NDP Surges And Vote-Splitting Risks

Could The NDP Surge Hand O'Toole Government?

There are, broadly, two questions about the NDP surge right now that are interesting - what does the surge mean for the NDP’s prospects of gaining seats, and what does it mean for the chances of the Conservatives gaining seats on the basis of left wing vote splitting? The question that has Liberals panicked isn’t really the former, as they are at no risk of losing government just because they lose Danforth, but the risk that the Liberals are concerned about - and Liberal partisans, very much so worried about, is the risk of a vote split.

In 2011, there were a lot of seats where the Tory vote went up slightly, but the votes of the Liberals and NDP moved just enough around that vote to get the Conservatives into office, in some cases on very low pluralities, and this is the scenario that freaks out Liberals and their partisans. There are not many of these sorts of seats, but there are some - Kanata-Carleton, Bay Of Quinte, Kitchener-Conestoga, amongst others - where a rise in the NDP vote at the Liberal expense could elect Conservative members with sub-40% of the vote. And, with the Liberals slipping in Ontario right now (although, to differing extents by pollster), this risk could extend deeper, even into something like St. Catherines. So, is the risk real, that the NDP surge could create a Conservative government by accident? I’m doubtful, and here’s why.

We know from today’s Abacus poll that the NDP are getting 23% nationally and 26% in Ontario, huge increases since 2019. We also know the NDP is getting 35% of the 18-29 year old, decreasing by age bucket. And, courtesy of Abacus’ David Coletto, we have the NDP’s voter split by education - they get 25% of the vote with those with a High School education or less, 23% with a college degree, and 22% with a University degree. What’s it mean? That the NDP aren’t going to be killing the Liberals. The NDP numbers with HS or less voters will be two things - a combination of University students who don’t currently have a higher degree - which lines up with the age questions - and the old working class NDP vote, which would be important for the NDP to make some of the gains they want. Their rise is least concentrated in the University educated, who are most likely to be in the suburbs, and most aware of the risks of an NDP vote.

On the seeming contradiction of the NDP doing better with voters with less education while doing so well with younger progressive voters, it’s not actually contradictory, but just a quirk of polling. I remember in 2020, right before the pandemic, there was a provincial byelection in Ottawa-Vanier, and the Tories ended up substantially underperforming what a demographic based projection would have said, because of, basically, a quirk of math. Vanier isn’t all that University-educated a district, but it is full of voters who vote like they have degrees, because it’s where all the University of Ottawa student housing is, both formal and informal. Anyone who’s ever lived in Ottawa knows Sandy Hill is a student housing haven, but the district looked like a less educated, less socially liberal seat than it was, solely because so many of those voters didn’t have a degree yet, but voted like they did. It doesn’t tend to matter much in aggregate, but it does make sense.

Now, none of this is to say that the NDP surge couldn’t cost the Liberals a half dozen seats to the Tories - they might, but they’re also taking seats off the Tories on anything like these kinds of numbers. Saskatoon West, Kootenay Columbia, Essex, Kenora, Oshawa, and Desnethé--Missinippi--Churchill River are all easily on any target list, and given some poll’s purported Liberal weakness in BC, it might be the NDP which take seats in the Greater bit of Greater Vancouver. To claim that vote splitting could put the Conservatives into government is mostly absurd, at this stage.

What we can try and glean from the age data, the education splits, and the regionals - which have the NDP doing best in Alberta, BC, and Ontario - is that the NDP are doing well with University students and recent graduates, and seemingly doing less well with what could be described as older “professionals”, with all that that word conveys. We know their vote falls to 17% amongst those 45 and older, and we know they do worse with the University educated, but very well amongst the young, which means that they’re probably doing better with 25 year old graduates than the education splits alone would suggest, and worse with 45 year old graduates. Those seeking a narrative could suggest a renters versus owners dynamic - those who own their residences are mostly older professionals who either earn more or bought earlier, whereas new graduates are city renters - but that could be best described as sophisticated guessing on my part. What we can tell pretty clearly is that the NDP are currently on track to surge in Toronto, Vancouver, and Edmonton, and win back enough a half dozen seats from the Tories in their working class heartlands - plus, presumably, put scares into all the Northern Ontario Liberal MPs. But what they’re not looking like doing is taking huge swathes of otherwise Liberal voters in the suburbs - possibly because those voters realize that if their goal is a non-Conservative government, they can’t risk the NDP. 

The voters I’m describing as NDP apathetic, let’s say, are educated, social liberals, with degrees. Basically, Canada’s version of Elizabeth Warren supporters, and there were a lot of people who considered Warren in the 2020 Primaries before bailing when it looked like she couldn’t win. These are the voters who pay the most attention to politics, are going to be following the polls, knowing who’s likeliest to win in their local riding - and, seemingly, these are the voters who are sticking with Trudeau. They are disproportionately going to be in suburbia, and these are voters who seem pretty anti-O’Toole, or at least are the Canadian versions of the voters who are sprinting left globally. Are they really suddenly going to vote for the Conservatives, without prompt or scandal? Probably not, so the question becomes whether they’ll allow his party a free ride in the suburbs. Frankly, I doubt it.

It’s not for me to say what the mood of Liberal partisans should be right now, but it seems highly unlikely that the NDP will incur a vote-splitting penalty that vaults the Conservatives into government. You can oppose the NDP for other reasons, but they’re not opening the door to Prime Minister O’Toole.

(My sincere thanks to David Coletto of Abacus for providing me the vote intention by education data used in this piece.)