#ScrimshawSix: Abacus, Poilievre, And Ford
5 Thoughts On Federal Politics + Doug Ford
Since I never have any idea how to start these columns, go read my latest NFL columns over at TheLines, why don’t ya, after you read the column that you really ought to know the deal with at this point.
(This will be about both Abacus and Nanos, but one of these companies’ heads likes me and the other blocked me on Twitter and has proven incredibly willing to threaten people when he’s crossed, so I’m only putting Abacus in the headline.)
The Liberals Are In A Worse Spot Than I Thought Possible
Look, there’s no point denying that I didn’t think these sorts of results were possible. The funny (for a given value of the term) thing is that I’ve been pretty staunchly correct about two of my central tenants of this site’s coverage – that Poilievre will not be an asset to the CPC, and that Jagmeet’s NDP is headed for disaster. The problem is, this government is so unpopular right now that it doesn’t matter.
If you really need me to explain that the Cons winning Atlantic Canada or being at 45% in BC I’m not sure why you’re reading this site. An election held today would easily see the Tories win. Majority would be touch and go, and the real answer is that the majority would be decided on how well LPC incumbents in Atlantic Canada and NDP incumbents in Northern Ontario and non-Lower Mainland BC hold on in cases where the Global Fucking Realignment and provincial totals say they have no business doing.
Yes, Poilievre’s got a 31/37 favourable/unfavourable split per Abacus and he’s yet to do particularly well in a CPC-LPC byelection, but it’s clear at this point that the theory that he can’t win – which was true about the Tories after Scheer – is wrong now. The idea was that Poilievre’s odiousness would disqualify him in the eyes of enough voters. Clearly, that’s wrong, no matter who ends up winning the next election.
Why Now?
I still don’t have a satisfactory answer as to why the country has suddenly and sharply moved to the right – remember, at the end of June we had the byelections, but the Liberals were finding some momentum in some of the polls. Not landslide territory, but the government would be returned even without a byelection adjustment territory. Now the Liberal vote is down, the NDP vote is down too, and the Tories are profiting.
Various theories (the last Bank rate rise, the asylum issues in Toronto, general inflation unhappiness, foreign interference) miss the mark. I’m not that surprised that the government’s in a bad spot, but why now is a very fair question. Why did the last rate rise hit the polls but not any of the others? Why is Atlantic Canada and BC swinging so firmly on a mostly Toronto issue (lack of shelter space)? Why did two long running sores for the government suddenly blow up?
We’ll get more polls, and the Durham byelection in time. But until I get a plausible answer to why now, I’ll keep the possibility that this is a bit of just variance.
Nanos Learn To Poll Quebec Challenge
Even as Nanos shows the Liberals fucked, they have the Liberals up 8 in Quebec – 32% vote share only, though. How is that? The Bloc is at 24% and the NDP are in 3rd at 18.6%. If you think this happens in reality, I have a Francophone only neighbourhood in Westmount for you.
Nanos has always sucked at polling Quebec – remember when the Liberals were at 45% there during the 2021 campaign? – but this is fucking hilarious. Get your shit together, Nik.
Divergent Ontario
What’s interesting about Nanos and Abacus is that they’re mostly directionally the same. Both have Con leads in the Atlantic, both have the Tories north of 40% in BC, and the Liberals are in the low 30s in Quebec, even as Nanos’ Quebec numbers are a fiction (see above). Where they disagree most starkly is Ontario, where Nanos is painting a rosy picture and Abacus is painting a less rosy one. In Nanos, the Tories have a 10% lead and a vote share of 39%, whereas Abacus is +4 and a vote share of 37%. It’s a little bit cherrypicking, but the Cons have a lot more upside in Ontario if the vote share’s at 39%, because at 37% an effective squeeze campaign means the Tories probably don’t gain much, but at 39% there’s definitely gains coming.
Is this nitpicking a set of very good polls for the Tories? Sure, but if Ontario starts trending back to the Liberals then you can write off a Tory majority, so it’s worth pointing out.
Singh In Trouble?
The one fun thing about both Abacus and Nanos is that Jagmeet Singh would absolutely lose his seat to the Cons. Both have the CPC-NDP gap at about 20%, and that would be enough to see Jagmeet fall, especially with how mad Liberals are at him. Unlike some NDP MPs who will be able to run effective squeeze votes of Liberals, Jagmeet won’t be able to because of his general uselessness and willingness to trash the Liberals.
More interestingly than the fate of the MP for 3 Houses As He Bitches About A Housing Crisis is the fact that a Blue Wave in BC could wipe out 8 seats easily. A majority of the NDP’s caucus is in BC, and these numbers are an existential threat to the caucus.
(They also represent exhibit 495738489 as to why Jagmeet won’t pull the plug early – he doesn’t have the pension yet, and doesn’t get it until 2025.)
Is Doug Ford Trying To Lose?
I know this isn’t Federal politics, but I only have five points and so I’m doing this. Is Doug Ford trying to like artificially raise the difficulty level on his re-elect?
I’m on the record as a believer that if the Liberals make Nate their next leader, then the party will be in a position to challenge at the next election, but to be clear, I’m not repeating my 2022 mistake of underestimating how popular Ford is, or at the least underestimating the level of competence that the opposition needs to reach to get voters to leave Ford.
The Ontario NDP have abandoned the playing field, content to go down the culs-de-sac of Americanized culture wars and ineffectual social liberalism after an election where the warning signs for the party is on their culturally conservative, regional flank, because proposing a ban on protesting drag bars is definitely how you win back Windsor Tecumseh and Timmins, for sure. And so, almost like prioritizing only the side quests of a video game to try and make it fun, Doug Ford’s decided to hang a massive corruption scandal around his neck.
The Ford government’s decision to do these Greenbelt swaps will make developers nearly $8B in profit, because when the lands were originally bought, they were protected, and therefore commercially valueless. Now, they’re worth $8.3B. This is a huge scandal that should, if the Opposition meets the moment, take down a government. Whether it will depends a lot on the Liberal leadership choice, because if it’s Crombie, who has backed a version of these swaps and took developer cash as Mayor of Mississauga, then he’ll get away with it.
Lord God don’t make this province choose between two Conservatives and the useless NDP next time around.
Why is Trudeau collapsing? Canadians don’t trust him to govern. He spends too much time talking bad policy on issues that are second tier at best, and leaves everyone hanging when it comes to the top issues they care about.
It’s not even that Canadians disagree with him. It’s that he’s punted completely.
And power abhors a vacuum. If he won’t show leadership and get in front of issues, we’ll vote for anyone who does.
Frankly, Trudeau should be doing daily, or at least weekly, covid-style briefings on affordability, housing, environment, healthcare. That was him at his best, clearly communicating the ways his government was working to solve problems.
On the other hand is the collapse of Liberal support just par for the course? Most of the PMs these days are averaging 10 years, or three elections, whatever comes first, before their shelf life expires. Gotta laugh at the Poilievre makeover. Now he looks like a mini version of Justin Trudeau. Poilievre’s expiration date may come much quicker because it will take a couple years before everyone learns to spell his name right and that’s just too much work.