Election Assessment: Conservatives

The Conservatives lost the election on April 28 but not by as much as many believed it would. However, that is very significant because as late as the end of January everybody and their brother were saying that the Conservatives were poised to form a huge majority government. That was BS of course, over the course of an election everything would have come back to the centre, regardless of whether Justin Trudeau had stayed on and Donald Trump had not opened his mouth. However, the perception is the Conservatives blew it big time.

The Conservatives can blame Donald Trump to some extent. His talking about making Canada the 51st state in the weeks leading up to the election did not help. It created a great sense of patriotism, which gave the incumbent Liberals the best opportunity to work with that to unite the country behind them. However, as I stated in my previous post the Liberals failed to fully exploit that opportunity.

So much of the responsibility for the Conservative loss lies with Pierre Poilievre and the campaign he lead. The Liberal campaign sucked but the Conservative campaign was brutal. Pierre Poilievre has the charisma of an angry turnip but he could have overcome that to some extent if he would have had any political instincts and acumen. At every turn, when he had the chance to make the right political decision he did the exact opposite. The number of examples of his political ineptness are too many to articulate here. Someone should write a book about it. 

However, I will pick the example of the Liberals zeroing the Carbon Tax as a case study. That decision worried me because it could have been spun as a sign of weakness that would have dogged the Liberal campaign until the end if the Conservatives would have played it right and they would have been right because it was a sign of weakness. They did not do that however. When Mark Carney eliminated the Carbon Tax the Conservatives became hostile. They claimed it was not real and that PM Carney was just another Justin Trudeau. When I saw that I breathed a sigh of relief because I knew it would not resonate. What I feared and what the Conservatives should have done was take the freaking win. They spent 3 years demanding the Liberals "Axe the Tax" and the Liberals did just that. They won the war but then had no idea what to do afterwards and lost the peace. What they should have done was congratulate the Liberals in finally agreeing with them. They should have ridiculed the Liberals while thanking them, which they deserved. When the price of gasoline dropped by over 20 cents per litre on April 1, Pierre Poilievre should have shouted "I did this", with a regular and online ad campaign and with his MPs and candidates going onto social media to say the same thing. He should have continued by bringing up the topic during the debates. Doing so would have cemented his victory in the minds of voters and it might have shaken enough votes loose for him to actually win. Of course he did not do so. It was interesting, the week before the debates a pollster asked respondents who they credited with eliminating the Carbon Tax. Fifty two percent of respondents said Mark Carney and only 25% said Pierre Poilievre. So after three years of hard slogging, until they finally won, they did not receive credit for their victory. That pretty much sums up the political stupidity of the Pierre Poilievre.

So where to the Conservatives go from here. On the one hand the Conservatives did pick up 24 more seats over their 2021 result. On the other hand they lost an election that they were expected to win and Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat. So Mr. Poilievre could make a plausible argument for staying on as leader but there is also a plausible argument for his resigning. Added to this, it is probable that the Liberals will lose the next election. The probability of them winning a 5th consecutive election are extremely low. So, the leader of the CPC, during the next election, will probably become PM. That is going to make those who want to replace Mr. Poilievre quite motivated to make him leave.

The result could be some real fireworks coming from the Conservatives over the next little while and it could last quite some time. If Mr. Poilievre does not go quickly the infighting in the CPC will just become more vicious the longer he clings to his position. 

That is going to motivate Mr. Poilievre to try to bring down the Liberal government sooner rather than later but with both the NDP and the Bloc having no interest in another election that will not happen. And every time he fails to bring down the government will weaken his grip on the party that much more. I am not going to say that the CPC will split. Nothing that dramatic will happen but the infighting will be hard to miss and as long as it goes on the Liberals will be able to govern without an effective opposition.

Election Assessment: Liberals

The Liberals won the election last night. That cannot be disputed. However, you cannot shake the feeling that they squandered an opportunity for a majority government and they only have themselves to blame.

