2021 Canadian general election - Election Day and Results

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Getting conflicting responses: I presume low turnout favours Tories?

That's the assumption, because Tories tend to be more motivated to vote (and polling shows this). Every election that Harper won had lower turnout than Trudeau's two wins, for example. But drawing a link between turnout and party performance isn't necessarily that simple.

A better metric I think is polling error. Turnout is linked to polling error, as most polls weigh by census data and not turnout rates. I think Hatman said on the earlier thread that you can probably take 1-2 pts off the NDP's numbers in EKOS because they're getting high NDP support from low-turnout groups, and I assume it's the same for other pollsters.

Age and education tend to be predictors of turnout - seniors and university-educated voters turn out at higher rates. University-educated voters tend to be more to the left, mainly the Liberals but also the NDP, but NDP always gets screwed by low support from seniors. This time out, Liberals seem to be polling best among the 55+ group. This works to the Liberals' favour.

Historically, the CPC outperforms polls or at least finishes on par. They were roughly on par in 2006 and 2015, but clearly outperformed polls in 2008, 2011 and 2019 - likely because of high base motivation. 2004 is the exception where the polls predicted a close finish but on E-day Paul Martin's Liberals pulled ahead. During this period, NDP support was overestimated in every election (2015 is debatable because momentum was clearly against them). This suggests that NDP voters are less likely to turn out.

All this to say, yes the CPC will probably outperform expectations because of low turnout, while the NDP will probably underperform. The silver lining for the Liberals is the LPC shift among seniors, because if older voters disproportionately turned out (as they always do), it's probably to their benefit.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

https://theturtleislandnews.com/index.php/2021/09/20/federal-election-poll-moves-off-six-nations-after-haudenosaunee-confederacy-council-supporters-block-driveway/
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Great. Another of those rogue Native "governments", who are in fact a cover for weapon and drugs smuggling.

Tell me you're from Quebec wothout telling me you're from Quebec

There is an huge spike of gun violence in Montreal caused by guns smuggled from the Awkwasne reservation on the Quebec/Ontario/New York State border and it is a known zone of outlawness.

Native self-government and auto-determination cannot serve as cover and/or puppets for international crime rings.

As you can read in the article, they are literaly blocking their own members from voting, which is totally illegal and outrageous.

Agreed, and this is a reminder that indigenous communities are often themselves divided on political issues, including whether or not they should participate in Canadian democracy. It's not racist to point out that there are well-documented examples of mismanagement and corruption in indigenous governments - of course, that goes with the caveat that Canada has a long history of preventing effective indigenous government, and state policies have often imposed poverty and denied economic opportunities, paving the way for crime and corruption to take hold of many communities.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Is there any good equivalent to this article from the last Canadian election?

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/federal/2019/battlegrounds/

If you have an ipolitics subscription, they have a list of ridings across the country that are close along with projected vote share. Ipolitics has a pretty good reputation on these things, but their projections are based on Mainstreet polling and not the polling consensus (Mainstreet is showing more Liberal-friendly numbers than the consensus, so keep that caveat in mind). Hill Times also has a good reputation and a list of 30 close seats, but alas, I'm paywalled.

680news put this out. I've never heard of 680news nor their reputation, but their picks look pretty close to the polling consensus.

The least worst free resource is probably just 338Canada. Any riding they project as "toss up" or "leaning" is probably worth watching.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Didn't post on the big day, but allow me to chime in with this one comment:

What a colossal waste of time.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

My serious take on this election is that most people didn't really see a reason to change their vote. Some areas went more Liberal (urban Alberta, Chinese-Canadian areas), while Atlantic Canada trended Tory, but on balance it was a wash because most seats didn't change hands, uncharacteristically so for a Canadian election.

I and many others suspected that the Liberals would have a less efficient vote this time around, and the opposite was the case. They solidified their hold where it mattered. My view of the 905 is that it's a region that prefers stability over change, until they get really tired of the status quo and switch dramatically (LPC 2015, OPC 2018). With the uncertainty of COVID still looming large, they went for stability. O'Toole and Singh were never really able to drive home their pitch, and failed to expand beyond the base. I have little to say about the Bloc because Quebec is an enigma, but it seems like the Bloc vote is continuing to CAQ-ify, as in getting stronger in rural and regional Quebec and weaker in urban centres.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Didn't post on the big day, but allow me to chime in with this one comment:

What a colossal waste of time.

