For the first time since confederation, the Liberal Party of Canada is neither Her Majesty’s Government nor Her Loyal Opposition. The Bloc Québécois have been nearly wiped out. The leaders of both those parties lost their seats. The New Democratic Party is for the first time Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, but with more than half the NDP seats in Quebec, and 77% of Quebec’s seats NDP, the NDP & Quebec are now stuck with each other.
Clearly it’s been an unusual election; that is also reflected in Ve: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister and leader of Her Majesty’s Government, has achieved a majority of 167 seats with a Ve of 6.3, one point below (sic) his 2008 minority of 143 seats with a Ve of 7.3. The projected seat range for Ve = 6.3 was 136 to 164, but Mr. Harper bettered that by three, as shown by the large blue dot, so next time that boundary will have to move slightly.
The pollsters final results came in at ΣVe/n = 4.81, ca. 1½ points below the final election value (but they would have been worse if not for the COMPAS result). They were ca. two points low in 2008, yet ca. two points high in 2004 and 2006. I have updated the images and text in my Vitruvius’s Experimental Election Predictor essay to reflect these excellent results.
So as the 2011 Election sets slowly in the west, this is Vitruvius, his
election predictor, and Don Ho saying: Thanks for hosting us, Kate.