Most Canadians who plan on voting for the Liberal party are more motivated to stop the Conservatives from winning the election rather than endorsing the party’s vision and leader, according to a new poll released on Monday.
And this is why the LPC will never pass electoral reform (except for ranked ballot, because they’re more likely to be everyone’s second choice) because under full PR they’d never, ever, get another majority government despite having tepid support among the voting population. For the record, the CPC wouldn’t even support ranked ballots as they’re almost never the second choice of anyone (because their policies–when they can be bothered to articulate them–are unpopular, believe it or not)
For the record, no Canadian political party has had >50% of the popular vote in half a century, and even before then it was exceedingly rare. FPtP allows the LPC or CPC to sneak a majority in, anyways.
This is also why the one thing Trudeau could do to make me respect him would be say, “I’m stepping down as leader. My last act as PM is to roll out legitimate proportional representation.”
The Liberals are probably not going to win the next election no matter what; but legitimate reform would mean an end to autocratic majorities.
He’d face a full caucus revolt if he tried. I’d expect the Liberals would prefer to lose a vote of confidence than implement PR.
Honestly, I think they’d also rather lose than implement anything remotely economically progressive.
Also changing a majority from 34% to 51%
Instead they should vote for the NDP. The only party that truly cares about the biddle class.
ABC. Anything but conservative. FPTP is winner takes all, so vote for Liberal or NDP depending on who’s more likely to get in in your area. And pray to whatever force may be that someone puts in a sensible voting system at some point.
Remember when Trudeau promised election reform when he was elected the first time?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
I remember every election when I vote NDP.
We got dental and in theory pharma with this minority government. Maybe the NDP can twist their arm into voting reforms next time if we get another?
I remember seeing an analysis of FPTP and in about 70% of the elections since the 60s it favoured the Liberals against NDP and PC on a riding by riding and general election basis. It’ll be a cold day in hell before they change anything.
Which is disgusting! Their job is supposed to be about doing what is best for the people who live here, not whatever best serves the interests of their party. If there were a system that was good for the people while eliminating the concept of parties, every party should be glad to do the work of implementing it.
Or just vote NDP regardless so that we can stop praying.
If voting NDP had any more effect than pissing in the wind in my area I would. Unfortunately, they rarely get a significant percentage of the vote and when they do we go conservative. So it’s either hold my nose and vote lib or help a conservative who doesn’t even live in the city get in.
If polling changes to show the NDP beating the libs here I’m 100% changing my vote. Until then, the system sucks so sometimes voting sucks.
As a former resident who lived in (ugh) ol’ Stevie Harper’s riding, I totally sympathize. However, I took great pleasure in being the green blip in an otherwise homogeneous blue sea. I hope I made them insecure or at least forced them to have to hire an extra analyst…just that one little canker sore in his otherwise perfect, sterile version of Canada.
Well, because the liberals didn’t reform elections as they promised, we can’t do that.
You can, in fact, vote for NDP.
Yeah… how convenient.
sigh…
I really feel privileged to live in an area that’s NDP vs LPC where I can merrily vote against the Liberals.
Local riding 🔤 it is. 👍
In any case it’s the local riding election that matters. Some folks vote as if our system is proportional with completely counterproductive results.
God it must be so nice not having a two-party system.
Except it pretty much is a two party system with extra steps.
You mean with minority governments.
Minority governments have enacted everything that makes Canada good.
This could just be a feature of getting good things when we give the NDP a larger share of power than usual, though. The Liberals didn’t want universal healthcare, it was a concession given to the NDP because they had to. But it’s not like a majority NDP situation at the time wouldn’t have passed it.
Much the same as dental care today. What exactly are the Liberals bringing to the table other than acting as gatekeepers making sure the system isn’t as expansive as it could be?
I would be fine with minority governments for the foreseeable future.
As you said, better policy tends to result when there needs to be some level of cross-party cooperation in order to get anything done.
That’s part of the problem though. We can ignore our problems compared to the glaring ones next door.
Why are minority gouvernements a problem? That’s when parties have to make compromises with the NDP and have no choice but to vote on stuff that finally benefit the middle class.
I replied to the wrong comment. I meant to reply to someone saying at least we’re better than America.
I think minority governments are a big pro of our system.
Hahahaha ok no problem.
Well, just know that as bad as it is, you can always look south for a worse solution.
The party might, but its leader doesn’t. He’s a gilded spoon rich brat.
They all are. I’ll still vote NDP.
That the real source of the problem though, isn’t it?
The lack of citizen participation in our democracy. That’s one thing I admire about the system in the US and France. Anybody can represent themselves and get elected. I feel in Canada it’s a lot more complicated.
I don’t know much about the political landscape in France, but in the US you have to be wealthy to achieve political office above a certain level. When’s the last time a poor person became their President?