The Liberals had the best conditions for winning a majority government since 2015. They had the orange gas bag in the US making threats against Canada. They had a brand new leader who seemed uniquely qualified to deal with that very same gas bag. Their chief opponent ran a terrible campaign. (More on that in my next post.)

So what happened?

First of all, Mark Carney has very little charisma. He looks and acts like the technocrat that he is. Part of the job of the leader of a political party is to connect with Canadians on an emotional level and he failed to do that. It is true that he came across as the most competent but that was not enough. It is rarely enough. The campaign that he ran was boring and uninspiring. 

Second, the Conservatives ceded the Donald Trump issue to the Liberals and they did not take full advantage of it. At the beginning of the campaign Donald Trump dominated but that faded after the phone call between him and PM Carney. Although the issue never went away it dropped off as THE issue of the campaign, thus letting the Conservatives off the hook for their woefully inadequate response to Donald Trump's threat to Canada. I compared this campaign to the 1988 election. The big difference between that one and this one was the Liberals never relented using the perceived threat to our sovereignty that was represented by the Canada/US Free Trade Agreement. The Liberals should have done the same thing this time. They did not have to be over the top and they did not have to go into any histrionics. All they had to do was remind Canadians of Mr. Trump's actions and words for the whole campaign. Instead of that we had the Liberals talk about Trump's action impacting the global economy, probably creating a global economic crisis. Great, that is all true but that does not hit you in the gut like Donald Trump's direct threats against Canada. 

I was not impressed by the Liberal campaign and it would appear a large number of Canadians agreed. While I still voted for them anyway it would appear that millions of Canadians decided not to. That is on them.

So what does it mean for their ability to govern?

For now not much and there is a chance that they could govern with their near majority for quite some time. The NDP is going to be addressing a potential existential crisis. This happened to them in 1993 and it took eight years and two elections for them to come back. It could very well that as long this time which means that they may not want to force an election during the next four years. They could very well prop them up while they get their own house in order. That could last anywhere from 18 months to four years.

As well, their chief opponent is going to be going through some stuff in the coming months. I would imagine infighting, while they deal with it, will leave them unwilling to force an election, even if they could get the other parties to agree, which they would not do.

So the Liberals probably have a guaranteed window of about 18 months to push through their key election promises. After that they will be operating on borrowed time and their opponents will probably ramp up the shenanigans to disrupt their ability to govern. So they better move quickly.

One final note, it is very likely that this will be the Liberals' last term for quite sometime. This should also motivate them to move quickly.

Final Thoughts on the Election

It's election day and millions of Canadians are going to their polls and voting for the next government of Canada. This will be on top of the over 7 million who voted last weekend.

The events in Vancouver on the weekend were a tragedy and it is disheartening to see both main contenders for PM using it for political purposes. Mr. Poilievre and the Conservatives were about as subtle as a kick in the crotch with their approach, putting up videos that essentially said "See, we told you so." Mr. Carney was a little more subtle, attending the vigil with the Premier of BC but make no mistake that was the two politicians using the tragedy to score political points.

I was expecting a nastier campaign than what we got. By and large the Liberal campaign stayed positive and did not use the gold mine of statements and actions that Mr. Poilievre has made over the decades against him. They just seemed to focus on the Donald Trump threat. I was expecting more negativity from the Conservative campaign. It was negative but it seems they held back.

I have stated many times in this space that I do not put much stock in polls. That is particularly true for polls conducted in between elections. However, polling that takes place during an election are a little more useful as the pollsters are going to have to compare their estimates against the poll that really counts and if they are too far off they will lose credibility. Considering the fact that polling companies use their polls as marketing tools for the money making business they have an interest in getting it right. Indeed, I would say that they have an incentive to ere on the side of caution. As a result we can probably take what the polls are saying as a general indicator of the relative positions of the parties in public support. If the final polls of the campaign indicate that the Liberals are 4 percentage points ahead of the Conservatives, on average, and that both the NDP and Bloc are going to get creamed then we can believe that is what they are seeing in their polling. Whether that turns out to be reality remains to be seen but it is probable that they are seeing a truish picture.

