Election Results and Analysis
So....how did we fare?
Sort of all over the place this time. Some races we called very well, especially St. John's East (which was a huge unknown for a lot of people), and Avalon. Some other ridings...not so much lol.
- First things first, the NDP have to feel very bad about their results here. They massively underperformed in practically every riding, with the exception of Labrador.
St. John's South - Mount Pearl and
Long Range Mountains in particular have to be hard pills to swallow for the NDP; their SJS results are a massive let down compared to several previous elections, and in LRM a mere 12% is insanely bad considering how Corner Brook is usually a very area for the NDP. I wonder how many NDP-to-CON swing voters there were in Corner Brook.
- Even beyond the above mentioned poor NDP showing in its good ridings, the NDP underperformed in ridings where it normally doesn't do well. Strange to see them under 10% in the rural central/east ridings, though parachute candidates likely didn't help them win votes here. All that to say that my NDP numbers were a little high all across the board.
- It's fair to say that trends which we saw develop during the 2019 election continued in the 2021 election. I anticipated the Conservative vote in rural ridings to continue to grow, but I vastly underestimated how much it would grow. The upset in Coast of Bays was very unexpected as I thought it would be harder for the CONs to break into the larger population centres in the region than it would be in a place like Bonavista-Burin-Trinity, but the CONs greatly improved their numbers in Coast of Bays.
- Likewise they also greatly improved in Long Range Mountains. While I was bold in my prediction and gave the CONs a high vote share, it appears that it wasn't enough and I should have been even bolder.
- The Liberals overall performed marginally better than I expected, except in St. John's South (where the NDP underperformed) and Coast of Bays (CON upset). I had anticipated overall a better NDP performance which would eat at some of those Liberal numbers, which didn't really materialize. That being said, the Liberals can't be looking at rural NL right now without feeling some unease about their standing in the region.
How about the social media analysis?
Not too much to take away from this to be honest:
- Flat Liberal numbers almost across the board which correlated to declining Liberal vote share. O'Regan and Churence Rogers had the best performances social media wise for Liberals, and O'Regan improved his vote share by a nice 5%, whereas Rogers improved his by a meager 1%. Ken McDonald, on the other hand, had pretty flat numbers yet improved his vote share by 4% (likely taking in some of that lost Green vote).
- Surging Conservative numbers in several regions did correlate to very good results come election night, especially in Long Range Mountains, Coast of Bays, and Bonavista. Maybe we should have paid closer attention to that final week upsurge in Clifford Small's support. Labrador again didn't really tell us anything new, similar numbers between this election and in 2019 pretty much gave us the same result. Will be mindful of that for the next election.
- NDP coming out flat despite decent numbers in Long Range Mountains and the St. John's districts leads me to shy away from correlating anything from this analysis to the NDP in the future. There may be some logic behind this too: younger folks (millennials and Gen Z'ers) are more likely to be engaged on social media, but are also less likely to actually vote or may represent a disproportionate amount of the actual electorate.
- And well...the PPC was what I thought they'd be. Their numbers were hog wash, as expected, though they likely performed better than a lot of people may have anticipated.
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