2006 Canadian General Election
The 39th Canadian General Election (English. 39th Canadian General Election , French. 39e élection fédérale canadienne ) found on 23 January 2006 instead. 308 members were elected Canadian House of Commons (Engl. House of Commons , fr. Chambre des Communes ). After a vote of no confidence , early elections were called. The Conservative Party of the previous opposition leader Stephen Harper replaced the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Paul Martin as the strongest force and formed a minority government.
root cause
The reason for the early elections was a vote of no confidence on November 28, 2005. The opposition agreed that Prime Minister Martin's liberal government was corrupt and withdrew its confidence. The following day, Martin met with Governor General Michaëlle Jean , who dissolved the House of Commons and called for a new election. She set January 23, 2006 as the election date (winter elections are uncommon in Canada). The election campaign lasted almost eight weeks and was the longest in two decades. The Christmas and New Year holidays (with correspondingly less attention from the population) practically separated it into two parts.
Current political events, above all the investigation reports by the Gomery Commission in connection with the sponsorship scandal , have weakened the Liberal Party considerably. She was accused of having committed criminal acts. The Commission's first report, published on November 1, 2005, spoke of a “culture of entitlement”. Although the next election should have taken place in 2009, the opposition did not want to wait any longer for the second part of the investigation report, which was scheduled for February 1, 2006, to be published. All three opposition parties - the Conservative Party , the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Québécois - as well as three out of four independents supported the vote of no confidence, which was successful with 171 to 133 votes.
Opinion polls
Before and during the election campaign, opinion polls showed fluctuating approval ratings for the ruling liberals and the opposition conservatives. After the publication of the first part of the Gomery Inquiry Report in November 2005, the Liberals voted in favor. A few days later they were able to recover and make up for the losses. After the election announcement, they had a slight lead over the Conservatives in December. Renewed corruption allegations as a result of investigations by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police led to an upswing among the conservatives at the expense of the liberals towards the end of the year, which indicated a possible change of government. The approval ratings for the NDP rose slightly, while they fell slightly for the Bloc Québécois; in the case of the Green Party , they remained largely unchanged for the duration of the election campaign.
Effects
The election resulted in a conservative minority government with 124 seats. Although the Conservatives had gained 25 seats, they lacked 31 seats for an absolute majority, which is why the new Prime Minister Stephen Harper had to rely on the support of other parties in the following legislative period. The Liberals lost 32 seats and were pushed back into the opposition for the first time since 1993. As a result of the election defeat, Paul Martin resigned as party chairman; in December 2006, Stéphane Dion was elected to succeed him. While the NDP was able to gain ten seats, the Bloc Québécois lost three seats, but remained by far the strongest force in the province of Québec .
The turnout was 64.7%, which is an increase of 3.8 percentage points compared to the 2004 election.
Results
Overall result
| Political party | Chairman | candidates data |
Seats 2004 |
upon dissolution |
Seats 2006 |
+/- | be right | proportion of | +/- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative Party | Stephen Harper | 308 | 99 | 98 | 124 | + 25 | 5,374,071 | 36.27% | + 6.64% | |
| Liberal Party | Paul Martin | 308 | 135 | 133 | 103 | - 32 | 4,479,415 | 30.23% | - 6.50% | |
| Bloc Québécois | Gilles Duceppe | 75 | 54 | 53 | 51 | - 3 | 1,553,201 | 10.48% | - 1.90% | |
| New Democratic Party | Jack Layton | 308 | 19th | 18th | 29 | + 10 | 2,589,597 | 17.48% | + 1.71% | |
| Independent | 90 | 1 | 4th | 1 | 81,860 | 0.51% | - 0.07% | |||
| Green party | Jim Harris | 308 | 664.068 | 4.48% | + 0.19% | |||||
| Christian Heritage | Ron Gray | 45 | 28,152 | 0.19% | - 0.11% | |||||
| Progressive Canadian Party | Tracy Parsons | 25th | 14,151 | 0.10% | + 0.02% | |||||
| Marijuana party | Blair Longley | 23 | 9,171 | 0.06% | - 0.19% | |||||
| Marxist-Leninists | Sandra L. Smith | 69 | 8,980 | 0.06% | ||||||
| Canadian Action Party | Connie Fogal | 34 | 6.102 | 0.04% | - 0.02% | |||||
| Communist Party | Miguel Figueroa | 21st | 3,022 | 0.02% | - 0.01% | |||||
| Libertarian party | Jean-Serge Brisson | 10 | 3,002 | 0.02% | + 0.01% | |||||
| First Peoples National Party | Barbara Wardlaw | 5 | 1,201 | > 0.01% | ||||||
| Western block party | Doug Christie | 4th | 1,094 | > 0.01% | ||||||
| Animal Alliance | Liz White | 1 | 72 | > 0.01% | ||||||
| vacant | 2 | |||||||||
| total | 1,634 | 308 | 308 | 308 | 14.817.159 | 100.0% | ||||
Result by provinces and territories
| Political party | BC | FROM | SK | MB | ON | QC | NB | NS | PE | NL | NU | NT | YT | total | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative Party | Seats | 17th | 28 | 12 | 8th | 40 | 10 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 124 | |||||
| Percentage ownership % | 37.3 | 65.0 | 48.9 | 42.8 | 35.1 | 24.6 | 35.7 | 29.7 | 33.4 | 42.7 | 29.6 | 19.8 | 23.7 | 36.25 | ||
| Liberal Party | Seats | 9 | 2 | 3 | 54 | 13 | 6th | 6th | 4th | 4th | 1 | 1 | 103 | |||
| Percentage ownership % | 27.6 | 15.3 | 22.4 | 26.0 | 39.9 | 20.7 | 39.2 | 37.2 | 52.5 | 42.8 | 39.1 | 34.9 | 48.5 | 30.2 | ||
| Bloc Québécois | Seats | 51 | 51 | |||||||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 42.1 | 10.5 | ||||||||||||||
| New Democratic Party | Seats | 10 | 3 | 12 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 29 | ||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 28.6 | 11.6 | 24.0 | 25.4 | 19.4 | 7.5 | 21.9 | 29.8 | 9.6 | 13.6 | 17.6 | 42.1 | 23.9 | 17.5 | ||
| Independent | Seats | 1 | 1 | |||||||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 0.9 | 0.1 | ||||||||||||||
| Green party | Percentage ownership % | 5.3 | 6.5 | 3.2 | 3.9 | 4.7 | 4.0 | 2.4 | 2.6 | 3.9 | 0.9 | 5.9 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 4.5 | |
Web links
- Elections Canada (Electoral Authority)
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Clifford Krauss: Liberal Party Loses Vote Of Confidence In Canada. The New York Times , November 29, 2005, accessed August 31, 2015 .
- ^ Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums. Elections Canada, February 18, 2013, accessed August 31, 2015 .
