Beyond The Commons

 Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

One unquestionably good thing

by Aaron Wherry on Tuesday, May 3, 2011 8:56am - 47 Comments

Voter turnout was up, if only slightly—from 59% to 61%.

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  • chet

    Funny thing about those CPC "attack" ads about Iggy…..they were true.

    Imagine a world in which the CPC war room was able to infiltrate the Liberal "elite" and put a bug in their ear to shoot down the prospect of party renewal, to douse the flames of passion of the party grass roots, to convince them to pass thier gaze past EVERY SINGLE LIBERAL LIVING IN CANADA and instead annoint one who, unlike 99.99999999% of Liberals, chose to live outside of Canada for most of his adult life and even publicly mocked the country he would one day try to lead and self identify with the country to the South that all Canadians are self conscious about.

    One has to wonder whether the Liberal elite was that bad, or whether Harper really IS an evil mastermind genius.

    • John D

      Gracious in victory i see

      • Schadenfreude

        Hey, I just expressed my great admiration for Ignatieff below, but Wherry deserves all the kicks-while-he's-down that he gets for his pathetic propaganda masquerading as journalism.

        • McC_

          um, this post was a voter turnout statistic.
          <tap> hello? is this thing on? <tap, tap>

    • Andrew (not PorC)

      Chet, election's over, you can leave now. See you in 2015.

      • LdKitchenersOwn

        By "leave" do you mean "power down"? I'm not sure the chet program is capable of "leaving" the internet.

    • Atchison

      "Funny thing about those CPC "attack" ads about Iggy…..they were true."

      Ignatieff just announced that he will return to teaching. Turns out that he was just visiting.

      • http://idrinkinthemorning.com Rick Omen

        Let the Liberal In-fighting begin!!!!!!! Yiippeee!!!!!!!!!!!

    • AT1

      Chet, what are you on about? Just enjoy the moment.

  • chet

    ….and is anyone else looking back at the most "historic" headline grabbing story of this election – the ejection of a couple of suspected Liberals from a CPC rally…..

    and thinking to themselves "was the media really THAT bad?"

    The score:

    Commen sense Canadians 1
    Media 0

  • Schadenfreude

    I've got a lot of respect for Ignatieff. Good man, great Canadian, honourable politician. I was sorry to see him go down like that. But I love the message to cheap hacks like Aaron, and I'll be urinating on his grave for the next four-to-five years. And even though Aaron flacked for the Libs with an unbelievable degree of hackish shamelessness these last several years, they should resent him too – since as you'll have read in several campaign postmortems, one of the Liberals main mistakes was assuming that ordinary Canadians hated Harper as much as hardcore Liberal partisans did. And it was shills-posing-as-journalists like Aaron who did more than anything to create the Harper-hating bubble in which the Libs would become so disconnected from reality. So this is your bed you've made, Wherry – and now you've got to lie in the bed that you crapped in.

    • alfanerd

      And it was shills-posing-as-journalists like Aaron who did more than anything to create the Harper-hating bubble in which the Libs would become so disconnected from reality.

      So true. Until the Liberals recognized why the Conservatives won and why they lost so terribly they will not recover.

      Funny thing is, Harper was giving them good advice the whole time: Canadians dont want a politician who lived his life outside of Canada to lead them, and they did not like the Liberal's stated wish to take power after losing the election. The NDP surge started after Iggy's infamous interview with Mansbridge where he admitted he would take power after losing.

    • John D

      I find it hard to believe hat you know the meaning of the word "respect."

    • Loraine Lamontagne

      Conservatives: 39.6% of Canadians
      Non-Conservatives: 60.4% of Canadians

      Why be surprised that there is an anti-Harper discourse when an overwhelming majority of ordinary Canadians don't support him or his party?

      • Schadenfreude

        Right, and 80% of Canadians don't support the Liberal party. Funny thing is, when the Libs were winning majorities with 38% they were claiming to be the only party that represented Canada. No political party has won 50% of the vote for decades, and it's not going to start happening anytime soon, either. And who is "surprised" that there is "an anti-Harper discourse"? I'm just interested in the way that the "discourse" has fogged Libs judgment: just a few days Liberal toadies were ranting and raving on these boards about how no Libs would ever switch their vote to the Conservatives – well, where did all those new votes in Ontario come from? Clearly, you people are out of touch with your own voters, or you wouldn't have lost the GTA, for instance. And how'd you get so out of touch? The echo chamber created by cheap shills like Wherry has a lot to do with.

