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You're mostly right Judy. The Carbon tax appeared to be a regressive tax that affected lower income people worse, but perhaps instead of their counter intuitive yet populist "axe the tax" slogan the NDP could have offered to reform it, or better yet left it alone until after the election. I guess their "strategists" didn't foresee how much the green backlash would hurt the party and took what looked like an easy populist stand.

But you're right about the NDP. I think many NDP supporters, myself included, have really been turned off by their so-called strategic approach, including from the national leadership of Jack Layton. They appear to be trying so hard to follow the prescriptions and talking points of spin doctors that they don't seem like real people, more like contrived puppets. They're also bending over way to much to the corporate media, appearing weak in their vain effort to appear "acceptable". Both these approaches seem to be backfiring badly as the corporate types and their media hate them anyways and always will, and they seem to be loosing touch with their base of support and ordinary working people. The result is a lot of apathy. I almost didn't vote because I really felt there is very little substantive difference between the Liberals and the NDP, both their approaches are borrowing heavily from a US-style image and sound bite over reality vision of politics that is destroying democracy.

The magnitude of the STV defeat boggles the mind.

It all makes me think that perhaps this election happened as it had to, because things have to get a lot worse before we are shaken out of our stupor. Like Edward Abbey said "Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top."