When this election started the Liberals were "winning" over 200 seats according to the polls and the seat models that have proliferated in recent years. I never believed that and I stated in my last post that they would probably coalesce around 180 to 185 for the Liberals by the end and I was correct.

So who is going to win. I would say it is the Liberals and they will probably win between 165 and 185 seats. 

I am not basing this completely on the polls. I am basing it on how the campaigns worked during the final week. The Liberals spent the week campaigning in Opposition ridings. The Conservatives spent the week in their own ridings. In other words, it looked like the Conservatives are running a "save the furniture" campaign in the final week and not one where they expect to win. The last time that happened federally was in 2015, when Justin Trudeau won a majority government. We also saw it in 2011 when Michael Ignatieff spent the last week of that campaign running around Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. It did not save the Liberals from being relegated to 3rd party status against a majority Harper government.

Can the Conservatives still win? Theoretically they can but everything will have to go right. Their voters will have to come out, Liberal voters will have to stay home AND the NDP and the Bloc will have to perform well above what the polls are saying, I mean like 10 points above. I know that some Conservatives believe that if their party can actually tie the Liberals in the popular vote they could win but that is simply not true. With two exceptions the Conservatives have only won when the NDP does well. If that does not happen the Conservatives would need to win the vote by at least a 5 percentage point margin. They are now down by 4%. Will the election swing 9 points to the right on election day? Again, it is possible but it is not probable.

So it is possible that the Conservatives can win but it is also possible that the late breakers, those who do not decide on who to vote for until election day, break hard for the Liberals, which could make this a blowout. The high estimate for the seat modelers puts the Liberals at 200-220 seats. Neither outcome is probable but we will just have to wait and see for a few more hours.

Some More Thoughts on the Election

The higher than normal turnout at the advanced polls is impressive but it does not mean that there will be a higher turnout overall. What is does mean is that a higher number of voters had made up their minds in time to vote early than in the past. What that means to the overall result remains to be seen. However, it is nice to see that people seem to be engaged enough in this election to want to vote in such numbers a week before election day.

As expected, the debates were boring and banal. As usual, I could not sit through more than 15 minutes of the English debate before I found something more useful to do. I am always impressed with those who can sit through them and grateful for those commentators who do it professionally, without losing their damned minds. Also, as expected, who won depends on who you support. According to Liberal partisans Mark Carney crushed the others but Conservative supporters indicate that it was Pierre Poilievre who ran away with it. In the end their impact will probably be negligible.

I tend to dismiss polling in between elections for reasons I have stated in this space many times before. I tend not to dismiss them out of hand during elections because people will have the actual results of the election on which to compare their estimates. That makes the polling companies more careful in conducting their polls. So the pollsters showing the Liberals winning the election with anywhere from 173 to 192 seats is plausible but that gap is still an issue. My guess is it will coalesce at around 180-185 by April 28, assuming this is not a big polling miss and assuming a reasonable voter turnout.

I do not believe that the turnout will be any worse than in 2021. The advance polls would seem to indicate that Canadians are energized enough by the campaign that they will show up on April 28.

I also do not believe that we are seeing a polling miss. I have stated here before that all of the political parties have data analytics teams. These teams have data and statistical tools available to them that dwarf what the media pollster provide us. They have traditional polling data, they have the data they are receiving from each of the local campaigns and they have big data that is available to them through social media and the internet. They will all have top-of-the-line data analytics, including machine learning and AI, to make sense of all of that data. That will allow them to be able to provide their respective campaign teams voting estimates down to the individual ridings that would be as accurate as the national estimates we see in the media polls. As well, they will have developed predictive algorithms to help them foresee the future to a certain extent, probably a day or two in advance.

