Coalition government and/or a left-wing merger in Canada is all the rage at the Globe and Mail, with a Globe and Mail editorial discussing the ramifications of a shift left, Jeffrey Simpson arguing that the whole thing is a stupid idea, and Neil Reynolds talking about the Whigs for no good reason. The arguments on all sides contemplate a merger or coalition of the Liberals and the New Democratic Party, which is the most logical assumption considering that the Greens are nonviable nationally (although I did enjoy discussing the “hypothetical Mango Coalition” that could result from the 2008 election if the red, orange, and green parties joined up).

I’m interested in the effect of a merger, so I’m going to make some assumptions, not all of which are warranted:

• The Bloc Québecois is not party to any coalition. BQ voters will always vote for the BQ. (This is probably the weakest assumption, since the BQ actively campaigns for votes and almost certainly won marginal candidates.)
• The Green Party is not party to any coalition. Green voters will always vote for the Greens. (Again, this is a fairly weak assumption and I might examine the hypothetical Mango Coalition in a later post, but they’re not considered relevant by the editorialists so I’ll ignore them. However, they would have made quite a difference in the model below.)
• Ridings won with a majority by any party remain with that party.
• A riding won with a plurality by a Liberal or NDP candidate would remain with the merged party regardless of the current vote split.
• A riding won with a plurality by a Conservative or BQ candidate needs to be reconsidered. I’ll do so by assuming that 66% of the NDP vote goes to the merged party and the other 34% evaporates (to model voters being displeased by a perceived shift to the middle and staying home). Based on those numbers, the party with a plurality takes the seat.

There were some surprising results. The Liberal-NDP merged party ended up poaching 24 seats in total, including 17 from the Conservatives and 7 from the Bloc Québecois. In total, that puts the parties at:

• Liberal Democrats: 137 seats
• Conservatives: 127 seats
• Bloc Québecois: 41 seats
• Independent: 3 seats

This puts a different spin on the current House. However, we must take into account the Bloc’s behavior. After the 2008 election, there was discussion of a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition government. However, it is not in the Bloc’s interest to form a coalition, since the Grits’ position on Québec sovereignty is not compatible with the Bloc’s. As a result, we must consider this a non-coalition government – a majority run by the Grits.

It’s difficult to imagine this situation as being much better for the Grits. Dion would have run a minority government, but as a weak leader he likely would have been forced into an election some time between October 2008 and now. Ignatieff would still have been waiting in the wings to take over the leadership of the party in the ensuing chaos.

A merger is not a panacea.

Background: After spending $300 million for an election to congeal his minority into a majority government, Stephen Harper made little progress and ended up with another minority government. This appeared to be well and good, despite the fact that a coalition of the left-wing parties plus the Bloc Quebecois could easily defeat the Conservative government in a confidence motion if it decided to do so. However, because Harper failed to deliver an economic stimulus package in his fall budget, the coalition is attempting to take over as government.

That’s the official reason, anyway. Stanley Hartt argues that the whole thing is a pretext to prevent the Conservatives from cutting per-vote campaign funding. Lysiane Gagnon, predictably, thinks this is fantastic.

Governor-General Michaelle Jean is faced with an essentially subjective decision about whether to accept the coalition’s overtures to replace the minority government.

Bloggers are amused.

This is an interesting bit of political theatre in that the left coalition is one of rejection rather than agreement. Dion disagrees with the Bloc’s reason for existence. Layton smelled blood in the water and was poised to take over for Dion at the slightest misstep. I have no doubt that the parties can cooperate, but their agenda will be difficult to characterize as anything but white bread.

This all assumes that Michaelle Jean feels it’s appropriate to allow Dion to step in as Prime Minister, of course, though it would be difficult for her to disallow it. The political costs to defeating a motion of confidence and calling another election would be ridiculously high; if Jean values continuity and stability over effective government, then it would be against the left’s interest to defeat a motion of confidence lest they go through another election just to have a similar result but provide a procedural opportunity to request to form a government.

I don’t think it would. In each of three polls ending 2 October posted on NoDice.ca, the three-party left could take a majority of the popular vote with a fair margin of error in their favour. (The numbers are: 52% left coalition, 37 Conservatives, 9 Bloc; 57, 35, 10; and 54, 36, 9.) Of course, the caveat of distortion from taking the popular vote rather than the riding-by-riding vote applies. The seat projections at NoDice are nearly a month out of date.

So here’s a simple approach: I mapped (in OpenOffice.org Calc) the popular vote for each party, the number of seats, number of seats divided by percentage of the popular vote, and percentage of the popular vote per seat won. (I threw out the Conservatives’ 1993 number, since 2 seats and 16 percent of the popular vote skewed the numbers badly.) I then averaged the Seats/Percentage numbers over the last 5 elections to find the coefficient of the popular vote.

The coefficients are:

BQ:4.18

Conservative (plus Canadian Alliance): 2.76

Liberal:3.92

NDP: 1.52

Based on incumbency advantage, I’m going to arbitrarily adjust the Conservative coefficient upward 50 basis points to 3.26. I’m also going to arbitrarily issue the Greens 5 seats, because their lack of representation makes it impossible to find a coefficient. Thus distributed, I multipled the coefficients by averaged current support based on the 3 polls and rounded. The seats (accounting for 292 seats) are:

BQ: 40

C: 117

L: 97

NDP: 28

Green: 5

Under these numbers, a Liberal/NDP/Green coalition would have 130 seats – not a majority, even of the smaller number of distributed seats, but still more than the Conservatives.

This is NOT A PREDICTION, though. The numbers are utterly lacking in rigour. It was merely meant as a very rough demonstration that the Bloc would not be necessary for a coalition government by the left.