And money-what's the exact amount?

$610 million. I know that by heart and will know it until my heart stops beating because CPC ads really drove that home, to no avail it seems

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Didn't post on the big day, but allow me to chime in with this one comment:

What a colossal waste of time.

And money-what's the exact amount?

$610 million. I know that by heart and will know it until my heart stops beating because CPC ads really drove that home, to no avail it seems

Jeesh, that's a small tragedy for the country.

I voted Liberal (quite reluctantly), but seeing these results, the CPC has been vindicated in complaining about the $610M pricetag

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Singh should of course go, after two disastrous elections in a row now, but there is nothing NDP voters love more than losing while feeling superior about themselves, so they will of course keep him.

This is right. On CBC the NDP woman they had was talking about how proud everyone was of Jagmeet; it doesn't matter whether they won or not, what was important was that they made such a great stand by making the turban man their leader. It's the attitude that comes from being in permanent opposition. Nobody got into the NDP because they wanted to win, so nobody can even imagine what winning would be like. It's not surprising that Rachel Notley has tended to keep her distance from the federal NDP, because she is a winner and they are losers.

Speaking as the person who first sounded a "could the NDP underperform 2019?" note, let me say this:  "disastrous" is an overstatement.  If you want "disastrous" in the bigger scheme of things, look to Audrey McLaughlin in 1993, or to the Mulcair tailspin over the course of the 2015 campaign.  And yes, this result highlighted a certain all-surface-no-guts element to the Jagmeet campaign--and in a weird way, I think PPC energy-hogging plowed a big mound of dirt on top of Jagmeetian "positivity" over the course of the campaign.  Otherwise, "bittersweet" might be the more fitting term, not too much different from the Douglas/Lewis leadership era--or else you might as well suggest that the federal NDP's very existence has been one continuous disaster (2011 excepted) for six decades running, and more if you include the CCF.

Painting this in blunt-testosterone winners vs losers terms betrays too much conditioning within hyper-binary systems a la the US or Australia.  I prefer my electoral politics gynaecological over phallic, thank you.

Still feeling this way? I’m waking up to the NDP being at 25, which is frankly pitiful given all the potential upside they had this year. I wasn’t thrilled when I was going to bed with them at 29, but now I’m actually upset.

I probably preemptively insulated myself through my prior "could the NDP underperform 2019?" speculation.  And again:  when all is said and done, more bittersweet than "disastrous", much less "two disastrous elections in a row".

Still, I agree that there's a *bit* of delusionality among partisans.  And while I've suggested that Layton was himself prone to novelty gimmicks, at least he set out to build an organizational foundation "where it counts", and a lot of that as a carryover from his latter-day approach to municipal politics, setting up alliances and seeking common ground in unlikely places.  Whereas Jagmeet and his team seem more adept at whipping up millennial-friendly pixie dust than that kind of Laytonesque meat-and-potatoes kitchen-table fare (and millennials and post-millennials are too "lateral" a demo for the "verticality" that a FPTP electoral system demands).  Too much AOC, not enough "2016 Bernie".  The result being that the *actual* unsexy ground-level riding-by-riding party infrastructure winds up being undernourished--and of course, Covid concerns don't presently help; perhaps they were hoping the pixie dust could compensate for necessarily thwarted groundwork.

Let's presume the NDP *does* clue into that deficiency.  And if Jagmeet is *still* not the right vehicle (perhaps because it'd be hard to get him to do meat-and-potatoes without putting a cute "Punjabi" spin on it?), then as future leadership goes...anyone for Avi Lewis?  (Seriously.  He finished an awfully strong 3rd in a universally-agreed-upon hopeless cause, *probably/perhaps* as a preview to a future run in a more viable riding--and on top of that, his family bloodline practically *codified* a certain characteristically "NDP" hyperintensive street-level voter-identification approach to electoral politics.)

I'm not sure Avi Lewis is the Laytonesque alternative to Singh, and especially because this is a minority parliament where the NDP is likely to play a big role, I'm not sure picking an extra-parliamentary leader (again) is a good call.

