People voted. Results were tallied.
Things that were an actual surprise:
Less surprising things:
The hell of it is that if Stephen Harper meant it when he said Parliament wasn't working, well, he won't have a more workable Parliament in the morning. It's cynical and improbable, but the theoretical next step is for the Liberals to form a coalition with the BQ and the NDP, or another election.
Neither is likely, because the Liberals will continue to prop up the Conservatives through another round of confidence votes.
The calculus is this: neither the Liberals or the Conservatives can be seen to be canoodling with the BQ. But only the Conservatives can win confidence votes without BQ support. And even if the Liberals had the numbers to bring down the Conservatives, they surely don't have the stomach: a leader they barely tolerate, finances that have gone from strained to very strained, and little prospect for improvement within the next 18 months.
Ultra-evil prediction: the Grits are exactly desperate enough to try to elect that nice young Mr. Trudeau as their new leader.
Comments
The result in Van South was
The result in Van South was a huge surprise.
Hm..
That's a good point. What do you think was the bigger surprise: Ujjal Dosanjh coming within a whisker of losing his seat (33 votes is really close, but historically it is unlikely a recount will overturn that), or Alice Wong just thumping incumbent Liberal Raymond Chan in Richmond?
I was more surprised at
I was more surprised at Dosanjh's near loss, actually. I know my sample space is biased, but I didn't think there was much love for Chan in Richmond, and his use of resources in the last weekend was painfully dumb. I drove by a major intersection on No 3 road in downtown Richmond, and there was a large number of volunteers there just cheering and waving signs. For crying out loud, /that's/ how he spent 80-120-plus person hours????
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