August 2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election

[DC Al Fine]

Leslyn Lewis is the third candidate to meet the first set of requirements to get on the ballot, along with MacKay and O'Toole. Kind of surprising as she beat some of the better known socons and Marilyn Gladu out the gate.

[DC Al Fine]

https://twitter.com/Baird/status/1228092570695278592

Translation: He knew that if he ran he would be exposed as a serial abuser of young men...apparently the reason he quite abruptly as Foreign Affairs minister was some video of him with Palestinian boys at a brothel in Israel

That's the rumours I've been hearing on my side of the aisle *cringe*

[DC Al Fine]

I was wondering having read a lot on whether Conservatives can win or not, do people here agree with idea Conservatives are not electable and cannot win next election or do they think they can.

I think naturally Canada is more liberal than conservative thus putting Conservatives at a disadvantage but I think with right leader, right policies, and if Trudeau screws up a win is possible but won't be easy.  All else equal, I think more of Canada leans Liberal than Conservative and on balance more Canadians lean left than lean right although most are close to the centre.

Talking about how a party "can't" in a country like Canada is silly. In the last ten years alone we have 2011, 2015, Alberta 2015, Quebec 2018. Going back further we have 1993, BC 1991 and on and on.

Even ignoring the big wave elections, it's not all that hard to imgaine a Tory win. The economy might not be as strong next time, the government might bungle a file etc etc. The poll movements required for a Tory win just aren't that big; absorb the PPC, and some pretty small movements from Lib to Tory/NDP/Green would do it.

I think the talk about Canada being 'left' is more a symptom of an underlying issue for the Canadian right; that popular right wing politics in Quebec vs ROC is often contradictory and difficult to synthesize. Due to this issue and the post-colonial mindset in much of Quebec, a lot of people who vote CAQ provincially or who would for the right if Quebec were an independent state, vote for the left federally. Deprived of these voters (with some notable exceptions), the Tories are stuck trying to win voters that aren't very sympathetic to them in order to win power. Those suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver that the Tories need to win to win a majority government definitely fit your analysis.

Or put another way. Imagine an alternate universe where Quebec was settled by Anglophones, and was roughly analogous to Ontario. Montreal is Toronto 2.0, rural Quebec is like rural southern Ontario, Lac St Jean is like Sudbury or Thunder Bay etc. Maybe the PM is Justin Turnbull and Mark Burns quit to set up his own party. I don't know if Scheer wins that election, but the Tories and NDP would certainly do a heck of a lot better than they did IRL purely on demographics.

[DC Al Fine]

Is campaigning even still going on right now amidst the coronavirus crisis?

No one seems to be doing public events, but I'm still getting email blasts and phone calls. MacKay did a virtual town hall a few days ago.

[DC Al Fine]

I'm just hoping in here (and will instantly hop out) to remind you guys that these Tories are not running in a primary that will immediately be followed by a general. Trudeau II can go until 2023, and that is a lot of time for things to change and polling numbers to go in any number of directions. Sure, Canadian minority govts are shorter, but the NDP would have to 'approve' the collapse of Trudeau II. This means that the NDP would need to see some reason to gain from a new election. So for better or worse, the next Tory probably has a lot of time ahead of him to lead the opposition.

After all, time will eventually rot everything.

Or Trudeau likes his poll numbers & - in the name of 'stability' or something like that - calls an election once we've generally returned to normal.

Until we have a vaccine or go several months without new cases I don't think Trudeau will do this.  Lets say he tries this in the Fall and a new wave emerges during the middle of the campaign, he would pay a big price for this.  Spanish flu over a century ago petered out but second wave was worse than first.  I think he may do this, but will wait until vaccine or treatment is developed.

That doesn't mean he won't or can't hold a snap election before 2023. It's totally possible that in=f the summer of 2021 the virus has receded and he's perceived to have handled the crisis really well, he'll call another election and get a decent majority.

I wouldn't worry about 2017 UK parallels mostly because Trudeau, for his faults, is still a better politician that Theresa May, and the Libs are a little more in tune with what Canadian voters wants compared to Tories with British voters

Agreed he will wait until it has receded so sometime next year.  As for more in tune, generally true, but he is prone to stupid mistakes that is why he lost his majority so while in good shape now that could change.  Also large deficit could be a problem too.  That being said I am not personally a Trudeau fan, but agree here he will probably try before the hard decisions have to be made but also wait until there is no risk of another wave.

