Writ Drop: Previewing Canada 2019

Today, the Prime Minister has officially started the election campaign we’ve been fighting in Canada for the last year. Today, Justin Trudeau has finally decided to start the official campaign, even if the unofficial campaign has been going on since the day Andrew Scheer beat Max Bernier (remember how everyone thought Max was going to be leader of the Conservatives? That feels like a decade ago, and yet). And today, LeanTossup presents the official campaign preview – a sprawling piece covering what’s led to this point and what’s next. Get comfortable, folks, this has been one hell of a Parliament.

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Elected on what was a decently radical manifesto in 2015, Trudeau spent the next four years doing plenty of it – economic stimulus, anti-poverty and anti-homelessness, making strides at reconciliation with First Nations – and failed to do plenty more – electoral reform, a fourth year budget surplus, and the elements of free votes being quickly abandoned. And some of the promises – around anti-corruption and doing politics differently – are the kind that just look downright hilarious with the passage of time. But the story of the last four years can be told through two strains – a good economy, and a government led by a man manifestly unable to stop being corrupt, or at least unable to stop being seen to be corrupt.



The economics is pretty easy – the economic record is good and it’s been mostly a success. Despite some hand wringing about the deficit, the job numbers are good, the GDP growth is leading the G7, and the wage growth figures are in good shape. The economy being good is usually good enough to win an election. And, governments don’t get tossed after one term in Canada. Quite literally, an opposition leader without having previously been Prime Minister has never beat a first term government. The three times a first term government lost – 1878, 1935, and 1980 – the opposition leader who then took over had already been Prime Minister. Losing to Sir John A, Mackenzie King, and Pierre is a lot different than losing to Andrew Scheer. So the history says Trudeau should be re-elected – probably, but not certainly, in majority – and the economics look good for the Prime Minister. And, of course, the polls looked good for the Liberals – the NDP’s collapse in Quebec has opened up a dozen seats there for the taking. Throw in the anchor that is Doug Ford and all of this should mean the Liberals are dancing to 210 seats, easily. Except this is where the other track comes in.



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This is probably the most openly corrupt government in years. Trying to frame Mark Norman for the leaking of information to Davey shipyards against the commercial interests of the Irving family, the Prime Minister accepting the gifts of the Aga Khan, a man whose foundation lobbies the Canadian government with regularity, the cash for access fundraisers, and of course, SNC-Lavalin and the Deferred Prosecution Agreement. Removing Jody Wilson-Raybould as Attorney General because she refused to make a decision in the corporate self interest of a Canadian multinational is a level of blatant corruption I cannot even believe was possible, despite having been on Parliament Hill and hearing Liberals casually throw around the Natural Governing Party moniker once or twice (or 50 times, but who’s counting). The arrogance of the Prime Minister and his team would be astonishing if it wasn’t for the fact that two last two Liberal governments had patronage and corruption scandals end their tenure. While it’s possible to probable Trudeau was always handing over a poison chalice to John Turner, the hundreds of patronage appointments that went through, that Brian Mulroney used for the famous “You Had An Option Sir” line, probably moved the Liberals seat total down to the 40 they got from the 60-90 range. Liberal governments get tossed for corruption, but usually the corruption comes at the end, not the beginning. But SNC-Lavalin is a truly horrific scandal.



Let’s not sugar coat the terribleness of Lav-Scam just because Jagmeet Singh is useless and Andrew Scheer is manifestly unfit to a majority of the voting public. SNC was an abuse of power, a full court press designed to make Jody Wilson-Rybould act in a manner that has never happened before in Canadian history. The Prime Minister openly brought up the political impact – winning Quebec seats this October, since, after all, “I’m an MP from Quebec” as Wilson-Raybould testified JT said. Just because Scheer would be an odious Prime Minister doesn’t mean Trudeau hasn’t also been one. Gaslighting that SNC was not a catastrophic failure of a party and a government isn’t the right response.



The government’s polls fell after SNC broke, and it took a few months to recover. Most of the summer was marked by stability, with the government and opposition Tories trading national leads with a load of ties. Recently, the national numbers have come back to the Liberals, and we currently have them winning the popular vote by 2.2%.



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So where are we now? The latest LeanTossup model run has the LPC at 174 seats, 4 more than the bare minimum for majority government. The Liberals don’t need a majority to stay in office – they merely need to have 170 with the help of Jagmeet Singh’s NDP to be assured of government. Right now, our model has their combined total at 196 – a 26 seat buffer for the left parties, and some of the seats there cannot go Conservative. Not every NDP loss is a loss for the combined total – in fact, few of the remaining NDP seats are in the NDP-CPC battlegrounds. So the Tories need gains, big ones, off the Liberals to force a #TeamChaos outcome. And right now they aren’t seeing anything resembling the ground for it.



