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.
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