August 2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

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.

Keep in mind though that the CPC leadership race weighs each riding equally. The thousands of CPC members in a rural Alberta riding will have the same say as the hundreds (if that) in Toronto-Danforth. This effectively means that ridings with a lower Conservative presence have a built-in advantage, generally advantaging more moderate candidates. Not to mention MacKay has a home field advantage in Atlantic Canada, which has relatively few CPC members, and the ridings usually have a smaller population. Meaning MacKay's votes will be especially efficient.

MacKay's lack of French is really his big weakness, because Quebec ridings are a goldmine for CPC candidates. Most Quebec ridings have very few CPC members, so their vote is ultra-efficient. O'Toole speaks "English politician" French, true, but MacKay's French is...yikes. Quebecers take their language seriously, Harper had to learn that the hard way. The fact that MacKay didn't bother to learn better French after 17 years in federal politics doesn't reflect well on him.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

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)

I think she would be daft to run in Etobicoke North. Yes it's Ford country, but it's also a riding that the Liberals won by over 10 points in their 2011 collapse, and by 39.2pts last year. Not to mention, Doug Ford has said he won't even campaign for the CPC in the next election, so that will hurt anyone trying to ride his coattails.

Bruce Stanton (Simcoe North) and Diane Finley (Haldimand-Norfolk) will not be running for the next election. Both are solid Conservative ridings, and interestingly Haldimand-Norfolk was one of the few seats east of Saskatchewan that voted for her on the first ballot. The only problem is she lives in Markham, which is 1.5 hours away from Simcoe North and 3 hours away from Haldimand-Norfolk. Or she could uproot her family and move to one of those areas, but it's not clear that she actually wants to do that.

I think what's most likely is that she runs somewhere in Markham or elsewhere in the York Region. Markham-Stouffville is the only winnable Markham riding with a Liberal incumbent, so she might try there. If she wants a safer option near home, she could try Richmond Hill.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Though it's hard to think of the kind of "safe riding" where she'd be a good fit.  (Oshawa?)

If O'Toole wants to parachute her into a GTA riding, the dirty Shwa' isn't the best option. The NDP regularly comes close there, and the Liberals usually aren't too far behind. Colin Carrie knows how to win Oshawa because he's done it six times now, it would be a new riding for Lewis and could cause an upset.

If we're talking safe GTA seats, why not Thornhill? It's closer to where she lives, it's a safe seat, and the incumbent Peter Kent is now 77.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I think she would be daft to run in Etobicoke North. Yes it's Ford country, but it's also a riding that the Liberals won by over 10 points in their 2011 collapse, and by 39.2pts last year. Not to mention, Doug Ford has said he won't even campaign for the CPC in the next election, so that will hurt anyone trying to ride his coattails.

Bruce Stanton (Simcoe North) and Diane Finley (Haldimand-Norfolk) will not be running for the next election. Both are solid Conservative ridings, and interestingly Haldimand-Norfolk was one of the few seats east of Saskatchewan that voted for her on the first ballot. The only problem is she lives in Markham, which is 1.5 hours away from Simcoe North and 3 hours away from Haldimand-Norfolk. Or she could uproot her family and move to one of those areas, but it's not clear that she actually wants to do that.

I think what's most likely is that she runs somewhere in Markham or elsewhere in the York Region. Markham-Stouffville is the only winnable Markham riding with a Liberal incumbent, so she might try there. If she wants a safer option near home, she could try Richmond Hill.

She ran in Scarborough-Rouge Park in 2015 - the riding that had the highest Liberal vote share in the last federal election.

She was parachuted into Scarborough-Rouge Park after the previous candidate was kicked off the ticket for being caught on camera peeing in a homeowner's coffee mug.

But yeah there's no way she's running there again. She didn't run in Scarborough Rouge Park hoping to win, she was just a CPC activist that Harper threw onto the ticket because he needed someone to run there.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Given that Eglinton-Lawrence and York Centre seem to be secure for the Liberals, I wonder if they'll make a serious play for Thornhill? 

I think it's possible, especially if Kent goes. But Thornhill is a better riding for the Tories.

Eglinton-Lawrence and York Centre are a bit more mixed. The Bathurst corridor is heavily Jewish and well-off, but once you get west of Allen Rd you hit lower income communities, predominantly Italian, Filipino, and Black. Thornhill is more broadly higher income and whiter, making it less of a natural LPC seat. Not just that, but Thornhill has also been strongly CPC on a provincial level, where the Israel issue has no relevance. But we shall see.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I realize Peter Kent isn't Jewish, but I reckon the Tories would rather find a Jewish candidate to replace him there.

True, a Jewish candidate gives you an instant advantage in the Yonge-Bathurst corridor. But it's a strong enough CPC riding that Lewis could still keep it. Certainly more likely to win there than elsewhere in York Region.

The problem for a black/Caribbean tory like Lewis is that there's no real right-leaning riding with a significant Caribbean population. I'm sure she could get a demographic bump in the likes of Scarb-Rouge and York South Weston, but those places are titanium LPC short of a landslide like 2018 provincial. Her (and my) native York Region has significant pockets of Chinese-Canadians (Richmond Hill and west Markham), South Asians (east Markham and increasingly Vaughan), Jews and Persians (Thornhill, Richmond Hill), Italians (Woodbridge), and WASPs (Aurora-Newmarket). No real Caribbean/Jamaica/general black bloc, however.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberals were a distant third among Blacks in the 2018 provincial election. They make up a big part of the Fordnation constituency, and the NDP may have done well as well among Blacks (they certainly elected a lot of Black MPPs, enough to form their own caucus!)

The Liberals were a distant third among most demographic groups, to be fair. 2018 Ontario isn't really a good benchmark because it was a PC-NDP race, which is a rarity in both Ontario and federal politics. In a Liberal-CPC dynamic, black voters are overwhelmingly with the Liberals. If I had to pick one racial group that the Liberals won by the biggest margin in 2019, in Ontario or otherwise, it would be black Canadians.

It is a bit difficult to extrapolate the black vote based on election results though, simply because they don't really make up a significant voting bloc in most parts of Ontario. The few black enclaves that do exist are in electoral districts where larger ethnic groups outnumber them (Italians+Portuguese in YSW, Indians in Brampton, Scarborough, and Ajax, white Anglos and Arabs in Ottawa South, and white Francos in Ottawa Vanier). The only Ontario riding where they are the largest ethnic group is HR-BC, and even there, black voters are only a quarter of the population.

Based on the poll-by-poll results in the 2018 ON election, black voters probably voted NDP by a notable margin, with the PCs second and Liberals in third. But I also think it depends on where you look. In Ottawa, for example, I wouldn't be surprised if black voters backed the Liberals ahead of the NDP with PCs in a distant third.