      • briguyhfx

        Make that 24% of Canadians. We still had only 60% turnout.

        • Schadenfreude

          …cause of course everyone who didn't vote is a Liberal, natch! You people learn nothing, do you – have fun with your imaginary friends who all want you in power but just can't be bothered to vote for you!

          • briguyhfx

            WTF? It's a fact: 24% of eligible Canadians voted for Harper. 18% for the NDP. 12% for the Liberals. 3.6% Bloc. 2.4% Green. 40% didn't vote for any of the above.

          • LdKitchenersOwn

            Back to math class for you!

  • John D

    I don't think it is a good think that 2 in 5 Canadians are not interested in choosing how their country is governed.

    • Yanni

      Sure, but what can you do if people are content with whatever the status quo happens to be?

    • McC_

      but it is a good thing that at least 1 in 50 more Canadians took an interest this time compared to last time. Hopefully this will be a trend, and not an anomoly on the larger trend of declining voter turnouts. Would be nice to believe that we've bottomed out at 60% participation. Yup, would be nice to believe that.

  • john g

    I'm fully expecting to see a changing of the guard not just at the political leadership of the Liberal party, but at leadership & reporting positions in the left wing media.

    The Canadian Press and the Toronto Star in particular…both unabashedly liberal outlets have now tried their damndest and failed twice in the last 6 months (Harper and Ford) to prevent conservative victories, and both have failed miserably. When you fail this badly at achieving your objectives, it's time to make changes. I think Canadians showed quite clearly they have had enough of the media trying to influence elections with obviously one sided coverage of meaningless bullsh!t scandals. Jen Ditchburn and Joan Bryden in particular for CP, and Terry Milewski for CBC I would like to single out in particular for their spectacularly bad, over the top scandal mongering throughout the campaign. You folks are rendering your entire profession obsolete. Hopefully someone in leadership positions at these organizations is paying attention, because this election was as much a rebuke of traditional media as it was of the Liberals and BQ.

    • Schadenfreude

      I'm a fan of Milewski – he can go over the top, but he's done some great work as well. Overall, shameless flacks like Wherry can't even hope to be a fraction of the journalist that Milewski is. But Ditchburn and Bryden are definitely approaching Wherry-esque levels of hackery…although Aaron will probably always be the king of that category.

      • john g

        I deliberately left Aaron out of that rant because I was looking at it from an organizational perspective. Maclean's as a whole is not in the business of defeating Conservatives. However it's clearly part of the mission statement at CP, the Star, and CBC.

        • Schadenfreude

          I agree on CP and the Star, but I thought that the CBC did a much better job than usual this year.

        • s_c_f

          Wherry does deserve to be include in your list. But I suspect that he's been asked by his employer to perform his Lib-cheerleading Harper-attack misleading and partisan reporting. It does seem to pull in a rabid crowd of like-minded individuals on his blog (most of the are absent today, wonder why?).

  • Andrew (not PorC)

    Voter turnout increased slightly. Looks like the Liberals who stayed home in 2008 didn't come out this time either. I think the Liberals need to tack to the right.

  • Atchison

    One unquestionably good thing…

    167 Tory seats for a shameless hack like Wherry to suck on.

  • Atchison

    BREAKING NEWS:

    This just in. Michael Ignatieff has just bought his plane ticket back to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  • Yanni

    I think you can probably come up with more modern, secure and convenient methods of voting, but people are skeptical of electronic voting yet. Look at the states, where vote counting by machines is regularly blamed for election results someone doesn't like.

    As for mandatory voting, all that does is increase the number of MP's who have an "A" in their last name. Not voting is a way of expressing your preference, which is "I haven't really paid attention to politics, so whatever you guys decide is fine by me". If you bring in mandatory voting, then 40% of the voting population will just pick someone at random. What would be the point?

