Election night

I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen tonight. I've started watching the 2 Towers as a distraction.

Still I can't help but wonder if there will be any point during the night when a winner will be declared/predicted, or even if we'll know before we go to bed. There are so many unknowns, and each region of the country will have to be looked at almost as a separate election.

We'll get results from Eastern Canada first, where the Liberals may do fairly well. If the Conservatives get a large proportion of the seats there then I would predict a Conservative government is likely.

Then we'll be waiting to see the ratio of seats in Quebec, where the Bloc is doing well but some predict that the Liberals will do better than recent polling would indicate. Most estimates give the Liberals 25 seats in Quebec, so anything under 25 seats there will be good news for Harper, and anything over is icing on the cake for Martin.

As we await each region's results, suspense, suspense.

Ontario. So many ridings here have gone Liberal in the past 3 elections due to vote splitting, it's really hard to judge. The Conservatives will definitely pick up seats here. I would say that the unknown factor, the factor that is most likely to affect the seat count, is the number of former Progressive Conservative supporters who decide to follow the lead of Joe Clark, and vote Liberal instead of Conservative.

The further west we start getting results throughout the night, the higher the Conservative seat count in proportion to the Liberals will grow.

I'll comment more on the effect the west will have on the election as the night goes on and we have some results from the other regions.

Meanwhile, back to the 2 Towers