Some take away’s from tonight.

Several historical things.

A Conservative majority, largely at the expense of the split left vote that saw the bloc wiped off the map and the NDP becoming an historical official opposition.

Eliabeth May’s Green party haveing a historical first elected seat which means there is no excuse for her to participate in future debates.

2 Party leaders lost in their ridings, something that has not happened before.

Will the NDP be effective in official opposition considering how tight the Conservetives ran things during a minority government. 

Social media played a much larger role in this election. All parties must make more use of it as the population continues to use social media more and more.

As we have been waiting for the various leaders to speak. The bloggers have been talking about electronic voting and if that would help voter engagement. A good discussion is happening on if this would skew voter to one side or another.

We area also talking about how much of the Twitter traffic tonight has been negative on the results. Does this show that many of us are in a bubble. I have seen several mentions of that in the streams tonight.

As social media use increases these tools will play more of a part in how we cast our vote.

Stuart Clark

Finding the voter turnout numbers very surprising. I honestly expected greater numbers.

SC

We are listening to Michael Ignatieff speak and he seems stunned as some of us here tonight at /A\ ‘s internet cafe.  Many questions will be asked in the days and months ahead, but it is clear the Canadian voter has spoken.

Some of these questions will include.

Will Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe resign due the less then expected results?

We are curious on some of the poll by poll results in some ridings, London North Center comes to mind?

What will happen with Usage Based Billing?

If the voter turnout remains about the same, what can be done to further engage the voter?

What other questions do you have?  Please discuss.

Stuart Clark

election Canada shows 32.8% turnout from 42,361 of 71,512 polls

first conservative majority since 1988

NDP now over 101 projected seats

30 min into getting the results and the results particularly for the NDP are quite stunning.  Some ridings in London such as London West which was thought to be a horse race have turned out not to be. Ridings thought to be safe such as London North Centre, have become a very close 3 way race.

It looks this time the polls showing the NDP support did translate though on election day. The past two weeks of the election have shown how quick things can change.

More thoughts as the evening goes on.

Stuart Clark