Canadian Election 2019

[DL]

So you are saying that it’s OK for the Tories to govern with the “separatists” (sic.) but if the Liberals and NDP do it everyone shrieks “treason”. Why the double standard?

It's not a double standard, it's about the number of seats. I wasn't clear about this in my last post, but who ever "wins the most seats" will be treated as "the winner".

And yet in the BC 2017 election the Liberals took two seats more than the NDP and when the NDP turned the tables on Christy Clarke and formed a minority government with support for the Greens - all these pundits shrieked bloody murder because the second place "loser" party was taking power and  everyone predicted that the Horgan government would have no legitimacy and wouldnt last two months...well two and a half years later the BC NDP is still in power and seems reasonably popular and no one seems to care that they actually have fewer seats than the BC Liberals. Similarly when the Ontario Liberals under David Peterson took power in 1985 despite having fewer seats than the PCs, they became very popular and won the next election in a landslide.

[DL]

We're talking about the federal Liberals here. Do they have the courage to lead a minority government if they win fewer seats than the Tories? I wouldn't bet on it.

What do you mean "do they have the courage?". For the Liberals being in power is the be all and the end all. It takes zero courage for them to stop at nothing to keep power. What would take courage would be to voluntarily let Scheer become PM without having exhausted every possibility! The worst day in power is a hundred times better than the best day in opposition. Why wouldn't they do absolutely ANYTHING to cling to power damn the torpedoes. The last time the Liberals lost their plurality in 2006, they reassured themselves that Harper would have no luck leading a minority government and that his government would collapse just like Clark's in 1979 and that the Liberals would be back within a year...ten years later Harper was still PM and the Liberals came extremely close to being killed off by the NDP. They wont let that happen again.

[DL]

No one seems to have pointed it out yet but the NDP is showing signs of life in Quebec. The Nanos daily tracking now has the NDP at 20% in Quebec and well ahead of the Tories who have 14%. With the Liberals at 30 and the BQ at 25 it could set up some three way races. An example of this is in Sherbrooke. In mid September Mainstreet did a poll there that have the Liberal a huge lead with 44% and the Ndp incumbent Pierre Luc Dusseault was a distant fourth at 12%. Now the head of Mainstreet is tweeting that they will put out a poll tomorrow in Sherbrooke showing a three way dead beat. That would represent a big recovery for Dusseault. It probably helps that the BQ candidate was exposed as a racist and had to apologize for saying that Islam is “evil”. Sherbrooke is a progressive university town that voted Quebec Solidaire last yeat

[DL]

A coalition means more than one party having cabinet ministers. No one is contemplating that especially not with the BQ which has no interest in governing Canada. There is no need for any formal agreement with the BQ. Harper governed for his first year thanks to the BQ voting for his throne speech and budget. Trudeau is the PM until he is not. He doesn’t need to make any formal deals, he can just introduce bills and get one or another opposition party to vote for it. Some people talk about the Tories forming a minority government with BQ support. No one refers to that as a coalition

[DL]

It’s now looking like the Greens will end up with no more than 2 or 3 seats so it’s unlikely their seats will matter in the calculation of who can form government. I suspect the Liberals and NDP alone will get 170+ rendering the Greens irrelevant

[DL]

In 1997 the Liberals just barely eked out a majority by five seats...but they didn’t just win Ontario that year. They won 101 out of 103 seats in Ontario due to the conservative vote being split down the middle between the PCs and the Reform Party.. I expect the Liberals to get a plurality off seats in Ontario and to likely end up with more seats than the Tories in a minority parliament, but if anyone tunings the Liberals will win all but one or two seats in Ontario like they did in 1997, all I can say is, you’ve gotta be nuts

[DL]

Nanos's final poll out today shows a bit of swing away from the Liberals and they doubled their sample size on Saturday to 800 so this is a poll of 1,600

CPC - 31.5%
Libs - 31.0%
NDP 18.8%
Greens 9.5%
BQ at 30.5% in Quebec...that is no where near majority for anyone

Leger's final poll says its 33-33-18 with the Greens dropping to 6% and again the BQ over 30% in Quebec with a big lead among francophones

[DL]

The Tories today are closer to having a friend in Quebec than anytime previously in living memory, but they can't convert voters because they are the Tories and this is Quebec.

