{"id":12348,"date":"2015-10-21T17:52:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T21:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=12348"},"modified":"2015-11-05T00:03:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T05:03:03","slug":"front-porch-perspective-election-predictions-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/front-porch-perspective-election-predictions-2\/","title":{"rendered":"FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE: Election Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Somerville<\/strong><\/p>\n

As loyal readers will know, one of my favourite pastimes is making electoral predictions.
\nBefore I provide you with this, a little history is in order though, regarding my predictive powers.
\nIn 2011, I thought that Lois Brown and the Conservatives would win the federal election contest in Newmarket-Aurora by seven or eight thousand votes, not the over 17,600 and some odd votes that it actually turned out to be.
\nI also confidently predicted that Stephen Harper \u2013 in that same election \u2013 would continue to preside over a minority parliament with about 145 seats, not the majority of 167 seats that he actually received.
\nIn December 2006 I also boldly predicted Bob Rae would win easily win the federal Liberal Leadership on the fourth ballot \u2013 another one of my classic \u201cclangers\u201d, I must admit.
\nBut this still pales in comparison to my 1993 forecast when I confidently predicted that Kim Campbell would win 100 seats!
\nI also predicted that then incumbent Mayor Tim Jones would retain the mayor\u2019s chain by about 350 votes over Phyllis Morris and Nigel Kean in November 2006!
\nMy only consolation is that I did correctly pick six of the eight Aurora Councillors in that same municipal election. Pretty thin gruel, I must admit!
\nBased on my record in predicting elections, I won\u2019t be headed for Las Vegas or Casino Rama any time soon!
\nThere is, without a doubt, a betting theorem now being developed by a PhD mathematics student somewhere in the bowels of academia called the Somerville co-efficient.
\nIt is very straightforward \u2013 \u201cBet in opposition to the actions of Stephen Somerville and, 99.6 per cent of the time, you will be successful\u201d. The dissertation should be a best seller!
\nNow for my predictions:<\/p>\n

I am making these on Friday, October 16. By the time that you are reading this column, the actual results will have been in for a few days.
\nWe have two local ridings in Aurora: Newmarket-Aurora, which is comprised of Newmarket and the area north of Wellington Street in Aurora and the Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill riding which takes in the Aurora population south of Wellington Street.
\nI state my bias here \u2013 I was a campaign volunteer for Newmarket-Aurora Conservative candidate Lois Brown.
\nMs. Brown, the incumbent Conservative MP is being challenged by Liberal candidate Kyle Peterson, the NDP\u2019s Yvonne Kelly, the Green Party\u2019s Vanessa Long and Dorian Baxter of the Progressive Canadian Party.
\nI believe that Ms. Brown will retain the seat for the Tories. It will be an extremely close vote though, with Ms. Brown winning by less than 250 votes over Liberal candidate Mr. Kyle Peterson.
\nCostas Menegakis is the incumbent in Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill, representing the Conservatives. His opponents include Leona Alleslev of the Liberal Party, Brenda Power of the NDP and Randi Ramdeen of the Green Party.
\nI believe that Ms. Alleslev will win the seat by a comfortable margin; about 3,000 votes.
\nLooking at the national contest, as a result of seat re-distribution based upon population, the number of contested seats will increase from the current 308 seats to 338.
\nAt dissolution, according to Wikipedia, the Conservatives currently held 159 seats, the NDP 95, the Liberals 36, Independents 8, Bloc Quebecois 2, Green 2, Strength in Democracy 2, with 4 vacant.
\nI predict that it will be a Liberal minority government with the Tories within a few seats, in the closest election since 1972 when the Liberals won 109 seats and the Progressive Conservatives won 107 seats.
\nThe Liberals will win 131 seats as compared to 124 for the Tories and 66 for the NDP, while the Bloc Quebecois will win 16 seats and the Green one seat.
\nAnd lastly, the Jays will defeat the Kansas City Royals in five games to win the American League Championship and then go on to defeat the Chicago Cubs in six games to win the World Series!<\/p>\n

Stephen can be contacted at stephengsomerville@yahoo.com<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Somerville As loyal readers will know, one of my favourite pastimes is making electoral predictions. Before I provide you with this, a little history is in order though, regarding my predictive powers. In 2011, I thought that Lois Brown and the Conservatives would win the federal election contest in Newmarket-Aurora by seven or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3da","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 15:19:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}