Will Stephen Harper engineer his own defeat?

There has been some speculation on Liblogs and in some of the media that Mr. Harper may engineer his own defeat this Fall, likely by placing a poison pill within some kind of confidence motion.

I find this unlikely.

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are not lying when they say they do not want an election this Fall. There are several reasons for this.

Such issues as the partisan ads and partisan stimulus spending are issues that resonate with Canadians. Even if they are the recipients of such largesse most Canadians do not like governments using tax payers money for partisan purposes. As these issues are recent they would still be topical during a Fall election. The same will not be true in the Spring.

Their chief opponent is not the pushover it once was. The inter-writ ads with Mr. Ignatieff demonstrate that they have money to burn so they will be able to spend money during the next election dollar-for-dollar with the Conservatives. Analyses of the last election show that the Conservatives actually lost votes in 2006 compared to 2004 but the Liberals lost more because almost 1 million former supporters stayed home last fall. Now the Liberals seem to have a renewed purpose along with a leader who seems to have his stuff together so the Conservatives cannot count on Liberal supporters staying home on the next election day. I am not certain the same can be said of Conservative supporters. As I have stated before Stephen Harper seems to be spending a great deal of time throwing red meat to his base. A strange course of action at this stage of the game unless he fears that his support amongst his base may not be as solid as he would like. They would never vote Liberal or NDP of course, but they could just stay home as many Liberals did in 2006.

Then there is the NDP. They are not ready for an election and it is in Stephen Harper's interests to have a healthy and competitive NDP to pull votes away from the Liberals. As it stands now they will not do that.

This combined with the probable return of Liberal supporters to the polling booth puts between 40-50 Conservative seats in play plus another 20 NDP seats. This is not to say all of these seats will fall to the Liberals but the potential is there.

Now add a poison pill to the mix. By their very nature they are designed to piss off one or more parties opposing the government. So by extension, they will also piss off their supporters and depending on the poison pill it could alienate enough of the broader electorate to cost enough votes to cost another half-dozen seats. When governments engineer their own defeat they prefer to do it on something that is positive for them, such as good news budget. That will not happen until the Spring, which is when I expect the next window for an election will be.

Many people have pointed out the recent uptick on the polls for the Conservatives. However, it should be noted that they only returned to where they were in the last election. As well, this only came after almost 9 months where they were either trailing the Liberals or tied with them. For an engineered defeat to work he would need to see his party polling above the 40% range for a sustained period of time. Only then could he have a reasonable chance of surviving the inevitable decline in support that happens to all sitting government during election campaigns.

I do not believe we will see an election this Fall. The NDP does not want one so they will find an excuse to support the government. The Conservatives do not want one either so I do not believe they will try to goad the NDP into supporting the Liberals and the Bloc in any confidence motion.

Then again, Stephen Harper has demonstrated a political tin ear at crucial times on more than one occasion so he could decide to roll the dice anyway.

We will have to wait and see.