Motion Pictures (For A Crap Conservative Campaign)

On Abacus, Leger, And The Race

“All those headlines, they just bore me now/I’m deep inside myself but I’ll get out somehow/And I’ll stand before you, and I’ll bring a smile/To your eyes”

On Tuesday, Neil Young endorsed Mark Carney, a fact that has led some on the right to suddenly find it within them to lose their minds. One of the Mulroney Nepofails drudged up an old photo of Young and Donald Trump from before Trump ran for President as a gotcha (it’s not), others are attacking his anti-pipeline views (who cares), and otherwise experiencing a level of headloss that is stunning in real life.

The argument, as someone who was overjoyed by it, is not that celebrity endorsements in general or Neil’s in specific will move any significant number of votes. The reason I am happy about it is because it means a lot that someone whose music has been the soundtrack of my life in many ways, the soundtrack to this site often, and whose work has plainly saved my life before. The haunting beauty of Only Love Can Break Your Heart or My My Hey Hey, the quiet mastery of The Losing End (When You’re On) or Sail Away, and the absolute masterpiece that is On The Beach all have saved me before, and it means something to me that the author of that work is on the same side.

That said, I’ve been listening to Neil again today, and doing so while people lose their fucking minds about the polls. It’s hilarious, since there’s nothing to panic over. Leger and Abacus had their national leads shrink two points and both still have 7 point leads in Ontario, but apparently it’s time to panic. It’s not, because nothing has fundamentally happened other than what was always going to.

Two Sundays ago, I tweeted that I expected the Liberals to slip a bit. It was, and remains, a legitimate concern, because the polls were so good for the Liberals that there was never a chance they could get better. It’s just a statement of reality that if a poll, like the April 6th-released Ipsos, has a 20% Liberal lead in Ontario that there’s a significantly better chance it goes down than goes up. It’s basic fucking common sense. What has happened this week is I was proven right.

Now, I haven’t even been proven right to the extent I expected - my model projects out for 197 seats as of today, whereas I expected something closer to 192 - but yes, it’s been down a few seats. The fundamentals of this race haven't changed. Last week, I wrote about the state of play in the key battlegrounds, and how none of them are close. They still aren’t, and I’m about to run that exact same paragraph with the new numbers below to prove my point.

The closest seat in Brampton is a 14.5% Liberal lead in my model. The closest Liberal-held Hamilton is a 7% lead, the closest Liberal-held Kitchener is a 10% lead, nothing in Halton is within 10%, and the closest Mississauga is a 12% race. The Liberals are winning Bloc seats like La Prairie—Atateken and Shefford by 8%, Rivière-des-Milles-Îles by 11%, Blainville by 15%, and the Artist Formerly Known As Montarville by 9%. As I wrote last week, none of that is consistent with anything but a landslide majority.

Yes, if you want to pick out individual crosstabs you can piece together a narrative of momentum. You can also piece together a 225 seat Liberal projection if you engage in the same hackery. It’s nonsensical, and it’s a function of the fact this whole fucking campaign is more boring than the fucking Jersey trap. There is nothing happening that matters, so we’re wasting time with tweets and drama and fake momentum. Quito did a great job whipping up some interest in his polling over the weekend with a couple tweets but if you have paid attention to the seat model Mainstreet produces, it’s never not been a Liberal majority. It’s manufactured drama outside of the Kory Teneycke stuff because there’s nothing else to talk about.

There’ll be a lot of great pieces after the election, including by yours truly (or, at least, what I hope are great on my part) about how this happened, but that doesn’t make this campaign feel any less interminable. It’s why we’re panicking over nothing, tilting at windmills, and being bored by the headlines, therefore searching for new ones.

Do you think, plainly, I’m enjoying this campaign? I’m sure the dimwitted and moronic of you would say yes, because my team is ahead, but it’s been hell. We are at a point where without the constant stream of panic and nonsense narratives I’d be out of column ideas. What has happened is that the Liberals were polling too well, and now they’re merely polling incredibly. Take David Coletto’s points about rising negatives for Carney - they’re still miles better than Poilievre’s ratings. Like, I don’t know guys, are we suddenly giving the Conservatives the benefit of the weakest curve possible?

Their leader is less popular on every metric than Carney, they’re losing on vote intention numbers, and there is not a single poll released in the last week that would result in anything other than a Liberal majority. And yet, panic.

Carney seems to have done well on Tout Le Monde En Parle, given the fact that Mainstreet, Liaison, and Nanos all reported higher LPC vote shares in Quebec Wednesday morning than they did on Monday (no polling Sunday was done after the show, given CRTC regulations). Abacus showed the Liberal vote flat across a Monday-Tuesday sample as well, so it’s pretty clear that the appearance didn’t hurt Carney as many Conservatives expected/hoped. But more than that, it’s clear that this election, at least when it comes to predictions, is a litmus test of your political IQ, and there’s a clearly correct side.

If you’re offended by that I want you to. From what we’re seeing publicly and the conversations I’m having privately, the smartest people in Canadian politics think the Conservatives are deeply fucked. It pains me to give them actual good publicity, but listen to Kory Teneycke on today’s Curse Of Politics and tell me with a straight face the Tories are going to win. I dare you, because you can’t, or you’re an idiot.

But yeah, man, Ben Mulroney attacking Neil Young’s really your way back. It’s absolutely the case that at a time when older voters are your weak spot and you’re losing Ontario by 6+ in every poll you want to attack a Canadian legend and not get back on message. I fucking despair.