PREDICTIONS III

This is the last part in a trilogy.

Election Prediction site has called all 308 seats: Liberals 121, Conservatives 105, NDP 29, BQ 52 and Ind 1.

Damian is running a roundup of blogger/columnist predictions at his site – including mine.

Andrew Coyne's Collective Wisdom thread has ended unchanged, but he revises his own forecasts and gives projections from the papers and the bookies.

I'll be at work as the results come in tomorrow (early Tuesday in Asian time) so there won't likely be any color commentary here.

As the day closes though, I feel very optimistic about the probable result. Whatever happens, we're at the end of a long period of unhealthy and unbreakable one-party rule. Many Canadians no longer see the Conservatives as 'scary.' The ground is shifting.

Even if do end up with a Liberal/NDP coalition, which would be the worst possible result save a Liberal majority, it will probably lead to more clarity in government and better elections in the future.

Paul Martin in the final hours pushed his party to the left, a place where he himself is uncomfortable. This won't do him any favors in the long run, but it could help shape the way Canada's political parties operate in the future. In the next election, we may have a real contest and real debate between 'small-l' liberals and 'small-c' conservatives.

That may be too optimistic. But I feel a lot of hope, something which I didn't have about the Canadian political scene a few months back.