Canadian by-elections 2023

[Hatman 🍁]

New Year, new thread.

Here are current vacancies both federally and provincially (excluding provinces that are having provincial elections this year). I don't believe we have any dates for any these by-elections yet.

Federal
*Winnipeg South Centre
*Calgary Heritage

Provincial
*Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore, NB
*Dieppe, NB
*Restigouche-Chaleur, NB
*Saint-Henri--Sainte-Anne, QC
*Hamilton Centre, ON

[Hatman 🍁]

The NDP doesn't have that much room for growth in WSC. River Heights and Tuxedo are too anti-NDP for them to have a chance I think.

[Hatman 🍁]

Is there any other reason this clown chose to run again in 2021 other than to get a pension?

I think you just answered your own question.

[Hatman 🍁]

A guy who I curled against last year in my club's Saturday morning league is running for the Conservative nomination in Calgary Heritage. It's weird how many Conservatives come to Ottawa for education, only to go out west once they graduate. Or in the case of Poilievre, they stick around.

[Hatman 🍁]

I'd imagine Beisan Zubi takes another run at it (she ran for the seat federally, and got squeezed out by Mike Morrice). The Greens are going to desperately target this seat too, but I'm not sure if they have any strong candidates to do it. Not sure if the Liberals will bother finding a good candidate, but if they do, we're in for a real dog fight.

[Hatman 🍁]

I'd imagine Beisan Zubi takes another run at it (she ran for the seat federally, and got squeezed out by Mike Morrice). The Greens are going to desperately target this seat too, but I'm not sure if they have any strong candidates to do it. Not sure if the Liberals will bother finding a good candidate, but if they do, we're in for a real dog fight.

Wait, what?  That would be the one WRONG candidate to choose.  Squeezed out?  She finished 3rd - almost 4th, a point ahead of the Liberal candidate who withdrew his candidacy.  Kitchener OVERWHELMINGLY said no to her.

She lost because Morrice was seen as the main progressive candidate. Had he not been on the ballot, she would've won the seat. I don't think the election was a repudiation of her candidacy. Unless there's something I don't know?

[Hatman 🍁]

I can't see the Tories getting much more than 25% of the vote. The non Tory vote would have to be pretty evenly split for the Cons to pick it up.

[Hatman 🍁]

I'd imagine Beisan Zubi takes another run at it (she ran for the seat federally, and got squeezed out by Mike Morrice). The Greens are going to desperately target this seat too, but I'm not sure if they have any strong candidates to do it. Not sure if the Liberals will bother finding a good candidate, but if they do, we're in for a real dog fight.

I wonder if she would pass vetting now. In the last year or so she has tweeted some very inflammatory anti-Israel stuff that crosses a lot of lines and I doubt if Marit Stiles wants to have to defend that

Ahh, I guess that's why I'm the only floating her name. Wasn't aware of that.

[Hatman 🍁]

Preston is nowhere close to being "majority Black". It was designed to be a Black opportunity district, but the riding is still overwhelmingly White. There are only 3 dissemination areas in the riding that are a majority Black, and they correspond to the communities in the riding named Preston (Preston, East Preston and North Preston), which may be the source of the confusion. Interestingly, North Preston voted NDP in 2021, but Preston and East Preston voted Liberal.

 

[Hatman 🍁]

Might be interesting, considering the People's Party came in 2nd last time. I doubt the Mennonites are still pissed about COVID restrictions, though.

[Hatman 🍁]

Toronto City council has to agree to a by-election. They could just appoint someone. Also, knowing Ford, he might want to meddle in things a bit. Whatever it takes to get his nephew elected mayor.

[Hatman 🍁]

Oh, ok. Well, I guess there's some good in that strong mayor legislation.

[Hatman 🍁]

Didn't Stew Young just lose? I get the impression he's not that popular anymore.

