Poll of the Day > Former President Obama endorses Trudeau, sir Sanders endorses Singh!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Canadian election coming up. Will the embodiment of the status quo and stagnant hate for the population reign or will the great Jagmeet Singh prevail victorious!?
https://www.blogto.com/city/2021/09/bernie-sanders-jagmeet-singh/

https://www.axios.com/obama-endorses-trudeau-canada-election-92aff20a-ec9e-44cc-8290-575e4be3e3e9.html

I dont know anywhere near enough about Canadian politics to have an opinion

---

Mead posted...

I dont know anywhere near enough about Canadian politics to have an opinion

Basically its a showdown between corporate moderate Obama -esque politician who speaks with a silver tongue. Vs compassionate understanding Bernie Sanders esque human being looking to better the country and world rather than hustle for their own well being.

Not saying Obama/Trudeau are bad people just selfish. Atleast they are not Trump

Given that the Liberals are very much the moderate party (further left than the US Democrats, but that's not hard) and the NDP are the aggressively progressive ones, this is not surprising.

---

This is great, as a racist I now have reason to hate both leftist candidates.

---

Sycophant posted...

Will the embodiment of the status quo and stagnant hate for the population reign or will the great Jagmeet Singh prevail victorious!?

NDP literally have a 0% chance of winning this election. 2011 this is not.

---

Sycophant posted...

Basically its a showdown between corporate moderate Obama -esque politician who speaks with a silver tongue. Vs compassionate understanding Bernie Sanders esque human being looking to better the country and world rather than hustle for their own well being.

There's no candidate from the right that's running?
Does Canada have our fucking piece of shit First Past The Post system, or do they have ranked choice or something else?
Just worried, the way this is being framed, it sounds like two leftist candidates splitting votes to enable a minority plurality victory by some ass hole on the right...

streamofthesky posted...

Does Canada have our f***ing piece of s*** First Past The Post system, or do they have ranked choice or something else?

Sorta First Past the Post - because there are more than 2 parties if the main party doesn't have a total majority the opposite can form a coalition veto block

And there are right wing parties in the running, but they do so laughably poorly that everyone ignores them... even here in Alberta the Wild Rose party just plain fails to make any ground

---

streamofthesky posted...

There's no candidate from the right that's running?
Does Canada have our fucking piece of shit First Past The Post system, or do they have ranked choice or something else?
Just worried, the way this is being framed, it sounds like two leftist candidates splitting votes to enable a minority plurality victory by some ass hole on the right...

Canada is similar to the US system except seats are allocated per local region, rather than per state. So there are smaller parties that are able to have some federal influence due to local popularity. But it's still most a two-party system with sprinkles. The relatively high popularity of third through sixth parties means vote splitting is always a highly discussed issue that's never resolved.

I'm also under the impression there are a lot more "swing" regions in Canadian politics with the exception of Alberta, probably due to candidates running at the local level. But I may be incorrect on that.

---

streamofthesky posted...

There's no candidate from the right that's running?

There is, though the Canadian Conservative party is still generally left of the American right (PPC excepted, because they're basically the "we want Canada to be Republican" party).

streamofthesky posted...

Does Canada have our f***ing piece of s*** First Past The Post system, or do they have ranked choice or something else?

Also FPTP. The Liberals were pushing for electoral reform when they got elected in 2015, but that never came to fruition (partly because nobody could agree on a new system and partly because they stopped caring so much about reform when the existing system worked for them).

streamofthesky posted...

Just worried, the way this is being framed, it sounds like two leftist candidates splitting votes to enable a minority plurality victory by some a****** on the right...

That is generally how it goes. Left-leaning voters are split between the NDP and Liberals (though the Liberals really aren't "leftists," they're very much a centrist party), while the Conservatives have basically the entire right-leaning vote (the PPC is relatively new and does split their vote a bit, but they're too fringe to make a significant difference there). Liberals take power whenever the Conservatives have been (or seem like they will be) bad enough to motivate strategic voting and push the undecided voters left, Conservatives take power whenever strategic voting efforts are weaker and/or people aren't happy with the Liberals.

---

u ppl care way to much about this shit

---

FatalAccident posted...

u ppl care way to much about this shit

maybe you dont care enough

drops entire soft pretzel on the ground

---

streamofthesky posted...

Just worried, the way this is being framed, it sounds like two leftist candidates splitting votes to enable a minority plurality victory by some ass hole on the right...

That happens up here. Canada is a fairly left-wing nation, so in any given election about 60-70% of our electorate votes for centre-left or left-wing candidates. The Conservatives only ever win because the left-wing vote is fractured amongst four major parties (the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Greens) whereas they have spent the last couple decades with no one to compete against on the right (though the PPC is now gaining ground as a hard-right party, which is both sad for its commentary on our politics at present and amusing because it will only hurt the Conservatives by splitting the already-small right-wing vote). We used to have two major right-wing parties - the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party (later the Canadian Alliance) - but they merged in the early 2000s to form the Conservative Party.