Charlie Angus is the name everyone's throwing around, he has this "straight-talkin' jack" persona which contrasts well with Trudeau. Or if they really want to call back to Layton and make gains in Quebec, Boulerice seems like the obvious pick. Nathan Cullen could be a good pick, but I don't imagine he wants to throw away his job in BC as a majority government minister in exchange for leading the federal party. Maybe Jenny Kwan, Peter Julian, or Don Davies from the Vancouver area? Maybe Leah Gazan from Winnipeg?

But in all honesty, I don't think Singh goes.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Wow! I've really been out of the loop. I didn't even know there was a snap election in Canada until today. And it also appears to be a collective set of blue-balls for everybody involved. I still think I'd rather have that political situation to the one here in the US.

Also surprising to me is learning that Erin O'Toole is only 48 years old.

The Erin O'Toole age thing really is something, lol. Poor guy didn't age well, especially in contrast to Trudeau who is older somehow.

"A collective set of blue balls" seems like a very apt analogy. Famous Canadian columnist Chantal Hebert made a similar, but more family-friendly remark on CBC yesterday:

"The election that nobody wanted gave nobody the results they wanted." Well put, Chantal.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

How about John Horgan. Does he want the top job?

I can't speak for him obviously. But I can speak for myself. If I were the premier of a major Canadian province, had a majority government and a lot of personal popularity, would I throw that away to lead the fourth party in parliament, a party whose left flank doesn't even like me? Not a chance.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Also, as yet more proof that the NDP replicates all the dysfunctions of European/Commonwealth social democratic parties while being much, much worse at winning votes than they are

FPTP does them no favours here, but in particular I think Jagmeet's approach to politics is particularly bad in our system. The NDP has been focused on a Singh charm offensive, and it has worked insofar as him being the most popular federal leader. But FPTP rewards parties that have solid ground game and build up strongholds, and punishes those that are spread too thin. The clearest example of this might be the PC-Reform split. In both 1993 and 1997, the PCs actually got about the same popular vote as Reform, but way fewer seats. Reform was of course heavily concentrated in the western provinces, while PC supporters were more sprinkled throughout the country.

You used Hamilton-Mountain as an example - I'm not from Hamilton but my sense is that the NDP vote there comes from decades of organizing and mobilizing voters in a heavily working-class city. So when you parachute in an outsider in a campaign that focused more on Singh's image than anything, you can imagine why Hamilton-Mountain residents weren't so keen on voting NDP.

Lib Dems pre-Clegg might actually be a pretty good blueprint for the NDP. As I understand, their campaigns were never as "national" as Labour and Tories, but more focused on areas where they had ancestral support or made recent inroads. It just seems like a smarter play for a party like the NDP than to spend most of your money on a huge national campaign while letting the Liberals beat you on the ground.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3149738/conservative-vote-plunged-canadas-most-chinese-electorates-did?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=share_widget&utm_campaign=3149738

"Conservative vote plunged in Canada’s most Chinese electorates. Did party pay price for tough stance on Beijing?"

I am surprised this actually made a difference.  Most of the BC Chinese are from HK and all things equal I would think they would vote the opposite of what the CCP tells them to vote for.  A bunch of them do have financial ties to HK but for the majority I cannot imagine the amount of money involved would make any sort of difference.

I mean, I am pro-CCP overall but I do not care what they say, I am voting Trump no matter what.  And we are talking about people that are more anti-CCP than pro-CCP.

Hmm, I'm not sure CCP policy explains it all. For one, Scheer was by no means the pro-CCP candidate in 2019. But I understand that feelings about the CCP are themselves polarizing within first-generation Chinese communities. Given that, I don't think this issue alone would create an almost universal LPC swing in areas with high Chinese-Canadian concentrations.

Just taking a guess here, could it have been outreach? Community outreach is hugely important in immigrant communities, especially ones with relatively low levels of English knowledge (CensusMapper shows that in both the GTA and MetroVan, the census tracts with the highest share of people who don't speak English or French correlate very strongly with tracts with high shares of Chinese-Canadians, more so than other immigrant groups). Given this, I assume outreach is even more important for this demographic, as language barrier can prevent one from meaningfully engaging with the national campaigns.

