Canadian Conservatives And The Path To Nowhere

The CPC's Math Problem

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the Conservatives electoral problems in the abstract in recent days (and weeks, and months, and years), but it’s probably worth working through the actual consequences of why they’re going to be unable to win the next election, so let’s do it. (This, for the record, will be operating under the assumption the current electoral boundaries will be in place in the next election, on the basis that any General Election held in 2014 would have been for 308 seats, not 338, and so I’m assuming that if 2025 is when the new boundaries would come into effect, that the current Parliament will have run out of steam by then.)

The Liberals and NDP won 185 seats between them at the last election, and if you assume that in extraordinary circumstances the Greens would pitch in too, the variegated parties of the left have 187 seats right now, meaning the Cons (and the Bloc) need to win 19 seats to get rid of the “left majority” in Parliament. Now, 19 Con-to-LPC gains would still see the CPC behind the Liberals in seats, but let’s just say that 19 seats is the target, right? How could they get there?

Let’s give them the 3 seats in Atlantic Canada that are within 10% and trending right easily, and toss Fredericton onto the maybe pile. In terms of CPC gains from the Liberals, there’s nothing in Quebec, so head to Ontario. Okay, Sault Ste. Marie is obviously flipping blue, Sudbury and Nipissing could be frisky, Kanata-Carleton’s close, and then there’s 6 seats in the Horseshoe within 10%, sure. Toss in Kitchener Conestoga, even, although if they couldn’t win it in 2021, I have my doubts they’re getting it. If everything breaks right, call it 10 gains in Ontario.

None of the Liberal Winnipeg seats are competitive, the Calgary and Edmonton Liberal seats are marginal but there’s only two of them, so that’s not saving you. Could a different China policy and some better luck get you four in BC? Sure, why not. Add it all up, and you get 20 seats that could flip – enough, with the Bloc or the NDP making a couple of gains off the Liberals, to get the Conservatives a plurality of seats and to keep the variegated left sub-170. Problem is? There’s no way everything will break right.

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Longtime readers of mine will be aware of one of my favourite hobby horses, the Global Fucking Realignment of educated, well off social liberals trending towards left wing parties, and cultural conservatives, generally those without a degree, trending towards right wing parties. Put another way, it’s the Conservatives’ “Working class truckers versus Work From Home elites” messaging as an actual electoral trend. If you want the evidence, it’s how Scott Simms went from winning his rural Newfoundland seat by nearly 57% in 2015 to losing it this year, and how Lisa Raitt’s home seat of Milton went from a 5% CPC win to an 18% Liberal one at the same time. It’s a Global trend, and you could easily tell the same story with southern Ohio and Southlake Texas, or Sedgefield and Putney in the UK, or any number of Australian seats. It’s a story that’s playing out everywhere, with one lesson everywhere – you can’t hold it together at both ends.

Think about this for even two seconds, and the Tories problem becomes crystal clear – the strategy that wins you Southern Ontario social liberals is the one that reverses all your gains in Sault Ste. Marie, and that’s why they won’t win. There’s a path to a better result through Northern Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, but if the Liberals can walk out of southern Ontario and Ottawa with 70 seats, they’re winning the fucking election, and any strategy that doesn’t have a robust path to winning Brampton, Mississauga, and Halton is a strategy that isn’t worth me pissing on. Oh, you want to try and win them both? You can’t, for the same reason Democrats couldn’t actually win large-scale reversion with working class whites and make inroads into the suburbs in 2020, and for the same reason Putney flipped to Corbyn’s Labour in the midst of the worst night for the party in 36 years.

If the Tories make a pitch for working class, culturally conservative voters – the kinds of people who think that Trudeau is a bit ashamed of Canada, who is a bit too willing to apologize for our past, who think he’s more than a little soft in an indescribable-but-obvious way – then they’ll eventually break through further in Northern Ontario and continue picking off rural Atlantic seats, while continuing to strike out in Oakville and Coquitlam. Pivot to the centre, and the 4 Atlantic Canadian members you gained in 2021 – plus the ones you’re counting on gaining – are gone, raising the number of seats you need to end up winning in Ontario.

The math isn’t there for a status quo approach, because if they muddle through, they’ll limit their upside with both flanks and probably trade isolated seats back and forth for a second straight election. Pivot to the right, and you can make some gains, probably – and the Liberals probably pick off a Vaughan or a Niagara Falls or more Calgaries and Edmontons. The only answer that will work is a pivot to the centre, and a proper, fulsome pivot, not the half-assed one Erin O’Toole did in 2021. A proper one, with a carbon plan that is intuitive and easy to understand, a gun policy that doesn’t 5 days to decide on and articulate, and one that starts and ends with “the protestors in Ottawa were hugely damaging to a city and its residents, and it was a mistake.” But does anyone think they’re going to do it? Anyone? Bueller?

The Conservatives would need everything to go right to scrape 140 seats, and that’s not going to fucking happen, because unlike the fantasies of both deluded Conservatives and doomer Liberals, the party that’s only beaten Paul Martin, Stephane Dion, and Michael motherfucking Ignatieff isn’t good at politics. They won 3 times in a row because a Liberal civil war left Martin weak, and his uselessness made it worse, before they nominated the two worst Opposition Leaders since the War. When the Liberal Party isn’t a steaming pile of dogshit, they win, and whatever you think of Trudeau, he ain’t close to that fate yet.

The Tories can’t win the next election. Get ready to hear that said a lot between now and whenever that is.