By
The Associated Press
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Jean Chretien's gamble for a third-straight term and a place in Canadian history went to the voters yesterday in an early election that could cost the governing Liberal Party its majority in Parliament.
The normally cautious Chretien set yesterday's vote just 31/2 years into his second five-year term amid a booming economy and record budget surplus.
Faced with moves from within the newly formed main opposition party, the Canadian Alliance, to consolidate its conservative support and calls to step aside from his own ruling Liberal party, Chretien, 66, decided to seek a fresh mandate from voters.
In the last vote, in 1997, the Liberals won 155 of the 301 House of Commons seats, and campaign polls have indicated a similar result this time. That would make Chretien the longest-serving leader of the world's industrial powers when President Clinton steps down in January, and secure his legacy as one of only three Liberal leaders able to deliver three straight majority victories.
Failure to win a majority, though, would likely bring Chretien's ouster as party leader in favor of heir apparent Paul Martin, the finance minister who has much greater personal popularity.
No matter the outcome, no change is expected in Canada-U.S. relations. The two countries form the world's largest two-way trade partnership, with Canada's economic growth in recent years dependent on a similar boom south of the border in the dominant U.S. economy.
Despite minor glitches yesterday with voters lists in some polling stations, balloting went smoothly as people lined up before heading to work. Chretien, wearing a dark overcoat while voting with his wife Aline in his hometown of Shawinigan in Quebec, said: "It's easier than in the United States."
The Liberals, in power since 1993, were virtually certain to win the most votes in the five-party contest. They won their majority in 1997 with only 38.5 percent of the popular vote, and the final round of nationwide opinions polls showed them with roughly 40 percent support, 12 to 15 points ahead of the second-place Alliance.
No party could boast of coast-to-coast popularity. The Liberals dominate in vote-rich Ontario, where they won 101 of the 103 seats in 1997, while all but one of the Alliance's 58 seats came from the four western provinces.
In Quebec, the separatist Bloc Quebecois was expected to win most of the 75 seats without running candidates anywhere else, with the Liberals placing a strong second. The Progressive Conservatives and leftist New Democratic Party hoped to win seats in the Atlantic provinces and other scattered areas.
A total of 20.4 million Canadians were registered, with a few hundred thousand more expected to register at polling stations yesterday. The 67 percent turnout in the 1997 vote was the lowest since 1925.
In calling the early election, Chretien hoped to prevent the Alliance and its 50-year-old untested leader, Stockwell Day, from gathering any momentum after forming in March. The Alliance struggled, with Day - a fundamentalist Christian who believes in creationism - spending much of the campaign trying to counter suggestions that he and his allies were right-wing zealots.
Chretien himself became the central campaign issue, though. Day and other opponents attacked him ceaselessly as arrogant and out-of-touch, saying he called the early vote out of personal ambition.
To counter Chretien's declining popularity ratings, the Liberals used Martin as a major campaigner and even hinted that Chretien would likely step aside sometime during a third term.
