Summary
A record 7.3 million people have cast their ballots over four days of advanced voting in Canada’s election, marking a 25% increase over the 5.8m advanced ballots cast in the 2021 vote.
There are further indications the election campaign dominated by threats from Donald Trump has galvanized voters, including unusually high ratings for two debates last week.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is the frontrunner, though Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party is incrementally gaining ground.
This year, polling points to a two-party Liberal-Conservative race.
sort of. Having a system that allows multiple parties, like in many European countries, certainly helps with representation and discourse. But looking at Europe, it certainly doesn’t prevent a right-wing drift towards authoritarianism. There’s sooo many other things needed for a healthy democracy, like education/literacy, strong independent institutions, unions etc.
You can just end up with two right wing parties, an extreme and a moderate one, but the moderate one catering to the extreme positions of the extreme party (and being mostly moderate in name only), and both of them forming a majority government and drifting to authoritarianism, even if there are many parties.
We only know what ends up in our eyes and ears and while some of us have the ability to remember and cross check and actively hunt for info and compare most of us don’t have the inclination or time.
Unless/until we put algorithmic feeds back in a box we’re due for a new dark age.