🇨🇦 2024 Canadian by-elections

[Hatman 🍁]

The NDP should win the Halifax by-election, but I was hoping the seat would stay vacant until the federal election, as it will get much more winnable for the NDP then thanks to redistribution.

In other news, someone I follow on Twitter posted this gem from our very own adma from back in 1999 regarding the last time the Tories had a chance in St. Paul's (provincially, though):

[DL]

The NDP should win the Halifax by-election, but I was hoping the seat would stay vacant until the federal election, as it will get much more winnable for the NDP then thanks to redistribution.

"Much more winnable"? I thought redistribution only netted the NDP a couple of hundred votes?

[Hatman 🍁]

The NDP should win the Halifax by-election, but I was hoping the seat would stay vacant until the federal election, as it will get much more winnable for the NDP then thanks to redistribution.

"Much more winnable"? I thought redistribution only netted the NDP a couple of hundred votes?

The riding gets smaller, so all parties lose votes. I thought it shifted things more than it did, but the riding gets 0.6% better for the NDP and 0.5% worse for the Liberals. It's a marginal change, but the riding was super close last time. The boundary change made the riding go L+3 to L+2.

[adma]

The NDP should win the Halifax by-election, but I was hoping the seat would stay vacant until the federal election, as it will get much more winnable for the NDP then thanks to redistribution.

In other news, someone I follow on Twitter posted this gem from our very own adma from back in 1999 regarding the last time the Tories had a chance in St. Paul's (provincially, though):

And technically, I wasn't off-base, even if it was a somewhat over 10-point gap for the Libs.

Incidentally, while I'm cautious about "winning sign race" claims, present CPC sign coverage is *much* more thorough than provincial PC sign coverage was in '22.

[King of Kensington]

Population by neighborhood (excluding CTs entirely outside of St. Paul's boundaries):

Mount Pleasant West (Davisville)  32,115
Yonge-St. Clair  13,175
Casa Loma  11,370
Forest Hill South  11,060
Humewood-Cedarvale  13,970
Wychwood  13,820
Oakwood  16,075

[DL]

The NDP is winning the Manitoba provincial byelection in Tuxedo! That was considered the safest Tory seat in Winnipeg!

[Oryxslayer]

The NDP is winning the Manitoba provincial byelection in Tuxedo! That was considered the safest Tory seat in Winnipeg!

Western Canadian provincial political coalitions continue to look more and more like certain American states.

[DL]

Stunning upset as the NDP wins Tuxedo!

https://results.electionsmanitoba.ca/?culture=en-EN

Evidently the so-called Poilievre effect did nothing to help the Tories in Tuxedo

[Hatman 🍁]

The Tory vote actually increased in Tuxedo, but it was the massive swing from the Liberals that propelled the NDP to victory:

NDP: 49.4% (+12.0)
PC: 41.6% (+1.4)
Lib: 7.4% (-14.8)
Grn: 1.5% (new)

NDP GAIN from PC (swing: 5.3%)

Turnout: 45.6% (-14.2)

The NDP is winning the Manitoba provincial byelection in Tuxedo! That was considered the safest Tory seat in Winnipeg!

Not since 1999 (when Gary Filmon was its MLA). Since then it has been Charleswood (now Roblin) and Fort Whyte.

And still, the NDP came within 9 points of winning Roblin in 2023. Fort Whyte has a different dynamic due to having a strong Liberal candidate in 2023, and the NDP finished third.

[DL]

This is further evidence of the "Edmontonization" of Winnipeg. The Alberta NDP won every single seat in Edmonton in 2015, all but 1 in 2019 and won every seat in 2023 - including the wealthiest seats that used to be PC strongholds. Now the Manitoba NDP has all but 2 seats in Winnipeg - and who knows if the PCs can even retain their last 2 seats in that part gets taken over by some populist extreme social conservative from the rural areas?

[lilTommy]

This is further evidence of the "Edmontonization" of Winnipeg. The Alberta NDP won every single seat in Edmonton in 2015, all but 1 in 2019 and won every seat in 2023 - including the wealthiest seats that used to be PC strongholds. Now the Manitoba NDP has all but 2 seats in Winnipeg - and who knows if the PCs can even retain their last 2 seats in that part gets taken over by some populist extreme social conservative from the rural areas?

This will also be likely the case in SASK when they go to the polls this year, and was the case last time the NDP was the gov't about 20years ago.

