Coast To Coast Election Wrap-Up

St. John's 'The Telegram':

...In this province, it’s a bit like the little dog chasing the electoral bus: now that we’ve caught that big old bus, what the heck do we expect to do with it?
Premier Danny Williams got his wish with the defeat of all Conservative candidates running in the province: the problem with that is just exactly what we expect to achieve with the result.
Quebec is also somewhat isolated.
As for the rest of the country, there’s certainly the argument to be made that the electorate has liked what the Tories have done in government, at least enough to give them a new and stronger mandate...

Charlottetown 'The Guardian':

Gail Shea made history in Prince Edward Island Tuesday by ending the Liberal party’s nearly three-decade-long hold on the riding of Egmont...

Fredricton 'The Daily Gleaner':

...The immediate task is to get over that fact and resist the urge to punish those provinces, like Newfoundland, and those ridings, like Moncton, that rejected you. You have been elected to represent all of us equally, and no good can come from dwelling on the numbers and holding grudges.

What you can do for us here in Atlantic Canada is everything possible to convince us that we matter. We are, frankly, tired of being dumped on by you. And don't think you can show up the day before the election and assume all is forgotten...

Halifax ' The Chronicle Herald':

BILL CASEY walked victorious into his Truro campaign office Tuesday night to shouts of "Bill, Bill, Bill."

The thunder of supporters’ voices echoed through the office, reflecting an electoral storm that wreaked havoc on his competitors and delivered a stinging rebuke to Stephen Harper. The prime minister kicked the respected MP out of the Conservative party last year for voting against the budget in a dispute over the Atlantic accord.

Mr. Casey, now an Independent MP, blushed, waved to the crowd and said meekly: "Hi, everybody."

His words were drowned out.

Later, when the room quieted down, he said the campaign, his seventh, was a wonderful experience because of the backing he received from his constituents in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley.

"People who were never involved in politics came out to support me," he said. "That is what was meaningful to me. My win is a credit to all those people...

Montreal 'The Gazette':

Harper might have failed to win a majority, but he did make significant gains, winning more than 140 seats in the Commons and making some important breakthroughs in the Toronto area. That should give him the strength he needs to make Parliament work, and that's what he must do. If there's one thing the country can't afford right now, it's another bout of expensive rancour...

...In one of his last campaign speeches, the prime minister hit precisely the right note when he told voters in Prince Edward Island that "the No. 1 job of the next prime minister of Canada is to protect this country's economy, our earnings, our savings and jobs, at a time of global uncertainty." The overwhelming majority of Canadians would no doubt agree with that assessment. But for better or worse, they've decided that although they're happy to let Harper lead the effort they don't trust him enough to let him do it alone.

That means Harper must find a way co-operate with a group of opposition leaders who have far more in common with each other than they do with him...

The Globe and Mail':

Doug McArthur, Jodi White and John Manley, join the Globe and Mail's Edward Greenspon dissect Tuesday's federal election in his weekly political podcast...

'The National Post':

...It is the least surprising of the possible outcomes contemplated at the beginning of the campaign, and in many ways the one that suits the national mood and the times best. Mr. Harper is the most trusted and respected of the political party leaders, and his politics are well within the Canadian mainstream. But his united Conservative movement, which required a strong hand to stitch together a rowdy regional protest faction and the corpse of a dead national party, has not yet proven capable of producing a front-rank team that Canadians are ready to trust with unfettered majority power. It is usually regarded as a weakness of the Liberals that there are always three or four credible successors loitering around the prime minister with hidden daggers, and the perception that Stephane Dion was campaigning with a noose around his neck certainly didn't help his cause in this election, but we rarely consider how long it takes a party to mature to the point at which it can count on having a class of credible leaders-in-waiting on hand...

Winnipeg 'Free Press':

When you are down to your last Manitoba seat, it's pretty hard to sugar-coat the ballot-box drubbing voters handed to the Liberals Tuesday night...

...Indeed. The only Liberal left standing is Anita Neville who held off Tory Trevor Kennerd in Winnipeg South Centre...

...The upsets leave Manitoba with nine Tories, four New Democrats, and one Liberal...

...One Liberal insider with a long history of running campaigns said the party’s fortunes were hurt in Manitoba by both an ineffectual leader as well as the vote-split on the Left.

"Let's be honest, the leader did not resonate here or anywhere," he said.

The Grit source noted the crowding of parties on the Left -- Liberals, NDP and Greens -- isn't making it any easier to hold seats.

"What we are facing now is exactly what the Conservatives suffered from 15 years ago which was a fragmented right," he said.

Raymond Hebert, a political scientist at St. Boniface College, said Liberal fortunes in Manitoba mirror that of Grits across the country.

"There's been a blue wind blowing from Alberta and it was just a matter of time before Manitoba got engulfed in that wave," Hebert said...

Regina 'Leader-Post':

Stephen Harper's Conservatives returned to power with a stronger, broadly based minority, facing a weakened opposition leader and ready to pursue an agenda that is likely to be aimed first and foremost at addressing the fallout in Canada from the economic storm sweeping the globe.

The results of Tuesday's election deprived Harper of the majority he so desperately wanted when he killed his own minority government on Sept. 7 and showed Canadian voters he wanted to keep the Conservatives on a leash during what the Tory leader acknowledged would be uncertain economic times ahead...

Calgary 'Herald':

So near, yet so far. It was not the majority Prime Minister Stephen Harper wanted, but he should still take Tuesday's much strengthened minority as a healthy mandate to govern.

For this election was, at its root, a referendum on leadership. By a convincing margin, Canadians have decided he is better able to lead Canada through difficult economic times than Liberal Leader Stephane Dion...

Vancouver 'Sun':

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have more cheerleaders in Parliament when it next sits, but he failed to get the majority government he sought when he called the election six weeks ago.

Liberal leader Stephane Dion also came up short in his quest to persuade Canadians that the Liberals are ready to lead the country again.

In fact, of the five party leaders who faced each other around the table in the televised debates, only the three who had no hope of forming the next government -- the NDP's Jack Layton, Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe and the Green party's Elizabeth May -- could have been satisfied with the judgment of the voters...