Conservative Party of Canada Leadership Race Megathread-May 27th 2017

[DC Al Fine]

The Libs never expelled Tom Wappel.  Just saying

There's the rub. Public opinion on gay rights (and abortion to a lesser extent) has shifted so rapidly that Liberal supporters look ridiculous when they criticize the Tories for harbouring views that they were willing to tolerate as recently as Ignatieff's leadership. Come to think of it, isn't John McKay still in parliament?

[DC Al Fine]

First of all, I suspect that any Liberal MP (or NDP for that matter) who in 2017 unapologetically said the kinds of vicious hateful things that Wappel said 13 years ago, they would be expelled from their party with a flourish!

What exactly did Wappel say? It was before my time.

Second of all, it's one thing to have quietly opposed same sex marriage but while still adopting a polite respectful tone...it's something else to spew the kind of hateful invective that Trost is using. The guy is even saying that if he was Tory leader he would forbid any Tory MPs from attending any Pride parades!

From what I saw, the Twitter post consisted of a fundraising letter and a social media posting opposing funding or marching in Pride parades. I frankly don't see the big deal, it's a reasonable wedge, since a lot of socons aren't necessarily aware of the candidates participation in the parades.

Based on the evidence noted on Twitter, I frankly don't see what a politician could say against SSM that you would deem acceptable in the public square.

Come to think of it, isn't John McKay still in parliament?

I believe existing MPs were "grandfathered in" regardless of their views.

I see thank you

[DC Al Fine]

I still think if Trudeau was truly Machiavellian, he'd go ahead with electoral reform and introduce proportional representation. That would encourage the break-up of the CPC into different factions and make the Liberals, who have been a big-tent party their entire existence, at least the senior party in any governing coalition (they could always throw their junior partner under the bus like what Cameron and Merkel did).

I get the logic, but I can't really see any major party getting behind a system that virtually eliminates majority governments. Besides, even though the Liberals aren't as faction ridden as the Tories have been lately, they'd still be vulnerable to the logic of proportional representation. To use the 90's as an example, I have a hard time imagining Sheila Copps and John Manley sharing a party under PR.

[DC Al Fine]

Trost goes way beyond just opposing SSM. He openly hates all LGBT people period and considers them all sinners who should stripped of all human rights period. He consider anyone gay to be sub human...though rumours are rife that he secretly has sex with men in public washrooms...

Citations desperately needed

[DC Al Fine]

There is approximately 13 or 14 candidates for the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership and Kevin O'Leary, considered as the Canadian Trump, is leading by a few percentage points in the polls. Will some of the candidates drop out in order to coalesce the anti-O'Leary vote?

It's a ranked ballot so there's no incentive to drop out.

[DC Al Fine]

YUGE & guarantees Bernier is our next leader.

Are you sure about that? O'Leary underperformed and I imagine his supporters will have a crappy turnout rate now.

[DC Al Fine]

The last Quebec MP able to endorse went to O'Toole.

Abacus poll asking if people would vote for Trudeau or various Conservative candidates.
http://abacusdata.ca/was-kevin-oleary-the-conservative-partys-best-hope-to-beat-trudeau-data-suggests-he-wasnt/

There is not a big difference between the seven leadership candidates. They are all in the 30s with 4% separating the first to the last. Chong scored best at 37%, followed by Scheer and O'Leary. Bernier scored the lowest.

There is also a measure on attracting voters who did not vote CPC in 2015 and losing 2015 CPC voters. O'Leary is (was) the person attracting the most non-CPC voter but he lost even more of the 2015 CPC voter. Bernier wins and loses the same number. Scheer does the best win a net gain, losing the least of the 2015 CPC voter. 

I don't know why people keep thinking fiscally conservative but socially liberal is the way to go for conservative parties. The segment of people who would vote for the Tories but for the socons/populist element is pretty limited.

[DC Al Fine]

Got my ballot today. I know who my top 3-4 are and I know who my bottom picks are, but I have no idea what I'm doing with the middle of my ballot. Thoughts?

[DC Al Fine]

Got my ballot today. I know who my top 3-4 are and I know who my bottom picks are, but I have no idea what I'm doing with the middle of my ballot. Thoughts?

Are you putting the social conservative options (like Trost or Lemieux) first, or are you going with electability (so presumably Raitt or Chong)? I'd ask you to put Bernier high, but he really doesn't seem like your style of conservative...

Fringe socons, then Scheer is my electable socon. After that I don't know. I want some sort of mix between liking personality, policies, and their electability.

