August 2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election

[Former President tack50]

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%?

[Don Vito Corleone]

So, is that the end of Peter MacKay's political career? Certainly, I don't think anyone expects him to ever become leader, but is his entire career done now? An interesting thought to consider would be MacKay running in Central Nova as he said he would in the next election and then losing (which I don't think would be that unlikely, the Liberals won it by a good margin in 2019 and their Atlantic Support is holding up according to polling), which would definitely be the end of his career in politics, and a very sorry end at that.

[LabourJersey]

Another weird thing to consider: O'Toole is a year and a month *younger* than Justin, though he looks much older.  (And one can definitely see the Cons spinning that to their anti-Justin/anti-Peter Pan advantage)

Hair (and lack thereof) matters.

Trudeau also just has a more boy-ish face, I suppose.

[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)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

MacKay really is the most incredibly dismal politician isn't he.

[CumbrianLefty]

MacKay really is the most incredibly dismal politician isn't he.

He assumed the succession was his by right and fought the most complacent campaign imaginable, I am hearing? Can't think of any other recent examples where that approach has gone wrong, at all

[adma]

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)

[Hatman 🍁]

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.

[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?

[Hatman 🍁]

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?

I made a quick one last night on Twitter, but there were a few errors. I made this one for Wikipedia, but there's an editor who's arguing with me because they arbitrarily chose brown and purple for O'Toole and MacKay, and I am not using those colours.

[adma]

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.

But again: it's more distinct with Indo-Canadians--notice the deep shades of MacKay red in Brampton and in Surrey.

[Hatman 🍁]

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.

But again: it's more distinct with Indo-Canadians--notice the deep shades of MacKay red in Brampton and in Surrey.

Yeah, I know. My point was the Chinese vote wasn't as distinct as the Indo-Canadian vote.  Did no one bother to do any outreach with them? Last time they backed SoCon candidates, this time, not as much.

[brucejoel99]

So, is that the end of Peter MacKay's political career? Certainly, I don't think anyone expects him to ever become leader, but is his entire career done now? An interesting thought to consider would be MacKay running in Central Nova as he said he would in the next election and then losing (which I don't think would be that unlikely, the Liberals won it by a good margin in 2019 and their Atlantic Support is holding up according to polling), which would definitely be the end of his career in politics, and a very sorry end at that.

I don't see MacKay still running for a seat in the next election, no. Central Nova has a popular Liberal incumbent in Sean Fraser, & I can't see an O'Toole-led CPC gaining traction in the Maritimes: the Liberals lost the overall popular vote in 2019 by 1.1% & they still managed to win Central Nova by 17%, so MacKay would struggle to overcome that Liberal strength, especially since the Liberals are now more popular today than they were in 2019. Besides, he's had a cushy private sector job for 5 years now anyway.

[harpercanuck]

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.

I disagree. Alberta Saskatchewan yes. However you're forgetting the crown jewel of the west in BC. Many ridings are close here and the fact that tories unlike toronto can win suburban vancouver ridings some of them narrowly, a western separatist party plus ppc is really really dangerous for the party.

[adma]

There's also the "where would Leslyn Lewis run?" question--and for all the hoopla over her, there's no guarantee that *she'd* have sufficient Liberal-giant-killing star power, either.  (Though in a weird way, I have this notion of her running in Etobicoke North on Doug Ford's coattails.  I'm not saying it'd be a *winning* sort of big; more a reflection of where the Conservative mindset is at)

[EastAnglianLefty]

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.

I disagree. Alberta Saskatchewan yes. However you're forgetting the crown jewel of the west in BC. Many ridings are close here and the fact that tories unlike toronto can win suburban vancouver ridings some of them narrowly, a western separatist party plus ppc is really really dangerous for the party.

Yes, but does suburban Vancouver have any interest in western separatism? The local economy doesn't have very much in common with Calgary's.

[brucejoel99]

There's also the "where would Leslyn Lewis run?" question--and for all the hoopla over her, there's no guarantee that *she'd* have sufficient Liberal-giant-killing star power, either.  (Though in a weird way, I have this notion of her running in Etobicoke North on Doug Ford's coattails.  I'm not saying it'd be a *winning* sort of big; more a reflection of where the Conservative mindset is at)

Presumably, O'Toole would just parachute her into a safe riding. Which one, who knows?

[King of Kensington]

My guess is MacKay doesn't run - but who knows?

Atlantic Canada is certainly a Liberal fortress, but O'Toole's "Anglo-Eastern-ness" and appeals to Eastern cultural conservatism plays better than Saskatchewanian Scheer could play better there.  Presenting himself as a friend of the working man, defender of traditional cultural symbols such as Sir John A. Macdonald, his military background etc.

In some ways O'Toole comes across as a "Diefenbaker Tory" in 2020 form.  

[Hatman 🍁]

Here's the first round:



What do Rainy River, Kitchener Centre and Bourassa have in common? Beats me!

[King of Kensington]

Harper was very capable of straddling the east/west divide, and O'Toole seems quite capable of this as well.

In 2008, Harper was able to get to near-majority territory winning New Brunswick, non-GTA Southern Ontario and BC.  But it's more difficult to recreate that coalition today.  The Lower Mainland of BC and Ottawa for example are voting a lot more like the GTA now. 

Quebec was always weak under Harper - but today the Liberals are much stronger there.

Furthermore, the millennial generation is a big voting bloc now and the Liberals really have strong support among the university-educated and in ethnocultural communities.

[Bernie Derangement Syndrome Haver]

So what happened in Quebec? Why did O'Toole do so good there? Most analysis before last night predicted MacKay would be stronger there.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What do Rainy River, Kitchener Centre and Bourassa have in common? Beats me!

Genuinely nothing. I'm oddly charmed.

[brucejoel99]

So what happened in Quebec? Why did O'Toole do so good there? Most analysis before last night predicted MacKay would be stronger there.

That's because everybody forgets that CPC members in Quebec are so different from (& so few compared to) the average Quebecois voter that they're not at all representative of what Quebec would really want.

For instance, O'Toole won the Laurier-Sainte-Marie riding last night. It's a Quebec Solidaire stronghold, so at 1st glance, this would seem quite baffling. But when you check how many CPC members there are in Laurier-Sainte-Marie, it starts to make sense: 41(!), & I'd venture a lot of them might be uprooted English Canadians. In 2019, the CPC candidate in that riding came 5th with only 2.82% of the vote. And that ain't a one off. The CPC was also 5th in the riding in 2008, 2006, & 2004, despite that being back when the NDP had next-to-no presence in Quebec & the Greens weren't even a party with an MP yet. In 2000, the PCs placed 6th because the Marijuana Party came 4th. The last time a conservative party did better than 4th was 1997, when the PCs came 3rd.

Basically, everybody forgot that appealing to people in Quebec ≠ appealing to CPC members in Quebec.

[Continential]

Why did Sloan overperform?