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Ridings on the Brink: The Results Edition

By Hamutal Dotan

In the run-up to our favourite national pastime of electioneering, Torontoist profiled some of the most closely contested ridings in the GTA, looking for the bellwethers and offering snapshots of electoral districts in transition. Today we survey the outcomes of those races.
2008_10_15flag.jpg
Photo from CityNews’ photostream.
Floor-crossing, brake-slicing, debate no-shows, drop-in candidates: elections are by nature dramatic, and while this one was viewed by many as a bit of a snooze, many races in the GTA certainly managed to capture our attention. Forthwith, a summary of how the pivotal contests we’ve been following played out.

Halton



Lisa Raitt (CON): 32,916

Garth Turner (Lib): 25,136

MARGIN OF VICTORY: 11%
In the end, it wasn’t even close. Turner’s long run in office proved no match for his constituents’ frustration at his switch—after having been booted from the Conservative caucus—to the Liberals. Lisa Raitt, currently on leave from her post as CEO of the Toronto Port Authority, is the closest the Conservatives came to electing a Torontonian yesterday. Her election doesn’t indicate any real shift in the area’s political leanings, as the riding has often gone Conservative in the past (including their initial election of Turner in 2006).
Conclusion: Party-switchers beware.

Mississauga South

Paul Szabo (Lib): 20,475
Hugh Arrison (CON): 18,476
MARGIN OF VICTORY: 4%
This was one nail-biter that lived up to its advanced billing. Targeted by the Tories from the very beginning, ridings such as this were intended to be at the vanguard of the Conservative push into our metropolis. They failed to make such hoped-for inroads, though certainly not for a lack of trying. The electoral district elected Conservatives for 14 years (from 1979-1993) and Szabo is one of the most socially conservative members of the Liberal caucus, so the Tory dreams for this riding weren’t entirely ill-founded. Expect the Conservatives to keep pushing hard here.
Conclusion: No matter how hard Harper tries, some people may never be buying.

Mississauga-Streetsville

Bonnie Crombie (Lib): 21,579
Wajid Khan (CON): 16,946
MARGIN OF VICTORY: 10%
Another case of a candidate who switched parties, another case of said candidate getting trounced at the polls for doing so. Khan not only crossed to the Conservative Party, he left the Liberals of his own accord (in contrast to Turner’s eviction), and the voters were not impressed. Given this outrage, and the strong Liberal presence in the area, it’s no wonder Khan kept a low profile throughout the campaign. Though Crombie is a political newcomer, her history of local volunteer work, including a stint on one of Mayor McCallion’s task forces, made her run credible from the outset, and she can take her seat confident in her constituents’ support.
Conclusion: Party-switchers—really, we aren’t kidding—beware.

Parkdale-High Park

Gerard Kennedy (Lib): 20,715
Peggy Nash (NDP): 17,330
MARGIN OF VICTORY: 7%
This one was a real heart-breaker for NDP stalwarts, and it ended up being a far more decisive victory than any poll or pundit predicted. Both candidates had extensive local support and roots in the community and—some incidents of vandalism notwithstanding—the campaign was marked by a noticeable absence of acrimony on both sides. Nash was judged one of the most promising young NDP members of the last Parliament and will have lots of backing if she decides to run again. Kennedy, in the meantime, has already been getting questions about his predicted run for the Liberal leadership—he placed fourth last time around.
Conclusion: Both candidates were and will continue to be respected, and both have done good work for their communities. With Cheri DiNovo as MPP, the NDP presence in this riding won’t be going anywhere.

Trinity-Spadina

Olivia Chow (NDP): 24,442
Christine Innes (Lib): 20,967
MARGIN OF VICTORY: 6%
Chow held onto this seat with the same margin of victory as she first won it two years ago, which is just enough to be convincing but not so much as to be insurmountable for challengers. Both the NDP and Liberals retained their presence in the riding, and both will continue to think of it as a base of power.
Conclusion: In the heart of urban Canada, left-of-centre is still the only choice.

Comments

  • rek

    Here’s for another two years of Harper ignoring the cities and regions that didn’t go blue, failing to keep his democratic reform promises from the previous election, trying to get his DMCA mark II bill passed for the third or fourth time, Layton’s headline-grabbing populist bluster disappearing after a few weeks or months, and Dion failing to be a leader where it counts (on the floor) until his party smartens up and replaces him.

  • EricSmith

    What are Dion’s options, though? There are but two:

    1. Lament Harper’s crummy, unilaterally written omnibus bills, but fail to bring down the government. Everybody: “Wahh, what a wimp, he has no principles, not a leader!”
    2. Join the blustery NDP and Bloc in defeating the government on a crummy Harper omnibus bill. Everybody: “Wahh, another election, democracy is too expensive, Liberals are arrogant!”

