A Canadian electorate that appears to have tired of more than a decade of Liberal rule was heading to the polls on Monday, seemingly ready to hand a limited mandate to the Conservatives.
Notice how it is a "limited mandate." This would ONLY happen to conservatives--libs always get landslides--even when it is only 43% of the vote as x42 got in '92. Reuters = Pravda of the '60s and '70s
Check out history here...
http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/1867-2004.html
Rare does a party hit 50%.
Especially with 4 major parties.
Over 45% is a landslide.
Liberals got a majority in 1997 with 38.5%.
The Tories are knocking on the door.
Don't forget they started the election down 5 to 8%.
Reuters is right. In a parliamentary system, the "winning" party cannot create a government on its own unless it wins an outright majority of the seats in government. Since this is not likely to happen in Canada (but it could), the Conservatives would have to create a governing coalition by joining one of the other three major parties (Liberal, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois). Since these three parties represent varying degrees of big-government Marxism (and in the case of Bloc Quebecois, big-government Marxism in a world in which Canada as it is currently constituted doesn't even exist), you can be sure that a Conservative "victory" today is likely to be pretty subdued in the long term.