This article was published on May 3, 2011

The race to run Canada is on


The race to run Canada is on

The federal election results are in, and the Conservatives have won a majority government. A party needs to have 155 seats in Parliament to achieve a majority and the Conservative party won in 167 electoral ridings, 12 more than the required number needed to hit that mark.

The number of seats for each party are listed as follows:

Conservatives: 167
Liberals: 34
New Democrats: 102
Bloc Quebecois: 4
Other: 1

(Note: Any results are unofficial until final ballot counts are verified by Elections Canada.)

But really made the news was the fact that the social media ban of early results from the Eastern provinces was circumvented in more ways than one. Some Canadians had asked their American friends to tweet results since they were not bound by the laws prohibiting Canadians from doing so. According to other reports, some news outlets had accidentally posted screenshots of #tweettheresults and revealed how things were going in the Atlantic provinces. The hashtag was the top trending term on Twitter in the world for a three-hour spell due to all of the activity.

Finally, in typical Canuck fashion, humour played a role as some Canadians were using innuendo to subtly tweet election results while the ban was still in effect:

“My orange soda is fizzy #notaresult”

“If I used to have three oranges, and someone gave me four more oranges, would I go to jail?”

It’s worth noting that the official colour of the New Democratic party is orange.

It is clear is that there will have to be some changes made to this law before the next federal election campaign.

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.