Election 2021: Week One Complete

Week one of the 2021 Federal election is in the books and (imagine me speaking like Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars) it is unfolding as I have foreseen.

The Liberals are running a typical frontrunner campaign because they are the prohibitive front runner. They have been for over 18 months. It can be kind of frustrating if you were expecting them to come out guns blazing but they have done what I would have expected after calling an election during the dog days of summer. Some have said that they never gave a good answer for calling the election but no answer would have been sufficient. Everybody knows that they called the election because they believe they can win a majority government. Hell, all of the Opposition Parties and the media acknowledged just that with their over-the-top reactions to the election call. The first 7 to 10 days of their campaign is going to be like this. After that they will begin to ramp up the effort and urgency of their campaign.

I stated in a previous post that the Conservatives were starting with exceedingly low expectations. So it should surprise no one that they have exceeded them in the first week. However, even then their first week has not been stellar. Hell, if they would have started with normal expectations they would have had a terrible first week. They came down on the wrong side of the vaccine mandate and child care issues, their pre-writ Willy Wonda ad was typical Conservative BS that will remind swing voters why they voted against the Conservatives in 2015 and 2019, their "GST holiday" has been widely panned as the gimmick that it is and Mr. O'Toole's statements on abortion and conscience rights seem to change daily. None of these issues seemed to impact them in the first week but they will haunt them as the campaign goes forward. One final thought, the biggest reason why they released their whole election platform early is because they know they are more likely to lose seat than gain them this time. They need to somehow reverse that and releasing an uncosted platform is their gambit to do it.

In 2019 the NDP did not really begin campaigning until the debates. It was very low key because of their financial situation. Although they are still heavily in debt (and will be even more heavily in debt after this campaign) they have enough resources to launch a typical NDP campaign and that is what they did. Some have said they have had a good week but the NDP usually have good campaigns. The problem for them is, although most Canadians like the NDP and their leader, most Canadians do not trust them to govern the country. That is a simple fact and it will probably not change. My guess is that after all this is done the NDP will garner their usual 15-20% of the vote and depending on how the Bloc does will be the third or fourth party again.

Speaking of the Bloc, some reports indicate that they did not have a good first week. This should surprise no one. Mr. Blanchett is now a known quantity. It will be harder for him to surprise Quebecers. That does not mean that they cannot recover but the Bloc is the party that denied the Liberals a majority government in 2019. If they fade in Quebec the Liberals path to a majority will be cleared of the last obstacle. Remember, there are two pools of voters in Quebec, one is federalists the other is Quebec nationalists and separatists. The first is about 40% of the Quebec electorate and the Liberals pretty much own it. The other is 60% but three parties are fishing in that pool. If each one of them can garner roughly the same proportion of voters from that pool the Liberals will come up the middle an win more seats. Hell if the conditions are just right they could win Pierre Trudeau seat numbers.

The Greens and the PPC were invisible which is not surprising. For the Greens the challenges that Ms. Paul has faced leading up to the election will probably not be overcome. As for the PPC they are running candidates in every riding of the country this time so they could very well be a dark horse. If the public polls are to be believed (they are not) the PPC is averaging just under 4% and they are climbing. If that happens it could be bad news for the Conservatives in ridings where they only won by razor thin margins in 2019.

I am not seeing anything on the Maverick Party out west but they are running in every riding West of the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border and if their Western separatist message resonates they could be trouble for the Conservatives.

The polls and the media are doing exactly what I believed they would do. They have created a horse race where one probably does not exist. It was pretty blatant too. The weekend before the election call virtually all of the pollsters indicated the Liberals had a high single digit, low double digit lead over the Conservatives. About nine days later they all said that the two parties were now in a statistical tie. Public opinion does not work that way. It is glacial and any negative reaction to the election call would not have been that intense. The only pollster that did not show this sudden change was Innovative Research. I know that it does not have the best reputation but it was the only company that produced a poll that was in keeping with how public opinion actually changes. Maybe they will begin to show a Liberal fade in the coming weeks, who knows, we will have to wait and see.

The one thing I did not expect was the situation in Afghanistan happening during the first week of the election. I knew that once the Americans left that the Taliban would reconquer the country but I was uncertain about the timing. The events there pretty much stomped on the messaging for all of the parties, which is probably something they all appreciate. As the government the Liberals will have to wear any bad news coming from that country but, although people will be concerned about the situation, it will not impact how people vote. Hopefully, over the next few weeks we can get as many Afghans who worked with Canadians out and then begin the process of bringing in refugees as they arrive in the neighbouring states.

I discovered a new website by Raymond Tomlin (Thanks Jackie Blue) and he has some really good insight into the election. Just click on the Election 44 link at the top of the page. He is much more bullish for the Liberals than I am so I thought he might just be a Liberal cheerleader but when I reviewed his feed for the 2019 election it is apparent he was not afraid to call a spade a spade. It will be interesting to see his take on the election as it unfolds.