2022 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election

[brucejoel99]

A Charest win would cause revolt of the base. Charest needs new members to do well. Poilievre seems to be the party's choice, maybe a bit more libertarian but the party is the same, vulnerable about environment, gun control.

I'm intrigued of what the people who wanted to find a candidate as an alternative to Poilievre do if he wins. Do they stay or are really uncomfortable with Poilievre and leave.

There's a reason that some moderate Conservatives have already begun to leave the CPC: they're already feeling drowned out, sick of the far-right being the loudest voice in the room, leaving them so desperate for a representation of their views that they miss the PCs... so you can see where there this may be headed: the party splitting again just like it did last time, along the extremist-right & center-right moderate lines, if only because it may inevitably have to since, if Poilievre wins, there'll presumably be an inevitable moment that serves as the straw that broke the back of a camel that's a tent that's somehow both too big as it currently stands yet is unable to appeal to a majority of the center.

[brucejoel99]

How well is Browns ethenic machine stratagey working ?

Hard to say until Q2 numbers come out. Q1 numbers suggested that it was not working at all, but now there's more of a push to get memberships out, so we'll have to see.

I think that Poilievre is still the frontrunner, but people might really be underestimating Brown's ability to sign-up members & get them to vote. He's literally in multiple cities everyday. This is the same guy who entered the 2015 PC leadership race that was supposed to be a Christine Elliott-coronation, only for him to win with 61.8% of the vote because he signed-up an insane amount of new members. He brought the PCs back from the dead after more than a decade & re-built the provincial machine that's Doug's today. He really shouldn't be under-estimated. Hell, Conservative MPs were informed last week that membership sales are headed toward 400K, a marked jump from the 2020 leadership campaign that saw ~269K signed-up. That's a record number of CPC membership sign-ups so far, & I won't be at all surprised if a sh*tton came from Brown.

[brucejoel99]

It depends on whether they were sold outside BC and ON.

Yep. More specifically, what such a grassroots win of the CPC leadership really ultimately requires, at its core, is just an organization that can create votes in ridings, the execution of which - even if done masterfully - basically amounts to an impossible-to-accurately-poll, ultimate retail campaign that can't be properly understood from afar 'til it's already occurred since you can't understand a thing about what's really going on unless you're literally on the ground. What he needs to really focus on is signing-up new members in ridings that have hitherto had small membership numbers, because it's those riding-by-riding wins that are ultimately critical in these point-based races (see: O'Toole's QC performance in 2020; Brown better pray that his opposition to Bill 21 didn't kill his chances of sign-ups &, thus, resultant votes there).

[brucejoel99]

Damn, I've seen this one before. There'll be no better proof of a simulation than if Jun. 2025 rolls around & sees a scandal-induced Patrick Brown resignation, which leads to Premier Doug Ford winning a quickie leadership race, & PM Ford in Oct.

[brucejoel99]

Will note that it was revealed after Brown resigned from the Ontario PC's, that he had pretty blatantly overstated how many members he had signed up.

Wait, weren't both the criminal & party probes into that (namely, in only 1 Hamilton(?) riding, IIRC?) dropped after the alleger withdrew his charges?

[brucejoel99]

Pierre Poilievre has sold 311,958 memberships and numbers by province are:

NL 2,582
PEI 1,322
NS 6,411
NB 6,210
QC 25,453
ON 118,996
MB 12,363
SK15,333
AB 71,759
BC 50,709
Terr 818

~983 per riding in ON & ~1,207 in BC. Damn. Also notable, ~2,111 per riding in AB, & just ~326 in QC. If PP is taking ON & BC, then he may very well be coronated on the 1st ballot after all: >35% of all points up for grabs in this leadership race are in ON, & PP claims to have signed-up as many members there alone as 80% of what Brown claims to have signed-up across the entire country. (And, if the reports are true & over 600K CPC members are expected to be eligible, then I don't think either PP or Brown are lying about their membership sale numbers, but PP just sold a lot more thanks to people buying them directly through his website, & these numbers wouldn't even be counting those who probably support him but just didn't sign up through his website, so he actually may have the support of even more members than he claims to have; also notable, for being rather sus, is that neither Charest nor Brown have yet to release their numbers by province).

Of course, this is all predicated on the assumption that these numbers are even remotely accurate. What I'm interested to see now are the final numbers published by the CPC once they finish vetting the hundreds-of-thousands of membership forms still awaiting processing (way more than in either 2020 or 2017), as they'll give us the best sense of just where this race might be headed at the end of the day. Nevertheless, there's still more than 3 months to go before the polls close on Sept. 7th, not to mention at least a month-&-a-1/2 'til anybody even gets their ballot in the first place, so it may be time for the non-PP candidates who hope that he doesn't - as would be implied by his reported numbers - win on the 1st or 2nd ballot to start vying to be a universal 2nd choice, if at all possible, because stranger things can always happen. Just ask Scheer.

[brucejoel99]

I'm very confident in saying Poilievre will either win on the first ballot, or after Baber's votes get redistributed.

Yeah, by now, he's the only one who can defeat himself for the leadership, & maybe even not then. A good question now is whether he can become PM: can he unite enough socons, moderates, ethnically diverse urban voters, & disaffected Grits-who've-voted-for-the-PCs/CPCs-when-Liberal-fatigue-sets-in behind him in '25, or is support for PP limited to his fan club?

[brucejoel99]

Brownie all but says he's slinking back to Brampton before the municipal filing deadline in August, as was very predictable. No idea why he thinks Lewis would do better in Toronto than Poilievre tho.

He probably doesn't. He probably just sees Lewis as more likely to lose than Poilievre, & so would be willing to run as an MP under the former's leadership presumably because he could then easily pivot to the leadership contest held after her loss, while he wouldn't wanna risk having to end up being an MP assoc. with a relatively more likely PP government (or, perhaps more likely, he wouldn't wanna be stuck in an Opposition that the base/party wants led by PP even after he loses).