#ScrimshawSix: Six Thoughts On Trudeau, Mainstreet, Nanos, and Charest

Y'all Wanted This

Despite the fact that I admittedly find this topic to be the rhetorical equivalent of watching paint dry, people are very excited by the latest round of federal polling, so here’s six thoughts on the Mainstreet and Nanos Polling that has my mentions in a tire fire.

Is It Correct?

Do I think the Tories are really polling at 39% right now, as Mainstreet had them? No, probably not, but the idea they have a lead is perfectly sensible. The Tories have an interim leader that nobody except the terminally online have any actual knowledge of or information about, and Justin Trudeau has had a politically shit last few weeks. None of this should be surprising.

When parties don’t have leaders, their polling generally goes up, as everyone who might be dissatisfied with the government projects “their” kind of preferred opposition onto the party without a leader. Once a party picks a new leader, and that new leader starts to articulate their vision for the party, that party falls again in the polls. You saw it with the Harper Majority, where the Bob Rae-led Liberals took a lead that Trudeau was able to hold onto for a year and a bit because he said almost nothing about what kind of Liberal leader he would be. Once he started to roll out policies, the Liberals started their polling slide that saw them in third place when the 2015 campaign started.

Here it’s much the same, with Candice Bergen not being known to anyone and every non-Liberal being able to project the Tory Party they want to see onto the CPC. At some point, the Tories – likely under Pierre Poilievre, but regardless of who the next leader is – will have to decide who they are and what they’re for, and when they do so they’ll piss off some number of people currently willing to say they’ll vote CPC.

Why Is Trudeau Unpopular?

Whether you like it or not, people expect their Prime Ministers to do shit at moments of national crisis, and doing shit all and then calling a national emergency only to see the blockade dealt with by the Ottawa police. Jurisdictional arguments are bad politics at the best of times and they’re even worse when the occupation is happening 15 feet from the House of Commons, and the entire Parliamentary Press Gallery are there to cover it, and cover your unwillingness to do much.

Whether he did what was right or wrong, letting citizens indefinitely occupy your capital for weeks on end and doing nothing until the end isn’t exactly a sign of strength, and anyone thinking he wouldn’t be polling badly right now is asking the Canadian public to pay more attention to nuanced arguments than they’re willing to outside election periods.

Is it his fault? No, but nobody is really making that argument. What they are saying is that at some point the Prime Minister is supposed to lead, and a nation where occupations take 3+ weeks to clear out is a nation that is barely functioning. It’s unsurprising that the Liberals are taking a hit.

Would The Liberals Win An Election Today?

Unclear.

The Mainstreet seat projection, which I would trust implicitly on the condition the poll is right would have a LPC plurality and the LPC and NDP above 170 seats, which is both hilarious and an indictment of first past the post, but would obviously see the government returned.

I haven’t bothered rebuilding my federal model for one simple reason – I cannot bring myself to give enough of a shit what the federal polls would point to 2 years out from the likely next election, when at least one, if not all three, of the major English federal parties will have different leaders. I don’t have a strong opinion glancing at the data, but an election held today would probably be touch and go for the Liberals, which is why there won’t be one.

I maintain the Tories cannot win the next election for reasons I’ve spelled out before, but “The Tories Won’t Win The Next Election” is not “The Tories Will Never Have Polls Where They’d Win A Plurality Of Seats” as some Liberals seem to be wishing it means. When Skippy, or whatever right wing ideologue makes it out of the Tory membership, actually has to face the electorate at election time, the Tories will lose.

What About Jean Charest?

Charest’s a joke of a leadership candidate and his rumoured candidacy will go nowhere.

Even if Charest manages to win a decent chunk of the points out of Quebec, nobody in English Canada under the age of 40 has any positive associations with Charest, and all we know of him is the corrupt Premier of Quebec who tried to raise tuition fees and got bitchslapped by the Charbonneau Commission.

The commentariat remember him for his Captain Canada routine in 1995, but that was, I can’t believe I have to explain this, 27 years ago, and the good he did by keeping Canada whole has been wildly outweighed by the governance disaster that was his 9 years at the helm of the province of Quebec.

Oh, and if you think the CPC establishment wants Charest, the man who campaigned against Harper, instituted a carbon price, fought to keep a long-gun registry, and worked for Huawei during the Two Michaels crisis, you’re not paying attention.

Shut The Fuck Up about Charest for the love of God, and let him get his 16% of the points in peace.

What Does It All Mean?

Almost nothing.

Will Candice Bergen lead the Tories into the next election? No. Will the nation’s capital be occupied for three weeks prior to polling day? No. Will any of this be the fight the next election is fought on? Of course not.

People are mad the Liberals looked like incompetent buckpassers as Ottawa burned and governments that look like that get punished. Once that isn’t the most recent thing people think of when they think of the federal Liberals, they’ll be fine.

Should Liberals Calm The Fuck Down?

As always, yes, unless you want to make a donation to the funds required for maintenance of Scrimshaw’s Strategic Rum Reserve, which graciously allows him to write more without wanting to shoot himself.