Canada Update: Could The Tories Lose Seats?

On The Very Real Possibility Facing O'Toole

I’m not going to lie, sometimes I don’t always grasp the implications of what I say. This isn’t to say I’m loose-lipped, I’m not (at least, while sober), but sometimes in saying what you think you end up saying more than you realize. The first time I told an ex-boyfriend of mine I loved him wasn’t actually saying the words - we were talking about the weekend we had spent together, and I said something to the effect of “it was an amazing time with the man I love”, before both of us promptly fell asleep. The next morning, I realized I had never told him I loved him, and that was the first time. Funny how these things can happen.

I’m thinking about this in the context of the seat projection I put out yesterday morning, wherein I had the Liberals 5 seats short of a majority government and the Tories losing 3 seats from 2019. Had someone asked me, even in the hours after that, which of the Tories losing seats and a Liberal majority I find to be more likely, I’d probably have said a Liberal majority, stupidly, because for some reason, it didn’t clue into me what I was actually saying with that forecast. Now that it has clued in, it’s fairly shocking what it could mean - and I didn’t even realize it. But, yeah, as of right now I have Erin O’Toole losing seats compared to the Liberals, because after all the sound and fury, and needless panic, it’s safe to say the Tories aren’t going anywhere fast.

If you think my opinion is crazy, it’s really not - I’ve got the Tories on 118 right now, in large part because I don’t buy they’re actually going to make the Atlantic seat gains suggested. TooCloseToCall has them on 128 with 5 gains in the Atlantic (including two seats on PEI, which admittedly I’m not seeing as likely), LeanTossup is a bit higher at 135 - but with 8 Atlantic gains for the Tories - and the Mainstreet seat projection has the Conservatives bouncing around 120. This isn’t a fringe possibility, but one well within the bounds of possible on all of these forecasts, with one exception, 338. My contempt for that site’s methods should be clear by now, but other than PJ “I Called O’Toole The Favourite Way Too Early” Fournier, everyone agrees the Liberals are favoured. By how much, and how likely the kind of lead the Liberals have now is to lasting through election day is up for debate, but the critical consensus is clear - the Tories aren’t in a much better spot than they were on election day 2019, if they’re in a better spot at all.

The reason I’m harping on the Atlantic gains as a big differentiator is simple - Mainstreet’s most recent seat projection has no Tory gains, and mine has one, and we have the Tories losing seats, net. TooCloseToCall and LeanTossup have a more robust Conservative position out east, and their position is much strengthened. I’m not saying I’m right - that’s not the point I’m making here - because the fundamentals of this electoral map are simple. The Conservatives are playing offence in the six Easternmost provinces, and playing defence in the four Western provinces. The Tories have four losses at least out west - Charleswood to the Liberals, Saskatoon West to the NDP, and Edmontons Centre and Mill Woods - before you even hit the BC border. They could lose the northern Saskatchewan seat to the NDP, they could lose Calgary Skyview to the Liberals, they could even lose Edmonton Griesbach to the NDP (as Mainstreet suggested today). Head into BC, and you could see losses to the NDP in Kootenay-Columbia and Port Moody-Coquitlam, before you hit the 4 CPC-held marginals in Greater Vancouver that are straight LPC-CPC fights - Stevenson-Richmond East, South Surrey-White Rock, Cloverdale-Langley City, and Pitt Meadows--Maple Ridge. Lose two of them, and you could easily be walking out of the Western four provinces down 10 seats without even really trying, and maybe even 13.

Ah, I can hear, but the Tories have so many seats they could go win in Ontario and the Atlantic, this is easy. Is it? Be nice but not overwhelmingly so to the Tories, and they might gain 6 seats in Ontario - Bay Of Quinte, Kitchener-Conestoga, Niagara Centre, two seats north of Toronto, and Monsef’s Peterborough seat. Say, even, they get all three of their Quebec marginals - the two Beauports and Trois Rivieres. Can they get two in the Atlantic becomes the question, and the answer is maybe, but probably not. For the sake of it, let’s say they get two seats in Nova Scotia, why not. They’re not over the line yet, because they still have NDP exposure in Ontario - namely Kenora, Essex, and (to a lesser extent) Oshawa - and that doesn’t even take into account any amount of PPC risk in the west or rural Ontario. If - and you should apply a very big health risk on the sentence I’m about to say - the IVR pollsters who are showing huge PPC numbers are right, there’s up to a half dozen seats the Tories could lose in otherwise deep blue territory. I’m not believing that, and I have the PPC projected for no seats. But would it really shock us that much if Bernier won in Beauce, or if the PPC caught a lazy incumbent in Alberta by surprise?

The Tories easily can gain seats, but it really wouldn’t take much for them not to. Not get the swing they’re hoping for in Ontario, or have that swing be more loaded into rural and regional seats, and out of the small cities that litter Ontario (like Peterborough, Kitchener, and the weird amalgam of municipalities north of Toronto), and they could easily not get the gains hoped for. Maybe Quebec’s three way marginals don’t fall your way, and those three gains become 1, or even none. And maybe the region where the Tories are perpetual underperforms continues to not send many Tories to Parliament. I know the East Coast is less educated and more working class, but there is still some part of me that cannot bring myself to believe that there are a mass of CPC gains on the East Coast. Am I a hypocrite, given all the shit I talked (correctly) in the 2019 UK election and (incorrectly) the 2020 US election? Oh probably, and I’m scared of this fact, but even in 2019, the CPC really should have won Mirimachi and Saint John-Rothesay. That they didn’t should provide caution for those buying the hype on them there this time. And without those Atlantic gains, the Conservatives are hoping for either no losses in BC or more gains than they’re likely to get in Ontario to avoid net losses.

I’ve been firm this entire time that I think the Tories lose this election, because they have no path forward with the map right now, and I stand by that firmly. At this point, I think they lose seats. They might get above the 121 they got last time, but I think that is less likely than them losing seats at this point. For all the bullshit thrown around as everyone enjoyed the final 2 weeks of their first summer in 2 years, Erin O’Toole sits 9 days out likelier than not to lose seats. But hey, he’ll always have Fournier’s Macleans column to keep him company as he stays at Stornoway - that is, if the Tories let him.