Canada Upset: Liberal Majority?

Can The LPC Get 170?

“If I’m wrong, there’s little reason anyone should take what I say with much seriousness. But if I am too cowardly to say in public what I say and believe in private, then nobody should give a damn what I have to say anyways.”

I have no idea what I'm trying to say with this piece, or more importantly, I can’t decide what I should say. The smart move would be to write about the polls, talk about the seats that could be flipping on the basis of the data, and then just gloss over the question of majority or minority government for Justin Trudeau. That’s what I should do, and this column should just be a massive victory lap on the idea that there isn’t and never was a path for the Tories to win this election. I should just be writing about how the four trackers today had an average Liberal lead in Quebec of 9%, and an average Liberal lead in Ontario of 7.5%, and I should be revelling in the fact that I went all in on Justin Trudeau staying in office when everyone lost their fucking minds because one aggregator said some stupid shit. That’s what this column should be, and yet it’s not.

…

Will the Liberals get a majority government on Monday? It’s the question I get asked most about this campaign, mostly because everyone knows the other question about this campaign - who will win - is of no value if it’s being asked of me, for obvious reasons. When everyone knows you’re the guy who wrote there’s no path for the Tories, even the most annoying of internet commentators know not to ask who I think is going to win. My answer has been that the Liberals have a 35% chance, I think, and in some ways that’s probably fair - even my wild arrogance isn’t slightly rocked by the fact that no one else is even bordering on the majority line at this point (though I haven’t seen any updates tonight as I type this, I highly doubt anybody joins me on this island when the next updates come). Whatever you think of me - and I know many think little - this is a responsibility I take seriously, and these columns, and moreso my readers, are important to me. And that’s why I’m stuck.

My latest seat projection is the Liberals at 175 seats, and I think I’m right, I’m very confident that if these polls are the result on Monday I’m gonna be right. I’m even confident the polls will be right, because Canadian pollsters are good at this. And yet, somewhere gnawing at the back of my mind is this doubt I can’t articulate, and this fear I can’t explain. It makes no sense, and yet, it’s still fucking here. I have been living this campaign, living the numbers and the data in a way I plainly didn’t expect to. I expected to be relaxed this cycle, but once it started, I couldn’t get out of it.

What I’m struggling with right now is the fact that if I say what I believe, then I will take my now-familiar place at the edge of the distributions of forecasts for the 4th time, after my time at LeanTossup saw us there thrice. Twice we were right, Canada 2019 and the UK election two months later, and then in 2020 we were wrong. I hate being here, I really do, and yet this is where I see the map right now. If you want me to say what others would agree with, the Liberals are favoured and we have no idea if it’ll be a majority or minority. But I can’t say that.

Think to the quote that leads this article, from the piece where I said the Tories have no chance. “if I am too cowardly to say in public what I say and believe in private” is the instructive line right now. As of today, and this could change by Sunday night, I think the Liberals are narrowly favoured to win a majority. I could easily be wrong, but if I am too cowardly to say in public what I say and believe in private, I could not live with myself. Not quite a called shot, but here we are.