The curious myth of the stronger Conservative mandate

By Larry Brown
National Secretary-Treasurer
National Union of Public and General Employees

The Jerry Seinfeld television show in the 1990s was famously a show about nothing. It had no theme, no consistent story line, it was about – nothing.

The Canadian election of 2008 should go down in history as the Seinfeld election. It was, for the Conservatives, an election about nothing. Observers who kept looking for a reason for the election looked in vain.

An election about nothing for the Conservatives

During the last week of the campaign, the Harper election platform was finally released, but it was full of very glossy pictures of Mr. Harper and so little content that the writers for the Seinfeld show would have been embarrassed by its vacuity. For this Mr. Harper broke his own law about fixed elections?

Like the best Seinfeld plots, the plot for this election was simplistic in the extreme. Mr. Harper wanted a majority, period. What he would have done with it remains a mystery because he didn’t tell us, and now we’ll never know.

But amazingly, the popular narrative coming from this strange election is that Mr. Harper won! He didn’t quite get his majority, but he emerged with a stronger minority.

So the only discernable reason for Mr. Harper forcing this election on us was so he could get a majority, and he failed to get it, but notwithstanding that failure, he won? Spin is one thing, but this goes beyond spin. This is rewriting reality.

But Mr. Harper increased the Conservative’s share of the popular vote, Mr. Harper and many of the pundits will point out, have pointed out to a fault. And he won more seats. What could be clearer?

Harper received fewer total votes than last election

Well, I don’t know, maybe winning more votes? The sad fact of this election is that Mr. Harper got a greater percentage of a smaller number. The Conservatives, after having been in power for two years, running against a very weak and impolitic Liberal leader, got 168,724 fewer votes than they did in 2006.

In 2006 the Conservatives won 124 seats on election day. This year, with almost 170,000 fewer votes, the Conservatives picked up an additional 19 seats.

The Conservatives won more seats because they drove fewer people to stay away from the polling booths than the Liberals did, although the Liberals in fairness had the assistance of the Harper attack ads to help people decide to stay home.

The only party to increase its total vote was the Green Party, not that it matters in our system, since with almost a million votes they still don’t have a seat in Parliament.

The much heralded point that the Conservatives increased their share of the vote loses even more of its luster when one considers that the percentage of those voting for the Conservatives only increased by about one percent, while the number of seats the Tories won increased by 6%.

Progressive opposition parties represent majority of Canadians

Mr. Harper insists that he emerged from the election with a stronger mandate, despite several crucial facts that say he didn’t: (1) He offered nothing substantive in terms of policy, and because he promised so little he has a very limited mandate; (2) He received fewer total votes this time compared to last time, and only a marginal increase in the percentage of those voting; (3) The most crucial difference was in vote splitting between other parties, not support for the Harper government; (4) We have another minority Parliament after a majority of voters (63%) voted for political parties that disagreed with Mr. Harper on almost every issue.

Harper wanted a majority and didn’t get it, so on election night he changed the narrative to the technicality of more seats and a slight increase in the percentage vote, conveniently ignoring the fact that fewer people voted for his party than did so in the last election.

Has it really come to this? The party that drives fewer people to drop out of the electoral process is declared to have won a significant victory? Jerry Seinfeld, where are you? We need a punch line for this election about nothing. The plot has fallen flat.

NUPGE

The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is one of Canada's largest labour organizations with over 340,000 members. Our mission is to improve the lives of working families and to build a stronger Canada by ensuring that our common wealth is used for the common good. NUPGE