Info word | Behind the scenes of a crazy and kidnapping electoral evening

It was 2 a.m. on Tuesday when we decided to end our special electoral program hosted by Patrice Roy, on the waves for eight long hours … Despite the late hour, many viewers still had their eyes on their screens, or on their telephone, and other pairs of ears were hung on our special radio on the radio, hosted by Madeleine Blais-Morin.

With reason: we have attended one of the most removed electoral evenings in generations!

When leaving the waves, many struggles in key constituencies were not yet finished. And on the result of these struggles depended on the answer to the question of millions of Canadian voters: the Liberal government, already screened by Radio-Canada at 10:10 p.m., be a minority or majority?

Several other television and daily networks had already thrown a minority liberal government.

Not radio-Canada. For what?

Let us guide you behind the scenes of the electoral projections of Radio-Canada and CBC.

Like several major media in the world, Radio-Canada is based on a decision-making office to help him formulate projections on the evening of the elections.

On the evening of April 28, around twenty journalists, directors and editors of Radio-Canada and CBC were present in a studio of 7^e Staff of the Maison de Radio-Canada in Montreal.

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Their task: scrutinizing the counting of the votes in each of the country’s 343 districts, whose profile they have meticulously studied in the previous weeks.

The results, provided in real time by Elections Canada to a media consortium, are displayed in a program specially designed to analyze them. We see, in particular, the number of votes stripped as each polling station is recorded, as well as a graph showing the trends and a history of previous races. The closer the race, the more the thresholds required to project the election of a candidate are high.

On Monday evening, analysts from our office were specially served in tight races!

At some point, no less than 80 constituencies had a difference of less than a hundred votes between the leader and his pursuer. And in a large number of cases, the anticipation vote had not yet been counted.

What give cold sweats to François Paulin, head of the Radio-Canada, and Meg Banks, director at CBC.

These are the two pioneers of decision -making offices, which, at 10:10 p.m., barely 40 minutes after closing the polls in Quebec, Ontario, in the meadows and in Alberta, had concluded, by observing the trend of the vote, that the next government would be liberal.

François and Meg have never doubted this projection. But the appearance of the evening and the uncertainty linked to anticipation voting prompted them to show great caution before predicting whether the government would be in the majority or minority.

The black anticipation vote box

This year, a record number of Canadians – 7.3 million – voted in advance. Which posed a particular challenge for the decision -making office.

Before projecting the election of a candidate in a tight constituency, it is crucial to know if the voting by anticipation has been recognized.

Elections Canada had announced, shortly before April 28, that it made it possible to count votes in advance two hours before the constituencies closed. But it was up to each district to decide whether it was starting to count these votes earlier or not.

However, in a large number of constituencies, the votes were counted late. And when they entered the system, they sometimes categorically changed the situation.

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Some striking examples.

In Cumberland-Colchester, in Nova Scotia, the conservative candidate led by 1100 votes at 9:49 p.m., enough to project a winner normally, according to our parameters. But the advance started to decrease, decrease… at 11:09 p.m., the curator led by 22 small votes. At 0:36 a.m., the constituency had switched to the Liberal camp… with 1176 votes in advance.

In Port Moody – Coquitlam, in the Grand Vancouver, a conservative majority of 911 votes at 0:30 am evaporated in the space of 30 minutes to give an advance of 1047 votes to the Liberals.

These two cases are not orphans. On Monday evening, our analysts noted, from one ocean to another, that anticipation voting favored, sometimes, the Liberal Party. Hence the appeal to the prudence of the decision -making office. When our special program came out of the airwaves, at 2 a.m., the Liberal party had 165 elected candidates or in advance. A few moments later, this figure increased to 167. At only 5 seats from a parliamentary majority.

The suspense continued in the early morning.

Candidates of the Liberal Party were second in 11 districts where the struggles were very tight. Winning 4 of them would have been enough for the party to reach the 172 seats required to delight the majority.

However, boxes of special bulletins (used in particular for voters who vote by post, in hospitals or as members of the armed forces) sometimes containing several thousand votes had still not been counted.

It was not until the afternoon that the suspense was finally lifted. When all the votes were recorded, the advance of the Liberal party stopped at 169 seats, three of a majority (judicial recoutages could still modify the final portrait).

For the supervisors of the decision office, the director-coordinator Marko Roy and the director Andrew Davidson, as well as for Meg Banks and François Paulin, the task was finished. They could say mission accomplished. We salute their rigor, their professionalism and their composure.

Pending the next election, whether provincial … or federal, who knows.