The LeanTossup model uses demographic information – and specifically, polling data on voting intention by educational level attained. The model uses this to get more precise readings than what uniform swing or uniform proportionate swing ever could. The value of this method is usually unclear in such a specific, obvious way, but it is right now: the Tories are losing because of an exodus of voters with a university degree. Two months ago, the Liberal lead with this group was 7% – now, 14%. This site has written about why that is many times – put bluntly, Doug Ford and Andrew Scheer are antithetical to the (mainly social) values of these voters – social liberals, fiscal conservatives, who like tax cuts since they’d save money but also feel completely at ease at a gay wedding. Usually, the tax cuts outweigh the cultural and social differences for these groups – and that is how Doug Ford won in 2018, by convincing these voters that the need for fiscal reform, and those juicy tax cuts – was better for them than a left wing government that’s more culturally aligned, but would probably raise taxes. That message is not working now, in part because of the way Doug Ford has governed Ontario, but also because Justin Trudeau isn’t Kathleen Wynne. People do not hate Trudeau the way people hated Wynne, and the people are not as eager to throw the government overboard despite SNC and everything else. The pundit class seems unaware of this fact, but voters are perfectly able to both find Justin Trudeau personally corrupt or odious or incompetent, and still actively desire his re-elect over Andrew Scheer.



For the Liberals, the path to continued Majority government runs east of the Manitoba-Ontario border. The path back to 170 involves losses in BC, Alberta, and the polling amalgamation of SaskyToba, and some losses in Atlantic Canada, so those losses need to come somewhere. Where? Ontario and Quebec. For the Liberals, NDP held seats in Ontario like London-Fanshawe, Hamiltons Centre and Mountain, and Windsor West are important, with CPC seats like Milton, Carleton, Kitchener Conestoga and Barrie Springwater also key. But the true battle is in Quebec – with the Bloc holding a number of marginal seats, and the NDP facing wipeout, or near wipeout, losing 15 of 16 seats at least. The Liberals came in second in 13 of the 16, and in one of the others, the Bloc vote is boosted by Gilles Duceppe’s strong personal vote which is (finally) exiting the system here. The Liberals probably need at least a net of 15 gains in these provinces for majority government – planning for around 20-30 losses in the rest of the country is sensible.



The Conservatives, on the other hand, have to get their game back in Ontario. They need to break the Liberals firewall in the 905, winning Mississauga, Brampton, Niagara, and making big gains in the northern Toronto burbs – Markham and Vaughan. The problem is that’s all very university educated areas and that’s why they’re currently seeing a swing against in Ontario right now. They have low hanging fruit in Atlantic Canada they’ll win, and some Alberta and Manitoba likely gains, but the big battles for the Conservatives if they’re going to win the most seats – let alone government – is Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver. They need to win the Suburbs, and right now they are getting destroyed across both metro areas.



The NDP – well, the less said the better. Quebec and BC are collapsing for them, and that’s where 65% of their Parliamentary party is. Their vote collapsing everywhere means they have zero-seat downside, and fourth place in both seats and votes is possible, even if as of today they would be only lean favourites to come third in both. Loss of official party status is a prediction this site’s model won’t make but one of its authors already has.



For the Greens, we currently have them winning 7 seats – their second best result in terms of raw seats in any single member only chamber anywhere in the world (behind PEI), and one of their best in terms of share of the Parliament (a couple of Australian states beat the federal Greens, as does PEI, NB, and BC). Their battleground is the five seats on Vancouver Island we project them to win, Fredericton, Thunder Bay Superior North, and then some stretch targets – Guelph, Charlottetown, Malpeque (I guess), Vancouver Centre. A seven seat gain, and closing margins elsewhere so the party has a better sense of their map moving forward, would be a perfectly good night for them, and should be taken as a massive success.



We’ll talk more about the PPC and the Bloc in time – the PPC can only win Beauce, and the Bloc’s polling right now is weird and volatile, so I’d rather wait to see what shakes out there. But this election will be won or lost in the greater bits of Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver, with a dash of Quebec as always. The Liberals enter this campaign with momentum and a lead with the key demographic that’s getting bigger not smaller. Unless something monumental happens – and no, another SNC revelation is not that – the Liberals will win, and probably in majority.