    There is a third outcome, but it’s not Dion’s option to choose: it’s Stephen Harper who can take a hint and instruct his minions to work constructively in committee instead of, you know, sabotaging Parliament. But that would require him to let the dream of ruling by fiat die, so I put the chance of Rek’s prediction coming substantially true at about 60%.

  • rek

    There is a very unlikely 4th option: the Liberals, Bloc and NDP agree to work as a team and unseat the Conservatives with a no-confidence vote and approach the GG with the coalition proposal.

  • Svend

    Defeating the 2 turncoats by 10 or 11% isn’t a close result or a surprise.
    I can understand the anger, if my representative changed sides without consulting the riding they should be turfed.

  • Lands Down

    Why is that unlikely? There’s no doubt Harper will use the second minority win as a mandate to proceed with his narrow policy goals (he said he would do as much in his interview last week with Mansbridge). Obviously no one wants another election within the next year, the only option is a coalition.
    Whether that coalition lasts very long is anyones guess as long as Jack’s involved!

  • rek

    If you think it’s possible, email Layton and Duceppe and Dion and whoever won your riding (as long as they aren’t a Con) and tell them it’s the only way.

  • EricSmith

    The Governor General not dissolving Parliament and instead letting someone else try to form a government? It was a noisy mess the last time it was tried. Some of the questions raised in that affair are long settled, but there’s more than enough contemporary drama to make it a complete circus if it happens in 2008.

    Even if Harper loses a confidence vote very, very soon — within weeks of Parliament resuming — and even if he willingly steps aside in favour of a Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition, explicitly saying that he’s doing so to spare us the expense and trouble of yet another election, Conservative supporters will work themselves into a raging, shrieking frenzy over Michaëlle Jean, “an unelected Liberal appointee”, “handing over power” to “arrogant loser” Dion. The crankiest will happily draw Sinister Connections: Dion in league with separatist Duceppe, Jean an alleged FLQ sympathizer; Dion and Jean both of French-from-France descent.

    Would such a conflagration be restricted to on-line fuming and photocopied handbills? That would require the press to have higher standards than they do.

  • PickleToes

    What makes you think that a coalition could be politically successful? The Conservatives are in power now because they’re governing from the centre, as the Liberals once did. An alliance of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc would likely be so extreme as to make it unfavorable among voters outside of the major cities. The key to putting the so-called “progressives” back in power is not uniting the left (although that would most certainly help), but retaking the centre vote from the Conservatives. Harper understands that, which is why he’s not afraid to anger his base by dumping a social-conservative agenda.

  • EricSmith

    Fix: Jean is not French by ancestry but was rather a dual citizen by marriage. In something of a low point in pandering to heretofore-unsuspected-by-me Canadian xenophobia, she renounced her French citizenship shortly before taking office.

  • Lands Down

    True PickleToes, but that’s a long term plan – the Liberal’s have to elect a leader with broad appeal and move back to being a big-tent party.
    That’s a years-long process, though. In the near future, something else is necessary. A coalition could work if the NDP and Bloc moderate their views. Like I said though, that’s unlikely and we’ll probably see an election next year.

  • EricSmith

    Pickletoes: the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc (which is effectively NDP + “Québec first!”) are not extreme. Are the Bloc calling for the nationalization of the oil industry? Did the NDP campaign include the phrase “property is theft?” All of the parties are centrist.

  • Lands Down

    Have you seen the NDP platform, Eric? Jobs commissioner? Government guarantee on pension funds? They’re still far out in left-field.

  • PickleToes

    EricSmith: Move out of the large urban centers and see if people still think that.

  • EricSmith

    Lands Down, even if those platform planks are “far out,” and I don’t accept that they are, “far out” stuff is the first thing you drop when compromising with other coalition members. Even if they had extreme aspects, those would be unlikely to survive.

  • rek

    Obviously a coalition of three parties couldn’t work if none of them were willing to compromise on their positions or agree not to operate in areas where their platforms are completely incompatible, but they’d have to be fools to give up the opportunity.
    The majority of Canadians did not vote for the Cons, including most of Atlantic Canada, most of Quebec, and big rural chunks west of James Bay; an L-BQ-NDP coalition would represent both the big cities and rural Canada (which is where “ordinary Canadians” probably live).

  • PickleToes

    The majority of Canadians did not vote for the Cons…
    Although the majority of citizens who voted chose a leftist party, the number was not a majority of the total eligible electorate. Given how low the turnout was, I think this is significant.