Eh, every single government around the world is deficit spending & increasing their national debt right now (& understandably so), so I'd like to think that wouldn't be a huge issue for Trudeau.

Yeah, the deficit is a much longer term risk. In the short term the big risk is presiding over a very weak economy.

The tough thing about calling a snap election to take advantage of COVID goodwill (and this goes for all leaders, not just Trudeau), is that it's a very narrow window of opportunity to exploit. If he goes too early, it will be irresponsible and he'll get crucified for playing politics with a pandemic. If he goes too late the COVID goodwill will have worn off and he'll just be a normal incumbent presiding over a crap economy. It's very hard to hit that sweet spot where one still has goodwill but it wouldn't be seen as crazy to call a national election.

[DC Al Fine]

Another Mainstreet research poll.

Mackay 38.6%
O'Toole 31.2%
Lewis 9.9%
Sloane 6.4%
Undecided 13.9%

With decided voters only it's 44.8% Mackay, 36,2% O'Toole.
Mackay leads in Atlantic and Quebec so could score many points with fewer votes.

https://ipolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/CPCLeadership-22May2020.pdf

If MacKay is carrying Ontario, Quebec, & Atlantic Canada, all while still having a strong 2nd-choice contingent in Alberta, then this race is his to lose.

MacKay stroing 2nd choice contingent is not really real, it's most likely O'Toole voters (which won't ever be redistributed).

The linked poll literally shows that it's not "most likely O'Toole voters," as he'd still receive a not-insignificant amount of early-round Sloane & Lewis voters (which will obviously need to be redistributed) as part of that 2nd-choice contingent.

Is likely, given the page about report by candidates, that it is O'Toole - > MacKay and Sloane and Lewis -> O'Toole.

I'm not claiming MacKay is getting more Sloane & Lewis voters than O'Toole, but O'Toole is obviously not gonna get all of the Sloane & Lewis voters either. Hence "a not-insignificant amount of early-round Sloane & Lewis voters" - MacKay is getting enough Sloane & Lewis voters to win.

From the crosstabs (assuming undecided split the same way as the decided ones), MacKay gets 37% of Sloane voters and 27% of Lewis voters, which is enough, but very barely.

This. The race is a tossup. Just eyeballing it, on those #'s MacKay needs ~25% of the Lewis/Sloan vote to win, which is definitely doable, but not guaranteed thanks to the er... problematic things he said about the kind of people who are voting for Lewis & Sloan.

Another issue to consider: Mainstreet polled the last race quite extensively. The biggest overperformers compared to the polls last time? Trost, Lemieux and Scheer. It may not happen this time, but it shows the point. If the (very difficult to poll) leadership polls are underpolling the right even a little bit, O'Toole should win.

[DC Al Fine]

Someone leaked a video of O'Toole courting social conservatives.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/erin-otoole-social-conservative-leadership-1.5613399

It used to be other parties that did this to the Conservatives, link someone with conservative social views or groups to scare but now the party is doing it internally.

Is this going to hurt him at all? Because I don't have the impression that many party members would be opposed to this - after all, it's only a vague hint about being "concerned", O'Toole isn't going all GOP. Sure, there might be a few people who might agree but not want him as a leader because it could hurt the party, but if anyone thinks that way, they're probably a political analyst, not a card-carrying Tory.

In the Tory leadership race? I think the sort of card carrying Tory who might be upset about this made up their minds for MacKay a long time ago. Honestly I'd be kind of annoyed if some politcal analyst types are acting surprised or upset by this. Getting Lewis and Sloan's preferences on the final ballot was part of O'Toole's path to victory since the field firmed up. What did they expect? For a politician not to try and win necessary votes

[DC Al Fine]

A sixth Quebec MP for Mackay and 38 defeated candidates in the province also support him.

The MP criticised O'Toole's strategy of courting social conservatives in making his decision public and he's been a progressive conservative so Mackay.

Quebec Conservatives mostly seem scared of seeing social issues come up in the next election and be on the defensive.