---

darkknight109 posted...

That happens up here. Canada is a fairly left-wing nation, so in any given election about 60-70% of our electorate votes for centre-left or left-wing candidates. The Conservatives only ever win because the left-wing vote is fractured amongst four major parties (the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Greens) whereas they have spent the last couple decades with no one to compete against on the right (though the PPC is now gaining ground as a hard-right party, which is both sad for its commentary on our politics at present and amusing because it will only hurt the Conservatives by splitting the already-small right-wing vote). We used to have two major right-wing parties - the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party (later the Canadian Alliance) - but they merged in the early 2000s to form the Conservative Party.

See, that shit would piss me off and make me feel the election was stolen, if 60-70% vote left of center and a right wing party wins.

People bitch about America's 2 party system b/c they're poorly educated. That's the natural end result of First Past the Post voting, the actual problem. I'd sooner vote for the lesser evil than see the diametrically opposite political party sweep into office with a mandate of *checks notes* 30% of the vote.

Just, when I saw that post stating the election was between Trudeau and Singh, my bull shit detector went off, "hey wait a minute..." That's the kind of rhetoric and framing that leads to right-wing minority rule, telling people it's a contest between two liberals...

streamofthesky posted...

See, that shit would piss me off and make me feel the election was stolen, if 60-70% vote left of center and a right wing party wins.

It's pretty annoying, but people don't seem to want to change.

I live in BC, arguably the most left-wing province in confederation, and we had a referendum a couple years ago to switch from first-past-the-post to a more representative system (several were on offer if the referendum succeeded). First-past-the-post won and not by a little bit either - over 60% of voters said they wanted to keep the current system.

Voters are dumb sometimes.

streamofthesky posted...

I'd sooner vote for the lesser evil than see the diametrically opposite political party sweep into office with a mandate of *checks notes* 30% of the vote.

No one wins a majority with 30% of the vote - in fact, you probably wouldn't even form government at all with a vote total that low (the 30% figure I gave above is basically the current floor of Conservative support; when they lose all their swing voters, that's usually roughly the vote total they wind up with). You need roughly 40% to have a realistic shot of forming a majority government and if you don't have a majority, you need the opposition's votes in order to get anything done, forcing you to work with them (a situation not dissimilar to a situation in the US where both houses of congress are held by different parties or the president and congress are of different parties). It tends to curtail the worst of the abuses, but the situation is still kind of ridiculous, if you ask me...

---

By and large, I do actually like minority governments. There are some disadvantages, certainly, particularly in that the opposition has an official duty to basically say "no lol" any time the leading party suggests something and that interferes with getting anything big/decisive done, but ensuring that a more diverse set of viewpoints has a voice in Parliament is generally a good thing and leads to more well-rounded policies than what happens if one side can just push through whatever they want.

---

adjl posted...

By and large, I do actually like minority governments. There are some disadvantages, certainly, particularly in that the opposition has an official duty to basically say "no lol" any time the leading party suggests something and that interferes with getting anything big/decisive done, but ensuring that a more diverse set of viewpoints has a voice in Parliament is generally a good thing and leads to more well-rounded policies than what happens if one side can just push through whatever they want.

The only thing I dislike about minority governments is how unstable they are which itself is also a product of first-past-the-post, given that a change of a few percentage points in the polls can change the ruling party from being in the minority to either being in majority territory (incentivizing them to call an election - incidentally why we're having one today) or being out of power altogether (incentivizing the opposition to call a vote of no confidence and force an election).

I would be far more comfortable with a Proportional Representation system. Yes, it would be perpetual minority government, but I don't look at that as terrible, largely for the same reasons you brought up here and it would do away with the instability that plagues the current system. This is especially true given that minority governments seem to be growing more common these days as the proportion of the population that could be considered swing voters shrinks and political alignments solidify.

---

darkknight109 posted...

I would be far more comfortable with a Proportional Representation system. Yes, it would be perpetual minority government, but I don't look at that as terrible, largely for the same reasons you brought up here and it would do away with the instability that plagues the current system. This is especially true given that minority governments seem to be growing more common these days as the proportion of the population that could be considered swing voters shrinks and political alignments solidify.

Same, particularly where prop rep does an even better job of giving smaller parties a voice (I was going to say "less popular," but the amount of voice they get under prop rep is actually exactly as popular as they are, so that's not altogether appropriate). Unfortunately, neither of the parties that can be expected to have the power to enact prop rep are particularly interested in doing so, so I don't have high hopes for it ever coming to fruition.

---

Sycophant posted...

Basically its a showdown between corporate moderate Obama -esque politician who speaks with a silver tongue. Vs compassionate understanding Bernie Sanders esque human being looking to better the country and world rather than hustle for their own well being.

Not saying Obama/Trudeau are bad people just selfish. Atleast they are not Trump

If those are the top 2 choices Canada is screwed.

---