Recency Bias, Ontario, The NDP, And The Lies We Tell Ourselves

On Seats And Incumbency

In Ontario, one of the things we saw was a generationally good performance from NDP incumbents. Only losing 4 seats with the map they had to defend and their polling was incredible. But it’s broadly misunderstood.

What happened in Ontario was a mix of two factors, not just a boring story of incumbency. The vast majority of NDP MPPs were vulnerable to the Conservatives, and those who put up their best performances were some of the most vulnerable. In a lot of cases, the Conservatives increased their share, but the Liberal vote cratered to the benefit of the NDP. In the only genuine three way contest (Humber River-Black Creek) the NDP held on, in part because tactical voting organizations blunted the Liberals by recommending the NDP.

Ah, but what about Toronto Centre, I can already hear you ask? Simple - Bonnie was a shitty Liberal leader in general and an especially bad one for seats like TorCen. But the vast majority of the NDP’s biggest overperformances were by crushing the Liberal vote.

If you want to tell me that the NDP aren’t in nearly as much trouble as straight swing would imply in London Fanshawe or Edmonton Griesbach or Elmwood Transcona - three seats where I’ve gone in and boosted the NDP significantly at the expense of the Liberals. In Windsor West, I’ve done the same, because Sandra Pupatello isn’t running again and I do think that significantly matters. There are NDP incumbents who if they are down narrowly in the model on April 27th I might tip over manually (Leah Gazan is only one currently down I’d tip over, but there’s a handful I’d consider it for). I am not unsympathetic to the idea that some of the models might be slightly high on LPC challengers. But “Look at Ontario” is a dogshit argument when it comes to Vancouver Kingsway.

There is a 33% swing from the NDP to the Liberals in BC. Don Davies won the new Kingsway by 21% last time. You can do the math - he’s notionally down 12%. Now, you can argue that’s bad math, but I’ll need an actual argument. “He’s popular” isn’t one, but that popularity is already built into his vote share. Either Davies’ vote is built in, and the NDP would only win this seat by 15% or whatever without him - at which point you should understand that it’s not a safe seat in a landslide - or Davies’ personal vote is non-existent, at which point straight swing will work fine.

In the City of Vancouver alone, the NDP got 36% in 2021. Last week, when Leger did a BC oversample and broke out their Vancouver numbers, the NDP were at 7%. An earlier campaign Vancouver poll from Leger had the NDP at 14%. Either way, the swing is bigger in the city of Vancouver than province wide. Given that, you’re not getting a situation where all of that swing is concentrated in the Liberal parts of the city. That’s not how this works.

No, the existence of a good ground game and a lot of signs are not the panacea you think. I’ve told this story before, but the OLP had 17000 “A” commits the Monday before the 2016 Scarborough Rouge River byelection. They didn’t break 7400 votes. An organized, efficient ground game is not a catch all that can solve all the problems created by having a leader polling roughly equivalent to drinking your own piss.

The problem a lot of NDP partisans are engaging with is this false notion that the ONDP strategy was about incumbency, because then you can convince yourself that all of these endangered NDP incumbents to LPC challengers - Davies, Gazan, Matt Green, Niki Ashton, Brian Masse, Laurel Collins - can win again through essentially the power of friendship. They’re in varying degrees of shit because it was never about incumbency, it was about beating the Tories.

If you want to make a tactical voting argument in Vancouver Kingsway or Hamilton Centre or Winnipeg Centre or Vancouver East, you’ll be laughed out of the room. The problem for the NDP isn’t just that ex-NDP voters fear Poilievre so they’ll vote Liberal tactically - they authentically really like Carney and don’t like Singh. Singh is a significantly greater drag on the NDP than Stiles was, and the NDP got to campaign against a deeply unpopular (to otherwise-Liberal voters) Conservative Premier. I would have easily voted for the Ontario NDP if I was in London or Windsor or Niagara, and in fact I did vote NDP in 2018. I was in a Liberal-Conservative battle so I voted red.

Hell, the dirty little secret is if I was in Elmwood or Griesbach or Fanshawe or Skeena I’d swallow my considerable contempt for the NDP and Singh and vote Orange. I would hate myself, but I’d do it because Poilievre is that contemptible. But why the fuck should someone who holds my general politics - voted NDP in 2021, hated Justin Trudeau at the end, thinks Singh sucks ass, and likes Carney - feel compelled to bail out New Democratic MPs?

The problem with all these takes about ground game and signs and all of this is that when the swing is on none of it matters. Look at some of the big name scalps the Liberals took out in 2015 - remember when Jack Harris lost his seat in a shock? Remember when Pat Martin lost with a 69% swing against him to a guy who came third in a Mayoral election? How about when Catherine McKenna destroyed Paul Dewar despite local Ottawa Liberals focusing more on West Nepean because Centre wasn’t seen as winnable?

Or, let’s look at all the Bloc MPs who lost to glorified Political bar trivia answers in 2011, including the fact the NDP won with a Carleton bartender who didn’t speak French and never went to the riding in Berthier. Do you really want to rewrite history to the point where the NDP had 59 good and competent candidates in 2011? Fuck no, they had college students and bartenders and rando activists who won races they had no business winning other than provincial swing and a prayer. Now, some of these randoms made themselves into solid MPs and are doing things with that time and title, but the vast majority of them were paper candidates. You had people first elected in 1993 lose to nobodies.

When I was at UOttawa, we had an Alum come back to speak to us at our Model Parliament - the then-newly elected MLA for Calgary Hawkwood Michael Connolly, who told us all about how he only ran because they needed someone to put on paper, and that he was actually running a different Calgary NDP campaign and barely campaigning for himself.

He won by 5%.

Remember when the owner of a Yoga studio who spent $240 to the PC’s $79k beat the sitting Minister of Justice and Solicitor General? Thank God we didn’t have people saying to avoid Wildrose we had to vote for the PCs.

These anti-intellectual arguments for why the NDP’s gonna be mostly fine in seats are moronic. They’re innumerate, they’re idiotic, they’re ahistorical, and they’re wishcasting. Yes, maybe a few of these people win. You’ll still need to be lucky to scrape official party status. This is a collapse for the NDP, not the gentle erosion in vote of Ontario. And everyone who is mocking tbe Conservatives’ poll denialist turn while pretending that somehow the NDP will win every seat they’re competitive in is doing the exact sort of anti-data hackery they decry.