Canada: The Election We Were Always Having

Sound, Fury, And Wasted Breathe

In my election preview, I wrote about the Tories up top, their uselessness, and then basically disposed of the party, saying that the question of the campaign was not whether they could win or not (they couldn’t) but whether the Liberals would get a majority or not - and that the NDP and Bloc were always more interesting if that was the question you were looking for an answer to. And now, with one week left, that’s where we are, with the Liberals assured of winning again, and we’re flipping coins in Quebec on whether or not they’ll get the majority they called this election.

Abacus this morning has Liberal leads of 7% in both Ontario and Quebec, and the Liberals maintaining a 2% lead over the Conservatives in BC - which would represent a 10% change since the Tories won BC by 8% over the Liberals in 2019. Mainstreet has a better Bloc number in Quebec, but they also have a 9% LPC lead over the CPC in BC and an 8% lead in Ontario, and a much bigger lead in Atlantic Canada, and while I will not break Nik Nanos’ paywall, if you were to be writing a story of English Canada strength for the Liberals and the Tories being fucked, his data would not, in any way, contradict that, and it would encourage it. Put another way, the Liberals are up in English Canada and not up enough to win majority government without gains in Quebec. Basically, we are where we’ve been this entire fucking time.

If we had skipped the campaign, and all we saw were the polls right now, we’d be laughing at the idea that this election is winnable for the Tories, and we’d be right. The notion that O’Toole could win, or that he could ever win, were always laughable, and now all that’s happened is a bunch of pollsters that made no sense are making sense. Are the Liberals going to get a majority? I have no idea, and never have. I’ve always said it’s a coinflip for the majority, and shockingly, it is one. Quebec is volatile, and it could go wonky for them -- that’s why I wrote the preview in such a way as to differentiate the chances of a non-Liberal government (non-existent, then and now) with the chances of a Liberal majority (which always have been substantial). I may be the same egomaniacal asshole I always have been, but even I don’t pretend to be able to see into the future and predict what Quebec is going to do.

That said, we should pour one out for Erin O’Toole, who people genuinely believed could become Prime Minister, and now is clearly favoured to lose seats. Measured against the position on the day the election was called, O’Toole has done fine, and it’s been a respectable, but not great performance. Measured against the benchmark of being declared the favourite by Chucklefuck McGee, this is a pathetic performance. He has had a shit campaign for the last two weeks, as he was unable to find an answer on guns, and now he’s having to grapple with the question of winning back his right, which his answer on not overriding provinces that hypothetically passed anti-abortion laws Sunday showed. His campaign has been buoyed by the idea he could win, and people find it difficult to argue the campaign that’s winning was being run badly, but this campaign hasn’t been good, and it’s showing now. I’d say enjoy another term in Stornoway, but for a guy people were talking about as a prospective Prime Minister, the depths of shit his polling has fallen to should really open the question up as to whether he deserves another crack at the Liberals.

Who’s right in Quebec right now? I don’t know, plainly. Mainstreet and Nanos show ties, essentially, while EKOS and Abacus show sizable swings to the LPC since the last election. If the former are right, the LPC will probably win the 35 seats they won last time in the province and no more, while if the latter are right then the election call will have been worth it, and the Liberals will be in majority. Right now my forecast splits the difference, with the Liberals making 6 gains in the province, 7 gains net in the rest of Canada, and barely getting to 170 seats, a majority of 1 once they put up the Speaker. The thing is, that forecast is probably wrong, if we’re being wrong, because it’s the result of polling we don’t really have. It’ll probably be either less gains than that, if the Bloc surge is real and sustained, or more gains, if the surge either isn’t real or is reversed in the next week, but either way, the basic truth of this campaign is clear - the Liberals needs gains in both English Canada and Quebec to win government. Whether they can get both at the same time is unclear, and that’s why this election has any drama attached to it. Justin Trudeau called an election where he believed the status quo was his worst case scenario and all he was staring at was majority government upside. That basic insight is still true. Trudeau will remain Prime Minister, and we’re waiting on Quebec to see if it will be in majority or minority. Same as it always was.