Election aftermath
While the Conservatives received 5.83 million votes Monday, the NDP and Liberals took 7.29 million votes.
From here.
Now that the election is over, speculation is starting to kick in. As much as I'm upset and frustrated by the election results, I've had some time to think about it and there are some things that I'm interested/wary about.
1.) With 24 hours to consider, I think I'm not quite as worried as I was before about how far Harper will push his agenda. With some space to breathe, it's become clear from looking at the results that the majority of Canadians are not actually right leaning - as evidenced by the vote listings above - and that Harper owes his majority to voters who could defect just as easily as they bolted to him.
While I dislike Harper, I have to agree with the assessment that as a politician, he's quite smart. I know that he can afford to be magnanimous right now, having a majority, but I think he's aware that he has to be smart about this or else he will alienate people. I am hoping that because he is this smart, he won't push the far right-wing issues. In the past he has stayed away from both the debates of both same sex marriage and abortion, I'm hoping that that caution will stay with him.
2.) It will be interesting to see where our left leaning parties go from here. There are two choices. We remain with a multiple tier party system and the Liberals will have to work their asses off in order to unite the center once again, siphoning votes from the NDP and the Conservatives to present an alternative. The second is that the left will have to actually unite - the Liberal Democrats, perhaps - and come together to appeal to left leaning Canadians.
I am... Actually a bit more in favour of the first, simply because it leads to a government that is more representative of a country in general. I don't think that highly polarised politics is good in general, and I don't relish the idea of bouncing back and forth between parties that are so different. I think it brings out a lot of negativity in people. :/
Either way, it's going to be an interesting four years. We'll see how things go.
There are
comments at Dreamwidth. http://kerri.dreamwidth.org/676740.html#comments
From here.
Now that the election is over, speculation is starting to kick in. As much as I'm upset and frustrated by the election results, I've had some time to think about it and there are some things that I'm interested/wary about.
1.) With 24 hours to consider, I think I'm not quite as worried as I was before about how far Harper will push his agenda. With some space to breathe, it's become clear from looking at the results that the majority of Canadians are not actually right leaning - as evidenced by the vote listings above - and that Harper owes his majority to voters who could defect just as easily as they bolted to him.
While I dislike Harper, I have to agree with the assessment that as a politician, he's quite smart. I know that he can afford to be magnanimous right now, having a majority, but I think he's aware that he has to be smart about this or else he will alienate people. I am hoping that because he is this smart, he won't push the far right-wing issues. In the past he has stayed away from both the debates of both same sex marriage and abortion, I'm hoping that that caution will stay with him.
2.) It will be interesting to see where our left leaning parties go from here. There are two choices. We remain with a multiple tier party system and the Liberals will have to work their asses off in order to unite the center once again, siphoning votes from the NDP and the Conservatives to present an alternative. The second is that the left will have to actually unite - the Liberal Democrats, perhaps - and come together to appeal to left leaning Canadians.
I am... Actually a bit more in favour of the first, simply because it leads to a government that is more representative of a country in general. I don't think that highly polarised politics is good in general, and I don't relish the idea of bouncing back and forth between parties that are so different. I think it brings out a lot of negativity in people. :/
Either way, it's going to be an interesting four years. We'll see how things go.
There are
comments at Dreamwidth. http://kerri.dreamwidth.org/676740.html#comments