One of those dry posts

Once again, a fun evening spent indoors looking at the curvey multicoloured bar on the CBC. Some short takes on the Quebec election:

• The CBC's political analyst lady from McGill was one of the sharper talking heads i can recall ever hearing from on these sorts of broadcasts. That hair, though, Jesus. Maybe it was because I was watching it on a wall-sized screen (don't ask), but my God, that thing probably had a riding of its own.

• Conventional psephological wisdom is that in first-past-the-post elections, the closer the three-way race, the more the translation between vote share and seat share gets distorted. I was half expecting that we'd have one of those fun results where the party that wins the most seats came second, or even third, in the popular vote. I bet the various PR campaigners, especially here in Ontario, were licking their chops in anticipation of this outcome. Instead, thanks to flukey geography, the three big parties wound up very close to perfectly proportional results.

• Because the ADQ crept up from third into second, defying the pundits and pollsters, it's safe to guess that a fair number of would-be ADQ votes actually wound up tactically parked, some with the PQ, probably a fair few more parked with the Liberals. Even Stephen Harper, ordinarily cut from adéquiste cloth, was throwing bones to Charest precisely because he saw the choice as being a Liberal/PQ binary split. Considering that the next election will be pegged as the ADQ show right from the outset, expect a fair number of these tactical votes to shift to the ADQ column. It is this fact that should scare the willies out of the Quebec Liberals. They might reassure themselves that they've hit bottom, but beware, there's still more room downstairs.

• Mario Dumont's wife: proof that being a career politician won't help the genetic fitness of your offspring.

• I see the potential for the federalist/separatist chasm morphing into a new divide in Quebec politics, between those who hold a civic-oriented, non-ethnic vision of the Quebec state, and those who see its core purpose as being a "homeland" for this nation Bas-Canadien, surrounded and under siege by anglos and darkies and so on. The ADQ has laid claim to the latter, and they're welcome to it. The real risk is for the Liberals to chase after them, much the same way Boisclair did with his whole me-too-ing on the face veil issue. Instead, they should jettison that festering ethnic-nationalist element altogether from their party. The province of Quebec is a multi-ethnic polity in which the nation Bas-Canadien happens to comprise a majority of the population and contributes substantially to the province's unique character. The protections of the Charter and numeric influence of the pur-laine ensure that their existence as a distinct culture is not in doubt either now or in the future. But to link Quebec's drive towards being empowered differently from the rest of Canada to this ethnic factor is inexcusable. This is political ground that the Liberals, both federal and provincial, need to vacate.

• Interesting, albeit unsurprising, how of the three leaders only Charest put part of his acceptance speech in English. Based on where the Liberals lost ground, never before in the modern era have we've seen a Quebec government so beholden to the anglo vote, proportionately speaking.
  

• We haven't heard the last from Québec solidaire. Now that the PQ is a wounded animal, expect the hardcore lefties to lose their incentive to stay on-side. Next time I think a seat in East Montreal would be a reasonable bet.

• Charest got Florid0wned. Or, to draw a more obscure parallel, John Reynolds-in-West-Vanc0wned.

• Once again, CBC's election coverage wins the beauty pageant. CTV, SRC and TVA's graphics still can't stand up to the CBC's toolbox, which has been kicking around in pretty much identical form since 2004. Curious to see if the CG stakes will get upped even more for the next federal election.
  

• Tee-hee. Andrew Coyne said "statist morass" on The National. Gotta admire him for wearing his ideology on his sleeve. And for being entertaining. That said, even Chantale Hébert was oddly charming tonight. Dogs and cats, sleeping together, etc.
  

• Oddly enough, I called this election outcome, sort of, back in the leadup to the 1998 election for a social studies project. Grade 11 Tom noticed the two-terms on, two-off pattern and enshrined it in a construction paper prediction years before the pundits rattled it off in the context of this election. Go me.