Stéphane Dion is going to be smarting Tuesday morning. He just lost a Saskatchewan riding to the Conservatives.
The Liberals won the riding of Desnethé--Missinippi--Churchill River by 67 votes in the last election. Monday night, the Liberals lost the riding to the Conservatives by about 400 votes. Ouch.
Not unexpectedly, the Liberals maintained their two Toronto ridings, electing Bob Rae and Martha Hall Findlay. These ridings don't matter in the grand scope of things. These are both zombie-Liberal-voter ridings.
The results for Vancouver Quadra are not in as of this post. But the horrible defeat in Saskatchewan is not good for Dion.
Let's check in on Jason Cherniak...
Toronto is doing great!
I was at two polls for Martha where we had them by 70%. Now, at the victory party, the number for every poll gets read out to a huge cheer as it arrives.
Martha Hall Findlay is going to Ottawa!
The Liberal Party has totally crushed the Conservatives tonight!
Update: The Conservative lead in Sask. seems to be more like 1400 votes.
Update 2: I am projecting the Liberals will decisively take Vancouver Quadra. The Liberal trend is holding, and their lead is widening as the polls come in.
sask has been confirmed??
Well its confirmed CTV and CBC are the TV arm of the Liberal Party. I can't believe this coverage soley the Liberalty have we seen any Conservatives or any one else...whay crap, this Toronto centered Media should be sent packing back to the enclave of Toronto. We should build a wall around them before anyone else gets infected by the water!!! If I lived in Toronto I'd look in a mirror and wonder if Everyone else in Canada is wrong maybe its time to look into that mirror...Because if this is all the Media can engineer for the Liberals they too have some worrying to do!!!
Not yet, but it's basically done at this point.
I thought it...interesting...that CTV chose to have reporters at all but one of the ridings...the one riding that the CPC had a good shot at winning...
Quadra is too close to call too!
Can't say I'm surprised by the T.O. results — but Quadra's got my interest piqued. The Saskatchewan stuff's bad enough considering the parachuting of the candidate, but if Quadra goes Conservative, Dion gets a knife in the back, real quiet like...
And Jason C.? "Delusional as usual." Shame the boy doesn't actually understand that there's more to Canada than Toronto, but he strikes me as one of those people who believes that Canada is defined as "everything you can see from the top of the CN Tower on a clear day."
love the G&M headline..."Liberals land 2 by election victories in Toronto".
Isn't that akin to saying that fish live in water, or a bear lives in the woods?
Hoping we take Quadra, for a real coup here. Either way, liberals only have the freakzoid Toronto to hide in now. It's time to kick some liberal ass!
The Libs appear to be holding Quadra, but are down more than 10 points compared to 2006, which apparently has all gone to the Greens.
After tonight, I wonder what Dion's record with appointed candidates will be in total.
Right now Cherniak is crowing about a Dion APPOINTED Hall-Findlay winning in Liberal safe Willowdale, as if that is some sort of accomplishment. And now witness Joan Beatty and how tight the race is in Vancouver.
My word, but Cherniak make you dizzy just watching him spin.
Hmmm, look at the total percentages of the votes; the Tories up by 5, the Liberals down by 5. Great gains in Vancouver. And high profile Liberal candidates winning in the safest Liberal seats in the country - Toronto. Ladies and gentlemen, the Liberal Party of Toronto have arrived. Bring on the general election.
The Liberals lost 16 points in each of the Sask, and Quadra ridings, as compared to the last elections.
That's gonna leave a mark.
According to the Toronto media, this morning it is a 'great victory for the Liberals' the fact that they lost one riding, and the Greens siphoned votes away from both the Liberals and the NDP in all ridings kind of got buried.
It doesn't matter if the Liberals won Toronto, seats there were never expected to lose. If they can't pick up more seats anywhere else, indeed even losing them, then they have no momentum. On the other hand, the Tories have picked up a seat and came within a whisker of getting another seat that should have went Libearl. So who really is the winner here? It certainly isn't the Liberals.
A bang on comment about the Toronto ridings being zombie liberal.....the liberals could've withdrawn their candidates completely from those ridings, could've left them with only a conservative running against the NDP and the Greens, and they would still have voted the Libs in! When people vote for the Libs with Deeyawn in charge you gotta know that there's no hope. Toronto is a wasteland in more ways than one.
I also have to chime in on the obvious partisanship of CBC and CTV. Geez it was disgusting, whatever happened to reporting the news, now we get opinion and spin.
Mike,
You said:
"Monday night, the Liberals lost the riding to the Conservatives by about 400 votes."
Lets get it right, they lost by 1709 votes which represents a 16.4 % difference in the popular vote.
They were humiliated.
Additionally , they barely won Vancouver Qaudra by 151 votes or less than one percent of the popular vote.
If this was a "great day for the Liberals" as stated by Dion, I would love to see what a 'bad day' would look like.
Lewis
151 votes in Quadra?! Is that all? I know, I know, first past the post and all, but 151 votes is a great victory? Wow...........
Let's all find the lord and pray non stop that Deeyawn can maintain the leadership of the LPC, the longer he "leads the way" the better the chances for a conservative majority.
As I've said before, I like to take the odd glimpse at Jason's blog for a laugh. I've looked at his latest and I'm still laughing.
This has got to be the most inclusive set of by-elections ever held... dang, when was the last time that every party, whether they won or lost, got to claim a victory of one sort or another - only in Canada 'eh?
Snark aside, the Conservatives got one more MP that the party whip can tell how to vote, and the Liberal Party now has three actual arses in seats that their whip can order not to vote.
I guess that makes it net "+1 CPoC" for this round.