August 2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election

[brucejoel99]

There is an article in The Hill Times on the possibility of a Fall election, it would be a good moment for the Liberals to win a majority. Pollster Nik Nanos "expects that once the money stops going into the system in the new year, and the government starts to introduce measures to cut programs and services, or to raise taxes, the government’s popularity will plummet."

"the Liberals have a legitimate rationale to call an election in the fall, considering the enormity of the crisis, and they can reasonably argue they need a fresh mandate."

https://www.hilltimes.com/2020/06/01/a-fall-federal-election-is-a-real-possibility-say-pollsters/250478

The Liberals are experiencing a bump in the polls because they've been measured & responsible during the COVID-19 crisis. Calling a fall election wouldn't be measured or responsible amid the virus. Calling such an election so rapidly could (& very likely would) undo a lot of the bump they've received, particularly if several provinces are still trying to get the outbreaks under control. To put it simply, an early election at this point would be widely seen as opportunistic & frankly dangerously reckless too if the virus is still around.

[brucejoel99]

The Conservative party has 269,469 members eligible to vote. That is about 10,000 more than in 2017.

Nice (though they should've limited it 269,420 for the double-nice).

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/canadianpolling/status/1295947685619474434

Seems like a pretty strong poll, guess all we can do now is wait & see how the first ballot responses line up with the result: if MacKay doesn't hit 40, then he's in trouble.

[brucejoel99]

The Mainstreet poll has Mackay winning 51-49 on the third ballot but it is on points. In raw votes it's O'Toole leading 53%-47% on the third. Probably too much voter concentration in Alberta for O'Toole. There could be a reaction if points winner is not the same as raw vote winner, some tried to change the voting method but MacKay among others opposed it.

Maybe there is not enough lower ranked choice for O'toole to overtake Mackay. 54% said they had no third choice.

https://ipolitics.ca/2020/08/19/mackay-ahead-of-otoole-by-a-hair-in-tory-leadership-race-poll/

Didn't Bernier get slightly more votes than Scheer? Or am I misremembering that?

No, according to the raw voting figures, Scheer got 62,593 raw votes to Bernier's 55,544.

[brucejoel99]

"We're experiencing a higher-than-normal call volume. Your call is important to us & a ballot result will be given to you as soon as possible."

[brucejoel99]

How did they do an exit poll for a mail-in vote?

https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/1297715938318524418

[brucejoel99]

How did they do an exit poll for a mail-in vote?

https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/1297715938318524418

Unless I’m missing a poll or something, wouldn’t Lewis coming in second be a very major upset?

Not only would it be a very major upset, but it still wouldn't be as very major an upset as MacKay being in 3rd.

[brucejoel99]

It's now tomorrow in Newfoundland. Scheer has lasted another day as leader.

[brucejoel99]

Rumors have been all over the place:

https://twitter.com/spaikin/status/1297725898888683520

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/spaikin/status/1297743314049851403

[brucejoel99]

Erin O'Toole looking happy:

https://twitter.com/michellerempel/status/1297746730948075520

[brucejoel99]

Whoever wins, an early-morning victory speech is never a good omen. Just ask George McGovern.

[brucejoel99]

1st Ballot:
Peter MacKay - 11,328.55 points - 33.52%
Erin O'Toole - 10,681.40 points - 31.60%
Leslyn Lewis - 6,925.38 points - 20.49%
Derek Sloan - 4,864.67 points - 14.39%

[brucejoel99]

This is an absolutely dismal nightmare scenario for MacKay. Unless Sloan breaks entirely for Lewis, O'Toole has this.

[brucejoel99]

Derek Sloan got 4,864 points, which is less than the amount that either MacKay (5,573) or O'Toole (6,220) still need to win, so this'll be going to a final 3rd ballot.

In any event, an O'Toole victory is a horrific result for CPC unity & the party's chances of winning an election anytime soon. MacKay is gonna be denied the leadership despite winning 7 out of 10 provinces (including Ontario), plus the territories, & O'Toole is very likely to win despite only winning Alberta & Quebec, both of which are pretty irrelevant to whether the CPC can win another election.

Red Tories & centrist voters that'll actually decide the election are gonna abandon the CPC in droves & just hold their nose & vote for Trudeau again. The CPC is seriously about to vote in another Andrew Scheer. Never underestimate the ability of this party to shoot themselves in the foot.

So yeah, tonight cements another victory for the LPC, because the CPC won't be making any meaningful gains under O'Toole. Hell, Trudeau could take after his father & go majority-minority-majority, especially with the pandemic polling.

[brucejoel99]

I’m so happy it looks like the party didn’t go back to the PC days and is sticking with Stephen Harper Tories as a party to emulate

Imagine looking at the 2019 election results & thinking that the CPC drifting further right is the best move for them.

[brucejoel99]

2nd Ballot:
Erin O'Toole - 11,903 points - 35.22%
Peter MacKay - 11,756 points - 34.78%
Leslyn Lewis - 10,140 points - 30.00%

3rd Ballot:
Erin O'Toole - 19,271.74 points - 57.02%
Peter MacKay - 14,528.26 points - 42.98%

Erin O'Toole has been elected to serve as the 3rd Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada & the Leader of the Official Opposition.

