Canada: Poilievre Honeymoon?

Calm Down

I really didn’t want to write about this.

I’m gonna be very honest, I do not give a rat’s ass about the state of federal polling right now, and I will not care about Canada until, basically, December at this point (except in terms of coverage of the Mississauga-Lakeshore byelection, when it comes). I’m sorry to Canada, but I just cannot bring myself to care about non-election polling up north when there’s, well, *gestures to the south*.

That said, Abacus and Leger both have Poilievre getting a honeymoon, so let’s talk through this – whether or not it matters, which parts do and don’t, and mostly why everyone needs to stop fucking tagging me in all this shit or I’m going to start drinking more than I already do.

Is Skippy In An Election Winning Position Right Now?

Probably?

I’m too lazy to bust out my model (and also, again, it’s football season and an American midterm, my dedication to Canada is functionally non-existent right now), but I’m sure a 3% lead in Ontario on average and the Liberals down 7% in Quebec would see the Liberals and NDP fall below 170 seats, which would be a chaos Parliament as Blanchet et al in the Bloc have to decide who they hate less.

It’s Abacus and Leger, so I’m not really concerned with whether or not this is “correct”, as I would be if the first polls of the Poilievre era had been, say, Angus Reid and Ipsos or some shit. This is probably a reasonable state of play right now.

Does It Matter?

No.

Michael Ignatieff had big poll leads in 2009, which all turned into warmed over piss by the time he actually got to an election. Is this evidence that Poilievre will do the same? God no, and I highly doubt it will happen. I’m just saying, there’s a lot of precedent for having a lead at one point not being enough to guarantee a win.

Right now, Poilievre has two things he won’t have on election day 2025 – a bad economy, and the lack of scrutiny that newness provides. He will have to take votes, and stances, in the next three years which will come back to bite him in the ass. The other thing is the Liberals have a bad economy right now, for whoever you blame (and the answer is, realistically, everybody), which projects to be much better by election day in 2025.

Do I Still Think He Won’t Win?

Yes.

Nothing that happens right now will shake my core belief, because my belief is not about the polls today. I do not give a single fuck what the polls say right now in terms of predicting the 2025 election. If you would like someone to spit out shitty analysis of the most recent polls, Eric Grenier and PJ Fournier exist. My statement that I don’t think Poilievre has a chance has been much articulated in the pages of this site, and if you want to refresh your memory do so.

But God almighty, there are 3 years to the next election, and the hyperactivity of every poll release will put everyone who sends me every poll into fucking cardiac arrest before we hit 2024. I made a claim. You think I’m an idiot? Fine, do that. But do it somewhere the fuck else than my mentions.

Does His Quebec Surge Matter?

I’m not sure I believe Poilievre’s CPC is at 25% of the vote in Quebec right now, which is what Leger says, but the thing is, it wouldn’t stun me.

It would stun me if the CPC gains in the province came from the Liberals, and not the Bloc, because there are a lot of Bloc voters who are naturally more conservative – especially on cultural issues. The oil stuff will always be a problem for some of these voters, but “Quebec” consensus on oil issues tends to be the “Gatineau to Quebec City” consensus on pipelines, and but that’s not really where the CPC’s potential gains are.

If the Conservatives are going to expand in Quebec, it’s almost assuredly going to be in Bloc seats right now, through winning over culturally conservative voters who have been distrustful of Conservatives as, essentially, western frauds. A Poilievre message around freedom – from the tyrannies of an activist Ottawa, freedom to control language policy, and to govern themselves in (mostly) peace is not antithetical to his message in English Canada and also appealing to the right in that province.

Because Gilles Duceppe was a east-island left winger, the lingering perception of the Bloc and of nationalist Quebec is still a bit warped. Duceppe always held together a coalition at two ends – people for whom the Liberals’ greatest sin was their centrism and the cuts of the Chretien-Martin era were unconscionable (aka, the East Island), and then cultural conservatives in the rest of the province who hated the Liberals because they were federalist, Anglo scum.

After Jack swept the province in 2011, the Bloc has never been able to rebuild in the East Island, with the NDP holding a ton of those seats in 2015 and then losing almost all of them to the Liberals in 2019. The new Bloc is completely different from the Duceppe era, and the Conservatives could supplant them as the protectors of the CAQ government and as the guardians against Ottawa. I’m not saying they will, but the road exists.

Should We All Fucking Relax?

As always, yes.