Most politicians in Canada are middle class, with the exception of some “star candidates” from the business and banking sectors who bring in lots of rich-friend donor money for the party.
The Liberals and Conservatives love that people believe this country can’t survive another election cycle of the other.
We’ll survive another 4 years of the Liberals or Conservatives. What this country can’t survive is alternating between two bad parties for another few decades.
All our parties are bad and that’s what sucks.
What are ya talking aboot? The sale of CN Rail, Experemental Lakes, PEARL, Ontario Power Generation were the best decisions ever! OH WAIT CANT FORGET THE PURCHASE OF THE KINDER MORGHAN PIPELINE /s
Vote NDP if you don’t want Cons to win, if voting Libs worked then this “threat” wouldn’t exist
As much as I hate to admit it, voting for anything other than the liberals right now will be a win for the cons. Popular support for the NDP hasn’t shifted from 20% support since 2021, meanwhile the cons are up to ~41% and the libs are down to ~27%.
Not true! Trudeau got rid of the first past the post syst… oh wait.
They are so stupid, they basically dug their own grave by not getting rid of FPTP.
If I vote Liberal I’d guarantee a conservative win in my riding…
How many ridings is this true for in the entire country? I’ll be voting liberal, and will be completely unsurprised if the conservatives get in where I live. But it will indicate something in the polls if/when more people than ever vote against them, which will increase the odds of Poilievre getting ousted if they lose.
How many ridings is this true for in the entire country?
About the same number as there are ridings in Alberta and Saskatchewan?
Ugh this is what my wife told me she was planning yesterday.
Pollievre is so fucking nutty were both worried about the country of he wins.
I cannot stress enough how fucking stupid this guy is, hell take any idea that’s popular at the time and run with it, like how he wanted to make Canada the crypto capital and neuter our central bank.
It’s pretty fucking clear if we’d done that in 2021 we’d be fucked today. He’s still peddling Bank of Canada and World Economic Forum conspiracy shit too. Yet the “fiscal” conservatives are fine with this?
So we’ve got the status PM quo that’s overstayed his welcome by a full election cycle vs 4chan Millhouse. Great. (Oh, sorry, he took off his glasses now, is he still Millhouse?)
And the NDP are also responsible because they’re sticking with Singh despite him being as uninspiring as Trudeau. They’ve only lost seats since picking him, but hey, why not stay the course… It’s great the NDP got pharmacare rolling but the implementation is asinine.
“This means just nine per cent of the Canadian electorate is passionate about and inspired by the prospect of voting Liberal,” Angus Reid wrote in the report.
What is there to be passionate about? Voting LPC to prevent a CPC government is by this point an established Canadian tradition. 🥹
Ballot reform, for fuck’s sake.
Approval Voting is where you check every name you like. Most votes wins. It’s genuinely that simple, and there’s no good reason what-so-ever it’s not the global default.
Wow. It’s hard to find a voting system I like less than FPTP, but you’ve found it! This only makes sense over STV if we don’t have computers.
STV only makes sense for multi-winner elections. It fundamentally does not pick the best candidate - just the first who can scrape together sufficient support. A person can be literally everyone’s second choice and still lose.
Approval is a straight improvement over FPTP - there is no good reason, at all, to prefer FPTP. It completely eliminates the way similar candidates cannibalize each other’s votes. It minimizes self-defeating efforts to be “strategic” by ranking no-chance buttheads higher, or only giving your preferred frontrunner half a vote.
If you’re gonna do ranked ballots to pick one candidate then use a Condorcet method.
And this type of disagreement on what sort of system to move to is among the reasons the lukewarm effort Trudeau attempted fizzled out pretty much immediately.
Can there be negative votes? So that not voting matters too
Nope.
What you’re looking for is called Score Voting. Approval is just yes-or-meh. It is the simplest form of Score, and yet, it avoids a lot of self-defeating behaviors, has less reported regret than other systems, and somehow matches Condorcet results pretty reliably.
Ennnh, I feel like ranked choice would be better.
Ranked Choice is an objectively mediocre use of ranked ballots. A candidate can be everyone’s second choice, and they’re guaranteed to lose. They’d be eliminated immediately because RCV only counts top votes. You really want a Condorcet method like Ranked Pairs.
Consider the following election:
45% of people vote Alice > Bill > Charles.
35% of people vote Charles > Bill > Alice.
20% of people vote Bill > Charles > Alice.FPTP says Alice wins, despite 55% of people preferring anyone else. Obviously terrible. Right?
RCV eliminates Bill and says Charles wins… despite 65% of people preferring Bill.
Condorcet says Alice v. Bill goes to Bill and Bill v. Charles goes to Bill so Bill wins.
As he should.
