2000 Canadian General Election
The 37th Canadian General Election (English. 37th Canadian General Election , French. 37e élection fédérale canadienne ) was held on 27 November 2000. 301 members of the Canadian House of Commons (English: House of Commons , French: Chambre des Communes ) were elected. The ruling Liberal Party of Jean Chrétien was able to defend the absolute majority and expand easily. In doing so, it again benefited from the fragmentation of the opposition forces. The Canadian Alliance that emerged from the Reform Party affirmed its supremacy in the right-wing political spectrum, while the decline of the Progressive-Conservative Party continued. The New Democratic Party achieved one of its worst election results ever.
The vote
After almost three and a half years in office, Prime Minister Chrétien asked Governor General Adrienne Clarkson to dissolve Parliament. Political observers saw various reasons for calling for an early election . First, the rise of the new Canadian Alliance , which sought to unite the right-wing political spectrum, should be curbed. Second, the Liberal Party rode a wave of sympathy after the death of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau . Thirdly, the economic situation was good and there were hardly any topics with which the opposition could distinguish itself.
The Liberals had some successes to show: surpluses in the state budget (and thus debt reduction), significant spending cuts through the privatization of state-owned companies, the introduction of new environmental protection regulations and increased expenditure in the social sector, which were financed by the additional income. During the election campaign, the Liberals focused their attacks on the Canadian alliances, accusing them of being a dangerous right-wing populist movement that threatens national cohesion. Within the party, Chrétien faced intense competition from Finance Minister Paul Martin , who had ambitions to become party chairman and prime minister himself.
The electoral strategy of the Liberals was strongly regionalized and aimed at winning over as many constituencies as possible in Ontario , snatching some seats from the Bloc Québécois in Québec , improving in the Atlantic provinces and minimizing the losses in Western Canada . For this reason, Chrétien spent most of the campaign in the east and kept his visits to the west to a minimum. In Québec, the Liberals benefited from the continued decline in popularity of the Progressive Conservative Party following the resignation of Chairman Jean Charest . The new chairman of the Tories was unpopular there and three MPs converted to the Liberals before the election. All in all, the Liberals managed to achieve their goals and increased the number of their seats from 155 to 172.
A new party was the Canadian Alliance, which had been formed just months before the election as the successor to the Reform Party . Its chairman Preston Manning was disappointed that it had not been able to gain a foothold in the east of the country and was thus restricted to the west. To prevent further liberal election victories in the future, he proposed to unite the Reform Party and the Progressive-Conservative Party. This project did not succeed at first, but the reform party gave rise to the broader-based Canadian Alliance, which from the beginning was only intended as an interim solution for the desired unification of the right-wing political spectrum. The alliance elected Stockwell Day as its new chairman and deliberately appeared in the election campaign as a national party that by no means only represented the interests of the West. Ultimately, the alliance clearly missed its goals. Although it gained six seats, in Ontario only two seat gains resulted, which led to the replacement of Days in the following year.
The Bloc Québécois suffered from the unpopular decision of its provincial counterpart Parti Québécois to forcibly merge numerous municipalities. This angered numerous bloc voters who either did not vote in protest or supported opposing candidates. The strategy of getting former supporters of the progressive conservatives to his side failed, as they mostly opted for the liberals. Despite a slightly higher share of the vote, six lost seats.
The social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) suffered from the scandal-ridden resignation of the Prime Minister of British Columbia , Glen Clark , the year before. In addition, there were electoral defeats in Saskatchewan , Nova Scotia and Yukon as well as disputes with various unions. The NDP received little media attention and chairwoman Alexa McDonough was barely able to speak in the French-language television debate because of her lack of foreign language skills. The NDP's share of the vote fell well below 10% and the party lost eight seats.
Under the leadership of new chairman Joe Clark , who briefly served as prime minister in 1979/80 and made his political comeback, the progressive-conservative party hoped to regain its traditional status as a major party. The expectations placed in Clark were not fulfilled: The Tories fell from 20 to 12 seats, which means they just reached parliamentary group strength.
The turnout was 64.1%.