So if the Liberals did better at engaging with Chinese-Canadian communities, and/or the Conservatives did worse than before, that might explain it.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I mean, I think the question for the CPC at this point is clear and quite binary - keep O'Toole, or ditch O'Toole. I would like to see them keep O'Toole, because although I ultimately voted Liberal, I was pretty happy with a lot of what I heard from him this campaign. But by any objective metric, this was a failure on his part - sure, the CPC didn't crater as hard as was expected before the election call, and Trudeau has been held to a minority (although the Bloc probably had more effect to that end). But pre-writ polls don't really matter, the expectations set during the writ period do. When a leader tries to steer the party to a different direction, a direction which many members were not comfortable with, and it gets them nowhere, it has to be seen as a failure. The question is whether or not he deserves a second kick at the can. But that depends on how exactly the CPC caucus and membership are feeling right now, which is not very clear yet.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

On a different note, I found the Conservative's big drop in Alberta to be quite interesting. It seems like a lot of people are mentioning Jason Kenney and the pandemic, which makes sense. It's probably also worth noting the Conservatives no longer have a leader from Western Canada. In a lot of seats, particularly the rural ones, a good portion appears to have gone to the PPC, but nowhere close to make anything a race. In fact, they seem to have got 2nd place in a number of rural Alberta seats. On the other hand, the PPC was pretty much at its national average in Edmonton and Calgary.

I also found some of the Calgary results to be quite interesting (specifically, the four least Conservative seats), particularly comparing this year with both 2019 and 2015. Comparing from 2015 to 2019 to 2021:

Calgary Skyview LPC+6.1% - CPC+24.1% - LPC+7.1%
Calgary Centre LPC+1.2% - CPC+29.7% - CPC+22.0%
Calgary Confederation CPC+2.4% - CPC+32.5% - CPC+18.3%
Calgary Forest Lawn CPC+12.0% - CPC+37.9% - CPC+16.9%

Those first two in 2015 were the first Liberal seats in Calgary since 1968. Obviously, it's clear that Alberta was seething in 2019 and took their rage out accordingly. I'm assuming the Liberals won Calgary Skyview because of it's large minority/Asian population. I couldn't find any data, but I'm guessing that's what also swung Calgary Forest Lawn so much as well. What's the reason the Liberals couldn't get a foothold back in Calgary Centre?

I also think Edmonton was quite interesting in its results. Both the Liberals and NDP should be quite happy there. The Liberals regained Edmonton Centre and the NDP won a second seat in Alberta for the first time ever (interestingly Edmonton Griesbach is the successor to the old Edmonton East the NDP won in 1988). The NDP also appears to have really locked down Edmonton Strathcona. And, despite getting third place in Edmonton Centre, they were less than 5% behind first, a legit 3-way race. Using the same format as above (although a little trickier as Edmonton is a 3-party city, unlike Calgary):

Edmonton Strathcona NDP+12.7% - NDP+10.2% - NDP+34.0%
Edmonton Griesbach CPC+5.9% - CPC+26.2% - NDP+3.4%
Edmonton Centre LPC+2.2% - CPC+8.4% - LPC+1.2%
Edmonton Mill Woods LPC+0.18% - CPC+16.7% - CPC+3.6%

I think the 2021 Liberal vote in Alberta shows the effect that the increased immigrant population is having. All four Calgary ridings you mentioned had a CON-LIB swing, but the greatest was in majority-minority Skyview, and the second-greatest was in Forest Lawn which also has a bigger immigrant/minority population than Confederation and Centre. Although Centre's relatively small swing might be down to the fact that the PPC did not run a candidate there unlike the other three, removing the vote split factor.

In Edmonton, it's clear that the dominance of the AB NDP is having coattails, and helped them win Griesbach and come real close to taking Centre. As for the Liberals, Mill Woods was seen by many as the second-likeliest flip Liberal in Alberta, and is in some ways Edmonton's answer to Skyview. Indeed, like the Skyview vs Centre split in Calgary, ethno-burban Mill Woods did shift Liberal harder than Centre, but it wasn't enough. I think this might be down to the fact that Amarjeet Sohi didn't run again, and Ben Henderson didn't have the same personal vote.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

On the CPC - it seems like they're divided over keeping O'Toole, and it won't be just a referendum over his leadership, but a referendum on vision (centrism vs ideological conservatism). It seems that the CPC membership is more inclined to the latter based on convention votes. So if O'Toole gets dumped and the party moves back to the right, who will they pick?