This has implications for some of the things we are seeing with the campaigns. First, the Liberals are still putting out advertizements and talking about the Trump threat because their data analytics are stating that there are enough Canadians concerned about it to make it worthwhile. It is highly likely that his threat is an important enough issue to a sufficient number of Canadians, and that the Liberals are in the best position to benefit from it, for the Liberals to keep talking about it. It could very well be the issue that will bring them the victory. Judging by how much Conservative commentators are trying to play down the Trump threat I would say that they are in agreement with the Liberal analytics team.

Second, Mark Carney has been going around the country and campaigning in Conservative and NDP held ridings since the end of the English debate. During the final stages of the election campaign, when a leader of a party campaigns in ridings that are currently held by their opponents, it usually means that their data analytics team has indicated it could be a pick up for their party. The last time I saw the Liberals do this was in 2015 and the last time I saw the Conservatives do this was in 2011. Both were majority victories for them. If the media polls are currently stating the Liberals are on track to win a majority government the actions of the national campaign would seem to back that up.

Pierre Poilievre should stay away from playing poker because his poker face is terrible. He looks miserable out there. Gone are the big rallies that he had during stage two. Now he just has staged announcements, attended by just a handful of people as props, and his facial expressions and body language are of someone who does not hold out much hope of winning. As well, the Conservative campaign trotted out Stephen Harper about two weeks ago and then released an actual advertizement featuring the former PM. In 2008 and 2011, when the Liberals trotted out Jean Chrétien half-way through the campaign, I knew that it was over for them. Having Stephen Harper appear in an advertizement is pretty much conclusive evidence that they are losing.

I stated when this election started that there would be two competing forces at play. The one is the fear of Donald Trump and what he could do to our country. The second is the desire for change that always exists for a government that has been in power more than eight years. With one week left until the election ends it would appear that the first one is driving this election. There does not appear to be a "throw the bums out" sentiment of sufficient strength to threaten the Liberals with a loss. It could manifest during the final week but I doubt it. If it was going to manifest itself in sufficient strength to give the Conservatives a chance of victory we would have been seeing signs of it from the beginning of the campaign.

Some Random Thoughts on the Election

In no particular order.

Some in the media and the Conservative side of the election are claiming that the Liberals are hiding Mark Carney for...reasons. This assertion comes from him "pausing" his campaign to take care of some PM stuff. What they are trying to sell with this line of reasoning is a non-eventful week, which saw the Conservatives ineffectively throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the wall, has seen them turn the tide against the Liberals. I even saw one dude mention that the Liberal internals must be terrible. The problem with that is leaders tend to campaign harder when things are not going well. Indeed, it can be manic. During the 2006 change election Paul Martin was campaigning like a mad man at this stage while Stephen Harper had a much less packed agenda. Perhaps the Liberal "internals" are actually saying that things are going so well for the Liberals that Mark Carney can take a little break. Or, hear me out, maybe he paused his campaign to actually address a global financial crisis that was triggered by the idiot who currently occupies the White House.

The contrast between the Liberal and Conservative campaigns is stark. For the Conservatives you would almost think Pierre Poilievre was running a Liberal campaign because he mentions them as often as he mentions his own party. Their ads on TV mention the Liberals more than the Conservatives by a ratio of almost 2:1. The Liberals campaign barely mentions the Conservatives. Mr. Carney only mentions them in passing during his campaign stops and I have not seen a single Liberal TV ad mention them. It is almost like the Liberals do not believe the Conservatives are relevant right now.

I saw the new Liberal TV ad, referencing the current economic turmoil unleashed by the orange blob to the south, yesterday during the hockey game. As political ads go it was nothing extraordinary. However, let's remember that political parties test their ads before releasing them so the release of this one would seem to indicate that Donald Trump and his stupidity is still very much on the minds of Canadians. If that is the case and it remains so until April 28 the Liberals are in the best position to win this election.