By attacking O'Toole with wooing social conservative, it pushes him to have to explain he is not very social conservatives and disappoints those conservative voters and cuts part of the transfer of votes O'Toole would need to win.

A linguist rated the candidate's French language out of 10. Lewis 1/10, Sloan 2/10, Mackay 5/10, O'Toole 6/10.

Would you mind contextualizing that scale? E.g. How would Maxime Bernier's English rank on that scale?

[DC Al Fine]

https://twitter.com/btaplatt/status/1273774268518748162

Another piece of evidence that social conservatism in Canada is really two closely related camps, not one single group. Lemieux and Trost gave us hints of this last time, but Lewis and Sloan are proving it in spades.

[DC Al Fine]

A sixth Quebec MP for Mackay and 38 defeated candidates in the province also support him.

The MP criticised O'Toole's strategy of courting social conservatives in making his decision public and he's been a progressive conservative so Mackay.

Quebec Conservatives mostly seem scared of seeing social issues come up in the next election and be on the defensive.

By attacking O'Toole with wooing social conservative, it pushes him to have to explain he is not very social conservatives and disappoints those conservative voters and cuts part of the transfer of votes O'Toole would need to win.

A linguist rated the candidate's French language out of 10. Lewis 1/10, Sloan 2/10, Mackay 5/10, O'Toole 6/10.

I thought McKay couldn't speak French?

Consensus from what I've read:

a) It's not that he couldn't speak it at all like Lewis, but his French was very poor, especially for someone who has been seen as a PM in waiting since like 2004.

b) He's improved quite a bit, but his French still isn't quite as good Scheer's or Harper's (no idea where they fit on Poirot's 1/10 scale)

[DC Al Fine]

Wife and I got our leadership ballots in the mail yesterday. We are voting for Lewis. I still need to figure out my downballot preferences.

It asked if people would be more or less likely to consider voting Conservative if the leader adopted three policy positions:

A comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to support climate change strategy would make 32% more likely and 11% less likely to consider voting

A plan to improve relations with Indigenous Peoples and further the efforts of Reconciliation and land claims would make 26% more likely and 13% less likely

A clear commitment not re-open the abortion issue or allow one if its MPs to introduce legislation to re-open the abortion issue would make 23% more likey and 13% less likely

I have often heard the party needs to put social issues behind to be more appealing but it looks like there is more potential by having a strong environmental policy but it doesn't look like it will happen.

Polling found a similar result in the aftermath of the 2019 election.

It's interesting since there's been quite a bit of talk about the role social issues and socons should play in the party since the last election, there's been virtually none about the environment or First Nations issues, and the leadership candidates aren't proposing any course change (except I vaguely remember Lewis suggesting we should subsidize renewable energy more or something).

The Tories better hope that the voters act like it's 2008 and put climate aside in favour of economics, or else they'll have some serious issues in the next election.

[DC Al Fine]

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

I don't know if they have released specific numbers but they say the largest growth was in Nova Scotia, Quebec Newfoundland Labrador and Alberta. Alberta was already big so with one of the biggest growth must be huge now.

Biggest riding membership: Battle River–Crowfoot, Calgary Centre, Foothills, Cypress Hills–Grasslands,  Banff–Airdrie, Oxford, Calgary Signal Hill, Edmonton–Wetaskiwin, Lethbridge, Parry Sound–Muskoka, Red Deer–Mountain View, Langley–Aldergrove.
8 from Alberta, 2 Ontario, 1 Saskatchewan, 1 BC

Higest percent of membership growth:
Surrey—Newton (BC), then three from Ontario, Brampton East, Humber River–Black Creek, Scarborough North, then three from Quebec, Laval–Les Îles, Papineau, Saint-Léonard–Saint-Michel,  Labrador (NL), Avalon, (NL), Cumberland–Colchester (NS).

That Quebec list screams Italian.

Three Liberal ridings. Someone has been selling membership within ethnic communities I guess.

I was thinking Greek factor. Senator Housakos is said to be a good organizer. He supports O'Toole. He is from Laval and ran for Canadian Alliance in Laval West. There is a greek community in Parc Extension in Papineau. My Greek theory doesn't explain Saint-Leonard.

Yes, a lot of this stuff is better explained by who's been putting in legwork where and who has the support of some local fixer than anything ideological.

