LPC's Poilievre Weirdness

On The Line Of The Week

Is Pierre Poilievre weird? Yeah, realistically. Are his political allies, both inside the Parliamentary CPC and in the wider country? Definitely. Would the average swing voter be horrified if they saw, for example, the leaflet the Tories deployed in Portage-Lisgar in 2023’s byelection attacking Max Bernier for not being a homophobe? 1000%. Poilievre has not humanized himself in the way that Conservatives made sure to do with Stephen Harper, and in theory that leaves a door open for a competent political operation to define Poilievre.

There’s just one problem with this approach: nobody wants this current Liberal government anywhere close to power. Nobody, and I truly do mean nobody. They’re at 23% in each of the latest Abacus, Leger, and Mainstreet polls, and even in Nanos - which, respectfully, is a quality downgrade from the first three - they’re at 26%. And as someone who would vote Liberal at an election held now, I do so with no enthusiasm for the incumbents, so it’s not like even a quarter of the country loves this government. The government lost Toronto-St. Paul’s, a seat so safe they comfortably held it in 2011. The swing in St. Paul’s was bigger than the current polled national swing, as well, so you can’t really do poll denialism - or, at least, can’t do it in good faith, not that that will stop the dumbasses engaging in it.

Now that Democrats have pioneered the “weird” line of attack, and even chosen its architect for VP, some number of Liberals are trying to echo it here. (I don’t have any Veepstakes reaction content planned, but frequent Scrimshaw Show guest Ryan Jakubowski’s video sums up my views quite nicely.) It’s a nice idea, and I do think it’s at least something, which is better than the alternatives this government has done to try and bolster its flagging poll ratings, but it’s not enough. What the Liberals need to spend the rest of this year on is not to drive up Poilievre’s negatives, but they need to try and either make this current iteration of the government less hated, or change leaders. There’ll be time for weird, but not yet.

..

The fundamental crisis afflicting the Liberals right now is not particularly that the country loves Pierre Poilievre. 29% of the country thinks Poilievre would make the best PM per Leger, and 39% have a positive impression of Poilievre per Abacus. Favourables that underrun vote intention by 3% before the other side have started running ads against you isn’t exactly a robust position, especially when you remember that the Conservatives have had the airwaves to themselves for a year. The country is at best lukewarm on Poilievre. What they actually are is downright pissed at the Liberals.

Satisfaction with the government is 29/66 per Leger, with only 14% of those voting Liberal are very satisfied with this government. Abacus has JT’s personal favourables at 24%. 15% say they actively want to re-elect the Liberals. This is a government that is drowning not because of a popular opposition, but an opposition leader of dubious popularity floating above the very real problems with the incumbent government. Sometimes, that means the government gets annihilated (Ontario 2018), sometimes it means the government comes back but falls short (Quebec 2012), and sometimes they win in spite of it all (BC 2013).

The best chance for the Liberals would be something like BC 2013, where a 2012 Ipsos poll had the NDP on 49% vote share but only 33% of BC preferring Adrian Dix to Christy Clark as Premier. In Ipsos’ final poll of that race, Dix was still at 34% Preferred Premier, which ended up being much closer to the NDP’s vote share. Christy Clark’s ratings, however, went from 22% to 33%, and lifted the BC Liberal vote with it. That election is the best case of this strategy, but what happened was soft NDP voters who were ambivalent on Dix but mad at the government were brought home by the government doing better. It wasn’t about hugely trashing Dix - Angus Reid had his approvals only moving from 45% to 42% as the NDP lead halved between September 2012 and May 2013. It was about sentiment towards the government going from murderous to meh.

Jean Charest’s recovery run in 2012 was the same thing. By picking a high profile fight that showed he led a government that was strong and focused on the province’s issues, he diluted the anger at him. In August 2010, only 22% of Quebecers approved of the government’s performance. By election day, 33% approved of Charest. (I have spent 15 minutes trying to find a more direct comparison, but I can’t. For what it’s worth, Charest’s approvals went from 28% to 33% from February 2012 to September.) What’s clear is that governments that stage these comebacks do so by raising their tides, not by bombing the other side.

Kathleen Wynne raises the risk of running solely, or even mostly, on “other side bad”, which was her operating strategy for the whole of the Wynne majority. The Liberals ignored warnings that they were on track to lose, confident that the allegations against Patrick Brown would re-elect them. When those accusations came out, and the PCs replaced Brown with Ford, Wynne came out and claimed that Doug Ford was a unique threat. The voters of Ontario responded to that by knocking the Liberal vote share below 20%. Voters clearly considered the idea that Ford would be a disaster - the PCs polled as low as 33% in the writ period - but they just didn’t give a shit because they weren’t electing the Liberals again.

Here, the rush to prioritize attacking Poilievre is an understandable instinct, because it’s an instinct to do the thing that’s easy (attack the other side!) instead of doing the thing that’s hard (pressuring the government to get its head out of its ass). But what could bring this government’s polling back to 29% is not more sanctimonious tweets about how Poilievre is weird or getting mad at news organizations for not reporting on alleged/pretty obvious pro-Poilievre bot activity on a holiday Monday. What can bring it back is Liberals making clear that the government needs to radically cut immigration levels immediately and have a Minister of Immigration who will forcefully make the case for these cuts. What this government needs is its supporters forcing it to get better, and not lying to them that everything is fine.

We have seen the power of grassroots momentum and online organizing in the US this summer, and despite the fact that I am mildly annoyed by the Walz pick, it’s clear that there is power to keeping the pressure on our structures. Liberals need to stop thinking that we’re one quirky attack line away from sinking the HMCS Poilievre. We need to fix this government’s problems and then we can focus on calling Poilievre weird. It is not the fault of the biased media that we are in this situation, because the Liberals won 3 elections with a dogshit, biased media. Postmedia was still horribly right wing in 2015 too, guys. What we need to have even a remote chance in hell of salvaging the next election is a government that’s less out of touch and more responsive to the public. That’s the ballgame. Everything else other than a sharp focus will end in disaster.

Poilievre is weird. It’s also not the solution to our problems right now. Turn the pressure on the government to 11 right now, and we might be able to beat the fucking weirdos.