Is the 2021 Federal Election a Change Election? Updated

Everybody has heard of the so called "ballot question". That is the question voters ask themselves when they cast their ballot. Many commentators assert that the political party that convinces enough voters to cast their votes for their ballot question will win the election.

Will the ballot question be about the environment, the economy, child care, vaccines or some other issue? In general it is none of these or any other issue.

I know of only one election in the last 40 years where an actual issue was the ballot question. That was 1988 when Canadians were asked to decide whether Canada should ratify the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Note that this was the agreement before NAFTA.

For every election since then the key ballot question has always been "Do I want a change in government?" That's it. Everything else was secondary and might have informed that decision but it always boiled down to that question.

In general humans do not like change. It frightens us. It confounds us. It clouds the future because you never know what the implications of change will be. The status quo, on the other hand, offers stability and predictability which we find comforting. As a result we only make changes when we are forced to or when a situation becomes so outrageous that change in the best option. However, even then we usually are not happy making the change. It is deemed necessary but for the most part we will not be too enthusiastic making it.

From a political standpoint this means that the incumbent party has the advantage in most elections. Most of the time voters are going to choose the status quo over change. The exceptions of course are those elections where the incumbent has worn out their welcome and voters decide that a change is necessary. That usually happens after a government has been in power for a very long time, which in Canada usually means eight or more years. 

Looking at all of the change elections of the last 40 years they were in:

• 1984 - when Canadians finally grew very tired of Pierre Trudeau and the Liberals
• 1993 - when Canadians grew tired of the Progressive Conservatives
• 2006 - when the scandal plagued Liberal finally convinced voters that a change was necessary
• 2015 - when Canadian said we have had enough of Stephen Harper.

Check the intervals between those elections and you will note that none of them are under the eight year mark I mentioned above. As well, for all of those cases it was obvious when those election campaigns started that there would be a change in government when all of the votes were counted. 

So that brings us back to the question above. Will this be a change election? The Liberals have only been in power for six years and there is no sign that a desire for change is strong in the country. Yes, the shine the Liberals had in 2015 has long worn off but that does not mean that Canadians are necessarily ready to pitch them to curb just yet. 

The Liberals' opponents are going to try to convince Canadians that a change is necessary but that is what happens during every election. In general, government opponents do not succeed in convincing voters to change if that sentiment was not already there. 

We will have to see if this election bucks the trend but if I had to guess I would say that it will not. Leaving aside that the Liberals have been in power for less than eight years there is also the upset and change that we have all been living through for the past 18 months. It can probably be argued that enough Canadians will decide not to add to the uncertainty we have been living under during that time by changing governments as well.

Update: Just to expand on my thought about change elections. The first election I ever voted in was the 1984 federal election. Including that election we have had 11 federal elections since then. Of those 11 only four of them were change elections. In other words change elections are very infrequent and the conditions need to be almost perfect for one to happen.