Liberals have concentration in Toronto, Montreal and pockets of Atlantic Canada. The notable change this election should be the area surrounding Toronto – the Vaughn by-election was a precursor for this.

Ontario remains the key battleground, which reminds me of a reduced version of the 1997 election when the PCs and Reform combined took 38% of the vote, but the Liberals took 101/103 seats with 49.5% of the vote.

In BC, the Liberals continue to get squeezed by the Conservatives on the right and the NDP on the left. There is not much room left in the spectrum for the Liberals anymore.