Epsilon Delta
Jedi Master
Generally, though, Canada doesn't elect majority governments with majority votes. Majorities are usually won in Canada with 38% to 44% of the vote. In BC a couple of decades ago, if I recall correctly and I may be a little off, Glen Clarke and the NDP won a majority with 35% of the vote while the Liberals won 38%. In one of the elections - I think it was 1997, Chretien won all 105 seats in Ontario as the conservative vote split between the Reform and the PC. The conservative vote split in something like 50 seats, such that had they been one party, they would have won those seats. But it allowed the Liberals to slip through the middle. I think the Liberals won a majority that election of 160-165 seats and 38% of the vote.
I don't think the Liberals will ever merge with the NDP. They are two very different parties. And the Liberals aren't really "left" either. They are more centrists. In fact, in some ridings, it appears that the right leaning Liberals broke to the Tories.
And despite the NDP's great night, they won only 44 seats outside of Quebec. Over the past 35 years, Quebec has given massive majorities to the Liberals under Trudeau, then the Tories under Mulroney, then the Bloc under Bouchard and Duceppe, and now the NDP. None had any staying power. Will the NDP be any different? Probably not, given that the party has absolutely no history in the province.
The Tories, on the other hand, won 161 out of the 233 seats outside of Quebec. That is a pretty solid showing.
I can see a scenario where the NDP wins the next election, but most likely, the Tories will be in power for a decade while the Liberals regroup, as they will.
Well, yeah, I agree, like I said it was a pretty big parliamentary win for the Conservatives in Canada, but I just love how whenever people see a country, or maybe even a group of countries, vote in their own version of a "Right" or a "Left" or a "Center" party, all these people go overboard claiming that it "vindicates the success of [insert preferred ideology] against the failed policies of [insert antagonistic ideology]," when it usually only reflects at best a narrow political reality unfolding in the current context of whatever particular country's being discussed.
In this case, it happens to be that unlike these sort of characters claim there isn't some sort of major right-ward shift in Canadian public opinion but the circumstances of a divided opposition, weak leadership, etc. that give one particular current greater strength electorally but not necessarily broad-based. One could find a number of examples (you mention that in Canada it has happened before, with the Liberals squeaking by through a divided conservative opposition) where the same could be true if a "Left" party won but the majority still voted for "Right" parties.
As far as the Liberals and NDP go, I don't see it as particularly likely either, just heard the idea floating around somewhere. I guess the point was more akin to the idea that, like you say, the Liberals (or the "Left" - agreeing that we're using the term here veeery broadly here, but at least "Left" in relation to the Conservatives's "Right") are going to need to regroup one way or another like Conservatives had to do in order to break the long years out of power, unless the NDP manages to "prove" to the electorate that it can really deliver or something makes the Harper government implode before the next polls [NOT likely]. But it could likely be just a fleeting moment for the NDP. When you put it the way you just put it (about Quebec giving majorities to different successive parties), it now makes sense why nobody could give me a straight answer when I would ask "How do the Quebecois vote?" (not like I prodded too far into it). Well, we'll just have to wait and see how next time.