Everyone says Poilievre but, surely, the CPC brain trust won't let that happen right? He's popular with the base because he's an attack dog, but attack dogs don't make good party leaders.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Everyone says Poilievre but, surely, the CPC brain trust won't let that happen right? He's popular with the base because he's an attack dog, but attack dogs don't make good party leaders.

Yes, because when I think of the CPC circa 2021, I think of a party where a 'brain trust' has tight control over everything that goes on internally.

Harper and his people seem to have a fair bit of control in internal party mechanisms. Knifing Scheer and stonewalling Charest's attempt to run for the leadership, for example.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Although, Freeland is a native of Peace River Country in Alberta. If she pulls an Elizabeth Warren and emphasizes her hardscrabble heartland upbringing, it could help to counter her Laurentian elite image.

Well I'm not sure she really wants to go the Warren route. Warren never really pulled off her "I'm just a gal from the heartland" act in the sense that her base was cripplingly confined to wonky urban liberals.

Freeland isn't going to be some prairie populist darling who suddenly starts winning seats in Alberta. Despite her being from the province, she's spent much of her adult life in Europe, and when she came back to Canada, Toronto. Albertans might not hate her as much as Trudeau, but she's inextricably tied to his brand. I also don't think she can counter her Laurentian Elite image by emphasizing her prairie upbringing because what we've seen of her, at least publicly, is only slightly less Laurentian than Justin Trudeau, a man who couldn't be more of a Laurentian Elite if he put on a top hat and started going by "J.P. Trudeau".

That said, I do think Freeland has more personal appeal broadly than Trudeau because she's seen as being more competent. I don't think people who hate the "Liberal elite" are really in play for the LPC, so it's probably not worth worrying about, but people who find Trudeau vapid might find more appeal in her. Her struggle compared to Trudeau might be Quebec because of her relatively weak French and lack of connection to the province.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Just realized only one seat out of 78 flipped in Quebec.  Amazing given how volatile Quebec has been last few election cycles. 

Kinda goes with the election in general. Still sad about REB not winning though.

Possibly calm before the storm.  In 2008, only 4 ridings flipped, but in 2011 58 out of 75 flipped.  So Quebec is unpredictable but when they swing, tend to swing hard.

Quebec was pretty consistent in 2004, 2006 and 2008 before swinging hard in 2011, so who knows...Gérard Deltell for CPC leadership?

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I don't want to bring race up like this, but it is notable that Skyview was the only one of the four Calgary ridings where they ran a minority candidate (although they did run women in two of them).

Not quite, their elected candidate in Calgary, George Chahal, is Indo-Canadian. Probably a different dynamic though since Skyview is majority-minority. (Edit: I misread your comment, I thought you were talking about Calgary Centre lol. In any case, the Liberal candidate in Calgary Centre is also a visible minority, but I guess she's white-passing)

I think you're right in the sense that race and immigration status probably is the thing that makes Skyview more Liberal-friendly than Centre, but I doubt running a white person in Calgary Centre would have made a huge difference. Calgary Centre is a little different than most "centre" ridings in that it contains a downtown core that is more left-leaning and elects the ANDP provincially, but its southern half seems more suburban, affluent, and UCP-friendly at the provincial level too. A more left-leaning Calgary Centre riding would include the northern half of Calgary Centre and the southern half of Calgary Confederation, both of which are ANDP areas and presumably more Liberal-competitive than both ridings in their current configuration.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

In terms of Rachel Notley pulling off another majority government, it seems like the NDP will have to get a near 2015 result in Edmonton, win a strong majority of seats in Calgary, and pick off a few small city/rural ridings. You mention the issue for the federal NDP in Calgary. The Alberta NDP still has its work cut out for it.

No doubt that Calgary will always be a challenge for the AB NDP, but keep in mind that AB politics is quite a different system. The Alberta Liberals are basically a non-factor, they got less than 1% of the vote last time. Most federal Liberals there probably voted NDP in the last two elections, so when predicting AB NDP vote shares, it might not be too much of a stretch to add NDP+LPC results. I'd say anyone who votes for any of the NDP, LPC, or GPC federally is an accessible vote for Notley's NDP, and with Kenney's unpopularity, even a lot of soft CPC voters are winnable.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

This may have already been answered, but this is the first time that a PM loses the popular vote for a second time in a row, but still wins the most seats, right?

