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Originally Posted by Snakeeye
Dumb question since the obvious answer is yes.
The Liberals dont have a leader, and don't have the money to battle an election for at least 18 months or so.
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Dumb answer really. You should bother to look at the seat breakdowns and historical evidence.
The facts are this, this minority government has the smallest seat share of any minority government in Canadian history.
Also, there are about 2.5 effective opposition parties in the house which is the largest amount of effective opposition parties in Canadian history.
I believe the average of minority government's sitting is about 16 months.
So how long will the government last? Based on these numbers, not long.
The biggest difference between this minority and other minorities is the seat share. Seat share has a proportional relation to the time a minority lasts in parliament. The higher the effective opposition parties, the more likely parliament will dissolve as well. This is of course based on historical data.
So right now, statistically, it doesn't look good for this government.
Will they get a majority next go? That's a good question. They need to do well in Ontario. They have maxed out their growth potential in the west so Ontario will have to be the tipping ground. Based on the 2006 numbers, the conservatives are still quite weak in Ontario based on historical election data from say 1957 when the Conservatives won a majority. But vote share across provinces looks quite similar to the last ill fated Conservative minority in 1979.
Chris Kam at the UBC dept of Political Science did the bulk of this analysis. If you have questions about his data, ask him. But to say it's a dumb question is well frankly, quite dumb.