Well the numbers are in and it went pretty much the way I expected. If anything the People’s Party of Canada did not perform as well as I expected. I thought they’d be closer to the 20 percent range but they came in with 17.2 percent of the vote which is still considerable.
The Conservative candidate, Branden Leslie (by far the most conservative of Conservative nominees in our riding for a very long time) performed well but not to historic highs coming in with 64.9 percent of the vote.
The combined might of the left leaning parties of the Greens (2.2 percent), Liberals (8.5 percent) and NDP (7.1 percent) came to 17.8 percent versus the combined right of the PPC and Conservative vote share of 82.1 percent.
Obviously this is a conservative riding. I imagine the PPC did not perform well for a few reasons:
The leader, Maxime Bernier, is “not from around here” and neither was ANY other candidate except Leslie. Locals are generally suspicious of parachute candidates.
Also – with no vaccine hysteria to capitalize on there were few extreme right handholds to grab on to leaving niche issues like banning 2SLGBTQ+ books from libraries and back and forth personal attacks on character in a “who is the most conservative conservative” sort of grade school name-calling kind of way, as the primary approach on the right.
The left strategy was the same as ever – “we cannot possibly win there so why try” with the typical parachute candidates who let their name stand.
Take Aways:
Publicly the Conservative Party will celebrate and shout about how this is the death of the PPC. Privately there will be discussions about how the PPC still managed to get a very large portion of voters that would almost certainly have gone to the Conservatives. There will be concern that the PPC will still be a distracting force in the next election requiring the party to campaign on the extreme right AND toward the centre at the same time. Not a winning strategy as it divides focus and can be costly.
Locally there were likely people panicked about Bernier winning the riding causing them to swing further right than they would normally and vote Conservative instead of Liberal or NDP “just to make sure” he never got elected. Part of the way we know this is the left of centre parties secured 24.4 percent of the vote in 2021 compared to just 17.8 percent this time around.
Voter turnout was a decent 45 percent but in the 2021 federal election it was more than 65 percent. That’s a big difference. This suggests the real battle in Portage-Lisgar will be the next federal election.
If Bernier is to be believed (and why not) he and the PPC are not going anywhere. Even prior to the election results he said he planned on running again in Portage-Lisgar in the next federal election. He likely knew he would not win this time around and was using the by-election to refine strategy.
Nationally – Nationally after looking at the results of the four by-elections the Liberals will be the most buoyed. Overall the Liberals performed as well or better than expected while the Conservatives performed less than hoped for – even in their wins.
As a campaign strategy the Liberals will likely focus on leaning into Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s more right-leaning tendencies to keep the centre away from them. It will be difficult for Poilievre to counter this because doing so would alienate an already tenuous grasp on the hard right vote (just look at what happened with Erin O’Toole to understand this).
If the election looks like it is going toward another minority count on the Liberals and NDP to plan another support deal behind the scenes to ensure a Conservative minority does not sneak in. Publicly they will both deny such an arrangement loudly.
When I say sneak in I mean it. While people in ridings like mine (Portage-Lisgar) like to view the national scene through the blue lens of Conservative values and project our bubble as the trend – history has shown the opposite.
If you look at the percentage of left leaning parties vs. right according to vote share in federal elections you have to go all the way back to 1930 and earlier before you find the right-leaning parties garnering most of the national vote with the exception of 1984 when the Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives secured just over 50 percent of the vote.
Percentage of national vote secured by left-leaning parties across federal elections 1930-2021: 2021 – 60.3, 2019 – 63.2, 2015 – 67.3, 2011 – 59.4, 2008 – 61.2, 2006 – 62.7, 2004 – 69.1, 2000 – 60, 1997 – 60.2, 1993 – 61.7, 1988 – 52.33, 1984 – 46.8*, 1980 – 65.8, 1979 – 62.6, 1974 – 63.7, 1972 – 63.8, 1968 – 62.5, 1965 – 61.1, 1963 – 66.7, 1962 – 62.5, 1958 – 45.9, 1957 – 59.7, 1953 – 66.7, 1949 – 65.9, 1945 – 61.2, 1940 – 66, 1935 – 57.4, 1930 – 43.9 * (Source – https://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/1867-present.html).
The reality for nearly 100 years is that Canada is a liberal democracy with roughly two-thirds of the population voting accordingly. Aside from possibly 1984 the only reason Conservatives have formed government is because the left is divided between several parties. But, according to vote percentages since 1930, most Canadians prefer a centre/left of centre government.
Historically the Liberal Party tends to form government when the left-leaning parties hold more than 62 percent of the vote. It gets dicey in the 60-62 percent range due to left side vote splitting. When the left leaning parties drop below 60 percent of the vote share typically Conservatives form the government.
This is why the Conservatives are so desperate to see the PPC go away. They likely would have formed at least a minority government in the last federal election if not for the PPC siphoning off votes. This is an interesting point to pause on – they almost secured a minority with Erin O’Toole and his strategy to move toward the middle. The decision of Poilievre and party to swing further right in response does not seem to be a winning strategy but time will tell.
In my opinion, unless significant vote splitting occurs on the left between the Liberals and the NDP the Conservatives will not form a government as long as the PPC are a factor.
No doubt the Liberals and the NDP know this. A merger between the two is unlikely as it would no doubt spawn another left-leaning party and further split the vote. My sense is that as long as the NDP know they cannot secure enough of the vote to form government they will be quietly supporting the Liberal party in a kind of invisible partnership that sees them get certain significant platform issues passed like Dental Care and Prescription Drug Benefits, which would not likely have passed otherwise.
Interesting times and usually it is foolish to predict political futures but I may be that kind of fool. 😉
Harnessing Chaos 