That's correct, no party has won the most seats twice in a row while losing the PV in both elections.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Skeena - Bulkley Valley (NDP)

And *that* might be another interesting case--that is, in a post-Nathan Cullen era, it's more vulnerable than it looks (and in a manner akin to much of Northern Ontario).

Meanwhile, Niki Ashton slid 8 points, but vs a split opposition--she could only be plausibly defeated by the Libs; and despite the FN counter-endorsement, this wasn't the election to do it. And the Cons have a fatally low ceiling, unless they rack up astronomic margins in Thompson/Flin Flon/The Pas--still, they went up 4 points, PPC went up another 4 points, and that would have brought them within 14 points of Niki.  (And it's telling how from what I can tell, this and Desnethe et al were the only Prairie seats where CPC gained over '19--though the latter no longer had incumbency to overturn.  So, "speaking of in the manner of Northern Ontario"...)

Churchill-Keewatinook is more indigenous than Skeena-Bulkley, so that probably limited the right-wing vote there.

It seems like the CPC did stronger in BC's "Reform-NDP" ridings than expected - not surprising, since they also did very well in Northern Ontario by CPC standards, and Northern Ontario is probably Ontario's answer to BC's Reform-NDP phenomenon.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

re: P'boro -- I find it interesting that Bay of Quinte also flipped though. Could it be a regional thing?

BoQ was never a natural Liberal riding. It's roughly divided into three parts - Belleville, Quinte West, and Prince Edward County. All three are pretty distinct, and the poll-by-poll maps tell the story.

Belleville is the most urban, working-class, and low-income of the three, so naturally the least CPC-inclined part. In 2015, the Liberals ran Belleville mayor Neil Ellis - this in addition to Trudeaumania and Harper fatigue meant that Belleville was swept by the LPC, winning every poll, and by huge margins at that. In 2019, we start to see more CPC polls emerge and Ellis margins narrow, as Ontario sans GTA shifted Conservative generally.

Quinte West - slightly less urban, slightly higher income. In 2015, LPC won the most polls but CPC was competitive, in 2019, CPC won most polls but LPC was competitive. Same story as Belleville, but smaller Liberal base to begin with.

Prince Edward County - lots of retirees, lots of tourism. Ergo, lots of Liberals. To be fair, retirees can go either LPC or CPC, but in the context of rural Ontario, they probably shift a riding Liberal. As for the "touristy" factor, the tourism industry almost always benefits the Grits. 2015 and 2019 poll-by-polls showed a continued Liberal dominance in Prince Edward County.

My guess is that Prince Edward stayed the same, possibly even more Liberal as retirees seem to be moving more to the LPC. However, the Tory trend in rural and small-city Ontario has continued, and I think O'Toole is a pretty natural fit. I'd expect the poll-by-polls to show Tory polls outnumbering Liberal polls in Belleville, giving BoQ to them.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

re: P'boro -- I find it interesting that Bay of Quinte also flipped though. Could it be a regional thing?

BoQ was never a natural Liberal riding. It's roughly divided into three parts - Belleville, Quinte West, and Prince Edward County. All three are pretty distinct, and the poll-by-poll maps tell the story.

Belleville is the most urban, working-class, and low-income of the three, so naturally the least CPC-inclined part. In 2015, the Liberals ran Belleville mayor Neil Ellis - this in addition to Trudeaumania and Harper fatigue meant that Belleville was swept by the LPC, winning every poll, and by huge margins at that. In 2019, we start to see more CPC polls emerge and Ellis margins narrow, as Ontario sans GTA shifted Conservative generally.

Quinte West - slightly less urban, slightly higher income. In 2015, LPC won the most polls but CPC was competitive, in 2019, CPC won most polls but LPC was competitive. Same story as Belleville, but smaller Liberal base to begin with.

Prince Edward County - lots of retirees, lots of tourism. Ergo, lots of Liberals. To be fair, retirees can go either LPC or CPC, but in the context of rural Ontario, they probably shift a riding Liberal. As for the "touristy" factor, the tourism industry almost always benefits the Grits. 2015 and 2019 poll-by-polls showed a continued Liberal dominance in Prince Edward County.

My guess is that Prince Edward stayed the same, possibly even more Liberal as retirees seem to be moving more to the LPC. However, the Tory trend in rural and small-city Ontario has continued, and I think O'Toole is a pretty natural fit. I'd expect the poll-by-polls to show Tory polls outnumbering Liberal polls in Belleville, giving BoQ to them.

