Author: tcnorris

After I published my previous blogpost on December 9 I received a comment on Facebook asking what the results would have looked like using proportional representation.  Good question. I have now done just such a calculation, the results of which can be found below. In the post I emphasized that

I previously posted a revised version of an article published in Inroads last spring on the forthcoming federal election, part of a series of regional analyses.  It concluded provincial politics were likely to play a role in the fall federal election.  A few days after the October 21, 2019 event

Polls and Seats: Divergent messages The polls in this campaign appear on the surface to be telling a similar story: a close election, outcome uncertain. However, different surveys, examined closely, reveal dramatic contrasts. Here are two examples covering the same October 8 to 10 period (the day after the English

Polls and Seats: Divergent messages The polls in this campaign appear on the surface to be telling a similar story: a close election, outcome uncertain. However, different surveys, examined closely, reveal dramatic contrasts. Here are two examples covering the same October 8 to 10 period (the day after the English

The Manitoba election is on September 10 and while most polling suggests an easy PC win, it may be closer than it appears.  The most recent poll from Mainstreet Researchhas an overall margin of nine points – 43% to the NDP’s 34% with the Liberals trailing at 15% and the

In June I attended a dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the election of Ed Schreyer’s NDP government in Manitoba in 1969. Fifty years ago I had just turned 21 and cast my first vote that day for the NDP, having worked during the campaign for Cy Gonick, the NDP candidate

The post below was published as part of a longer article in Inroads: The Canadian Journal of Opinion in their new issue released this week. In it several contributors assess prospects in their regions for the forthcoming federal election. However, I actually finished writing it on April 29 prior to the

A great deal of recent punditry is creating an expectation that Jagmeet Singh will lose the Burnaby South by-election, forcing him to resign as leader, creating a dilemma for the NDP as the 2019 election looms. Jagmeet Singh Having looked at the politics and precedents, my view is that he

The first thing that needs to be said about this is BC may well vote to change its electoral system. Much of the polling to date has been favourable to electoral reform although the margin has been tightening and the most recent survey has those favouring the existing first-past-the-post system

This is an essay I wrote in 1997 titled Ten Arguments for Proportional Representation. I used the 1993 federal election as a starting point. Some of the discussion is clearly dated but the extent of vote distortion in 1993 makes it an ideal candidate for analysis of this kind. The

If entirely conventional benchmarks were what mattered in the U.S. elections on November 6 the current strength of the economy – essentially the pinnacle of the growth cycle that started with Barack Obama’s stimulus bill in 2009 – then the Republicans ought to be doing extremely well. In 1998 in

Normally it would be absurd to pose such a question so early in a new government’s term. However, if Doug Ford thought the electorate would submit meekly to his authoritarian ways he must know better than that now. Nonetheless he doesn’t have to face the electors for four years. He

The Ford government lost for a second time in the courts on one of its early and arbitrary initiatives – the downsizing of Toronto City Council. Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward P. Belobaba ruled on September 10 that the Ford government’s legislation violated the Charter of Rights. Here is the most

When the Ontario campaign got underway it appeared the PCs were headed for an out-sized majority. They stumbled, largely because they are led by an unctuous idiot. The Wynne Liberals, as I noted in an earlier post, never had a chance, a fact that Wynne recently, and for some bizarre

A key feature of this campaign is the unpopularity of the Wynne Liberals; they have become the unacceptable alternative, making the effective choice between the Doug Ford PCs and Andrea Horwath’s NDP. Why? A principal reason is that the Ontario Liberals have been in office a long time. It happens

Mainstreet Research (a firm not around for the 2014 Ontario election) is beginning a daily tracking poll today, so with three weeks to go in the campaign we should expect to see this and the results of many other surveys. There will be much said good and bad about individual

Two Ontario Elections The Mike Harris PC government went to the polls on June 3, 1999, having been elected to a majority government in June 1995.  One striking curiosity about the two election results is that the Tories won just as great a vote share in 1999 as in 1995

Current polls suggest an easy victory for Doug Ford on June 7, although this is not yet certain. Assuming he wins, what should we expect that to mean? To listen to his rhetoric it would mean tax cuts. He has suggested cutting the current corporate tax rate from 11.5% (already

The closing polls in the BC election suggest a close race perhaps trending in the direction of the incumbent BC Liberals, despite the name really small ‘c’ conservatives. However, it is clearly too close to call. My seat estimate, which is based on riding boundaries that are out of date,

One hundred years ago today my father, Clarence Barber, was born on a farm near Wolseley Saskatchewan. His father was a farmer who sent milk to Regina, paying my father as a child to milk the cows. However, his mother had been a school teacher who highly valued education. Clarence