Even in BC we are seeing Vancouver's slow drift to full NDP, only two seats are not held by the NDP and one of those was so close (within a thousand votes more or less) But with the BCCs and BCU eating the same voter pool, the NDP is likely going to pick up that one next time if not potentially both

[lilTommy]

The NDP is winning the Manitoba provincial byelection in Tuxedo! That was considered the safest Tory seat in Winnipeg!

Western Canadian provincial political coalitions continue to look more and more like certain American states.

The death of any provincial Liberal party does that; The NDP also has much deeper routes in the West while the "Liberal" brand is not viewed positively (not just b/c of the Trudeau federal effect), but historically so.

[Hatman 🍁]

The great news for the Manitoba NDP is that Winnipeg is more than half the seats in the province. Unfortunately for the SK NDP, Regina+Saskatoon is not enough.

[King of Kensington]

The NDP is winning the Manitoba provincial byelection in Tuxedo! That was considered the safest Tory seat in Winnipeg!

Western Canadian provincial political coalitions continue to look more and more like certain American states.

The death of any provincial Liberal party does that; The NDP also has much deeper routes in the West while the "Liberal" brand is not viewed positively (not just b/c of the Trudeau federal effect), but historically so.

At this point, there really isn't much of a "too educated to vote Social Credit/Conservative, too bourgeois to vote NDP" demographic.  The NDP in the West functions as a small-"l" liberal party.

[King of Kensington]

Meanwhile in Ontario, the NDP has been unable to knock out the Liberals in spite of winning official opposition two elections in a row. 

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

The NDP should win the Halifax by-election, but I was hoping the seat would stay vacant until the federal election, as it will get much more winnable for the NDP then thanks to redistribution.

It should be a very solid NDP target regardless of redistribution. They only lost it by 3 points in 2021. With the Liberal vote sinking like a rock out east (well everywhere, but especially out east), and Tories being a non-factor here, I'd say this is a seat the NDP needs to win, both under the current map and the future one.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Meanwhile in Ontario, the NDP has been unable to knock out the Liberals in spite of winning official opposition two elections in a row. 

I wonder if letting Marit Stiles run uncontested was a mistake. Leadership races are a great way to raise your party's profile and fill up the coffers, even if it's very obvious who's going to win. Like for the CPC, Poilievre may as well have run uncontested because he was the clear favourite from start to finish, but the race allowed the CPC to fundraise like crazy and drown out the Liberals with money. AB NDP is doing the same, nobody doubts that Nenshi's going to win but the fact that there's a race at all is probably beneficial for them.

[DL]

First of all no one “let” Marit Stiles win the leadership by acclamation. No one else wanted to run. What matters is whether the leader is any good. Sometimes highly competitive leadership contests are very divisive and lead to a very weak candidate winning. There have been other cases of provincial parties in Canada picking leaders by acclamation. Those leaders have won the subsequent election 100% of the time.

Do you think the BC NDP was harmed because John Horgan was acclaimed as leader in 2015?

[King of Kensington]

The Ontario NDP has sort of maxed out the "base" of inner cities/labor/Indigenous.  But it is weak in the GTA suburbs where elections are won.  The Liberals are the stronger party in exactly the areas where the NDP needs to win, so they can't credibly say "if you want to defeat the PCs, you have to vote NDP" in these ridings.

In 1990, the NDP winning map is something that can't be emulated today.  The NDP didn't do very well in the "905" belt.  The "905" didn't have the significance it did now (in fact the 905 area code didn't come into effect until the early 1990s - it was under Harris that the 905 became politically significant).
And it won all these rural areas often due to vote-splitting on the right.

[adma]

The Ontario NDP has sort of maxed out the "base" of inner cities/labor/Indigenous.  But it is weak in the GTA suburbs where elections are won.  The Liberals are the stronger party in exactly the areas where the NDP needs to win, so they can't credibly say "if you want to defeat the PCs, you have to vote NDP" in these ridings.

In 1990, the NDP winning map is something that can't be emulated today.  The NDP didn't do very well in the "905" belt.  The "905" didn't have the significance it did now (in fact the 905 area code didn't come into effect until the early 1990s - it was under Harris that the 905 became politically significant).
And it won all these rural areas often due to vote-splitting on the right.

Though there were hints of 905 or outer-416 breakthroughs (or re-breakthroughs) in the '10's--the Jagmeet-bandwagon NDP blip in Brampton, especially, and a lot of strong 2nds or just-plain 2nds in Durham, Mississauga, etc by '18--but those were virtually all fumbled by '22.  (What doesn't help is that the OLP's had 2 consecutive 905-belt leaders; and Del Duca was tokenly good for *something* in '22, even if that "something" was no more than "who's the nominal-electoral-opposition boss here".  By comparison, Wynne was an "inner Toronto elite" politician, and stigmatized for the fact)

[King of Kensington]

Yes the pieces were coming together - but then fell apart in 2022.

