Conservative government could have been result of 2021 election
It is said that change in 11 ridings if taken by Liberal would have meant a Liberal majority government
I do understand how 11 more ridings won by Liberals would have given it majority government and I do believe that a change of only 17,000-odd votes could have produced that different seat count.
The same unfortunately holds true for the change from a Liberal minority government to no Liberal government at all.
A shift in a few hundred votes or less than three thousand votes in each of just 21 districts, less than 10 percent of the districts in Canada, would have produced a Conservative government, instead. (Or at least such a slight change would have given the Conservative party more seats than any other party. If that lead in seats would have actually produced a Conservative government is beyond me. And if so, how long such a Conservative government would have lasted before replacement by an NDP-backed Liberal government cannot be known.)
The massive effect of a small shift in votes was also seen in 2019
I calculate that in 2019 a shift of only 17,000 votes in a particular way would have caused the Liberal seat count to drop by 23 seats and raised the Conservative seat count by 14, producing a Conservative minority government. (details available on request).
A shift of just a small percentage of the votes cast in the 2021 election also could have resulted in a Conservative minority government.
This shows the risk that Trudeau thrust the country into when he called an un-necessary election under the FPTP election system that he refuses to part with. (Whether or not that Conservative government would have lasted and for how how long is another question. Perhaps its fall would have occasioned still another un-necessary election.)
How many votes would have had to shift to produce a Conservative government in 2021?
A drop of 21 Liberal seats and an increase of 21 Conservative seats would have produced a Conservative government, a HofC with 138 Liberal seats and 140 Conservative seats.
This could have been done through a shift of only 17,500 votes.
The Liberal hold on some of its 159 seats was weak. A shift of just a few hundred votes would have changed the outcome in many districts where a Liberal won.
The following ridings saw a Liberal win by a slight lead over his or her closest contender, a Conservative candidate.:
Sault St. Marie 247 votes Lib win Cons runner-up
Fredericton 502 votes Lib win Cons runner-up
Kitchener 577 votes. Lib win Cons runner-up
Total of these leads: 1326 votes, so a shift of just 618 votes would have taken three seats from the Liberal and given them to the Conservatives.
Thus new seat totals of Liberals 156, Conservatives 122.
There are 18 other ridings where the Liberal candidate's lead over the Conservative runner-up was also less than 3000.
In these 18 ridings, it would have been a matter of only a shift of 17,000 votes for the Conservative candidates to win and thus for the party's seat count to surpass the Liberal's.
In every one of these 21 seats the Liberal candidate won with less than 3000 votes over their Conservative runner-up.
Thus a shift of less than 1500 votes at the most in each of these 21 districts would have shifted the seat to the Conservatives.
The 21 ridings are:
Vancouver Granville, Sault St. Marie, Fredericton, Kitchener-Conestoga, Sydney,
Kitchener-South, Edmonton Centre, Richmond Centre, Bona Vista, Labrador,
Long Range Mountains, Cloverdale, Kanata, Aurora, Thunder Bay,
Malpeque, Niagara Centre, West Vancouver, Vaughan, Calgary Skyview
and Charlottetown.
(This is not considering the Liberal victories in NWT and Yukon where the total votes cast are fewer than the winner’s lead in votes in most of the other ridings.)
You might find it “made-up” that a vote might switch from the Liberals to the Conservatives.
But there is little reassurance to be found in a more possible hypothesis.
Instead of votes magically shifting between those two parties, what if some voters who did not vote at all did vote and voted for the Conservative candidate?
Or what if the progressive vote was more split?
What if some Liberal votes had shifted to the NDP or other party, instead of going to the Liberal candidates?
In these cases, a shift of 35,000 votes in those 21 districts would have produced Conservative wins -- and a Conservative government.
In these 21 ridings if the Liberal candidates had received 35,000 fewer votes or the Conservatives had received 35,000 more votes, the Conservatives might have taken the 21 seats, giving it more seats than the Liberals.
Yes you say but 35,000 is a lot of votes.
Yes and no.
The Liberals in those 21 ridings received 324,000 votes, so a loss of 30,000 is just a little more than 10 percent.
Average turn-out across the country was 62 percent, so in most districts at least one third of eligible votes did not vote. So an increase in the Conservative vote could easily be produced by some of the stay-at-homes not staying at home.
The Conservative candidates in these 21 districts received 289,242 votes, so an increase of 35,000 is not that exceptional.
And there were many who did not vote so the vote tallies could have easily been considerably different than they were.
In Calgary Skyview alone, 40,000 eligible voters did not vote. Is it possible that 3,000 0f them might have voted Conservative if they had voted? I would guess it is possible. That would have given the Conservative candidate there the lead over the Liberal candidate.
8,000 did not vote in Malpeque (PEI) where the Liberal lead over the Conservative was just 2100.
34,000 did not vote in Cloverdale (BC) where the Liberal lead over the Conservative was just 1700.
And so on.
So you see it was possible for the Conservatives to have taken another 21 seats, giving it government status in the HofC.
When we think about how the election might have given the Liberals a majority government if the votes had been slightly different, we should also consider how a slight change in a different way might have produced a Conservative government.
Due to the random-ness of the FPTP system we use, it could have gone either way...
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