Well, a little bit late to the party, but some thoughts on the election here in Canada on the 2nd of May......
On May the 2nd Canadians elected a Conservative majority government lead by Prime Minister Stephan Harper. The Conservatives won a total of 167 seats. However, a bigger development was the rise of the Social-Democratic party, the NDP (New Democratic Party), under the leadership of Jack Layton. The New Dems won 102 seats. The NDP's victory stretched almost with interuption (excluding Prince Edward Island) across Canada, including a phenomenal 49 seats in the province of Quebec. This election say the NDP's rise as a truly national party, and as a legitimate contender for national government.
For non-Canadians, you should know that the rise of the NDP represents the culmination of a left-wing activist movement which evolved directly out of 19th Century British Labour political activism on one hand, and a progressive social gospel movement that found its first voice in the preaching and teaching of Methodist "preachers", and ultimately to the founding in 1932 of the Co-operative Commowealth Federation, under the leadership of the great J.S. Woodsworth, a famous Canadian Methodist preacher, social activist and publisher. Today's NDP includes the descendants of many of the CCF's original membership. The roots of the NDP run deeply in Western Canada, run through Ontario in the form of the One Big Union movement and its descendents, and via similar movements across Quebec, such as that which occured under Robert Cliche in Quebec, and in Atlantic Canada.
Before I go on, let me just say a couple of things. When I refer to the NDP, I am referring to the New Democratic Party. Occassionally, the party is refered to erroneously as the NDP Party. This is wrong, and grinds on the nerves of committed New Dems in much the same way that Democratic Party members feel anger when their detractors refer to the Party as the "Democrat Party". Also, the NDP is not a "Liberal" party in the sense it is meant in the US. The NDP is a Social-Democatic party, similar in construction and values to existing Social-Democratic parties in Europe. In Canada, no one is afraid to call themselves leftists. Most New Dems dislike the use of the word Progressive. Most of us feel this word was hijacked by members of the Canadian "Liberal Party" (LPC), in an attempt to confuse and blur the lines which exist between the LPC and the NDP, as the Liberals struggled to "protect their left flank" from the NDP. For the record, the LPC is much more similar in temperment and make-up to the American Democratic Party as it is currently costructed; Corporatist and a mish-mash of competing interests that are basically held together by the promise of power.
So, what happened in Canada? There have been several threads of thought which have developed in an attempt to explain it. Some say a desire for a stable majority government, in combination with vote splitting on the left led to the results that were witnessed. Others say that at least in part, the growing "long-in-the-tooth" of the Bloc Quebecois, combined with a desire for change caused Quebec to vote New Dem. And there are just those who feel that Canadians had a collective nervous breakdown, and voted without considering the implications of their vote.
While I can't say this with certainty, my opinion is that a truly overlooked factor is tied to the perception Canadians have always had regarding the NDP leader, and by extension, the party as a whole. From early Party leaders including Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas (whom by the way, was voted the greatest Canadian of the 20th Century) through Steven Lewis, and then Ed Broadbent, Canadians have become accustomed to seeing the NDP leader work with the goverment for the good of Canadians as a whole. While the NDP has never governed, or won more then 43 seats in the Canadian House of Commons, our Parliment, New Democratic Leaders and MPs have historically always focused their efforts on working for the good of Canadians as a whole, either in opposition to or in support of government initatives. Unlike the Republicans of today, New Dems have never offered blanket oppostion, or blanket support of government legislative initiatives. As a result, with the exception of a period in the late 80s - early 90s, Canadians have consistently retured NDP MPs in double digit numbers and with levels of support in the low to mid, mid upper teens. It was in this context that Jack Layton assumed the leadership mantel.
Layton, as NDP leader built upon this basic framework and in combination with a deliberate 10 year plan, worked to put the NDP in a real position to make electoral inroads. And so we come to today.
At election's call, the NDP was polling 19%, and over the course of polling upto election day, never polled less then about 17%. The first breakthrough occured during the english language leaders debate. Layton perfromed very well, and succeeded in separting himself for the other party leaders, especially Michael Igatieff of the Liberals, the party trying the hardest to co-op the NDP on the left. Ignatieff's perception in the minds of voters had already been hurt by his failure to counter a deliberate Tory ad campaign which successfully painted him as an efete, out of touch, "Harvard Elitist", hungry to secure power solely out of personal ambition. Ignatieff, and the Lib Party's failure to respond to the advertising campaign would prove to be at least in part, a fatal miscalculation. I an unwilling to attribute more sigificance to the Tory ad campaign agaist Ignatieff and its effect on the Libs; I am not certain that Ignatieff wouldn't have come off being viewed this way by the electorate, nor am I certain how other parties, particularly the NDP, would have conducted their campaign had the Tories not run such a campaign. Suffice it to say, at the minimum, it did allow the New Dems to instead more usefully focus their efforts elsewhere.
Later in the same week, the New Dem Leader, Layton, did very well in the leaders French language debate, with it being acknowledged that Layton had scored well at the expense of the other leaders, including his main Quebec electoral competition, the Bloc Quebecois leader, Gilles Duceppe. Almost immediately following that debate, the NDP polling numbers began to move slowly upward; of note was the beginning of real growth in that party's support among Quebec voters to an unprecented degree not ever seen.
At this point, the campaign overall for all parties kind of went into a "phony-war" period, durig which the campaign seemed to stagnate. When the Bloc celebrated their 20th anniversary publicly on the 26th of April, the bottom fell out of the Bloc Campaign and the NDP numbers rose to the point where the New Dems replaced the Libs overall as the second choice of Canadian voters. This was historic; the Libs had never run third. It is important to note that the Libs, more then the Tories, had come to be thought of as "Canada's natural governing party". So, the NDP surge past the Libs was truly earth-shattering, and led to a tightening of the race between the NDP and the Tories as election day approached.
On the day of the election, only one poll showed the Tories pulling away (Nanosresarch had the Tories ahead by 8.5 points). Most other polls showed the race a statistical tie. The real Tory breakthrough came election night in Ontario, where Blue Liberals (Tory sympathetic, right wing Libs), moved in very large numbers to Harper's goverment, with the result that Ontario's voters in effect, gave Harper his majority. Post election examination of voting trends in the Greater Toronto and other areas of Onatrio suggests convincingly that contrary to LPC assertions, New Dems didn't split the left vote and instead, so-called "Lib voters", simply moved right to stop the NDP "Orange Wave". Indeed, the New Dem vote proved to be up all across Canada, and New Dems at the end of the night ran second in 122 ridings to the Tories, as opposed to the 55 ridings in which the Libs ran second.
It was a marvelous night! Going forward, it is unclear which way things will play out. To a very large and overall degree, the performance of the NDP as Official Oppostion will play the largest deciding role in what happens to the Libs. I wouldn't be inclined to dismiss the Libs, given their historical standing as the former "natural governing party". However, a strong NDP performance in opposition will very likely see the LPC decline further, opening a real possibility that the NDP could form a majority government in 2015, or 2016.
It was a wonderful night. As a lifelong New Democart, Socialist, and proud leftist, I am very optimistic about what is to come. With hard work, and a positive approach, I am convinced the NDP gains can be solidifed and a real path to governance secured.