Canadian by-elections 2021-2022

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I suspect the UCP will easily win the byelection in Fort-MacMurray because if there is one place in Alberta where the NDP can never wins its Fort Mac and secondly the UCP candidate is Brian jean who is openly running as an anti-Kenney candidate pledging to dump him as leader and to run for the leadership himself - so if you live in that riding by voting UCP in the byelection you get the best of both worlds - you get to register dissent against Kenney AND you can also reject the NDP.

Fort McMurray is very conservative and NDP dead there.  NDP support only somewhat decent in 2015 in riding although still lost as large First Nations' population.  Although my understanding is a lot of First Nations work in energy sector so probably don't vote NDP in same numbers they do in other parts of country.

Of course, that is if there is one *large urban place* in Alberta where the NDP can never win.  And even that's something I'd qualify--that is, they *could* have won in Fort Mac in '15 were it not for Brian Jean...

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I sorta agree with Josée Legault that M-V won't be that important for the PQ. Either they're comatose like Joe Clark's PCs or die completely like the UN, and I don't think another leader would do much better than PSPP.

Its interesting to look at formerly powerful parties in Canada that have died. The classic example is the Union Nationale which went from being the government of Quebec in 1970 to losing all seats in 1973 and after a dead cat bounce in 1976 - basically ceased to exist.

Other major parties that have died would include:

Alberta Social Credit (Government 1936 to 1971, sputtered with a handful of seats in the 70s and then vanished)
BC Social Credit (Government 1952-72 and again 1975-1991 - then got annhilated and subsumed into the current BC Liberal Party)
The provincial Liberal parties in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba were all going concerns as recently as the 1990s and 00s - and are all now basically dead.

The Manitoba Liberals aren't quite dead, they still have seats at least.

Manitoba's a curious off-and-on case--the Libs *were* basically dead there (i.e. seatless) going into the 80s, but then made a stomping comeback under Sharon Carstairs in '88, and henceforth faded yet always w/a River Heights toehold as a "just in case" electoral reserve fund.  So they're "alive enough", under the circumstance--more like the BC Libs during the Wacky Bennett years than during the Bill Bennett years...

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Yeah. I think the WIP result here was pretty neutral to be honest. It confirms what polls have been showing in terms of them being the best-positioned hard-right alternative to the UCP by far, but at the same time it also indicates that they still have their work cut out for them if they want to be able to win seats. There's also the very relevant Brian Jean factor to consider in this race - I would have been very curious to see how the WIP (and NDP for that matter) would have performed in a rural by-election almost anywhere else in the province.

Plus, there's surely some kind of serial-parachute-candidate jadedness w/regard to Paul Hinman--if it were a high-profile *local* WIP candidate elsewhere in the province, things might be different...

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I don't think it's *that* shocking--the MB Libs have always been the most UK Lib Dem-like of the provincial Liberal parties in their stealth capacity to concentrate their energies upon certain strategic byelections.

And again, it's less about the wealth than about the cultural demographics of said wealth--there's a big gulf btw/the McMansions'n'monsters type of suburbanizing wealth (or even old-money Rosedale/Forest Hill-style wealth), and that which has been Jane-Jacobs-gentrified into being within the inner city, where it's a matter of buying into values that can run the gamut from Limousine Liberalism to Champagne Socialism, according to the climate...

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I'm ready for the 100-seat CAQ majority that will be won with about 40% of the vote.

The biggest win in Quebec by seats (at last in 'modern' times) was the Quebec Liberals in 1973 under Robert Bourassa winnning 102 of the then 110 seats.  The Liberals lost the subsequent election in 1976.

The most seats a Canadian federal political party has ever won was 211 for the PCs in 1984 (though it's not the greatest fraction of seats a Canadian party has ever won, but whatever); two elections later they were annihilated.

(This pattern is widespread in Canadian politics at every level. The greatest BC Socred win, in terms of seats, was the one right before they collapsed. Lots of Canadian political parties have collapsed in an 'all at once' manner. It's Canada.)

And in Ontario, the Peterson Libs going from 95 seats in '87--the highest seat total ever for an Ontario government--to being upset by Bob Rae's NDP in '90.

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A yawner, but BCLib leader Kevin Falcon won the Quilchena byelection (58.61%--NDP 24.48, Green 9.69 , Conservative 6.60, Libertarian .62)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-quilchena-byelection-1.6436958

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https://twitter.com/davidakin/status/1527096350449467392

The most Con-vulnerable Mississauga seat, FWIW (a 6-point gap in '21)

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For the record, it was the Liberals' third best seat in the provincial election. True to form, the results were barely any different from 2018. There was only a half a point average swing from the Liberals to the Tories, even with Sousa off the ballot.

Despite that, I think the inelasticity of the riding works in the Tories' favour in the context of a by-election.

