Decision Day

Must-reads: Greg Weston, John Ivison and Chantal Hébert recap election night.

It’s going to be a great few weeks for anonymous Liberals.

Forget that bit about Dion appealing for calm. That’s what it looked like from eight feet back. But up closer (and to a national audience) it sounded a bit different.

Earlier today we posted a story identifying nine strategic ridings. Here are the results:

Welcome aboard…

Talk like that really makes Conservatives hot. Also phrases like… Our caucus is broad.

Further to my earlier post looking at the most and least “average” ridings in Canada, here’s what went on in the ridings where unemployment is around 6.6%, households get by on roughly $46,500 a year and about 21% of your neighbours came to Canada from abroad:

He started his stump speeches with the line “I’m Jack Layton and I’m running to be Prime Minister.” Tonight, he began with: “My name is Jack Layton and to put ordinary familes first, I ran for Prime Minister.”

Well, it’s all over but the calls for resignation. I suppose it’s time to break it down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNqGadFP_W8

Stephane Dion emerged from the elevator just past midnight, walking fast in a dark suit, his wife at his right, his daughter at his left. Down the hall, past the water fountain, then a left, then another hundred feet and into the first burst of camera flashes and questions. 

At Hollywood on the Queensway, the bar in Ignatieff’s Toronto riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore that, as mentioned in a previous post, has served as his election-night HQ, the crowd is thinning out. It’s not a venue that recalls his Ivy League days.