The early returns suggest that it may be a bit of disappointment for the Tories, at least in the Atlantic provinces. They've closed to witthin a few percentage points of the Liberals, but are still getting crushed on a seat-by-seat basis, picking up only two to trail 20-9. Still, it appears that they may be doing better than expected in Quebec. The Liberals had made a comeback of sorts there in the last few days, so any Quebec seats the Tories pick up will help a lot.
Right now, the CBC has it 47-32-10-4 Lib-Con-NDP-BQE, but they don't report the seats the way a sane network would. They report "leading or decided," and they start counting as soon as the first box of ballots is opened. Which means that if they've counted one precinct (or poll, as they call it), and you're ahead 6 votes to 3, they put you up as "leading." Which means that these first numbers are actually worse than meaningless.
And yet, that doesn't keep the talking heads from drawing grand conclusions about the fates of parties from them.
More, during commercials as we find out what is in those canisters...
UPDATE: Just before we start Hour 5, the whole thing has changed; 85-66-26-21-1, Con-Lib-BQ-NDP-I
UPDATE: Doesn't look like we'll get a majority, but right now, the Tories are trailing the combined Lib-NDP 113-106. Even though the Bloc will join the government, it'd be nice to have the Right outpoll the Left, even if it doesn't matter in terms of governance.
UPDATE: OK, so the Tories will form the Government, but it's not exactly 1974 for them. The Grits still have over 100 seats, after a campaign, as the CBC newshead giddily put it, "where it's hard to pick out any one day that was good for them." Hopefully, the BQ will remember that it split from the Tories.
UPDATE: Damn. Belinda Stronach was re-elected. Belinda was the Conservo-babe who was dating Stephen Harper, and then left both him and the Party to keep Paul Martin in power in the infmaous Only No-Confidence Vote That Counted. There's a rumor that she might challenge Martin for the Liberal leadership now. If she wins, the Parliament's going to look like CTU after Jack realizes just who Nina's working for...
CORRECTION: I just realized that Stronach wasn't dating Harper, but Deputy Tory Leader Peter MacKay. Since MacKay tends to think of himself as #1A rather than #2, this could make things even more interesting.
