We had four byelections last Monday and the final results were the Liberals won the seats they were expected to win and the Conservatives won the seat they were expected to win.
That and the fact the the seat count in the House of Commons remains the same are the only things we can say with certainty.
However, that has not stopped all sorts of people from trying to infer all sorts of things about the current state of Canadian politics from the results. Everybody is trying to read the entrails of the elections to come up with the bigger picture. It should surprise no one that the conclusions people are coming up with are supporting their preconceived notions.
It is true that the Conservative share of the vote was down for all of the byelections compared to the 2021 general election. That lead to a close race in Oxford and a blowout in the Winnipeg riding. If you look at the results it would seem that alot of Conservative voters decided not to vote.
The question then becomes why. For many it is an indication that many Conservatives are displeased with Pierre Poilievre and that this will not bode well for him during the next general election. Perhaps. Then again it could just be a combination of the usual low turnout for byelections with the fact all of the byelections took place in Liberal and Conservative strongholds. In such a situation there would be less incentive for Conservatives to vote because the results were pretty much preordained when the byelections were called. Why vote in a Liberal stronghold when it will not change the party who holds the seat? Why vote in a Conservative stronghold when they already have it in the bag?
Of course, we do not know which is the truth. It could be that both situations contributed to the outcome or not. Regardless, coming to any sort of conclusion about the broader political situation in Canada based on the results Monday night is a mistake.
There are also questions about the accuracy of polls considering the byelection results. Are the polls accurate?
That's easy. No
Anybody who has read this blog before knows my disdain for the public polls. They were always next to useless and they have become even more useless because their MSM clients gave up reporting news long ago in favour of pushing narratives that would generate clicks and revenue. They are not going to pay for polling data that does not support their narratives.
Combine that with the fact there is no incentive for pollsters to be accurate in between elections, since their estimates will not be tested against the actual results of a general election, and you can safely conclude that the public polls can be safely ignored.
