It’s Time To Take A 4th Liberal Win Seriously

On The Not Insane Idea

“To everybody calling me a Conservative or saying I’m taking Russian money or I’m taking rubles or whatever the fuck you want to say to me, I care more about liberalism, progressive values, and the accomplishments of this government than you do, because I am the only fucking person in the public sphere right who is trying to drag this party to a position where Pierre Poilievre doesn’t win 235 seats and feels like he can shit rainbows and nobody will care.”

In late September, I did a podcast about Ontario, but at the end I teed off on the Federal circumstances, and the fact that there was no sense of urgency despite the fact that the Liberals had just lost a second safe seat Byelection weeks before. It was obviously an exaggeration - I was not, in a literal sense, the only person trying to get Trudeau to resign, but it wasn’t much of one. That my motives and my loyalty to country were so routinely maligned by those defending the PM was infuriating, because all of this came from a sincere belief that the Liberal Party unburdened by Trudeau would be at least in somewhat fighting shape. And I have been completely vindicated, with today’s Pallas release reaffirming again that this is a tight race.

There are a lot of valid reasons to think that the current momentum won’t last. There’s been big honeymoons for Kim Campbell and John Turner, and neither of them manifested into anything by the election. That should at least make Liberals extrapolating momentum cautious. The other reason to be worried is that two of Canada’s best pollsters aren’t showing this yet Nationally (though Leger of course is picking up big Carneymentum in Quebec). But no matter what happens from here, be it a Liberal win or a Conservative landslide, I was right. The Liberal Party had no chance of even getting within striking distance if even for a moment under Trudeau. They’re within striking distance right now.

And that was my argument this entire time.

..

I wrote in August that the decision to get rid of Joe Biden for Kamala Harris had already paid off, even if she didn’t go on to win the 2024 election. The case I made then was that the existence of Harris’ candidacy made the chances of broader Democratic success higher, gave a floor to the party at a time when Biden was in free fall, and was a significant boon to downballot Democrats. Of course, that’s what ended up happening - there were 4 Senate Democrats elected in Trump states this year, all because Kamala limited the damage and kept their states close enough that Democrats could run ahead of her. In the House, the number of seats won by Democrats in either Trump-won seats or Harris-won-but-barely - also known as “Trump-won if not for the switch” - is probably two dozen at least. It was worth a huge amount, and it made the task of winning the House back in 2026 and winning the Senate sometime before 2030 much easier for Democrats. That Kamala’s performance - which every Democrat would have taken in a heartbeat the day Biden dropped out - was seen by some as a failure shows how much expectations got revised up.

In the same way, Carney has radically reframed what is possible. If you had asked the average Liberal what the ceiling with Carney was on January 6th, they’d have joked that 80 seats was the best you could ask for. When I asked Bryan Breguet that question the following Thursday on my podcast, his answer of what Carney’s ceiling was was 100 seats - and I thought he was honestly a bit optimistic to say that. Now, I don’t think anybody can truly say it would be impossible for Carney to win.

Now, I’m not saying he will win - I still think Poilievre is favoured to win a majority government when the chips are down, I do. But that belief has gone from a bet my life certainty if this was a Trudeau Poilievre race to something closer to an educated guess. We have gone from the land of statistical certainties to the land of gut checks and vague discussions of what is plausible or not. It’s a humongous change.

The problem with “it’s just a honeymoon, we’ve seen it before” is that it ignores two key factors - that Poilievre is not a generationally good politician, like Chretien and Mulroney were, and it assumes that the reason those two new leaders went down in flames was because of some immutable law of Canadian politics, as opposed to Pierre Trudeau handcuffing Turner to patronage and Kim Campbell running a horrifyingly bad campaign.

It also ignores the recent international and provincial examples of a more volatile politics - Harris is the obvious example, but Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison, and Boris Johnson all took over parties that were in the shits and led them to victories within the last decade. In Ontario, Kathleen Wynne took over and saved the Liberals, and while no Conservatives would ever want to admit it there’s a Danielle Smith-Mark Carney parallel that fits. None of this is to say Carney will win - again, I don’t think he’s likely to at all - but it’s an argument against overreading two historical data points.

Pierre Poilievre is announcing a “major rebrand” of his campaign and message at their rally next weekend, which is a thing you definitely do if the Liberals are still 17 points behind or whatever, right? Of course not. All of the signs are pointing to this being a real threat to the Conservatives, and they’re acting like it.

My model, updated today, has the Liberals at 114 seats and the Tories at 181, which would be a majority but barely. If Abacus, who I assume is going to have a poll next week, shows movement, it’s entirely possible that the Liberals would win enough seats to drop the Tories from majority government. (The reason Abacus is a hinge here is not some conspiracy, but they’re the likely next release from a pollster with Conservative friendly numbers. Abacus swinging from CPC+21 to a hypothetical CPC+12 would do more to boost the LPC in my model than another Frank Graves statistical tie would, simply because of the nature of averages.)

Am I nervous that the only reason I’m even engaging in this is because it’s what I selfishly want to hear as a progressive? Absolutely terrified. But enough good pollsters are showing a genuinely competitive race to make it worth taking seriously. The Liberals are genuinely in with a shot at winning government. Might be a small one, but it’s a shot they would never have under Trudeau. And it’s time those who defended the indefensible admit that I wasn’t secretly a Conservative or a traitor for saying what ended up happening.