The Liberal Party says “System working exactly as intended!”
I’m lucky, in a sense, that I don’t have to make this decision. The only viable candidates in my riding are the Conservatives and the NDP, so I can actually vote my conscience.
Lucky. I can’t remember the last time the federal NDP ran a viable candidate in my riding. The last 3 or 4 have been zero experience filler candidates.
As is tradition. If you lean left, how could you vote for Conservatives?
I think you’re missing the point. These aren’t people who lean left:
Meanwhile, three in five (63 per cent) Liberal supporters said they are more motivated to prevent a Conservative government rather than to support Trudeau and Liberal policies.
It sounds to me like they are fairly middle folks who think the left is closer to the middle than the right is.
I’d call those people left leaning - or at least left leaning compared to wherever the fuck the CPC has decided to go.
wherever the fuck the CPC has decided to go.
Through the ditch and way off into the weeds on the right side of the road.
I’m sure I didn’t miss the point and I still believe anyone who doesn’t vote Conservative is left leaning.
“Left” isn’t really much of an identity definition anyway.
Right is clearly aligned with the greater political body of the small-c conservative movement. Preserve existing power structures, resist social progress, prop up ‘traditional’ values (i.e., the values that match the preferences of your tribe justified by whatever histrionic nonsense you can think of).
The left is really only defined in opposition to the right these days. Liberals, socialists, progressives, Marxists, anarchists, you name it and all the shades in between. The common identity of “the left” is just… not conservative.
Which means I agree with you. Leaning left just means leaning away from right. It doesn’t really tell you what specific policies the person wants, just what policies they reject. And center/middle/“moderate” has no particular meaning in this day and age.
i kinda see where you’re coming from, but i think it’s reversed (and let’s ignore here that left and right are economic terms and we are discussion social politics):
left is progressive - aka change things
right is conservative - aka roll back things
the left has policies to push forward, the right has policies to pull that back in - the right is literally the side of “not progressive”. you can’t be a “not conservative” because they dont have positions of their own
this differs of course to anything but conservative, because there are many flavours of progressive
By that same line of argument, there are myriad ways to be progressive but only a single way to be conservative. Which is really only true theoretically. In practice, most people who identify as conservative actually have very specific policy preferences for how they want their society to evolve. But at least the way the word is used it has an intended meaning like this.
I mean heck, with the right parameters and conditions doing things like rolling back regulations and appealing to traditional values is progressive. For example look at the advocacy of Strong Towns, who in (very) broad strokes are pushing for a return to more traditional urban development patterns in order to help cities return to safer and more financially sustainable models. If you had a mind to do so you might define this as conservative progressivism, which isn’t really a contradiction at all.
Traditionally left and right were not “economic” terms. They were the revolutionaries and the monarchists. And the idea that economic politics as separate from other kinds of politics I kind of reject too.
i think you’re right in a few ways: there are myriad ways people present their conservatism, but i’d just say that’s kind of focusing on issues they care about… progressives have the same thing: some people care about the environment and don’t have much care about trans rights (like they care about it, but it’s not going to change their vote)
being progressive doesn’t mean you support all progress equally, just like being conservative doesn’t mean you support all conservation and (what we would call) regression equally either
i think the thing with progressive vs conservative is how “entrenched” something is… progressives change entrenched systems - “the way society works” kinda stuff, which can absolutely mean rolling back legislation - like don’t ask don’t tell, laws that made sodomy illegal, etc. these are all kind of entrenched societal things that we try to change. conservatism, by contrast tries to keen the entrenched societal things the same
in a well working system, this is actually great! progressives push really hard to change things and conservatives keep the best of the bits that were working - the bits that people actually care about. in reality of course, modern politics doesn’t work like that because it’s all corrupt bullshit
Sounds a lot like us here in the ISA. Dems offer nothing but a reprieve from absolute lunatics. No Left movement survives or really even gets started.
With the NDP coalition that’s not as true in Canada. Between the national dental care plan that’s coming and subsidized childcare, among other things, real left-ish progress is being made. But as usual a) the media isn’t always telling a balanced story, b) government comms are shit, and c) the Liberals keep fucking up in visible, spectacular, and stupid ways, which distracts from genuine victories.
Which, come to think of it, does echo the Biden administration over the last four years…
ISA
Inhospitable States Alliance?
That’s the one!
We have other options. Especially in Québec.
What’s new?
🎶 Same as it ever was 🎵
This is exactly why Trudeau went back on his promise of election reform, and why we will also get stuck with a conservative government if he tries to run again with all the baggage he has.
I think he “went back” because he knows very well that in order to do electoral reforms, he would need to open the constitution and that would be extremely messy, if not the end of Canada.
Every time we even think about changing the constitution, it’s endless national drama.
