Abacus' Conservative Curveball

Is There Life In The Liberals?

It is a notable statement that being down 10 is a victory these days for the Liberals, but Abacus has the Tory lead down 9 poll to poll, so it is actually good news for a government that’s needed it for a while. It’s of course not the same thing as saying that the government is in good shape – a government that’s happy to be at 26% in Nanos and 27% in Abacus because the trendlines are good is not a government that is in a good spot in an absolute sense. Nor does any of this mean that Poilievre giving up more and more of his lead is an evitability.

But it is a decent endorsement of the idea that Poilievre will not be able to be a dogshit political leader and still win easily. Yes, the Liberals are troubled, yes the economy is bad, and yes the Liberals need a rate cut or 5 before the election. But there’s been an air of inevitability about the Tories imminent victory that hasn’t sat right, as if the election had already been won and lost, and all that needed to happen was the results to be relayed to the masses.

The problem with that is the same as what used to permeate my columns saying Poilievre couldn’t win – an arrogance that there was a knowable answer that would be proven true in time, and if you don’t agree you’re a partisan hack. One of my regrets is going as hard as I did on the idea Poilievre can’t win before the 2022 Ontario election, which was a wake up call and a delineating moment for me (for reasons I’ve explained before). What we’ve seen since the Liberals’ polling collapse is an assumption – implicit in some places, explicit in others – that the Liberals’ polling would continue to be shit. And now, Abacus and Nanos have thrown a dagger at that assumption.

Abacus and Nanos are not evidence that the Tories won’t win, or even that they’re not favorites. I’ve avoided pinning my colours to the mast on the question of what chance Trudeau has of winning again, but I’ve said many times that any election now would result in a Tory majority. I think that assessment’s still true, but here’s the thing; Pierre Poilievre’s faced the scrutiny of being the frontrunner in recent weeks, and there’s finally some life in the government’s numbers.

These things aren’t likely an accident, and those who have dismissed Poilievre’s incoherent or stupid decisions since taking the leadership should plan for a universe where Liberals Suck isn’t enough to cruise to 200 seats.

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Anyone who has been reading my NFL work for TheLines in recent weeks will know that I’ve been a sceptic this season of the Philadelphia Eagles, and for weeks they’d find a way to pull victory out of their asses despite fundamentally just not being that good. The last two weeks they’ve been destroyed by San Fran and Dallas, because fundamentally, they were who we thought they were, even when they were winning. Those flukey wins weren’t evidence they were incredible, it was evidence they had a horseshoe up their ass. When it fell out, they turned into a good, but not great team.

Poilievre has been a version of the Eagles – wildly successful for an opposition leader, but not so on the basis of his individual merits. He makes tactically inept decisions, he makes big mistakes often, and it’s usually the failure of his opposition that makes it easy for him. But, when the terrain got tougher, it was always unclear if he would withstand the test. And now, it appears he isn’t, so far.

Between voting against funding Ukraine’s defence during the Estimates Vote-A-Thon and voting against the Ukraine FTA and losing his shit at a reporter for asking why he declared the Buffalo bridge incident terrorism, he’s looked less like a Prime Minister in waiting than a shitposter in waiting. The filibuster, and more importantly the reporting that he fucked off to a fundraiser while his MPs were forced to fight his battles, was a massive own goal. The votes the Conservatives took are idiocy on stilts, voting against funding everything from the Montreal Holocaust Museum to our spy service, the border, and our prisons.

None of that in a vacuum is enough to win the Liberals government, but it is enough to drive Poilievre’s negatives up 3% in Abacus and start to undo all the good that the millions in Conservative ad spending has done. If the CPC want to make Poilievre look like a kinder, gentler version of himself, a petty, vindictive attempt to “ruin the PM’s Christmas”, yelling at reporters for asking legitimate questions, and refusing to back in a key ally is a hell of a way to undo all that progress.

Poilievre has backed removing all vaccine mandates, not just COVID but all mandates, he’s trying to keep the right onside by talking about “radical gender identity”, as if that’s an issue anybody gives a fuck about, and he’s failed to produce any workable solutions to the cost of living crisis beyond axing the tax … which would leave most families worse off.

None of this is surprising, but Abacus confirmed why the Liberals have a shot. The Tory coalition is now different than the O’Toole coalition, or even the pre-polling collapse one. The new voters the Tories have gained are on the whole younger, more socially liberal, more pro-credible climate action, and bigger proponents of government spending than the existent CPC coalition. 78% of CPC voters want a Poilievre government to take climate change seriously (up 7% since April, also  known as post-polling collapse for the Liberals), 44% oppose cuts to CBC funding (up 5%), 65% oppose cutting the national childcare plan (up 6%), and 66% oppose cutting the dental program (up 4%).

What does any of it mean? That the Conservatives have to convert the votes of a lot of people who do not actually like existent conservatism. The Tories are trying to win over voters who do not instinctively associate the CPC with good things, but they’re willing to listen because the government has made a complete hash of things. The problem with that is two-fold; the Tories could scare these voters away, or the Liberals getting their heads out of their asses could win them back. Opposition is easy; prospective government is hard. Opposing things is easy; making the choices that governing demands is harder. His leadership is a Schrodinger’s Box – both wildly successful and also devoid of any value.

I’d call it a paradox, but that’s often what good oppositions are. The Adrian Dix opposition in BC, the Danielle Smith opposition in Alberta, and the Tim Hudak opposition in Ontario all shared a very good ability to attack the government of the day for their flaws. What none of them were ever able to do is convert people who were pissed at the incumbents that they would be any better at the job. The PQ in Quebec are surging right now as the CAQ are taken to the woodsheds for a multitude of failures, but nobody serious or credible in Quebec is saying that Legault’s dead (or that the PQ will be the government after the next election, even if they are). Nor should they be – Francois Legault led for the majority of the run-up to the 2012 election in Quebec and ended up a distant third when rubber hit the road.

The reason Abacus is valuable, beyond being a shot to the arm of every Liberal in Canada, is that it’s a reminder the Conservatives aren’t immune to their bad decisions. It’s entirely possible that a sustained polling revival to the Liberals – not to the point where all the damage is reversed, but where 10 points down and around 100 Liberal seats returns to be the modal expectation – follows Abacus. It’s also possible that that scares the Tories straight and in January they come back as a more disciplined party.

There’s a lot we don’t know moving forward about the eventual answer to the question everyone wants to know, but we do know one thing; the Tories haven’t been leading by increasingly huge amounts because of their own brilliance. Now we know they’re paying a price for their idiocy.