This is all a non-starter because a core principle of the Tories these days is to push through pipeline projects regardless of the views of provincial governments. This is total anathema across the political spectrum in Quebec. In addition, any hint of social conservatism on issues like abortion and gay rights are toxic even to the most conservative Quebecers.

[DL]

I remember the 1997 and 2000 elections very well. There was never much doubt in either of those elections that the Liberals would win again and get majorities again. If there was any surprise at all in 1997 it was that the Liberals came as close as they did (within 5 seats) to losing their majority - largely due to the Liberals getting thrashed in Atlantic canada due to their unpopular reforms to Unemployment Insurance.

In 2000, there was some speculation at the start of the campaign that the Canadian Alliance would be a threat but then Stockwell day prooved to be a flop and by election day everyone knew it was going to be a Liberal landlside

[DL]

The comments about Scheer and Singh's results are classic Atlas.

Scheer: +25 seats, wins the popular vote. "He has to go"
Singh: -15 seats, worst share in 15 years. "Here's a list of reasons why he should stay"

Scheer and Singh were both unknowns in their first campaigns. Scheer’s personal popularity plummeted over the course of the campaign and he now has the highest net disapproval of any of the party leaders. His performance w as very weak in the campaign and Canadians just don’t like him. He reminds me failed Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak.

Singh in contrast saw his stock go way up during the campaign and he now has sky high net approval. He was dealt very bad cards but he played them well.

Also, there are lots of viable alternatives to Scheer as Tory leader. The NDP has no viable alternative to Singh.

[DL]

The comments about Scheer and Singh's results are classic Atlas.

Scheer: +25 seats, wins the popular vote. "He has to go"
Singh: -15 seats, worst share in 15 years. "Here's a list of reasons why he should stay"

Let's put this simply:

When you have a leader who clearly runs behind their party in popularity and is clearly a liability (i.e. Scheer) you replace that person.

When you have a leader who is more popular than their party and is clearly a net asset (i.e. Singh), you keep them. All the polls at the and of the campaign had more people thinking Singh would make the best PM than would vote NDP. End of story.

[DL]

Yes, I think the question of whether Singh is a long-term success is ultimately probably at least as much about whether he can fix its finances as it is about how he navigates a hung parliament.

Wouldn't it be best for Singh to form an official coalition government with Trudeau? I know this is not as common as in countries like Germany or Italy, but the UK also had a coalition government from 2010 to 2015. I think the Liberal Party and NDP could get some stuff done.

Why would either party even want a coalition?

Singh getting a coalition agreement gives  him something concrete to point to when the NDP gets money and people start whispering that he has to go. Trudeau though has enough seats that his minority can last without an agreement, his total would need to be at least 10 seats lower to make it a possibility.

1. Singh's job is 100% safe. The next NDP convention is a year form now and i would guess that he would get about a 90% confidence vote from delegates. There is literally no one in the party organizing against him. he is now very popular with the members.

2. Coalition is a non-starter - it would be a step towards a merger of the NDP and Liberals into one party with the NDP being totally swallowed up. There is no interest in that and there is no tradition of it in Canada.

[DL]

I think proximity to Manitoba must explain it partially. The riding is on Central Time, and I'd imagine is in the Winnipeg media market.

The other unspoken issue is race. The NDP almost won Kenora in 2015 running former Ontario leader Howard Hampton. But this time the NDP ran First Nation chief Turtle - and while he likely did very well on a lot of FN reserves - there is a large chunk of WWC voters in northern Ontario who will vote for white NDP candidate but will go Tory if the NDP nominates an "Injun" (sic.)