Don’t take this election for granted

The writ has dropped!

At 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked the governor general to dissolve parliament. She agreed, and now it’s full steam ahead for the October 21 federal election.

For the past few months, I’ve been glued to the CBC’s online Poll Tracker, which is run by a political analyst I really respect — Eric Grenier. He takes all the election polls released across Canada and, depending on their individual characteristics such as sample size or previous accuracy, weights each poll accordingly. Grenier then blends them all together and the results are what you might call a poll of polls, or poll aggregator, as they’re sometimes called. (Please see my previous blog about Poll Tracker for more info.)

When I last checked Poll Tracker, the Liberals had closed the gap with the Conservatives so the two parties are now tied neck-in-neck with 33.8 percent of national support. However, this projection translates into a much different scenario in terms of seats, with the Liberals projected to get 164 seats and the Conservatives 141.

This is because, as political analysts would say, the Liberal vote is much more efficient. They’re projected to win a larger number of seats with a smaller number of votes in many, if not most, ridings they’re projected to win vs. the Conservatives, who will win many, if not most, of their seats with a larger number of votes per riding. This equates to a large number of wasted votes for the Conservatives.

If only this election was being held under proportional representation, not our antiquated first-past-the-post electoral system.

With PR, the Liberals, with 33.8 percent of the vote, would not get the currently projected 164 seats. Instead, they’d get 33.8 percent of the total 338 seats in parliament, or 113 seats. The Conservatives would get the same. This would result in a parliament where MPs would be forced to work collaboratively with each other to get things done — something more important than ever with huge issues like the climate crisis facing us all equally, regardless of our political stripes.

Given we’re still stuck with first-past-the-post, fingers crossed that the Liberals do not win a majority (170 seats or more). If they can only form a minority government, they’d have to turn to the NDP and Green Party for support. In such a situation, the NDP and Greens might just be able to extract a commitment from the Liberals on a number of critical issues. First on the agenda: the climate crisis, which is causing Canada to warm twice as fast as the rest of the world.

This election may be one of the most critical in Canadian history. And none of us can take the outcome for granted. So dig in, and learn about the key issues and how each party plans to tackle them.

Poll Tracker may be one of the best tools around to keep you on side with the polls. But the most important part of this election is making sure you get out and vote.