2008 Canadian General Election
The 40th Canadian General Election ( English 40th Canadian General Election , French 40e élection fédérale canadienne ) took place on 14 October of 2008. 308 members were elected Canadian House of Commons (Engl. House of Commons , fr. Chambre des Communes ). The ballot brought only minor changes. The Conservatives of Prime Minister Stephen Harper indeed increased their number of seats at the expense of the Liberals slightly but could still only a minority government form.
background
In the 2006 general election , the Conservative Party was the strongest party with 36.27%, whereupon its chairman Stephen Harper became the new Prime Minister and formed a minority government. Since then, seven MPs have changed parties: three liberals joined the conservatives, one conservative joined the liberals, one MP from the Bloc Québécois and one from the conservatives politicized independently, and one liberal helped the Green Party for the first time ever to get a seat in the federal parliament with his change of party.
In November 2006, parliament passed a law that fixes the length of a legislative period to exactly four years. The third Monday in October of the fourth year after the previous election was set as the election date. According to this new law, the next general election should have taken place on October 19, 2009. The governor general retained the option of dissolving parliament early at any time - be it on the advice of the prime minister or because of a successful vote of no confidence by the opposition.
Since the opposition parties had threatened a vote of no confidence in August 2008 and the ruling Conservative Party continued to refuse to support the legislative process, the Prime Minister announced early elections on September 7th and asked Governor General Michaëlle Jean to dissolve the House of Commons early. At the time of the dissolution of parliament, four seats were vacant; the by-elections planned for September 2008 were then canceled.
Effects
The Conservative Party started with the declared aim of forming a majority government. Although it gained 19 seats, it was ultimately missing twelve seats, so that it still had to rely on the support of the opposition. With its new chairman Stéphane Dion , the Liberal Party hoped to stop the downward trend after the failure of Paul Martin's government . She did not succeed in this, instead she suffered further heavy losses. While the separatist Bloc Québécois recorded slight losses, the New Democratic Party grew significantly and achieved the best result since 1988. The Green Party lost its only seat, which it had won during the legislative period by converting it.
All four parties represented in the lower house won at least one seat at the expense of the other parties, and at least one representative from all four parties was not re-elected. A total of 40 constituencies chose a representative from a different party than two years earlier. Michael Fortier was the only cabinet member who failed to enter the lower house. According to the law, the count had to be counted in six constituencies, as the difference between the first and second place was less than 0.1%. In the constituency of Brossard-La Prairie, Marcel Lussier from the Bloc Québecois was initially 102 votes ahead, the recount finally revealed a victory for the liberal candidate Alexandra Mendès with a 69-vote lead. For the Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh , former health minister and prime minister of British Columbia , the recount in the Vancouver South constituency showed a lead of only 22 votes, after he had been ahead with 33 votes in the first count.
Results
Overall result
Source: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
At 59.7%, voter turnout was lower than ever before. In 2004 it was 60.9%, which was also the worst result ever at the time.