With that in mind, a Chinese friend of mine says she's seeing a lot of Sloan ads in Chinese-language media. I guess his people are trying to repeat the Brad Trost strategy.

[DC Al Fine]

Just mailed in my ballot

[DC Al Fine]

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?

[DC Al Fine]

Welp, off to bed then. I'll find out the result in the morning.

[DC Al Fine]

3.In not criticizing Lewis and Sloan and in seeking them out as allies, the social conservatives will have expectations from him and he didn't even mention social conservative issues in his victory speech other than a mild boiler plate about wanting a Canada for everybody (including non-believers.)  I don't think it will be long before some social conservatives become disgruntled with him.

He clearly owes his leadership to the socons, so they will naturally expect some concessions. The question is how much. Small sample size, but for me and the other Lewis voters I know, this election was primarily about sending a message to people like Peter MacKay that they can't push us around or out of the party. For people thinking like that, I can't imagine expectations are that high... again, that's a small sample size. I don't know what other socon voters, especially Sloan ones are thinking.

Given our overall political standing, I don't care what O'Toole does campaign-wise so long as socons have a seat at the table, and he throws me a couple policy bones. He best start looking through the socon playbook, and find one or two relatively centre-friendly policies to use (maybe child benefits, or support for homeschooling in an age of COVID?)

[DC Al Fine]

Watching the speech O'Toole seems to be a step up from Scheer who was too much of a "social conservative from the Prairies", and will likely play better in eastern Canada, delivering a more somewhat efficient vote rather than piling up huge pluralities in AB/SK.  But the country has shifted leftward and it's hard to see a Conservative path to victory at this point.  Large margins to reverse in the ridings of southern Ontario and not just the GTA.  

Agreed. The benefit of O'Toole, is not that he's some GTA juggernaut, it's that he's culturally Anglo-Eastern, in a party that's gotten too West-centric. Independent of specific policy plays, the party spent way too much time last election  talking up issues for one region that was already in the bag.

Lord knows how alienating it would be if the party picked MacKay and he spent the whole campaign talking about Maritime issues and the lobster industry, but that's kind of how it felt as an Easterner last time

[DC Al Fine]

Watching the speech O'Toole seems to be a step up from Scheer who was too much of a "social conservative from the Prairies", and will likely play better in eastern Canada, delivering a more somewhat efficient vote rather than piling up huge pluralities in AB/SK.  But the country has shifted leftward and it's hard to see a Conservative path to victory at this point.  Large margins to reverse in the ridings of southern Ontario and not just the GTA.  

Agreed. The benefit of O'Toole, is not that he's some GTA juggernaut, it's that he's culturally Anglo-Eastern, in a party that's gotten too West-centric. Independent of specific policy plays, the party spent way too much time last election  talking up issues for one region that was already in the bag.

Lord knows how alienating it would be if the party picked MacKay and he spent the whole campaign talking about Maritime issues and the lobster industry, but that's kind of how it felt as an Easterner last time

In fairness, the CPC has North Korean style margins in Alberta and Saskatchewan, so they can definitely afford to alienate them to a decent amount.

Even if the CPC massively collapsed there, who cares that they win rural Alberta with 60% of the vote instead of 85%?

Exactly. Plus, those margins were driven, not just by the Tories, but by the Liberals and NDP actively going out of their way to antagonize Western interests. The Tories have a lot of wiggle room here unless one of the Western seperatist parties manages to take off.

[DC Al Fine]

Results by riding are up:

https://www.conservative.ca/leadership/

Scroll to the bottom and click "see the full report" (pdf warning)

[DC Al Fine]

Final round map

Results by riding are up:

https://www.conservative.ca/leadership/

Scroll to the bottom and click "see the full report" (pdf warning)

It's interesting how some well-meaning but ill-informed progressives projected "hope" on Leslyn Lewis due to the face value of her race, educational background and articulation--yet her strongest nodes tended to have a Bible Belt tinge like Niagara West, or much of rural Western Canada.  (And the sheer numbers of so-disposed card-carrying voters might explain why she was first on the second ballot in terms of votes-not-points--it's a little like Scheer's being ahead of Trudeau in 2019 votes thanks to his plumped gigamajorities in the West.)

