How close did the NDP come to losing everything? Annihilation was just 2,087 votes away: Wilson +86 DPR +148 Corbett +158 Macdonald +276 Belliveau +363 Zann +483 Gosse +573 2,087   How close did they come to forming the Official Opposition with 15 seats? It was just 2,104 votes beyond their grasp: Dexter -21 Morton -32 Kent -143 Whynott -204 Jennex -371 Birdsall -387 Parker -438 Boudreau -508 -2,104   Elections NS reports a (preliminary) total of 414,880 valid votes cast in the election....

11 October, 2013

[Update and correction] I have taken down my post analyzing Frank Corbett's near defeat in Cape Breton Centre, because I had the turnout percentage in his riding wrong. Since this was the key data point on which my analysis hinged, it no longer holds up. I am on the road all day today, but I will have a second look at the numbers first chance I get. If anything useful turns up, I will put up an amended post. Apologies to Frank and to the electors of Cape Breton Centre for my error, and many thanks to Contrarian reader Rob Spencer...

10 October, 2013

Nova Scotians tune in on election night to learn two things: Who won, and who are the sore losers. Darrell Dexter was a smart loser, delivering the best speech of the night, a gracious amalgam of congratulations to the winners, and thanks and condolences for his followers, upbeat but laced with sadness he could not hide. Perhaps the worst thing about the crushing defeat meted out to the NDP is the suboptimal quality of the survivors. I heard both both N-Dips and Tories Tuesday night predict Sterling Belliveau will bolt to the Liberals who, if they are smart, will not take him. DPR,...

09 October, 2013

It all began with this: Then this and this in rapid succession: One smart-ass tweeter caught the Elections NS spirit: The results from Needham: Not all ballot makers are created equal: Here's a spelling-challenged ballot forger: Ballot-making as political speech: This guy voted three times: I don't know. Those Xs look suspiciously familiar. Feel free to send us your proof of voting facsimile.  ...

08 October, 2013

You may have heard Elections Nova Scotia's allegation that I violated the province's election act Saturday. I don't believe I did,  but however the controversy turns out, you may want to know how I got myself in this putative pickle. On Saturday, I drove to Halifax, where I will do election night commentary for CTV. I had misread the yellow election card that came in the mail, and mistakenly thought I could vote Saturday at any returning office. Turns out that option expired last Thursday. At the Blues Mills polling station, the helpful returning officer informed me the only two places I...

07 October, 2013

Many of those who responded to my posts on the Dexter government's mistakes and accomplishments (here,  here, here, and here) were disappointed New Democrats. To my complaint that a small cadre of apparatchiks in the premier's office exercised far too much central control, a party supporter employed in the administration offered this colourful label: [A] group of too-young, nasty, disconnected, Harper-style assholes. Another longtime party supporter on the party's left flank wrote: One of the most disappointing failures of the government was not bring more talented, knowledgeable, and competent people into the government and the party. In every area the government claims to be interested in improving—the environment, poverty,...

04 October, 2013

Readers of my two recent posts (here and here) on the Corporate Research Associates rolling poll for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald* should consider a new poll, commissioned by the right-wing Sun News Network, that shows a somewhat closer race than CRA's eyebrow-raising results. Sun headlined the 48-26-25 split, but it's worth noting that when Abacus Data, the firm that conducted it, counted only respondents it deemed likely to vote, the numbers edged closer to the CRA results: 51-26-23. The likely voter sample included only 243 respondents, which yields a sampling error of ±6.4 percent, 19 times out of 20, somewhat higher than...

03 October, 2013

Assume for the moment that the Corporate Research Associates poll showing Stephen McNeil's Liberals with a 30-point lead is accurate (which I assume it is), and assume McNeil holds that lead until Tuesday (which remains to be seen). The next question is, how the heck did this happen? The NDP made serious mistakes (see here and here) but they did not run a horrible government (see here and here). Not everyone will agree, but there is a reasonable case that Dexter deserves another term, something of a tradition in Nova Scotia, as many have pointed out. The curious thing is that one detects little passion in...

02 October, 2013

Unintended Consequences Dept.: If next week's election turns into a Liberal sweep, as seems increasingly likely, there will be many, many new faces at Province House. All those new members will be required to find fully accessible constituency offices within one year, or forego reimbursement of their office expenses. Returning members have three years to comply. AMI, the accessible cable channel, has a nice video on the new rules: These consequences aren't completely unintended, of course, but at the time the new rules passed the House of Assembly Management Committee, few realized how many freshman MLAs might be arriving later this month....

02 October, 2013

Don Mills sounds nervous. Nova Scotia's best known pollster has been conducting a rolling poll for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and over the last week, his numbers have pointed to an historic rout. For the last five days, he has shown Stephen McNeil's Liberals holding steady between 55 and 57 percent of decided voters—enough to propel him to a lopsided majority. "We're under a lot of scrutiny here," he told Contrarian. Here's the latest edition, published Tuesday morning: To understand how unusual such an outcome would be, I looked at every Nova Scotia election since 1960. Over those 15 provincial votes: The winning party got more...

01 October, 2013
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