My ballot currently looks like

1) Lemieux
2) Trost
3) Scheer
4-10)

Ballot cutoff
O'Leary
Leitch
Blaney
Peterson

[DC Al Fine]

Just finished filling out my ballot. Not bothering with full details, but:

1) Lemieux
2) Trost
3) Scheer
4) O'Toole

Off ballot:
O'Leary
Blaney
Leitch
Peterson

[DC Al Fine]

Is the Conservative party going to keep its leader if the result of the next election is again a Liberal majority government ? I'm wondering if the next leader is there at least for the medium term or needs a good result in two years.

Probably depends on what kind of majority government we see. If the new leader makes some progress and shrinks the Liberal majority, I imagine they'll stick around.

[DC Al Fine]

Is the Conservative party going to keep its leader if the result of the next election is again a Liberal majority government ? I'm wondering if the next leader is there at least for the medium term or needs a good result in two years.

Probably depends on what kind of majority government we see. If the new leader makes some progress and shrinks the Liberal majority, I imagine they'll stick around.

Where would we shrink the Liberal majority? We might get some Atlantic seats back but Grits could gain a chunk here in QC, maybe lose a couple in BC. I'd put O/U at 190 right now.

Well there's a decent number of suburban seats (mostly in Toronto, but also dribs and drabs in the rest of the country), but you're right, I forgot about the Liberals likely landslide in Quebec. I think the point still stands though. The NDP and Bloc's electoral situation seems worse than ours given our lack of promiscuous progressive, and their sizeable number of seats won by <10%. If the results are something like:

Lib (+5)
Tory: (+15)
NDP/Bloc: (-20)

That would be enough of a success for the leader to stick around and build upon no?

[DC Al Fine]

I logged into Facebook and noticed an ad, which was just a link to a 2008 Toronto story about Harper firing Maxime Bernier from cabinet. Wonder which Tory candidate paid for that.

[DC Al Fine]

I'll be looking at the regional breaks of course. Looks like they'll putting the riding results up right away.

Awesome. Should be much more interesting than 2004. With so many candidates there should be all sorts of interesting riding results.

[DC Al Fine]

The Socons, we live!

Also, everyone skim the riding results for non- Bernier or Scheer winners. Lisa Raitt won Sydney-Victoria and Cape Breton-Canso.

[DC Al Fine]

Chong led on the first ballot of a few urban ridings: Vancouver Kingsway, Spadina-Fort York, University-Rosedale etc.

[DC Al Fine]

This is as exciting as Canadian politics will ever get.

Here's a typical boring Canadian election where everyone votes the same as the previous election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_1993

I love that. Smallest swing for a major party was Liberal +9.32%

[DC Al Fine]

Any idea what O'Leary's best riding was?

[DC Al Fine]

Trudeau is probably the second happiest person in Canada tonight. 

People keep saying that, but it's not like Bernier's economic program is supported by an overwhelming majority of Canadians. The Liberals would have no problem reverting to early 2000's form and run "he's going to cut your healthcare" attack ads during the campaign.

[DC Al Fine]

I don't think that the Liberals viewed ANY of the Tory leadership candidates as being particularly formidable but the Liberals were probably looking forward to running against Bernier who also used to be a Quebec separatist and who spoke English so badly that many voters would have had a hard time understanding let alone feeling connected to him.

Scheer on the other hand is just boring and boring is harder to negatively define

Agreed. Plus Bernier would have run into the same problem all "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" candidates face. That is, he would upset major parts of the Tory coalition (e.g. Chinese Canadians, white ethnics, Evangelicals) who aren't on board with the libertarian project, while failing to bring in enough swing voters to offset this. Given that "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" are far more likely to exist on the opinion page of the Globe and Mail than in key 905 swing ridings, Berneir would be at a disadvantage.

With Scheer, you basically start with the Harper 2015 coalition and can go up and down from there. A much safer choice IMO.

[DC Al Fine]

Is there a reason why Scheer did so well in Quebec?

Bernier wanted to kill a bunch of subsidies for farmers and farmers are a large portion of the Tory base in Quebec.

[DC Al Fine]

So it looks like the Mennonite/Dutch Canadian religious right was behind Scheer for the most part while Trost had more Chinese Christian support?

Sort of. From what I can tell, heavily Dutch or Mennonite ridings backed Scheer, but Pierre Lemieux (and to a lesser extent Brad Trost) also overperformed in those areas. e.g. Lemieux got over 20% in Provencher.

[DC Al Fine]

I just wanna know the general consensus: is Scheer a good choice for the party (and by that i mean could he lead conservatives to victory in 2019)?

He's the conservative choice, no pun intended. As others have noted, the field was lacklustre and the Liberals weren't terrified of any candidates. That said, he's a safe pair of hands, who won't cause schisms  or lose  tons of votes/seats. Bernier was much more high risk/high reward.