Always interesting to ponder how Jagmeet would have done as ONDP leader in 2018.  

[King of Kensington]

St. Paul's can perhaps be divided into 4 main "zones":  progressive Hillcrest-Humewood, heavily Jewish Forest Hill-Cedarvale, establishmentarian Deer Park-Casa Loma and Yonge-Eglinton (aka "Young and Eligible").

It's worth pointing out that Forest Hill is basically where the top 1% of the top 1% live, and even when Tories don't do particularly well with Jewish voters relative to other groups (CPC 2019, PCPO 2018 and 2022), they can still count on the wealthiest parts of Forest Hill to come out for them. I'd imagine even more so now given the recent Capital gains tax hike.

But those 4 "zones" you describe are basically why Liberals are so damn resilient here, they've gotten solid support from all four of those blocs in recent elections. Tories typically don't get much support in Hillcrest/Humewood or Yonge and Eg, while the NDP don't get much support in Deer Park/Casa Loma, let alone Forest Hill.

Given the overall trends, I think it's pretty safe to say that CPC will dominate Cedarvale and Forest Hill, while Deer Park/Casa Loma is the most likely to remain solidly Liberal. But Hillcrest/Humewood and Yonge and Eg have a lot of younger voters, and this is a cohort that's deserting the Liberals, to the benefit of both NDP and Tories. One would assume that big city millennials are more likely to switch LPC->NDP, which would be the opening for a Jill Andrew coalition. But even still, Poilievre polls much better with young voters than Ford, so young voters deserting the Liberals may not be as solid for the NDP as they've been provincially.

Forest Hill is only about a tenth of the riding.  Meanwhile 60% live in either the Hillcrest-Humewood-Oakwood zone in the west or Davisville in the east.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

The Ontario NDP has sort of maxed out the "base" of inner cities/labor/Indigenous.  But it is weak in the GTA suburbs where elections are won.  The Liberals are the stronger party in exactly the areas where the NDP needs to win, so they can't credibly say "if you want to defeat the PCs, you have to vote NDP" in these ridings.

In 1990, the NDP winning map is something that can't be emulated today.  The NDP didn't do very well in the "905" belt.  The "905" didn't have the significance it did now (in fact the 905 area code didn't come into effect until the early 1990s - it was under Harris that the 905 became politically significant).
And it won all these rural areas often due to vote-splitting on the right.

I believe the NDP did quite well in the 905 belt in the 1990 election.

[adma]

The Ontario NDP has sort of maxed out the "base" of inner cities/labor/Indigenous.  But it is weak in the GTA suburbs where elections are won.  The Liberals are the stronger party in exactly the areas where the NDP needs to win, so they can't credibly say "if you want to defeat the PCs, you have to vote NDP" in these ridings.

In 1990, the NDP winning map is something that can't be emulated today.  The NDP didn't do very well in the "905" belt.  The "905" didn't have the significance it did now (in fact the 905 area code didn't come into effect until the early 1990s - it was under Harris that the 905 became politically significant).
And it won all these rural areas often due to vote-splitting on the right.

I believe the NDP did quite well in the 905 belt in the 1990 election.

Well, as part of a generic univeral wave of higher/competitive shares.  But they only won seats covering Durham Region/NE York Region and the N part of Halton Region.  Nothing in Peel whatsoever (Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon), nothing in York Region other than the aforementioned NE...

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

The Ontario NDP has sort of maxed out the "base" of inner cities/labor/Indigenous.  But it is weak in the GTA suburbs where elections are won.  The Liberals are the stronger party in exactly the areas where the NDP needs to win, so they can't credibly say "if you want to defeat the PCs, you have to vote NDP" in these ridings.

In 1990, the NDP winning map is something that can't be emulated today.  The NDP didn't do very well in the "905" belt.  The "905" didn't have the significance it did now (in fact the 905 area code didn't come into effect until the early 1990s - it was under Harris that the 905 became politically significant).
And it won all these rural areas often due to vote-splitting on the right.

I believe the NDP did quite well in the 905 belt in the 1990 election.

Well, as part of a generic univeral wave of higher/competitive shares.  But they only won seats covering Durham Region/NE York Region and the N part of Halton Region.  Nothing in Peel whatsoever (Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon), nothing in York Region other than the aforementioned NE...

Oh yeah, you're right. They swept Durham. I incorrectly thought that a couple of them were from Mississauga/Brampton.