  • Blue

    I was not surprised to see the voter turnout only slightly higher than last time—there is a strong group that will always get out and vote Conservative—-the other parties support seems to be on again-off again.

    Why were the pundits and pollsters so wrong with the relatively large majority win—Canadians may soon look to chet for their predictions.

    I had thought that the 4 ridings near Brampton would be the bellwether ones that would determine the CPC win. In the previous Parliament they were all Liberal and if 2 of them went Conservative this time then it should be a higher minority—3 would be a small majority. Well, all 4 went Conservative and they cruised to a majority.

    The vote split certainly helped the Conservatives in Ontario especially, and as I thought the 40% popular vote did result in a fairly easy majority.

    As for that parked-protest-NDP vote in Quebec—who knows what will happen to those MP`s. Harper will be glad they are Layton`s problem and not his.

  • John D

    I see a lot of comments about 'left-wing media' and calling Aaron Wherry a shill, etc. I really don't get why people spend their time consuming media that they don't like and visiting blogs that present an alternate viewpoint from their own, and then complain about it. I don't spend my time watching Sun-TV and yelling about it, or visiting conservative blogs and complaining that they are conservative. Unless you guys are getting paid to do this you might want to find a more relaxing hobby.

    • Schadenfreude

      I've explained why it's relevant to discuss above: the Harper-hater echo chamber which flacks like Wherry created was an essential factor leading to their defeat. So if you want to understand the Liberal defeat, you need to understand how shills like Wherry helped to make it happen. Personally, I visit Liberal propaganda sites like Wherry's because it gives me some insight into the Liberal mindset – I learn a lot from them that way actually. But I also think that if Wherry wants to be a Liberal spin doctor – and obviously that is what he wants to be – he should stop pretending to be a journalist, and make his partisanship official instead of passive aggressive.

      • Selena

        Dress it up all you like, you're still a troll.

    • AT1

      JD, I agree with you. But sometimes its nice to get the other views.

      On the other, it's a bit silly to for people to grumble about reporters like Terry Milewski, who are doing their jobs asking questions that are tough. If politicians can't handle difficult questions they should be doing something else.

      On the matter of Terry Milewski, he was the first to congratulate Harper on his win.

  • Blue

    Iggy is making his Quit-Speech now and he still doesn`t get it—that contempt thing was a Committee stunt and Canadians knew that—Jack Layton knew that—Iggy still doesn`t know it.

    I don`t envy the Liberals and their rebuild. If you look at the MP`s they elected there is very few stars there—-a very weak bench—they will look old and tired in Parliament.

  • http://twitter.com/matwilson6 @matwilson6

    I DID NOT VOTE:

    http://ahabit.com/harper.htm

    I HATE THEM ALL EQUALLY !

    • Selena

      Then you have no business commenting. You obviously don't care, don't wast our time with simplistic remarks, or any, for that matter.

  • Dot

    The Greens lost 400,000 votes nationally. I wonder how that contributed to the vote split/shift in Ontario. It seems to me the GPO is a bit more centre-right than May's GPC. Ironic if she contributed to the majority by foregoing a national campaign. But, I'm sure she'll make a good local MP.

  • JSC

    I think the “Unquestionably” Best thing to happen was the near wipe-out of the BQ Party.

  • McC_

    just a whole lot of on-topic commentary here.

  • Iccyh

    More and more, I'm starting to come around to the idea that maybe it isn't such a bad thing that voter turnout isn't spectacular (don't mistake this for me saying low turnout is good, just that it isn't the end of the world). While I'm sure in some circumstances low turnout is due to a serious breakdown between citizens and the government, I suspect that in most cases low turnout reflects Canadians deep faith in their politicians to not mess things up.

    Or at least not mess things up so badly that they'd need to care about politics.

  • excanuck

    Rather bluntly put for polite Canadian society, but hmmm….

  • Turd_Ferguson

    So, is this the end of the world as you know it Aaron?

  • McC_

    shouldn't be, lots of people still seem to be reading his posts and commenting, that means lots of eyeballs near to the ads that make this site possible.

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