Canadian by-elections 2021-2022

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The Liberals doing well was a surprise, but they've done well in the riding in the past (just not for a long time). Interestingly, they also won the seat in the 2021 federal election if you look at just the votes in Kirkfield Park itself.  

And also, when it comes to the insufficiently-foreseen 3-way dynamics of this particular byelection, don't write off the Libs as a Tory-thwarter independent of anything NDP.

When it comes to the past, the Carstairs blip of '88 is the most immediate barometer--that year's version of Kirkfield Park went 47.25% PC vs 44.96% Lib, and even in defeat the Libs did better than *winning* by 2 points in Assiniboia next door.  PC and Lib did a lot of shadowing of one another in Winnipeg's western ridings that year--even Premier Filmon only won by 47-46.

So the record low Tory share might, in fact, reflect a split in the middle rather than a split in the left.  (And remember that 1988 was pre-Reform/Alliance, i.e. a lot of what was encompassed under the Tory label then was already primed for subsequent centre/leftward shifting.)

And speaking of 3-way dynamics, *maybe* we should allow for the potential same in a federal Winnipeg South Centre byelection.

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Final results of Mississauga-Lakeshore by-election (last poll reported last night):

Lib: 51.2% (+6.3)
Cons: 37.4% (-1.3)
NDP: 4.9% (-4.9)
Grn: 3.1% (+0.9)
PPC: 1.2% (-3.0)

Liberal HOLD (Swing: +3.8%)

Turnout: 27.6% (-36.3)

And Alain Lamontagne remained mired at 1 vote for last place.  (Followed by Ysack Dupont and Pascal St-Amand w/2 votes apiece, and M.A.C. Jubinville with 3.  So, 14 of the independents got single-digit vote numbers.)

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https://twitter.com/CanadianPolling/status/1603422140941815808

Presumably bedrock-safe CPC.  But the growth of the auto economy has made for a surprisingly peppy NDP machine lately (they were 2nd in '11, of course, as well as '19, and within 2 or 3 points of 2nd in '08 and '21), so expect them to put on a more competitive-esque show than in Mississauga-Lakeshore.  Of course, if things were still like 2021, PPC would stand a chance of 2nd; but judging from Mississauga-Lakeshore, Poilievre's nuked that likelihood...

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*If* the Liberals made a comeback, it'd practically bring things full circle back from when Andrea Horwath won by byelection in 2004 following the death of Liberal MPP Domenic Agostino--which brought the ONDP back to official party status after losing it in '03.

I also have a certain measured skepticism about putting *too* many eggs in the OLP basket for the next general election--even re the present scandalesque whirlwind of the Ford Gov't being in the developer's pockets.  It'd really depend upon whether the Libs are capable of pulling a "winning" leadership miracle out of the hat; but also, Ford's minions have a supple way of "compartmentalizing" these scandals so that concern over them becomes rather too inside-baseball to be a major electoral factor.  (Changes in media and media-consumption habits also factor in, sadly.)  But conversely, I'd never *totally* rule out Ontarians' generic amenability to the NDP in government--a lot of *that* hypothetical circumstance has been "induced from without", anyway, the repeated "NDP can't win" party line, or the tendency of pundits to emphasize the negative even when the NDP manages a positive relative to past patterns or relative to expectations.

And as for Sarah Jama: I can't rule out the likelihood of her losing; but by that measure, Joel Harden should have been a goner upon nomination to Ottawa Centre in '18--and he was reelected by a landslide in '22.  (He also might have been Stiles' likeliest viable leadership opponent on the left, had he not been reprimanded by acting leader Peter Tabuns for perceived anti-Semitic statements)

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And actually, when I think of it, it's most remarkable how in the previous Ontario legislature, there were only 2 byelections--both in Liberal incumbent ridings where they had a built-in advantage.

While the Libs might surely be *eyeing* Hamilton Centre for opportunity, I'd think that an outer-416 or 905 seat, or one where the sitting NDP's more obviously pinch-hitting for the Libs, is a stronger goal in the event of a byelection.  It just happens to be that Horwath's seat is first up on the plate; but regardless of the candidate, the Dippers would *really* have to drop the ball on this one, and the Libs here aren't in the same shape as the Tories were going into the general in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek or Windsor-Tecumseh.  Of course, knowing Doug Ford's anti-democratic instincts, he might just as well be tempted to appoint an partisan MPP for Hamilton Centre and do away with a byelection altogether...

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Of course, one thing that's different is that said "100 times more appealing" new leader does *not*, unlike her predecessor, represent this riding--all the same, as it now stands, for the Libs to win there would require a Simon Hughes Bermondsey '83 kind of earthquake--and the ONDP to make a calamitous botch of things the way that Labour did in '83.  Right now, other than "woke" candidacy (and there's an argument to be had that even using the "woke" label by way of condemnation is a double-edged sword), the only argument against the NDP and for the Liberals is if you *really* want to play up the case that historically, the Liberals have had more of a record as a "governing party" than the NDP has.  So we might as well be full circle back to the "unite the left under the Liberals" dork argument.

The one thing for certain is that the PCs can't win in a seat like this--yet paradoxically, given the nature of the seat and the state of the parties, they might also presently be the biggest spoiler for the Grits, as long as the Grits remain DOA relative to blue-collar Steeltown populism.  It ain't the Sheila Copps or Domenic Agostino days any longer, IOW...