I see many Conservatives asserting that things will change after the debates. Perhaps, but as things stand now Pierre Poilievre will have to knock it out of the park AND Mark Carney would have to be a bumbling idiot. Anything is possible in politics but it should be noted that debates rarely have that much of an impact on election outcomes. Most of the time the debates are boring and banal, where party leaders toss out competing talking points.

In 2015 the Liberals crowed a great deal about the size and enthusiasm of the crowds that Justin Trudeau was attracting and the Conservatives played them down. This time the opposite is true. The whole thing with crowd size was silly then and it is silly now. Many years ago I helped my local Liberal candidate win an election. I once accompanied her to an all-candidates debate and was surprised and concerned by the number of Reformers who showed up to heckle her. I spoke to her after the debate about it and she stated that she had now problem with it. If they were spending their evening in a room heckling her they were not out knocking on doors and identifying their vote. She won that riding by over 10000 votes during that election. The foundation of an election win is established on the ground, in the individual ridings. If Conservative partisans want to waste time attending a rally instead of identifying their voters then I have no problem with that.

This is not feeling like a change election. I could be wrong and that sentiment could explode onto the scene over the next two weeks but that would be a first if it happens. Usually you can see a change election coming long before the writ is dropped. Usually, you can certainly see it as the campaign unfolds. However, for this election I am just not seeing it and believe me I have been looking for the signs from the beginning. I am just not seeing it, which is surprising considering how long the Liberals have been in power.

The polls indicating the Liberals will win 200 seats are about as believable as the polls that stated the Conservatives would win 200 seats. I am becoming more convinced that this election is all about Donald Trump and will remain so until the end. As a result, I believe the Liberals have the greatest chance of winning but their seat count will probably be between 165 and 185 if they do. There is still a chance for the Conservatives to win but time is running out for them. There are two weeks left in the campaign and public opinion usually does shift that quickly. Many point to the shift for the Liberals but I like to remind people who do so that the shift began at the beginning of January and it took almost 10 weeks before it shifted enough to benefit the Liberals. Will public opinion shift as markedly over the next two weeks. It is possible but highly unlikely.

Are Voters Paying Attention? / Who Will Show up on April 28?

These are two questions I have heard in the last couple of days from largely Conservative commentators and pollsters.

The first question is the result of the fact we are in stage two of the election campaign. See, there are three stages in a campaign. 

The beginning is stage one and it is exciting, we see the candidates for the first time and we see the first few polls, which is all the media really cares about during an election campaign.

We enter stage two 10-14 days after the writ is dropped. This is the time of the campaign when nothing much happens. The candidates announce a bunch of policy promises, the media parse every little detail about the Liberals to try to find something to focus on and the polls become stagnant.

Stage three is the final sprint to the finish, with the debates being the starting guns. This is when things begin to move if they are going to move.

So we are in stage two. It should be noted that the question of whether voters are paying attention was asked by a pollster. His answer was no. He was saying this in context of the Liberal lead and whether it would change. He did not specifically say it but he implied that once they do begin to pay attention we might see some movement of the polls towards the Conservatives.

Funny thing is if this was an ordinary election campaign I would agree with him. Canadians do not pay attention to politics, which has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time. They do not pay attention in between elections and they do not pay attention during election campaigns. Many will not begin to pay attention until election day. However, this is not an ordinary election campaign. For better or for worse Donald Trump has made everybody stand up and take notice and he did it just before and during the beginning of a Federal election campaign in this country. So they are paying attention to him and that has raised the awareness of Canadians that we are going through an election campaign. I had an interesting conversation with someone this week who is someone who does not pay attention to politics, often to the point of not bothering to vote every time. During my wife's birthday gathering he mentioned that he would be voting for Mark Carney this time because he believed he would be best at dealing with Donald Trump. This opinion was not solicited by anybody. (I would not start a political discussion at my wife's birthday celebration, I value my life). This is anecdotal but I believe it does show that Canadians are a little more engaged for this election, probably not as much as I am but enough to answer yes to that first question. I stated in an earlier post that this election feels like the 1988 Free Trade election and that feeling has only strengthened in the last few days.