  • x_the_x

    This coaltion you are speaking of is nothing but an NDP wet dream. Layton ran the campaign of his life, benefited from collapsing Liberal support, and still barely increased his share of the popular vote. The NDP is at a high water mark and knows that its only role is to peddle influence. The Liberals know that they are ~8% of the popular vote away from forming the next government. Put shortly, the NDP has everything to gain (a role in governing) and the Liberals have nothing to gain in forming a coalition. I can’t put the obstacles any plainer than that.
    The post-election fantasy coalition differs from the version being advanced by NDP operatives pre-election only since now it includes the Bloc since the Liberal/NDP seat count isn’t large enough to form a government on its own. I can’t imagine a circumstance where the Liberal party, the strongest Federalist force if Quebec, would join forces with the separatist Bloc. Nor can I imagine a situation where the Bloc is involved in governing the country it has a mandate to separate from.
    Needless to say, I disagree with rek who says that the parties would “have to be stupid to pass up the opportunity”. At least in the case of the Liberals, they would be stupid to accommodate two parties who have no hope of forming the government themselves.
    Moreover, there are fundamental differences between the parties that can not be put aside for the sake of governing. You can’t just put tax policy aside at budget time, even less so in the face of an economic crisis where tax policy takes on heightened importance. The NDP in particular, knowing they can’t form a government, have substituted enlightened economic policy to improve productivity, create conditions for job creation etc. in favour of populist bank and oil company baiting filled with either deliberate lies (“make the big polluters pay”) or total falsehoods (the idea that raising corporate taxes will protect manufacturing jobs). I know the Liberals have always been a bit tent policy but one thinks that there are limits to that when it comes to accommodating the worst ideas of the political left.
    I know minority governments are fundamentally unstable, but there is no reason to believe that the government will bounce from confidence vote to confidence vote. The Conservatives have been handed a mandate, a larger one than before the writ dropped, and the opposition parties have no choice but to respect that in the short term. Unless an issue arises that leads an opposition party to bring down the government – like government corruption, or fundamental economic mismanagement, or a foreign conflict – this government will get 12-18 months to set the agenda. After that all bets are off.

  • Green Sulfur

    Geeze, Lands Down, did Layton run over your puppy or something? Get a life.
    And, Pickle Toes, the NDP got almost all of its gains outside the largest cities. In fact, I think only only new seat was from Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal combined while they got five new seats in northern Ontario alone. I don’t care if you have a hate on for the NDP or whoever but at least try to tell the truth.

  • rek

    x: I said from the start it was very unlikely to happen, what more do you want?
    Anyway, here’s how the seats would have been filled if Parliament formed according to popular support:
    Cons: 117
    Liberals: 81
    NDP: 57
    Bloc: 28
    Green: 23
    Independent: 2

  • PickleToes

    Green Sulfur: Of course there are exceptions to the rule (northern Ontario in particular), but generally the NDP is a party that wins seats in urban areas.

  • Mark Ostler

    ^Don’t forget the Yukon, northern BC, northern Manitoba…

  • Mark Ostler

    ^sorry, not Yukon, but the Western Arctic riding. Also Welland in Niagara Region and Acadie-Bathurst out east. There are plenty of NDP seats outside of urban areas. Take a look at the CBC’s country-wide riding map.

  • PickleToes

    That’s where I was getting my information from actually. I cited northern Ontario as a region that was an exception to my rule, but I never said it was the only exception. Of course there are NDP ridings outside of the cities and away from northern Ontario but not a great deal.

  • Mark Ostler

    It’s interesting though that it seems to be where the NDP is growing its support. Perhaps the exception may become the rule in a few years time…

  • friend68

    The Liberals seem to now be nothing but a party for big cities — but too bad for them there are only three of those in Canada. Calling yourself a big-tent party doesn’t make it true.
    I think if they want to rebuild, they need to quit pretending they have some god-given right to be in power, and to quit pretending that anyone who disagrees with them is either stupid or some dark menace.

  • Mark Ostler

    “pretending they have some god-given right to be in power”
    One reason why a coalition government won’t happen anytime soon. A sense of entitlement to govern.

  • rek

    I don’t think that’s unique to the Liberals.

  • Lands Down

    I think it is, it’s why they didn’t think twice about electing Dion as leader at the convention. At a time when they needed a strong leader to redefine the party and reach out to people on the fence, they elected someone who had serious trouble communicating in English whose entire campaign was based on one issue.
    Hopefully they learned the lesson and won’t do something like this again.
    And Green Sulfur – yes, yes he did.

  • friend68

    Lands Down,
    That is odd… Layton also ran over my puppy, then laughed maniacally while licking his moustache.

  • PickleToes

    Mark: I would definitely agree with that.