The assertion in the title of this post would seem very odd considering that just three days ago the Conservative Party of Ontario won the 2018 Ontario election very convincingly. However, a closer look at the results backs up my assertion.
The Ontario Conservatives had the best of conditions going into this election. The imcumbent party was deeply unpopular, there was a history of the Third Party being a disaster the one time they won power, and they had a centuries old voting pattern going their way.
So when the votes were counted did the results indicate that the Conservatives won an overwhelming victory?
No.
When the votes were counted it was revealed that the Ontario Conservatives won 40% of the popular vote, that is a minority of the popular vote and only 6 points ahead of party that came in second.
In fact if you look at the total Conservative vote and compare it to the total vote for the "progressive" parties, the Liberals, NDP and the Greens, you would note that the vote count for the progressive parties exceeded that of the Conservatives by more that 20 percentage points. The only reason why the Conservatives won is the progressive vote split.
This situation is my no means unique. It is the norm in Canada. Nationally and provincially Conservative Parties come under 50% in every election. Sometimes they enjoy a split in the progressive vote, and the First-Past-the-Post voting system allows them to take government but when the split does not happen they do not take government.
We only need to look at the recent history at the federal level to see that. Stephen Harper never won more that 39% of the popular vote in four elections. In three of those elections the split in the progressive vote gave him government, with the last one being a majority government. Then in 2015, that split disappeared, the Conservatives only won 30% of the vote compared to the Progressive vote of almost 70% and they lost government. That is, the progressive vote outnumbered the Conservative vote by a margin of 2-to-1. But even when he won the progressive vote outnumbered the Conservative vote by a wide margin.
So the Conservative movement in Canada is exceedingly weak and they know it. When Prime Minister Trudeau made his promise to change the way we vote the Conservatives freaked. During the debate about it, after the 2015 election, the Conservatives were the most strident and shrill in putting forward their position that any proposed change must be put to Canadians in a referendum. They know that the current voting system is the only way that they can ever win government. Any other kind of voting system, whether it be Proportional Representation, as favoured by the NDP and the Greens, or preferential ballot as favoured by the Liberals, would greatly reduce the splits in the progressive vote and put the Conservative Party in a nearly impossible electoral bind.
Some would argue that my assertion is wrong by pointing at Alberta and the West. Certainly, that part of the country is more conservative in its thinking but the total population of the West is less that the population of Ontario and even in the west the Conservative vote is not monolithic. There are pockets of strength for the Conservatives in this country but they are relatively small and concentrated and they do not disprove my assertion.
Others would argue that the Liberals have the same problem. They have never hit the 50% mark in winning any of their elections. That is true but the reason is that there are currently two other progressive parties that siphon off progressive votes during every election, the NDP and the Green Party. If they did not exist and there was only one progressive option available to Canadians it is an interesting thought experiment to think about the implications for elections in this country.
In every election in which Conservatives have won government, in the past 50 years, the same pattern has played out every time (except in Alberta and Quebec, which have different politics). A progressive party is in power, usually for a long time, and voters have grown tired of it and sought change. At that point the progressive vote splits between the progressive parties, and the Conservative parties then come up the middle. After a time, when the electorate gets tired of the Conservative government, the split ends and the Conseratives lose. In all cases, whether the Conservatives win or lose, the number of voters who vote for progressive parties far exceeds the number of voters who vote for the Conservative Party.
Over a century of elections has proven that Conservatism in Canada works from a position of weakness. They routinely capture a minority of the vote in every election, being outpolled by the progressive parties by huge margins. Their saving grace is the First-Past-the-Post electoral system and the split in the progressive vote. Without them it is an open question of whether the Conservatives would ever form a government again.
That is profound weakness.
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