This brings me to the second question. It was also posed by a Conservative pollster and his answer again was designed to give some hope to Conservative supporters. Another of my pet peeves is Conservatives do seem to be more motivated to vote than progressives. Buoyed by their hate and anger they do tend to be more inclined to vote. 

However, that only becomes an issue if the election is close and even then only sometimes. It is what cost VP Harris the election in the US in November (which is a straw Conservatives have been grasping like a life preserver since the beginning of March) but comparing that election to the current Federal election is a stretch. I would point out that both the 2019 and the 2021 Federal elections were extremely close but Liberals came out as much as Conservatives did. That is why they won. 

With this becoming more and more the Trump election it would be very surprising if Liberals did not come out again this time. Indeed, as I stated previously, he seems to be energizing Canadians, convincing some, who have spotty records of participating in our elections, to participate this time. Turnout for the elections leading up to 1988 were trending downwards. The 1988 election bucked that trend. It would not surprise me that this election will also buck that trend. We will see on April 28.

I do not believe that many commentators and the CPC have yet to grasp that this election is different from that last few, at least the first two weeks of it have been. They have not adjusted to that reality. So while these two questions might have been valid in previous elections and they will be valid in future elections I think this time they are probably not the correct questions to be asking during stage two of this election?

The Polls are Still Ridiculous

I have stated many times in this space that I never believe the polls. They can sometimes be a useful tool to get a general sense of things but they should never be taken as the true picture of the political situation in this country.

If you want to receive the truer picture of how things are look at what the parties are doing.

During an election campaign I find the best way to do that is to watch the leaders speak with the sound turned off. Nothing they say is important because most just follow talking points. However, with the sound off you can read their facial expressions and body language without distraction.

Looking at Mark Carney's I would say that the Liberal Party's data analytics team is probably agreeing with what the media polls are saying. They are in the lead with a reasonably comfortable cushion. He is relaxed and natural at the podium and there are no fear or anxiety markers on his face or in this body language. He can probably thank Donald Trump for that and he should be really thankful because his campaign so far has been lackluster. It lacks vision, being just a campaign where he throws out random policy promises. Make no mistake, most of his policies ideas are good ones but they are not being held together by an overarching theme or vision. If Donald Trump was not looming over the election he would probably be hard pressed to push back any desire for change.

Looking at Pierre Poilievre I would say his data analytics team agrees with their Liberal counterparts. He looks terrible at the podium. His smile is pasted on but the rest of his face is stuck in a permanent frown. The way he moves at the podium would also indicate that he is not having fun. It is true that he just might not like being at that podium but he has stood behind many when it appeared he would win the election and his body language and face were much different. His campaign is just as lackluster as the Liberal one. It is also completely lacking in any overarching theme or vision. However, he has the advantage of the Liberals being in power for a decade. Without Donald Trump all he would have had to do this time is try to appear non-threatening and he would be on his way to a possible election victory. At the very least it would probably be alot closer than it appears to be.

Mr. Singh looks like he is phoning it in. Enough said.

Mr. Blanchette is not looking happy either. Quebecers have always feared the US more than Canada because it is a big English speaking country to their south. They know that if the US wanted to throw its weight around on the continent the French language would be one of the first victims. Therefore, even the most ardent separatist is looking for the federalist party that will most protect against that. Most Quebecers have heard the anti-French rhetoric from the Reform wing of the CPC and they know that the NDP has no chance of forming a government so the Liberals probably look pretty good right now.

If I were to guess the current political situation in the campaign I would say that the Liberals are indeed in the "driver's seat" and that it is their election to lose at this point. Neither the Liberals or the Conservatives are running good campaigns but so far the fear of Donald Trump appears to be trumping any desire for change in the country. This is to the Liberals' advantage. Although my head says that could change my gut is increasingly saying that it will not change quickly enough for the Conservatives to win the election.