And I presume "third best" means in Mississauga--but we're only talking about 6 seats, and 5 of them were within a 2-point range (from 35.5% to 37.5%)  So OLP performance in Lakeshore wasn't really exceptional relative to the bigger picture this time--almost *all* Mississauga ridings registered '18 Sousa-like shares (ironically, the one which *didn't* is the one which *once* would have been presumed Lib-friendliest: Mississauga-Malton, thanks to Malton).

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Saskatoon Meewasin--Nathaniel Teed holds Ryan Meili's seat for the NDP (and becomes Saskatchewan's first out MLA in the process)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskatchewan-byelection-politics-1.6596753

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NDP"s biggest problem in Saskatchewan is lack of rural support.  In most provinces you can win just by sweeping the cities, but in Saskatchewan that is not enough.  Only silver lining is Saskatoon and Regina fast growing while rural areas losing people so may mean NDP out of power for a few more terms but once those two cities have more than half the population, I think they can win again.  Off course need to sweep both which is not easy but can be done plus some in Prince Albert, Moose Jaw and two Northern ones.

Of course, it wasn't such a problem before there came to be so much monolithic urban/rural electoral sorting.  What might also help is expanding the scope of "available" urbanity (i.e. returning to the days of Swift Current or Yorkton or Battlefords targetability)--and, of course, echoing Alberta in '15, a re-fragmentation on the right..

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Elected in a byelection, and resigns causing a byelection.

As was his predecessor, come to think of it.  (What other recent cases?  I can think of 2 2006 Liberal leadership contenders:  Bob Rae & Stephane Dion)

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Meanwhile, no by-election in Scarborough North...

One bit of food for thought there, though:  if we're to subtract the councillor total from the mayoral total to guesstimate how many "dead" Lai ballots there were, the differential still falls short of the Jamaal Myers vote.  So Myers still has a *bit* of gird of "legitimacy"...

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There were signs at the polling stations saying that voters should not cast a vote for Cynthia Lai, and if they did their votes wouldn't be counted.  So that simple math doesn't quite tell the whole picture.

True, I'm not claiming that it does.  But I still think that a fair number of wouldbe status-quo e-day Lai voters voted for Jamaal as the most viable option remaining, even if his politics went the other way.

And the ward lucked out by having that kind of viable alternative, which even the Star endorsed prior to Lai's passing.  So even if that simple math is deceptive, the fact that he got more votes than the mostly-advance apparent Lai null at least dampers the asterisk about him somewhat.  (If it were Josh Matlow who died, *then* there'd be a nothing-but-mice-remaining problem.  And that similar nothing-but-mice factor kept the sex-scandal-tarred Michael Thompson in there--had someone of Jamaal Myers' calibre run against *him*, he/she might have won.  Though it helps that Scarborough Centre is more naturally "Jamaal-compatible" than Scarborough North)

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Progressives have won Scarborough North before. Remember Rathika Sitsabaiesan?

The boundaries were different when she won in 2011. It was Scarborough Rouge River and if we t further east. It was less Chinese and more Tamil than the current Scarborough North

And it's that "further east" part that made the difference for Rathika (and similarly, forms Jamaal's likely base--a councillor reflecting the Malvern end rather than the Milliken end, for a change)

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Well, Mississauga-Lakeshore is not prone to *wild* wild swings; however, because this is the inner 905, "inelastic" is relative.

But what it has is Mississauga's primary "no matter what" Conservative nodes; that is, the affluent areas along the Credit Valley N of Port Credit to Dundas, and W via Lorne Park to Clarkson.  But as such, they've also been very "Paul Martin Liberal" compatible, and that lean t/w "business Liberalism" also enabled Charles Sousa to outperform the provincial party in the '18 disaster.  So with that particular thumb on the scale, it's the most Don Valley West-ish of Mississauga's ridings, or at least contains the most Don Valley West-ish parts--in the rest of the city (as well as Brampton), such parts are comparably minimal or ultra-incremental.

What remains--old Port Credit & Lakeview in the E + the fringe on the N side of the QEW, the Sheridan/Park Royal/outer Clarkson zones to the W--is humbler; it includes blue-collarish parts which might be deemed "Liberal/Ford Nation crossover", some nodes of true nuclear ethno-Liberal (notably the apartment towers NE of the QEW & EMP, which in UK terms would be like a council-housing Labour node in a Tory constituency), and a reasonable hint of wouldbe 416-spillover starter-millennial gentrification.  Keep in mind that this is the Mississauga riding whose "feel" is most that of "Toronto Township" (which is what Mississauga was before 1968).

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And wouldn't you know it, but they got themselves the perfectest Liberal candidate for the riding...

https://globalnews.ca/news/9255533/mississauga-lakeshore-byelection-charles-sousa/

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The good news for the Liberals is that their candidate was the member of provincial parliament for the riding from 2007-2018.

The bad news for the Liberals is that he was Kathleen Wynne's Finance Minister.

In fact, it could be said that Charles Sousa made Kathleen Wynne Premier of Ontario.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/five-reasons-why-sousa-supported-wynne/article7895047/

Yet the good news for the Libs in *this* particular riding is that even in defeat, Sousa was far more popular than his party in '18.  (Not unlike Yvan Baker in nearby Etobicoke Centre, who dead-cat-bounced his way to Ottawa in '19).

