Is It Time For Liberals To Panic?

Questions To Which The Answer Is No

There’s been a mini-burst of Conservative optimism today, as the two trackers came in better for the CPC, which now leads us to the fun question of whether anything meaningful has happened. The answer, for what it’s worth? No.

The cause of this panic, let’s be very clear, is not a series of polls showing the Liberals losing. It’s a series of polls showing the Liberals winning slightly less, and in almost every case showing the Liberals in majority still. (I’m too drunk to be bothered to toss an Abacus only model run together right now, but eyeballing it suggests it would be borderline majority.) So, unlike 2021, when there were polls that suggested disaster was imminent, the polls now suggest that there may be disaster* at some point down the line if things continue to go the exact same way. (*Disaster, in this case, meaning a minority government that we all would have gladly taken 3 weeks ago, let alone 10 or 15 or 30 weeks ago.) It’s nonsensical, it’s innumerate, and it’s just fucking annoying.

The truth is that the Liberals are polling unbelievably well in SaskyToba and Alberta, in the literal sense of the word. Like, literally, “I do not find these numbers believable”-level unbelievably. On my average, the Liberal vote share is up 13% in both those polling regions from 2021. I do not, for a single second, buy that. But, those three provinces are worth ~19% of the country’s seats, and so that 13% increase is worth 2.5% nationally. Throw in BC, where the Liberal vote is up 15% and is worth 12.5% of the country’s seats, and you get about a 4.4% rise in the Liberal vote share from 2021 just from the west. It’s not happening.

The Liberal vote will go up in all of those places, but it really doesn’t need to. The Liberal vote increase could halve in all four of those provinces with all of those votes going to the Conservatives - so, a 15% swing on margin in BC and a 13% swing on margin in the other three - and 6 seats would flip to the Cons. (Peter Julien and Niki Ashton would also keep their seats.) 6 whole seats, but that would be a 2.2% increase in the CPC vote and a 2.2% drop in the Liberal one. A 4.4% margin swing, and it would be worth 6 seats.

All of that math, by the way, is on the updated averages, which account for the fact that Mainstreet and Abacus and Liaison already have shown slippage for the Liberals in the west. It’s irrelevant. We aren't actually going to win 33% of the vote in SaskyToba and 30% in Alberta, and 45% in BC or whatever starry heights isn’t real either, but losing those votes doesn’t cost us seats.

What would cost us seats is Atlantic Canada, where there’s been some slippage, and then the big two. Atlantic Canada is simple - I haven’t bought the polling showing huge Liberal leads this whole time, and once Leger’s sample normalizes next week there will be a few more CPC gains. This is fully expected. Don’t freak the fuck out over it. If the Liberals can win 20 seats there they’ll be more than happy.

Ontario looks great, still, even with minor slippage in Liaison. 9% lead in Mainstreet, 7% in Liaison, Liberal leads in every poll out there, and an average of somewhere between an 8-9% lead. (I double weight any poll solely conducted in one province compared to crosstabs, so Campaign Research is double weighted. With the double weight it’s LPC+9, without it it’s LPC+8.2%.)

Right now, the Liberals are more likely to win Bay of Quinte and Peterborough than they are to lose Kitchener Conestoga or Niagara South, seats the Conservatives would look at as essential gains. The Liberals are holding strong across the suburban strongholds, as I wrote about yesterday. We’re looking at a minimal change situation in Ontario right now, and one where the Liberal lead is bigger than it was in 2021.

But, the greatest source of my optimism is Quebec. I hate to keep going on about Quebec, but the honest truth is few people in English Canada have seen the possibilities that are currently playing out in Quebec like I have. The Bloc, far from being buoyed by the things that animate people whose knowledge of Quebec runs out once they struggle to remember the Smoked Meat shop they’ve heard about, are in crisis, down to 22% in Mainstreet, 23% in Leger and Nanos, and 24% in Abacus. These numbers are catastrophic for the Bloc, and wonderful for the Liberals. If the Liberals aren’t losing any seats in Quebec, let alone making gains, then the Tories have to basically run the table in English Canada to claw them back to par, let alone worse. And right now, there’s 11 Liberal gains in Quebec, which basically guarantees government. The Liberals are polling so well in Quebec that a 5% drop in the LPC vote, all flowing to the benefit of the Bloc, would still result in a net gain in seats for the Liberals. That's how good the polls are for the Liberals there right now.

Would I be shocked if in a week the seat projection was down to 185 Liberals? No, but the thing people are missing is that the gap between 185 and 172 is very large, because outside of a Conservative spike in Ontario or an outright Tory lead in Atlantic Canada big vote swings in the west or Quebec won’t translate to big seat gains. I would bet money that this week’s Leger and Angus Reid polls show swings to the Conservatives in the popular vote, solely because I do not believe in any way shape or form that we’re at 70% in the East, 30% in SaskyToba, 29% in Alberta, or 45% in BC as Leger had. But make those numbers 55%, 25%, 25%, and 40% respectively and we still have the broad story of a big Liberal majority while moving my model maybe 10 seats right. Maybe.

There’s no reason for Liberals to panic. None. There might be, at some point. But cherry-picked data and bad understandings of just how much vote there is to lose before the seat count gets dicey isn’t a reason. To quote my old QB, R-E-L-A-X.