{"id":3816,"date":"2011-10-05T13:33:44","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T18:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=3816"},"modified":"2011-10-05T13:34:09","modified_gmt":"2011-10-05T18:34:09","slug":"manitoba-elects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2011\/10\/05\/manitoba-elects\/","title":{"rendered":"Manitoba Elects&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_3817\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3817\" style=\"width: 476px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/breakingnews\/manitoba-election-expected-to-be-the-closest-in-more-than-a-decade-131034178.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3817  \" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2011\/10\/mb-election-2011.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"476\" height=\"455\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2011\/10\/mb-election-2011.jpg 661w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2011\/10\/mb-election-2011-100x95.jpg 100w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2011\/10\/mb-election-2011-400x382.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3817\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Manitoba Provincial 2011 Results<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Manitoba New Democrats rolled to a <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/breakingnews\/manitoba-election-expected-to-be-the-closest-in-more-than-a-decade-131034178.html\">4th straight majority win<\/a><\/strong> over the Progressive Conservatives. Canadian election campaigns are mercifully short and while the Manitoba contest was a curt 4 weeks, the advertising and rhetoric was brutal in this battle for the political middle. The Manitoba economy, like parts of the upper Midwest of the US isn&#8217;t reeling like the rest of North America, so there wasn&#8217;t a great thirst for change. The <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Manitoba_general_election,_2011#Opinion_polls\">opinion polls<\/a><\/strong> had the Progressive Conservatives up earlier in the year, but the New Democrats rallied under Premier Selinger.<\/p>\n<p>The Progressive Conservatives narrowed the gap in terms of the popular vote, but gained no additional seats. Andrew Coyne of Macleans expressed his annoyance at the current first-past-the-post {candidate with a plurality of votes wins the riding, <em>i.e.<\/em>, district}::<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/acoyne\/status\/121419376007196672\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3818\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2011\/10\/Screen-shot-2011-10-05-at-7.28.52-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"481\" height=\"264\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2011\/10\/Screen-shot-2011-10-05-at-7.28.52-AM.png 481w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2011\/10\/Screen-shot-2011-10-05-at-7.28.52-AM-100x54.png 100w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/files\/2011\/10\/Screen-shot-2011-10-05-at-7.28.52-AM-400x219.png 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 481px) 100vw, 481px\" \/><\/a>He used the &#8220;anomalous&#8221; results to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/acoyne\/status\/121427605411995648\">plug his articles on election reform<\/a><\/strong>. I&#8217;m actually in favor of election reform, such as <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Single_transferable_vote\">STV<\/a><\/strong>, but I have serious doubts if it would matter in Manitoba. The province is divided:: the rural south votes Progressive Conservative by a wide margin, while urban Winnipeg and the aboriginal North votes NDP by a sizeable but lesser margin, on average. The unofficial results are <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.elections.mb.ca\/election\/results\/flashresults.asp\">here<\/a><\/strong>. Given the geographic party split of the province and the two-party &#8220;duopoly&#8221;, I&#8217;m not seeing a lot of opportunity for vastly different results. If there were larger ridings with more seats per riding, the STV gamechanging math breaks down when one looks at the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Manitoba_general_election,_2007#Results_by_region\">regional breakdowns for 2007<\/a>.<\/strong> The NDP and PCs had their respective regional strongholds and it will be interesting to see how the final 2011 shake out.<\/p>\n<p>This doesn&#8217;t mean I feel STV shouldn&#8217;t be implemented, but that the 2011 Manitoba results might not be the best case to pitch for it. Tomorrow&#8217;s Ontario provincial election, well, that&#8217;s a different story. Ontario has three strong provincial parties {PC, Liberal, NDP} and strategic voting is likely to be a factor in quite a few ridings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Manitoba New Democrats rolled to a 4th straight majority win over the Progressive Conservatives. Canadian election campaigns are mercifully short and while the Manitoba contest was a curt 4 weeks, the advertising and rhetoric was brutal in this battle for the political middle. The Manitoba economy, like parts of the upper Midwest of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[11694,12350,12348,1388,12349],"class_list":["post-3816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comparative-politics","tag-andrew-coyne","tag-greg-selinger","tag-manitoba-election","tag-ndp","tag-progressive-conservative"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3816"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3820,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3816\/revisions\/3820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}