...and the votes keep being counted...

[ciroccoj]

CBC.ca has the running tally. There are 308 ridings, and the Conservatives need 154 to win a majority government.

Total Elected and Leading so far...

Party	Elected	Leading	Vote Share
CON	83	37	36.32%
LIB	56	42	32.23%
BQ	40	10	8.16%
NDP	12	13	18.39%
IND	0	1	.42%
OTH	0	0	4.48%

For a while there, there was a riding where the leading candidate was from the Green Party. Didn't find out where the riding was before they lost their lead.

Comments

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

Okay, so what exactly does it mean to form a majority or minority government?

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

The government is whoever has the most seats. If the party with the most seats has more than half of the seats, they are a majority, which means that pretty much whatever bills they propose will become law, because, with rare exceptions, Canadian pols vote by party lines. It also means that the biggest party gets to stay in power for up to five years, when the next election is called.

If the biggest party does not have more than half the seats, that means that in order to get bills passed, they have to work with the other parties to get them to vote for the bills too. It also means that, if there's a big enough stink raised about anything, the other parties can gang up and call a vote of no confidence, at any time. And if the leading party loses that vote of no confidence, they have to call a new election.

That's what happened with the Liberals. They were a majority government for ten years, then held a general election and became a minority government. They cooperated pretty well with the NDP (socialist party) and with the Bloc Quebecois, for about 1.5 years. Then the results of an inquiry into major corruption came out, the Bloc, NDP, and Conservatives held a vote of no confidence, and the Liberals lost. Hence our current election.

Which has been won by the Conservatives, as a minority. Which is not great, but not the end of the world, either, because they won't be able to ram through whatever they want whenever they want, because if they try to do that they'll face a vote of no confidence too.

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

Gotcha. How terribly exotic. :))

LOL!!

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Canadian politics.

Exotic.

I'm trying to get my head around that juxtaposition of nouns.

Nope, not getting there.

Re: LOL!!

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

*g* Exotic is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.