World Politics and Elections 2025

[dubsartur]

Liberal leader and PM-without-a-seat Mark Carney has called an election with the Liberals and Tories approximately tied in voter intent.  He already implemented one major Tory policy by ending the individual carbon tax after the April rebate payment.  Trump's threat to annex Canada caused about 10% of voters to shift their intent from NDP to Liberal, and 10% of voters to shift their intent from Conservative to Liberal.  The election is the earliest possible, Monday 28 April (roughly five weeks away).

On the weird Internet communities front, Carney is really into spicy autocomplete despite being a banker where precision and factuality matter.

Something called the Toronto Star was one of the papers which had an excitable headline about the Kelowna residential school in 2021.  Its only read by people in TO and other journalists (although back when I read newspapers I wonder how many journalists read even one paper a day given some of the things they forgot and some of the patterns they failed to recognize) https://www.thestar.com/

Doug Saunders once published the book Maximum Canada (meaning population 100 million https://www.dougsaunders.net/about/maximum-canada/ ).  After an American pundit talked about 1 billion Americans, Pierre Polievre is complaining about the Century Initiative, a lobby group with Saunders' original goal https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/  Usually its Canadians who adopt bad old idea that the Americans are abandoning.

[Jubal]

According to 338 Canada, the "neck and neck in the polls" thing may be a little misleading insofar as the Liberals probably hold a structural advantage in seat numbers: a dead heat in the polls on polling day probably equates to a Liberal win in seats terms. The Conservatives conversely have a much more solid base in their rural ridings but in a sense "stack" too many votes there so the distribution is less efficient. So at present from a career perspective many Conservative MPs have better job security but the Liberals are more likely to form governments.


Over here in Europe, the Portugese have set their general election date for 18 May, coinciding with the first round of the Polish presidential election. In France, François Bayrou's government holds on to existence by the skin of its teeth, plagued by internal arguments, and in Germany and Austria new centrist coalitions are completing negotiations (Germany) or starting governing (Austria). None of them feel very optimistic - it does feel like, with one or two exceptions, governing parties have been facing very bad headwinds for most of the last 10-15 years such that the political penalty for being in government is becoming very tricky to deal with. There's always some incumbency penalty, but my gut feeling is that it's dangerously large right now.

[dubsartur]

The other problem in Canada is that BC and Alberta are underrepresented in parliament. Quebec and the maritime provinces have a number of special favours written in to the rules for the size of parliament and the western provinces were not good negotiators last time it came up.

This would not be such an issue if JT had fulfilled his promise to replace First Past the Post, because then winning 60% of votes in a riding would be 50% better than 40% of votes, and not "exactly the same result."

[Jubal]

The other problem in Canada is that BC and Alberta are underrepresented in parliament.

How many more seats should the west have, out of interest?

[dubsartur]

The other problem in Canada is that BC and Alberta are underrepresented in parliament.

How many more seats should the west have, out of interest?

That is a technical question and I don't have a reference offhand.  Its also complicated because parliament will expand from 338 to 343 seats after this election. 

Wikipedia gives population of Canada 41.5 million Q1 2025
population of BC 5,722,318 in Q1 2025
population of Alberta 4,960,097 in Q1 2025 (obviously these are all estimates)

So BC and Alberta have 25.8% of the population of Canada, and would have got 87 MPs under representation by population.  They actually had 80.

This site seems pretty reliable although I don't know where the figure 339 comes from https://businesscouncilab.com/insights-category/analysis/why-alberta-continues-to-be-under-represented-in-ottawa/ Note that the number of electors per MP varies by a factor of 3:1 or 3:2 if you exclude tiny Prince Edward Island (somewhat smaller and much less populated than Crete).

[Jubal]

The UK likewise has some particular carve-outs for island areas (Orkney and Shetland being consistently the least populated seat).