NB: the provincial territory's been reasonably solidly held by the PCs' Todd Smith since 2011--well, most of it; Quinte West had been bunched w/Northumberland pre-2018, and that also went Tory in 2011 but bounced back to the Libs for a term in 2014.

Though there is a kind of quasi-natural "Loyalist Liberalism" that can tie Quinte environs into Greater Kingston (and indeed, which unexpectedly swayed Hastings-L&A in the Lib direction in '15).

While urbanity definitely plays a part in Belleville's Liberal inclinations, given the trajectory of things I'm no longer so sure whether working-class/low-income is so much a part of it all--indeed, the most Lib/non-Con-leaning parts of Belleville tend to be more middle/upper these days.  It's a "regional hub", and that has a way of inducing a Lib-leaning Laurentian cosmopolitanism.

Quinte West, as aforementioned, is very much coloured by CFB Trenton, where O'Toole was stationed in his military years.  And while Trenton proper has its own working-class scrappiness, any Liberal oxygen that could generate has lately been squeeze-played by the "military town" element.  Plus, Quinte West is one of those Harris-era megamunicipalities, so most of it happens to be rural/exurban.

PEC is sort of "tripartite".  The tourist economy (but also, in the case of Picton, "small urbanity") does give the Libs more of a boost than is usual in rural Ontario these days; nonetheless, I can see what's left of "old PEC" shifting further to the right in keeping with broader rural Ontario trends, perhaps even by way of reaction to the influx.  And the third element to that "tripartite" is that of PEC as part of the urban Quinte commuter belt--that is, Ameliasburgh serving as a "desirable" Belleville/Trenton exurb; and I can picture that element shifting rightward, too (it was already the "bluest" part of PEC in '19).

Yeah I forgot the military factor in Trenton. That's a CPC base in most elections, but probably even more so this time given O'Toole's Trenton/CAF connections and the military vote having more reason to punish the LPC this time out.

I think you're right that the bulk of the LPC base in Belleville is probably more "white-collar Laurentian" than "working-class small town" at this point. I was thinking more 2015 when it seemed like class was a major dividing point. More well-off parts of the GTA (along with ethnic factors for the Chinese and Jewish votes in some ridings) had a great Tory showing in 2015 - note how Eglinton-Lawrence was the CPC's second-best 416 riding, probably a combination of the Jewish vote, Joe Oliver, and the wealthy demographic. Meanwhile, more rugged smaller cities in Southern Ontario went hard for the LPC.

Based on the poll-by-poll maps, some of the smaller class cities/towns that voted LPC in 2015 include:
- Chatham (not the rural parts of Chatham-Kent, just Chatham proper)
- Owen Sound
- Woodstock (very competitive, but not a CPC sweep like 2019)
- Simcoe and Port Dover, the major population centres in Haldimand-Norfolk
- Orillia
- Basically all the towns between the GTA and Kingston - Port Hope, Cobourg, Belleville, Napanee, etc
- Brockville
- Cornwall

All of these places, save for some in the GTA-Kingston strip, voted CPC in 2019, again based on a cursory poll-by-poll analysis. There are still Liberal town in Southern Ontario like Saugeen Shores, Collingwood, and Stratford, but they're uniquely culturally left-leaning.

This is probably the biggest problem for the CPC. Just by the nature of districting, most of these small cities and big towns where they've won over 2015 Trudeau supporters are surrounded by hyper-Tory rural areas, and the ridings have always been CPC. Apart from the GTA-Kingston corridor, there were no rural Liberal ridings for them to flip in Southern Ontario - only Glengarry-Prescott-Russell remains red, which is majority Francophone and has very unique dynamics. So although O'Toole maintained a respectable popular vote in Ontario, most of it probably came from gains in these Liberal enclaves.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

JJ McCullough put out a video analyzing the election - and I have to say, his weird twitter takes aside, his analysis was pretty good.

He said something to the effect of: "This election suggests to me that most Canadians aren't voting based on the platforms. There's no doubt that O'Toole ran on an aggressively moderate platform, but his seats were all in the most right-wing parts of the country. Canadians vote more on the basis of cultural identity, and even though O'Toole and the CPC resonates with the cultural identity of many Canadians, the seat-rich major metropolitan areas remain loyal to the worldview of Liberals."