Philip Jong

This month the public witnessed the unfolding of two very differently held elections in the United Status and Canada. In the United Status, the midterm elections heralded the downfall of the Republicans and the ascension to power by the Democrats in both the House and Senate. In Canada, the municipal elections in Toronto (where I live) oversaw the domination of incumbent mayor David Miller over the two frontrunners Jane Pitfield and Stephen LeDrew. Notwithstanding any obvious dissimilarity in the landscapes of these two elections and in the policies by which they had been driven, an understated difference was the presence in the former and the absence in the latter of a major political controversy over which the respective voters had to contend. For the United Status, the continuing war with Iraq had deeply divided the country during election and ultimately became an embarrassment for George Bush and his administration. By contrast, for Canada, the election was a low-key affair for which David Miller had coyly avoided any political scandal in the media that would have attracted unwanted criticism by the voters. In the end, the defeat of George Bush and the victory of David Miller stand as a great example in the study of elections in extreme. In politics, after all, no news is perhaps truly good news.