Results
Overall result
| Political party | Chairman | candidates data |
Seats 1997 |
upon dissolution |
Seats 2000 |
+/- | be right | proportion of | +/- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal Party | Jean Chrétien | 301 | 155 | 161 | 172 | + 17 | 5,252,031 | 40.85% | + 2.39% | |
| Canadian Alliance 1 | Stockwell Day | 298 | 60 | 58 | 66 | + 6 | 3,276,929 | 25.49% | + 6.14% | |
| Bloc Québécois | Gilles Duceppe | 75 | 44 | 44 | 38 | - 6 | 1,377,727 | 10.72% | + 0.05% | |
| New Democratic Party | Alexa McDonough | 298 | 21st | 19th | 13 | - 8 | 1,093,868 | 8.51% | - 2.54% | |
| Progressive-Conservative Party | Joe Clark | 291 | 20th | 15th | 12 | - 8 | 1,566,998 | 12.19% | - 6.65% | |
| Green party | Joan Russow | 111 | 104.402 | 0.81% | + 0.38% | |||||
| Marijuana party | Marc-Boris Saint-Maurice | 73 | 66,258 | 0.51% | + 0.51% | |||||
| Not partisan | 57 | 37,591 | 0.29% | + 0.28% | ||||||
| Canadian Action Party | Paul Hellyer | 70 | 27,103 | 0.21% | + 0.08% | |||||
| Independent | 29 | 1 | 4th | - 1 | 17,445 | 0.14% | - 0.32% | |||
| Natural Law Party | Neil Paterson | 69 | 16,577 | 0.13% | - 0.16% | |||||
| Marxist-Leninists | Sandra L. Smith | 84 | 12,068 | 0.09% | ||||||
| Communist Party | Miguel Figueroa | 52 | 8,776 | 0.07% | + 0.07% | |||||
| total | 1,808 | 301 | 301 | 301 | 12,857,773 | 100.0% | ||||
1 compared to the result of the reform party in 1997
Result by provinces and territories
| Political party | BC | FROM | SK | MB | ON | QC | NB | NS | PE | NL | NU | NW | YK | total | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal Party | Seats | 5 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 100 | 36 | 6th | 4th | 4th | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 172 | |
| Percentage ownership % | 27.7 | 20.9 | 20.7 | 32.5 | 51.5 | 44.2 | 41.7 | 36.5 | 47.0 | 44.9 | 69.0 | 45.3 | 32.9 | 40.8 | ||
| Canadian Alliance | Seats | 27 | 23 | 10 | 4th | 2 | 66 | |||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 49.4 | 58.9 | 47.7 | 30.4 | 23.6 | 6.2 | 15.7 | 9.6 | 5.0 | 3.9 | 17.6 | 27.0 | 25.5 | |||
| Bloc Québécois | Seats | 38 | 38 | |||||||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 39.9 | 10.7 | ||||||||||||||
| New Democratic Party | Seats | 2 | 2 | 4th | 1 | 1 | 3 | 13 | ||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 11.3 | 5.4 | 26.2 | 20.9 | 8.3 | 1.8 | 11.7 | 24.0 | 9.0 | 13.1 | 18.3 | 26.9 | 32.1 | 8.5 | ||
| Progressive-Conservative Party | Seats | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4th | 2 | 12 | ||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 7.3 | 13.5 | 4.8 | 14.5 | 14.4 | 5.6 | 30.5 | 29.1 | 38.4 | 34.5 | 8.1 | 10.1 | 7.6 | 12.2 | ||
| Green party | Percentage ownership % | 2.1 | 0.5 | 0.4 | 0.2 | 0.9 | 0.6 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 4.5 | 0.8 | |||||
| Marijuana party | Percentage ownership % | 0.7 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 1.0 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.5 | |||||||
| Canadian Action Party | Percentage ownership % | 0.8 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.2 | |||||||||
| Natural Law Party | Percentage ownership % | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.3 | ||||||||
| Marxist-Leninists | Percentage ownership % | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.1 | ||||||||||
| Communist Party | Percentage ownership % | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | ||||||||||
| Others | Percentage ownership % | 0.4 | 0.4 | 1.0 | 0.6 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 4.4 | 0.4 | 0.4 | |||||
| Total seats | 34 | 26th | 14th | 14th | 103 | 75 | 10 | 11 | 4th | 7th | 1 | 1 | 1 | 301 | ||
Web links
- Official election results Elections Canada (Electoral Authority)
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000 . Dundurn Press, Toronto 1998, ISBN 978-1-55002-356-5 , pp. 8 .
- ↑ a b Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. p. 16.
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. pp. 22-23.
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. p. 115.
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. p. 21.
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. pp. 61-62.
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. p. 59.
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. pp. 140-141.
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. pp. 140, 145.
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. p. 114.
- ↑ Christopher Dornan, Jon Pammett: The Canadian General Election of 2000. p. 129.
- ^ Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums. Elections Canada, February 18, 2013, accessed July 4, 2015 .
