The "hicks" came to town

Mark C., posting at Daimnation, points out that the common assumption about Tories being rural hicks and Liberals being urban slicks is less and less accurate:

The Conservatives won the most votes in:

Calgary
Edmonton
Hamilton
Kitchener
London
Niagara
Ottawa
Québec
Regina
Saskatoon
Vancouver (Yes, you read that correctly — 41.5% of the vote)
Victoria
Winnipeg

In those places the Conservatives also won 66 of 104 seats. Pretty decisive, what? Toronto and Montreal are the two elephantine anomalies in the urban electoral room. And even if one includes the seats in those two, truly "metro", oddities, the Conservatives still won 74 (8 in metro Toronto, 0 in Montreal) of 180.

Some knuckle-dragging, red-necked hicks, eh? But then I guess our major media, almost all in ToMo, just can be bothered to do the arithmetic, what with their certainty that only they live in the real word. The power of unexamined journalistic memes in Canada.

Canada now truly does seem to be quatres nations: The RoC, Québec, Toronto and Montreal. With this further nasty reality, that the Québécois really, really, do not think themselves Canadian in any real sense anymore.

Update: Mark was really on a roll yesterday, pointing out that the Tories actually hold a significant majority of the non-Quebec seats:

That majority is outside Quebec. In fact, a 33 seat advantage over other parties. The Conservatives won 133 out of 233 seats in the Rest of Canada, compared to 100 seats taken by others: Liberals 63, NDP 36, Independent 1 (subtract Quebec seats from national seats).

Moreover, in the RoC the Conservatives got a very respectable 44% of the vote (same process using popular vote figures).