[Hatman 🍁]

Final figure:

QS 7897 (44.50) (+16.68)
PLQ 2896 (28.96) (-7.19)
PQ 2025 (11.41) (+3.14)
CAQ 1661 (9.36) (-8.37)
PCQ 478 (2.69) (-3.67)
PVQ 251 (1.41) (-.50)

I think there is a typo on the PLQ number here

Correct. The Liberals won 5,139 votes.

While a lot of people are casting off the Liberals as dead now, let's not forget they are still the official opposition. Who is going to replace them? QS is too extreme, as are the Conservatives. And the PQ are even more dead.

[Hatman 🍁]

The by-election showed that people are willing to vote strategically (or at least stay home) to stop the... Liberals   The drop in the CAQ vote and the PCQ vote is quite interesting, considering it didn't help the Liberals at all. I'm guessing those voters mostly stayed home, but I'd imagine some of them voted QS.

[Hatman 🍁]

I recall we did some riding polls during the election that did happen to pick up on QS strength on the island, including their win in Verdun. Of course, we were calling cell phones.

[Hatman 🍁]

Ottawa Centre:

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/naqvi-takes-another-step-toward-running-for-ontario-liberal-leader-1.6312918

He is not resigning as MP.

[Hatman 🍁]

My prediction is turnout will be abysmally low; the NDP easily wins with a reduced share of the vote, and the Liberals take second.

The NDP floor in the riding is in the mid-40s, so I can see them dropping down there if they have a bad night. Though, I think the final result will be around:

NDP: ~50
Lib: 25-30
PC: ~15
Grn: 5-10

[Hatman 🍁]

As expected, the turnout was low. I think I was a little shy on my NDP expectations though, I expected a larger swing to the Liberals.

[Hatman 🍁]

As expected, the turnout was low. I think I was a little shy on my NDP expectations though, I expected a larger swing to the Liberals.

Why would you have expected any swing to the Liberals at all? I suppose its not surprising that the NDPO vote share would be slightly lower now that they are losing the "leader bonus" that came with Horwath being the candidate in the general election - plus maybe the Liberals get a "dead cat bounce" from being able to run 100% on party brand and not being dragged down by Del Duca

The Liberals are the natural second party in the riding, that's why. Just look at the riding's history, only the NDP or the Liberals have won it since the 1960s. So, when the NDP vote goes down (which was obvious, given Horwath wasn't on the ballot, and the minor controversies), it benefits the Liberals.

And I was right, there was a 5 point average swing to the Liberals. Not as large as expected, but a swing nonetheless.

[Hatman 🍁]

We also can't discount the very low turnouts of not just the by-election, but the general as well. Horwath did better in the 2018 election, because the NDP was seen as the main non-Tory party, and that was a bit muddled in 2022. Many of her 2018 voters may have just stayed home in 2022, and they were unlikely to have voted in the by-election.

Speaking of turnout, I think in the current provincial climate low turnout is helping the NDP. According to our post-election polling, most non-voters would have gone PC or Liberal. Makes me think that low information voters are more likely to back the established parties, while high info voters were more aware that the NDP was the main opposition, and therefore they should get your vote to stop the PCs. This is also why the NDP did better than expectations, whereas they normally do worse.

[Hatman 🍁]

Speaking of turnout, I think in the current provincial climate low turnout is helping the NDP. According to our post-election polling, most non-voters would have gone PC or Liberal. Makes me think that low information voters are more likely to back the established parties, while high info voters were more aware that the NDP was the main opposition, and therefore they should get your vote to stop the PCs. This is also why the NDP did better than expectations, whereas they normally do worse.

That would also explain how the Ontario NDP did far better in the seat count in the June 2022 than anyone expected. The conventional wisdom was that whatever the final polls showed the NDP would do even worse because in a low turn out environment, their voters would be more likely to stay home - instead the exact opposite happened. I think part of what is happening a reflection of the new "education" factor on turnout. While its true to NDP vote tends to skew younger and lower income, it also skews towards higher levels of education - and people who have more education tend to follow politics and vote more.

