Andrew Furey and the Liberals now have a slim majority government winning 22 of the 40 seats up for grabs in the long-running 2021 Newfoundland and Labrador provincial election.
The Liberals had 19 seats when the assembly dissolved; 21 seats is the minimum for a majority and one of those seats will go to the assembly speaker.
The leaders of the other major parties lost their seats to the Liberals: Ches Crosbie (Progressive Conservatives) in Windsor Lake and Alison Coffin (New Democratic Party) in St. John's East — Quidi Vidi. The PCs fell from 15 seats to 13 seats. The NDP retains seats in Labrador West and St. John's Centre.
There are now 3 independent MHAs in the assembly.
Despite the individual losses, most ridings were status quo. All the cabinet members who ran won re-election.
Crosbie gave a pre-taped speech, the first time we've seen that in our history of covering provincial and federal elections in Canada. Given Crosbie's 2019 speech, a pre-taped speech might have been a smart move. Crosbie's 2019 speech was so angry that even Jason Kenney would have been like "tone it down." Crosbie did predict correctly that Dwight Ball would leave as premier and party leader within a year (but for different reasons) but the rest of the speech was filled with bizarre theories and an overall odd speech.
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The turnout was an all-time low in the province at 48%. The 2019 election had a 60% turnout. We have covered a number of issues involved with the mail-in options. Coffin's loss was relatively close.
The Torngat Mountains riding, where language is an issue, had an appalling 22% turnout.
Canadian elections generally have larger turnouts than American elections. The hope is that the turnout will be bounce back in a more traditional election. Election ballots need to run in Indigenous languages. The CBC News coverage noted an Alberta election that had a 40% turnout.
The CBC News coverage talked about a 12% drop; the actual math is 12 percentage points so the drop was 20%.
In what feels like a long time ago, 33,523 Newfoundlanders and Labradorians cast a ballot in the advance poll, a 50% increase over the 2019 election with 21,289 early voters.
The release of the Green Report, designed to help the province with solving financial woes, was delayed until after the election, so that will be a post-election focus.
Newfoundland and Labrador was required to have an election before August 19 since Furey was elevated to premier without an election.
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The number of female MHAs remains at 9. The Liberals now have an additional female MHA that counters the loss of Coffin with the NDP. The number of women in the assembly is just under 25%.
With the loss of Coffin, there are now 4 women running a provincial party with seats in a legislature: Andrea Horwath (Ontario) and Rachel Notley (Alberta) are opposition leaders; Sonia Furstenau (Green Party in British Columbia) and Manon Massé (Québec solidaire).
Annamie Paul is the federal leader of the Green Party.
photos credit: CBC News Newfoundland and Labrador
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