[brucejoel99]

Damn, literally if Lewis just spoke French a little bit better, she might've won. If I were her, then I'd be spending the next 4 years learning French, becoming an MP in a safe riding (O'Toole will probably wanna reward her anyway), & creating a profile for myself like Poilievre did so she can run to be Leader again in the next leadership race.

She definitely has a real future in the party.

[brucejoel99]

I’m so happy it looks like the party didn’t go back to the PC days and is sticking with Stephen Harper Tories as a party to emulate

Imagine looking at the 2019 election results & thinking that the CPC drifting further right is the best move for them.

Quebec is the problem and the problem is Canada knowtows to them fat too much

[brucejoel99]

for those who say Erin can't beat trudeau, i can respect and understand that point of view. However to say this is a bad result for the tories is wrong. Peter mckay is the jeb bush of Canada. He has always been an electoral loser outside of his home riding.

Erin is an airforce veteran, a lawyer, ran a foundation to help our troops and is a proven winner in the all important GTA! This is a great man and I am proud to support Erin. Congrats to Erin on winning. Peter mckay winning would cause defections to PPC and ensure a loss. I'm glad that the party is back. Erin has a monumental task against him from the state run media, and the same forces against trump. Lets go Erin!

Not being able to beat Trudeau is an inherently bad result for the Tories, though.

[brucejoel99]

Anyway, the victory speech from O'Toole wasn't bad. Perhaps he does indeed get that it's simply not enough to slag Trudeau, & that he'll need to present a credible alternative? I'm just not sure how you do that when so much of the party base is out of sync with a large majority of Canadians. What tonight showed is that the roots of social conservatism are still alive in the party, & with that in mind, Trudeau is probably very happy with this result.

[brucejoel99]

Damn, literally if Lewis just spoke French a little bit better, she might've won. If I were her, then I'd be spending the next 4 years learning French, becoming an MP in a safe riding (O'Toole will probably wanna reward her anyway), & creating a profile for myself like Poilievre did so she can run to be Leader again in the next leadership race.

She definitely has a real future in the party.

Follow-up because oh my god, Lewis actually won the *MOST* amount of votes on the 2nd ballot: Lewis 60,316, O'Toole 56,907, MacKay 54,165. If anything, that's the most interesting number tonight. I'm calling it now: she's the next CPC leader.

[brucejoel99]

So, is that the end of Peter MacKay's political career? Certainly, I don't think anyone expects him to ever become leader, but is his entire career done now? An interesting thought to consider would be MacKay running in Central Nova as he said he would in the next election and then losing (which I don't think would be that unlikely, the Liberals won it by a good margin in 2019 and their Atlantic Support is holding up according to polling), which would definitely be the end of his career in politics, and a very sorry end at that.

I don't see MacKay still running for a seat in the next election, no. Central Nova has a popular Liberal incumbent in Sean Fraser, & I can't see an O'Toole-led CPC gaining traction in the Maritimes: the Liberals lost the overall popular vote in 2019 by 1.1% & they still managed to win Central Nova by 17%, so MacKay would struggle to overcome that Liberal strength, especially since the Liberals are now more popular today than they were in 2019. Besides, he's had a cushy private sector job for 5 years now anyway.

[brucejoel99]

There's also the "where would Leslyn Lewis run?" question--and for all the hoopla over her, there's no guarantee that *she'd* have sufficient Liberal-giant-killing star power, either.  (Though in a weird way, I have this notion of her running in Etobicoke North on Doug Ford's coattails.  I'm not saying it'd be a *winning* sort of big; more a reflection of where the Conservative mindset is at)

Presumably, O'Toole would just parachute her into a safe riding. Which one, who knows?

[brucejoel99]

So what happened in Quebec? Why did O'Toole do so good there? Most analysis before last night predicted MacKay would be stronger there.

That's because everybody forgets that CPC members in Quebec are so different from (& so few compared to) the average Quebecois voter that they're not at all representative of what Quebec would really want.

For instance, O'Toole won the Laurier-Sainte-Marie riding last night. It's a Quebec Solidaire stronghold, so at 1st glance, this would seem quite baffling. But when you check how many CPC members there are in Laurier-Sainte-Marie, it starts to make sense: 41(!), & I'd venture a lot of them might be uprooted English Canadians. In 2019, the CPC candidate in that riding came 5th with only 2.82% of the vote. And that ain't a one off. The CPC was also 5th in the riding in 2008, 2006, & 2004, despite that being back when the NDP had next-to-no presence in Quebec & the Greens weren't even a party with an MP yet. In 2000, the PCs placed 6th because the Marijuana Party came 4th. The last time a conservative party did better than 4th was 1997, when the PCs came 3rd.

Basically, everybody forgot that appealing to people in Quebec ≠ appealing to CPC members in Quebec.