The Rapidly Evolving Landscape of the Federal Election

In jurisdictions that use the Westminster parliamentary system, there is an incredible amount of change that can occur within a fortnight. When you throw that same jurisdiction into an expedited campaign schedule, volatility increases sevenfold. Without question, this has held true in Canada as we begin to transition into the start of the third week of electioneering. 

When Justin Trudeau arrived at Rideau Hall to request that parliament be dissolved so an election could be called, the general narrative around the country was that the Liberals were hoping to capitalize on projections suggesting a majority mandate was a possibility. While this seemed like a very real scenario Canadians could expect for a number of months, the once forgone conclusion has been replaced with a much closer race than many pollsters and pundits had predicted. 

On August 30th, 338Canada’s projection appeared as follows:

·       Conservative Party – 33.5%

·       Liberal Party – 32.1%

·       New Democratic Party – 19.6%

·       Bloc Quebecois – 6.2%

·       Green Party – 4.2%

·       Peoples’ Party of Canada – 3.6%

The reason this writer cites 338Canada is because the organization collects the results from numerous pollsters across the country and comes up with a weighted average based on a number of considerations and variables, providing a better idea of what voters are thinking. With that said, observers should not look to polls as a way to feel confident about projecting any result. One just needs to look at this month’s provincial election in Nova Scotia to see a recent example of just how wrong polls can be. 

In this article, we will take a look at some of the factors that have been contributing to the changing landscape in the first two weeks of the election and sharing some insight into what could transpire in the back-half of the campaign. 

Erin O’Toole Finding Campaign Balance

Going into this election, O’Toole faced a significant challenge that the other leaders didn’t – introducing himself to Canadians. While he is no rookie in the House of Commons, the new Conservative leader is the only one of the top three national parties that has not campaigned to become Prime Minister in a previous election.

“While this was indeed a steep hill to climb, it is nowhere near the challenge of overcoming the obstacle that is uniting a broad tent of small-c conservatives across the country. This has been his key to campaign and polling success to date.”

It is well known that Conservatives tend to have the largest political base across Canada, but they struggle to grow the base and often lose swing voters to the Liberals when the CPC platform moves too far to the right of the political spectrum. O’Toole has been able to mitigate the damage in this area by taking a page out of the Liberal’s playbook – inserting more progressive platform promises designed to attract swing voter from the centre-left.  For example, platform items like doubling the Canada Workers Benefit, requiring federally regulated industries to have staff representation on their boards, and doubling health transfers are good examples of this. 

Additionally, O’Toole has also been doing a good job of pitching himself to Canadians as a more progressive conservative which has helped to increase attraction to his campaign. He’s implemented alternative carbon pricing policies despite the party voting to not recognize climate change during their last policy convention and he has voted in favour of banning conversion therapy. However, he has not been able to distance himself from the controversial comments of candidate Cheryl Gallant who asked “how long do you think it will take before the Trudeau Liberals start calling for a climate lockdown” in a video. It is unlikely that this would derail the Conservatives, but it is one of the few pieces of ammunition that the Liberals can use against them. 

Liberals Fail to Control the Narrative

“While the O’Toole camp should receive the credit it deserves for running a relatively controversy-free campaign up until this point, the Liberal Party is responsible for a great deal of collateral damage that has impacted their standings in the polls.”

There have been three critical incidents that have been responsible for this. 

Firstly, there is the peculiar strategy of delaying the release of a full campaign platform at the onset of the election season. Both the Conservatives and NDP released their full platform document when the election began, followed by the traditional nation-wide tour to hold announcement on specific items. While the Liberals have been releasing promises a la carte, the absence of a comprehensive platform has provided the other parties an opportunity to work ahead of the curve. It is likely this was done with the debates on September 8th and 9th in mind as it will give opposition leaders less time to prepare counter arguments, giving Trudeau a unique advantage. 

Secondly, there is the issue of the social media battlefield which has not worked in the Liberal’s favour. Last week, a post went out on Chrystia Freeland’s social media account with the intent of highlighting that O’Toole was in favour of privatizing Canadian health care. However, Twitter quickly applied a disclaimer to the video which indicated that the post was misleading as the clip was heavily edited. Of course, this riled up the Conservatives – but also Canadians. Trudeau was offered a chance to apologize and change the channel, but he doubled down on the contents of the post. 

Now, it is also important to point out that the post in question was part of a thread which did include access to the full video for viewers to have the full context; however, the damage was done as soon as Twitter applied the disclaimer. 

Lastly, we also have the issue of a recent statement by Minister of Women and Gender Equality, Maryam Monsef on the subject of the ongoing tragedies in Afghanistan. She had said “I want to take this opportunity to speak with our brothers, the Taliban. We call on you to ensure the safe and secure passage of any individual in Afghanistan out of the country. We call on you to immediately stop the violence, the genocide, the femicide, the destruction of infrastructure, including heritage buildings.” Of course, it was the “our brothers” sentiment that caught people’s attention. The statement followed a remark from Justin Trudeau indicating that they would not recognize the Taliban as government following the recent insurrection. 

All of the stories above made it difficult for the Liberals to control the narrative of the first two weeks, a critical misstep that could come to bite them on September 20.

The Election is Still a Toss Up

While the picture we have painted above appears quite grim for the Trudeau Liberals, there is one thing that should give the party’s campaign team and supporters reason for optimism – with everything that happened to date, they are still very much in this race. But they have some work to do to pull off the comeback. 

Right now, the Liberals barely top the Conservatives in Ontario and are currently projected to lose more than 20 of their seats to the Tories and the NDP. They are projected to have a modest increase in Quebec, but any advantage that would normally present has been washed out by small increases by the Conservatives. As it stands at the time of writing, these changes would be enough to see a swing to the right if an election were called today. At the halfway point, approximately 163 ridings can be considered “safe” for any party, meaning there are plenty of swing votes to be had. 

While there are few ridings which can be considered “predictors” of federal election results, there is one Ontario riding that has an 81% record. Peterborough-Kawartha (and its predecessor) have elected a member of the governing party in every election since 1984. As of today, the riding is leaning Conservative. With that in mind, remember that this riding belongs to the aforementioned Maryam Monsef who has been in plenty hot water during the campaign. While no one riding should be relied upon as an election bellwether, we will learn if this riding’s winning trend will continue yet again.