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Wouldn't be surprised if the Alberta Party also got a fair bit of "anti-Danielle" vote.

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There is a record of 40 candidates running in the Mississauga-Lakeshore by-election.

Elections Canada says:
Forty candidates have been confirmed for the by-election currently under way in Mississauga–Lakeshore (Ontario). This is the largest number of candidates to run in any single electoral district in a federal election or by-election administered by Elections Canada.
As a result of the higher-than-usual number of candidates, Elections Canada has adapted the traditional ballot by using a two-column design. The changes maintain the ballot's standard integrity features and large font size.

The list of candidates can be found here:
https://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/candidates?L=e&ED=35061&EV=54&EV_TYPE=3&PROV=ON&PROVID=35&QID=-1&PAGEID=17

John Turmel is running. There are a great number of independent candidates with the same official agent including the leader of the rhinoceros party. They are protesting Trudeau's giving up on his promise of electoral reform.
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/national/2022-11-25/election-partielle-en-ontario/nombre-record-de-40-candidats.php 

Okay, so this is a repeat of their 2021 "St Boniface-St Vital" strategy.  (And frankly, I find it's silly.)

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Wonder if we'll get a candidate who wins 0 votes? Also, this could result in Turmel's lowest PV share, maybe ever? (This coming off his Brantford mayoral run, where he had his best result in 25 years and 60 elections)

Of the St Boniface flock in '21, the lowest vote getter got 7 votes.  (I think there's been *someone* with a lower tally in some relatively recent election--1993 seems a banner year for fringe-party no-hopers)

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And it'll be interesting to see how the vote distribution goes among the rogue independents, given that it's a byelection and that there's almost twice as many candidates as in StBStV in '21.  (And among *those* rogue candidates, the Rhino was the flagship w/80 votes, the first alphabetically on the ballot was next w/58 votes, and everyone else got 31 votes or less.  We might see a record for candidates with single-digit vote numbers; who knows--there was only one, a 7-voter, in StBStV.)

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The reason I supported Poilievre over Charest was because I believed (and still do) that a Charest leadership would have atrophied the base to the point of any potential swings not really making a difference. Poilievre's risk was that he wouldn't be able to swing votes, but we were confident that he would at least maximize the number of right-leaning people who come out to vote CPC. But if he can't even do that (largely because he can't be bothered to campaign apparently), then what's the damn point?

Maybe because the "right-leaning people" most energized by Poilievre (at least, those inclined to support him in the leadership race) are still too far right for Mississauga-Lakeshore?  That is, we may inadvertently be coming back to the square one represented by the glass ceiling for the Canadian Alliance or 2004 Harper.  And the Lorne Park uppercrust isn't the sort to be enthused by a leader tarred by Freedom Convoy apologist associations.

That is, it's the old Trump bugaboo: "energizing the base" means nothing when you alienate too much of everyone else.

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How much "base" is there in Mississauga Lakeshore of all places?

This is a place where the PCs have always done unusually well provincially, isn't it? It was PC even when they were in third place in the legislature. I'd imagine that demographic change has affected things, but Mississauga—Lakeshore has a PC MPP right now so there should be an obvious right-wing base

However, that PC-in-third-place provincial circumstance was back in '87/90, when it was really a different and more genteel party than in the present.  That was before the federal PCs were hollowed out and ultimately displaced by the forces of Reform/Alliance, and before the provincial Robarts/Davis legacy made way for Harris/Ford coarseness--and the backlash to all of that led it to fall to the McGuinty Liberal wave in '03 despite withstanding '87/90.

And sure, Miss-LS has a PC MPP now; but so does everything else in Peel Region, and all the Mississauga seats had the PCs within 5 points of each other in the last election, so it's not like the advantage is any more special than in the rest, other than perhaps the Cons having a higher *floor* here than in the rest.  Indeed, the truer where-that-'87-PC-gentility-vote-went-to barometer is in how the Wynne Liberals (under Sousa) overperformed in defeat in Miss-LS in '18...

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The CPC appears to be looking at another election loss while still winning the national popular vote if this continues (although the PPC might change that, though Pierre appeals to them more than O'Toole) .

Yet the PPC share collapsed, too, to about 1/3 of what it was in '21.  So maybe Pierre *already* appealed to them...only to, once again, alienate a whole lot of others in the process.

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How much "base" is there in Mississauga Lakeshore of all places?

I believe the demographics here make this the most "Conservative" of all the Mississauga ridings - so this is precisely where they need to do well.  Is there a road to victory for Poilievre without any Peel wins (other than Dufferin-Caledon)?  York (and Durham) seem like they may be easier targets for Poilievre.

Harper won in '06 while being blanked S of the Brampton/Caledon border.  (And the HarperCons picked up but one such seat in '08--interestingly, *not* Lakeshore.)