{"id":3016,"date":"2011-05-02T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3016"},"modified":"2012-05-29T16:46:25","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T20:46:25","slug":"election-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3016","title":{"rendered":"Election Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m volunteering for my local Liberal candidate<\/a> for most of the day and will be at the campaign party tonight, so updates might be a bit sporadic – especially since I plan to spend an hour or two at some point curled up in the fetal position in tears.<\/p>\n

But rest assured, I will log on here a few times tonight to share my thoughts on the results. So consider this an open thread to post your thoughts on what could be a historic election.<\/p>\n

Some things I’ll be paying attention to tonight:<\/p>\n

1. Harper’s majority<\/strong>: People often dwell on the “155” number, but when you consider resignations, floor crossings, and by elections, every extra MP in that 150-160 range is a big deal. I’ve got Harper projected<\/a> at 151 seats and a 28% chance at the majority, so it might be late into the night before we see how the dust settles.<\/p>\n

2. The independents<\/strong>: Arthur, Ford, and Guergis all stand a chance of winning tonight. Can you imagine how delicious it would be if Harper needed Helena’s vote to get his majority?<\/p>\n

3. Liberal incumbents<\/strong>: A lot of Liberal MPs I like and respect could be in tough tonight – Kennedy, Trudeau, and Dryden to name a few.<\/p>\n

4. Harper’s Cabinet<\/strong>: Lawrence Cannon seems likely to be going down, but he’s not the only Quebec Cabinet Minister in jeopardy. 308 is also predicting Peter MacKay will lose – I have a hard time believing that, but it would be the stunner of the night.<\/p>\n

5. The NDP in Quebec<\/strong>: The NDP could win 20 seats in Quebec…or they could win 50. I can’t remember the last time a province was this unpredictable heading into election night. Their performance in Quebec will be an excellent case study in just how important the ground game really is.<\/p>\n

6. May<\/strong>: It’s going to be a close one. What happens in Saanich tonight could very well decide how relevant the Green Party is in Canada over the next decade.<\/p>\n

7. Gilles Duceppe<\/strong>: This will almost certainly be his final campaign. The only question left is whether or not he holds his own seat, and just how bad it gets for the Bloc.<\/p>\n

Those are just some of the things I’ll be watching for tonight. I’m sure we’ll be treated to a few surprises along the way too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m volunteering for my local Liberal candidate for most of the day and will be at the campaign party tonight, so updates might be a bit sporadic – especially since I plan to spend an hour or two at some point curled up in the fetal position in tears. But rest assured, I will log […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1019,983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2011-federal-election","category-federal-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3565,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3016\/revisions\/3565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}