| Political party | Chairman | candidates data |
Seats 2006 |
upon dissolution |
Seats 2008 |
+/- | be right | proportion of | +/- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative Party | Stephen Harper | 307 | 124 | 127 | 143 | + 19 | 5,207,553 | 37.63% | + 1.36% | |
| Liberal Party | Stéphane Dion | 307 | 103 | 95 | 77 | - 26th | 3,628,337 | 26.22% | - 4.01% | |
| Bloc Québécois | Gilles Duceppe | 75 | 51 | 48 | 49 | - 2nd | 1,379,956 | 9.97% | - 0.51% | |
| New Democratic Party | Jack Layton | 308 | 29 | 30th | 37 | + 8 | 2,509,148 | 18.13% | + 0.65% | |
| Independent / non-partisan | 71 | 1 | 3 | 2 | + 1 | 107.107 | 0.77% | + 0.22% | ||
| Green party | Elizabeth May | 303 | 1 | 941.097 | 6.80% | + 2.32% | ||||
| Christian Heritage | Ron Gray | 59 | 26,745 | 0.19% | ||||||
| Marxist-Leninists | Anna Di Carlo | 59 | 8,565 | 0.06% | ||||||
| Libertarian party | Dennis Young | 26th | 7,300 | 0.05% | + 0.03% | |||||
| Progressive Canadian Party | Sinclair Stevens | 10 | 5,860 | 0.04% | - 0.06% | |||||
| Communist Party | Miguel Figueroa | 24 | 3,572 | 0.03% | + 0.01% | |||||
| Canadian Action Party | Connie Fogal | 20th | 3,455 | 0.02% | - 0.02% | |||||
| Marijuana party | Blair Longley | 8th | 2,298 | 0.02% | - 0.04% | |||||
| neorhino.ca | François Gourd | 7th | 2.122 | 0.02% | + 0.02% | |||||
| Newfoundland First Party | Thomas V. Hickey | 3 | 1,713 | 0.01% | + 0.01% | |||||
| First Peoples National Party | Barbara Wardlaw | 6th | 1.611 | 0.01% | ||||||
| Animal Alliance | Liz White | 4th | 527 | > 0.01% | ||||||
| Work Less Party | Conrad Schmidt | 1 | 425 | > 0.01% | ||||||
| Western block party | Doug Christie | 1 | 195 | > 0.01% | ||||||
| People's Political Power Party | Roger Poisson | 2 | 186 | > 0.01% | ||||||
| vacant | 4th | |||||||||
| total | 1,601 | 308 | 308 | 308 | 13,834,294 | 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 | 22nd | 27 | 13 | 9 | 51 | 10 | 6th | 3 | 1 | 1 | 143 | ||||
| Percentage ownership % | 44.4 | 64.6 | 53.7 | 48.8 | 39.2 | 21.7 | 39.4 | 26.1 | 36.2 | 16.5 | 34.8 | 37.6 | 32.8 | 37.6 | ||
| Liberal Party | Seats | 5 | 1 | 1 | 38 | 14th | 3 | 5 | 3 | 6th | 1 | 77 | ||||
| Percentage ownership %: | 19.3 | 11.4 | 14.9 | 19.1 | 33.8 | 23.7 | 32.4 | 29.8 | 47.7 | 46.6 | 34.8 | 13.6 | 45.3 | 26.2 | ||
| Bloc Québécois | Seats | 49 | 49 | |||||||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 38.1 | 10.0 | ||||||||||||||
| New Democratic Party | Seats | 9 | 1 | 4th | 17th | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 37 | |||||
| Percentage ownership % | 26.1 | 12.7 | 25.6 | 24.0 | 18.2 | 12.2 | 21.9 | 28.9 | 9.8 | 33.9 | 27.6 | 41.5 | 9.0 | 18.2 | ||
| Independent | Seats | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||||||||||
| Percentage ownership % | 0.6 | 6.6 | 0.7 | |||||||||||||
| Green party | Percentage ownership % | 9.4 | 8.8 | 5.8 | 6.8 | 8.0 | 3.5 | 6.2 | 8.0 | 4.7 | 1.7 | 8.4 | 5.5 | 13.0 | 6.8 | |
Web links
- Elections Canada (Electoral Authority)
- Survey
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Bill C-116 - An Act to amend the Canadian Elections Act. Parliament of Canada , November 6, 2006, accessed September 2, 2015 .
- ↑ Head of government is considering new elections. Focus , August 27, 2008, accessed September 15, 2008 .
- ↑ Stephen Harper ends gossip in Canada's parliament. Tages-Anzeiger , September 7, 2008, accessed September 15, 2008 .
- ↑ Four byelections ended after general vote called. (No longer available online.) CTV September 7, 2008, archived from the original September 16, 2008 ; Retrieved September 15, 2008 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Liberals oust Bloc in suburban Montreal following recount. CBC News , October 24, 2008, accessed September 10, 2015 .
- ↑ Dosanjh retains Vancouver South seat after recount. Toronto Star , October 24, 2008, accessed September 10, 2015 .
- ↑ Canada votes. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, October 14, 2008; accessed October 15, 2008 .
- ^ Voter Turnout at Federal Elections and Referendums. Elections Canada, February 18, 2013, accessed September 2, 2015 .