I do want to make it clear, when I said the NDP "did better than expected" I was actually referring to the general election, though the same maybe true for the by-election.

[Hatman 🍁]

Hate to be that guy, but I don't think there's anything to be interpreted from the Hamilton Centre byelection. Sure, a slight NDP->OLP transfer, but that's probably reversion to the mean more than anything else. I mean, not only did Horwath have a leadership bump, she held this riding and its predecessor for 18 years. The OLP has a lot of work to do before we can definitively say they're back.

On top of that, Hamilton Centre is as quintessentially NDP as it gets. The Liberals do have a history of winning here, but it requires many things to go right for them and wrong for the NDP. If Trudeaumania (TM) wasn't enough to even get within striking distance of turning this seat red, Minivan Caucus (TM) never had a chance. Obviously the PCs are a complete non-starter here, and it showed.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the "Liberals are back" based on a measly 5 point swing. If anything, they underwhelmed (my) expectations.

[Hatman 🍁]

I doubt the NDP will really bother to contest Kanata, so it will be a real test to see if the Liberals can become relevant again. Of course, who will want to join the lifeboat?

I wonder if councillor Allan Hubley will run for the PCs. He's not very popular in his ward, only getting re-elected with 1/3 of the vote last year, so may want to make the jump to provincial politics.

The other local city councillors are fairly new, so may not want to make the jump to provincial politics. Then again, Jenna Sudds was in her first term when she ran federally. I don't think Sudds' successor is partisan, but the third city councillor in the area (Clarke Kelly) is a Liberal.

[Hatman 🍁]

Merrillee Fullerton is resigning https://twitter.com/DrFullertonMPP/status/1639335799136059411/photo/1 .  This is sort of a bellwether as narrowly went Liberal federally but PC provincially.  Was solid Tory a decade ago but like many suburban ridings has shifted left.  So this could be a good indicator if PC support holding up or falling.  And likewise also sign if OLP or NDP gaining.

A *very* tenuous and newfound-condition "sort of a bellwether" at best.  But technically, I'm not sure if this territory has been anything *but* Tory, for well over a century--of course, that's accounting for predecessor ridings that were much larger and more rural.  Yet these days, with growth and redistribution rural West Carleton is really the only truly "Tory-invulnerable" zone left; so yes, provincial history is no longer automatically-presumed destiny here.  Now, it's PC more generically because the Libs imploded and the NDP's still too quixotic an option--though in a Chandra Pasma era, who knows about the latter anymore.

I doubt the NDP will really bother to contest Kanata, so it will be a real test to see if the Liberals can become relevant again. Of course, who will want to join the lifeboat?

I'm actually not so sure about that re the NDP--after all, rather than reverting to 3rd place status quo a la Nepean or Carleton, they actually *kept* their 2nd place in K-C in '22; and if Melissa Coenraad were to stand again, it's hard not to imagine that she'd give it a serious run on Chandra Pasma coattails.  (And Kanata has a lively history of municipal Dipperdom most particularly through Alex Munter, even if it's scarcely translated to a provincial or federal level.)

Alex Munter was quite popular in Kanata, but that only translated into strong municipal numbers, and Peggy Feltmate winning his seat in 2003 on his coattails. Her chosen successor did not win in 2010 though, and the ward has been stuck with the dud that is Allan Hubley ever since.  Anyway, Munter was popular not because he was a progressive, but because he was the Kanata's wonderkid of the late 1980s, forming a local newspaper at the age of 14, and winning a prestigious award from Brian Mulroney.

Anyway, given recent municipal and provincial numbers, I'd say the NDP's ceiling here is around 30%. Not enough to make it competitive, but might make things interesting in a 3-way race. But the Tories would win in a tight 3-way. The Tory floor is about 35%, so that doesn't leave any room for the Liberals, unless the Greens don't run.