Can Pierre Poilievre Win?

Also, Notes On 2025

Two pieces of data came out today – one, a Leger poll with vote intention If Skippy Is CPC Leader and an Abacus study of how Pierre Poilievre’s message plays with the voters – and those two results are being spun the way the various audiences want them to be spun.

Liberals who despise Skippy are using the Leger numbers to dismiss Skippy as an unelectable fool, and those with a vested interest in Poilievre being a success are using the Abacus study to point out how electable he can be, and therefore, people are trying to figure out which is “right”, and I kind of think both are.

The Abacus study is simple, in a sense – it outlines Skippy’s argument in an uncriticized, un-scrutinized manner. Yes, in a sense, getting 49% to say they’d definitely or probably consider voting for a Conservative Party led by him – when Abacus’ CPC voter pool sits at 41% right now – is a success, but this is also when his argument is presented without a counter. It’s a high water mark, in a sense, and once he faces greater scrutiny – and once Liberals decide to actually turn their guns on Skippy, that number will fall.

What we also know is that a Skippy-led CPC would get under 30% of the vote, according to Leger, our best pollster, and that is leading many to think that his appeal to the general population is non-existent, which is an interesting response to a hypothetical poll.

So, how do you square this circle? Easily. Both polls can be right at the same time, and everyone overreading one and not the other is acting in bad faith.

How do you square 49% of people saying they’d consider voting for a Conservative Party lead by Poilievre with the idea that 29% of the country would vote for the CPC in a hypothetical matchup? Easily, because those two questions are very different, but people are acting like they’re the same.

The Abacus data is about what could happen, and the Leger poll is about what would happen right now. Canadians, right now, are not particularly impressed by Poilievre, or at least what they’ve seen of him so far. When presented his arguments, they warm up to him, but against Trudeau, they’re not convinced.

What does it all mean? Everything and nothing. Like, I’m sorry, “if you presented someone’s best pitch to the voters, you’ll get good results” isn’t revolutionary (I’m still very glad Coletto did this for us, but still), and “incumbent Prime Minister beats guy most Canadians have only seen in the context of a leadership race where he has to his base” is also not very dispositive. All it tells us is that if you want to make the case for Skippy, you can. But it really doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen.

…

One of the things that it looks like I’ve been wrong about is my belief that the next election would be on the current electoral boundaries, on the basis that I always believe minority Parliaments will find a way to go to the polls. If the Liberal-NDP deal holds, and we get a 2025 election, the next election will be held on the new boundaries, which will change things. (How? I don’t know, I have no idea where people have been coming or going, so, no idea.)

What I do know is that until the redistribution is done, and the new maps are out, there’s no point in caring about federal polling – there really, genuinely, isn’t, because the stability of the deal means that the minor variation doesn’t matter. “The Tories Won’t Win The Next Election” is my claim, not that the Tories will be in a losing position for all four years of the Parliament. And with the fact the boundaries will be redrawn, I’m just going to tap out.

The thing about all of this is that the likely outcome of the next three years at a federal level is pretty clear to me – Skippy will win the leadership, the polls will show a (rough) tie for most of the next three years, and we’ll walk into the 2025 summer with an election call coming in September and an October 2025 election. The one thing that could fuck that calculation up is Justin Trudeau handing off his leadership to Chrystia Freeland, but even then, what you’ll likely see is a Liberal honeymoon and then a return to the status quo.

I stand by that Poilievre won’t win the next election for all the reasons I’ve written in the past, but once he wins the Conservative leadership race, everyone needs to really, genuinely, take a Xanax and relax. What Skippy says now is irrelevant, because with both Scheer and O’Toole what they said before the campaign and what they say in the campaign will be what matters. I am aware that Skippy has said he’d undo the child care deals now, but does that hold in 2025 if the average child care space is $1000/month less in Mississauga than it was in 2021? Can he pivot back to the centre on some or any things like climate policy, pharma and dental, child care, or fucking, really, anything? I have no idea, and we won’t know for a long, long time.

The biggest lesson of the last 5 years of politics is that timing really matters. None of the years of chaos before Boris Johnson stopped Boris from winning the biggest Tory Majority since 1987. None of Donald Trump’s horrible 4 years of government stopped him from getting 47% of the vote in 2020. Democrats looked to be on track to hold at least two Senate seats they ended up losing in 2018, in large part because Republicans got a Supreme Court seat filled like a month before the midterms. Timing matters.

In Australia right now, we’ve seen a state government generally seen as having done very well lose and lose badly because of a bad few months at the wrong time, while Anthony Albanese racked up a huge polling lead going into the writ and is facing the beginning of questions about his ability to hold it when the chips are down. Politics has always been a game of what have you done for me lately, but holy shit is that clock ever getting closer and closer. None of what is said now will make a damn difference.

Yes, I know a regularly updating federal model would drive a lot of interactions to my work and give me the basis for a ton of columns here, but I can’t do it. The time from Skippy winning the leadership to early 2025 will be a time of lots of activity and no importance, politically. It’s not good to be living and dying with every poll and every projection, and I know I feed that beast.

Skippy’s chances of becoming the next Prime Minister should be as low or as high today as they were before either Abacus or Leger released their data, and nobody should be changing their priors now about an election in 42 months. Trust me, it’s not worth it.