Another observation: MacKay seems to have done particularly well in ridings with a significant South Asian base (in Brampton and Surrey most notably, and also discernable in places like NE Calgary)

The ethnic vote is always interesting in Conservative leadership elections, considering unlike most right wing parties in the world, they actually do well with minorities. Interesting to see that Chinese Canadians didn't go strongly one way or the other; it seems it went for O'Toole with the same margins as White Canadians.

Great map. Are you going to do a first round map as well?

[DC Al Fine]

Can’t say that I expected my new home riding (Kitchener-Conestoga) to have a higher % religious right than my old riding (Oxford) at all.

Perhaps in the case of K-C, those who fall within the statistical-category proxy are more "ancestral" than ideological and likelier to be affected by the moderating influence of suburban K-W?  (Plus, some of the deeper Mennonite sects are notorious for low turnout.)

I'd also throw out there that the census "Other Christian" category is very messy. Per my review of the detailed breakdown of what groups and their #'s, "Other Christian is mostly Evangelical sects but it also includes non-Evangelical groups like Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, a few mainline Protestantish groups and generic "Christian" people.

It's still a perfectly fine rough metric (it's not like I expect Kensington to manually tally 20+ Evangelical groups by riding ), but the noise in the metric may account for some of the oddities like K-C.

[DC Al Fine]

Why did Sloan overperform?

Compared to what, polling? Lewis overperformed too. Social conservatives are less likely to answer polls. In 2017, the issue was that many social conservatives were from minority communities, and so there was language and cultural barriers to polling them. However, this time the results don't show minorities backing Sloan or Lewis to the extent they did Trost and Lemieux in 2017. Based on the maps, it looks like Chinese Canadians backed O'Toole to a moderate degree, and Indo-Canadians gave MacKay some large margins. So, I'm not sure what the issue is this time. Maybe even White social conservatives don't answer polls?

Some hypotheses:

1) Pollsters are letting a significant amount of non-members into their samples, which degrades their polls into name recognition polls. Socon candidates are mostly low profile (except Jason Kenney I guess) and therefore underpoll.

2) Some conservative Christian groups, while participating in politics, are pretty insular in general (e.g. Dutch Reformed, Mennonite). People like that would vote in leadership races but not answer polls.

3) Conservative Chrisians in general are feeling pretty embattled, Canadian ones in particular, and are therefore answering polls in a more 'socially acceptable' manner.

Thoughts?

[DC Al Fine]

Lewis has confirmed she is running in the next election. Seat tbd.

[DC Al Fine]

Lewis has confirmed she is running in the next election. Seat tbd.

Perhaps Thornhill? It's a safe riding which she can be parachuted into, close to her home in Markham, & has a Tory MP in Peter Kent who's approaching his 80s.

I mean the simplest option if O'Toole really wants her (or any star candidate from the GTA really) in parliament is to just parachute her into a safe seat. Lord knows the Tories have a surplus of those

What are people's thoughts on the Tories' choice?  And do you think O'Toole could actually beat Trudeau or have the Tories just handed Trudeau another win?

He's the best choice for party unity, which is a sometimes overlooked consideration when pundits look at the Tories. No one really seems to hate the guy.

I'm not convinced by the "Moderate = electable = MacKay is the best choice" logic at all. MacKay has shown himself seriously gaffe prone over the years and his fiscal conservative, social liberal orientation has not been an electoral powerhouse in the West.

Overall, I'd put O'Toole as the underdog against Trudeau, albeit with a reasonable chance to win. More importantly I think his fate will be decided mostly by things outside of his control; how is the economy in 2021/2022, how did the second wave of COVID and the government's response go, did Trudeau commit another major unforced error? Etc etc.

[DC Al Fine]

Lewis has confirmed she is running in the next election. Seat tbd.

Perhaps Thornhill? It's a safe riding which she can be parachuted into, close to her home in Markham, & has a Tory MP in Peter Kent who's approaching his 80s.

Again, she's not Jewish. Haldimand-Norfolk is a better fit. Lots of social conservatives, and it will be an open seat. She may have to move, but a small price to pay.

Yes that's a good thought. Really, anywhere in the Dutch Reformed belt in southern Ontario would be a great fit for her. Those folks broke hard for her in the leadership race.