Who said this election wasn't going to change anything?

Things are shaping up for this to be a historic election. First of all, voting at the advance polls jumped 35% from last election. This is part of a general trend seeing more people vote at advance polls, accompanied by the fact that they fell on a long weekend and also, I think, greater awareness of the advance polls. So it doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a big jump in overall voter turnout. The advance polls in the riding where my school is ran through 60% more voters than last election. In this student-heavy riding, this might be due to vote mobs, the fact that there are no exams on Good Friday, or the fact that most students are going to be out of the city and off to summer jobs before May 2nd.

Besides a potential voter turnout revolution, things are looking good for a potential Green victory in Elizabeth May's riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, BC. (Saanich-Gulf Islands, was, by the way, a trending topic in the Twittersphere today.) Both the Liberal and NDP candidates have environmental activist cred, so it seems the riding is environmentally friendly in general.

And, one of the biggest upsets--polls show the NDP leading the Liberals in support. They're predicting a Conservative minority of around 130 seats with an NDP official op with about 100. People in Ontario are freaking out remembering Bob Rae's disastrous NDP provincial government, but I had dinner tonight with someone from Nova Scotia and someone from Manitoba. Both of these provinces are currently under NDP government, and both are getting along just fine. "The Liberals are just falling away," one suggested. "There's just less interest in a centrist party. My problem on a federal level is that I'm fiscally conservative, but left socially, and there's no party for that." Too true.

Anyway, they're calling it the Orange Crush:

And, even more orange crush-ing, here are the results when people were asked to name both their first and second choices:

That's the majority of people polled putting the NDP in their top two, yo! Totally throwing that in the face of everyone who says this election isn't going to change anything. Now there are definite problems with polling data, so let's not count our MPs before they hatch. But anyway, orange crush. I am drinking some right now (for non-NDP-related reasons). Also:



UPDATE: I picked that song because it has orange crush in the lyrics, but I forgot how depressing it was. Pro the NDP's promise to get troops home from Afghanistan? Anyway...