2022 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election

[Хahar 🤔]

Probably just bloviation, but this idea of Charest accomplishing the mythical feat of uniting Red Tories and Blue Grits has me excited. I've always been more PC than C anyway, and seeing that return could either go surprisingly well, or condemn us to 20 years of Generalissimo Freeland, but I'm willing to roll the dice.

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/analyse/2022-02-14/parti-conservateur-du-canada/un-realignement-politique-en-branle.php

It doesn't seem like there's much meat on the bone with this article, but this line stood out:

Pour contrer une victoire de Pierre Poilievre, des députés conservateurs du Québec courtisent avec ardeur l’ancien premier ministre du Québec Jean Charest.

I had imagined that the electoral appeal of Poilievre was that he's an Albertan with a French name. If he's an absolute non-starter in Quebec (which may or may not be true, but Quebec MPs clearly don't think that he'll help them keep their jobs), then it becomes a lot harder to envision a path to victory at a general election.

[Хahar 🤔]

I would like leadership candidates to talk about their general election strategy and plans to add to the Conservative vote pool. Which is at 33%-34% in the last two elections.

However, I really prefer when leadership candidates explain this in terms of demography and geography and really dislike it when they make their case by invoking a political spectrum or a time spectrum.

For example if Jean Charest said CPC currently has 10 seats in Quebec and I can get 20 seats in Quebec by appealing to so and so, I am willing to hear me about. But if Jean Charest said I will win additional seats because I am moderate, or I will appeal to moderates, I am ignoring him.

Another example is John Tory saying I won the Toronto mayoral race so I can win additional seats in the GTA. Or if Doug Ford said I won seats in the GTA provincially so I can win GTA seats federally. These are just hypotheticals on my part but I hope I am communicating my point.

Whenever people say moderates, modernize, or the center, I am very unimpressed. I also find it irritating.

The problem is that the Canadian electorate is so volatile that this sort of analysis is not particularly meaningful. It's very difficult to identify any meaningful trends in Canada. When Trudeau was running for the Liberal leadership, what was his pitch in these terms? You can say that he appealed to urban and suburban voters, but you can't really get more granular than that, because whatever trends seemed to have been happening in 2006 and 2008 and 2011 were erased in 2015.

[Хahar 🤔]

A Léger poll  that is not great news for Charest if he wants to play the electabilty, winnability card.

With Charest as leader, voting intentions are:
LPC 33
CPC 28
NDP 20
BQ 8
PPC 7
Green 3

With Poilievre:

LPC 34
CPC 30
NDP 21
BQ 8
PPC 3
Green 3

With Charest PPC is up and CPC lower. It will be interesting to see regional numbers when the details are published.

People's Party votes are largely in safe Conservative ridings with minimal effect on the actual result, so if those results are accurate than a Conservative Party led by Charest would need a significantly smaller share of the vote to win than a Conservative Party led by Poilievre. Of course, that's a pretty nuanced argument and a difficult one to make.

[Хahar 🤔]

I went to Leslyn Lewis's speech in Halifax tonight. She got a better turnout than I expected (and much better than Charest did when he came here). Was quite impressed.

Not at all related to her politics, but she's also much taller than I expected

It's pretty impressive that she's a rookie MP and was a complete nobody until about two years ago, and has now basically asserted herself as the de facto leader of the CPC's so-con wing.

As a counterargument, she was the standard-bearer of that wing of the CPC when she ran in the last leadership election, at which point she was not an MP. Her being a first-term MP seems irrelevant here; her prominence has nothing to do with her parliamentary standing.

[Хahar 🤔]

The debate has been a sh**tshow with the moderator making me feel bad with Poilievre and I think Baber was the winner.

Oh, did they bring back Shachi Kurl?

[Хahar 🤔]

Interesting article. I don't think that a party led by Poilievre would do particularly well in Quebec, but I have a hard time understanding why Quebec Conservative MPs hate him so much when he seems like a standard Conservative. Did they think that they were joining a different party?