From left to right: Liberal leader Justin Trudeau), Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
and New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair
After ten years of right-wing governance, Canada goes to the polls on Monday in an election that will almost certainly eliminate Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper's parliamentary majority. Whether it ends Harper's tenure in the top job is less clear: His party governed Canada with only a minority from 2006 to 2011, though shifts in the makeup of the rest of Parliament make a repeat of that scenario unlikely, but not impossible.
The historically centrist Liberal Party, coming off its worst defeat in history, has rebounded under new leader Justin Trudeau and has a good chance to dethrone Harper by winning the most seats and forming a minority government of its own. Meanwhile, the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP), led by opposition leader Thomas Mulcair, is trying to stop its recent descent in the polls that has seen it drop from first to third and likely out of contention for leading the next government.
Before we examine at the latest polling and possible election outcomes (like in most countries with more than two parties, "winning" is not always a definitive result), we'll take revisit the prior election in 2011 and the key events since then that have taken us to this unusual juncture.
Head below the fold for both a look back at recent history and a look forward to Monday's elections.
The 2011 Election
The last Canadian federal election in 2011 redefined the baseline of Canadian politics. That election saw two big changes: the rise of the NDP in Quebec and an incredibly poor showing by the Liberal Party nationwide. The Liberals, once known as Canada’s natural governing party, had been in an eight-year downward spiral since Prime Minister Jean Chrétien stepped down in 2003. Plagued by weak leadership and squeezed on the right by the Conservatives and on the left by the NDP, the Liberals saw their worst showing ever, coming in third place with only 19 percent of the vote and 34 seats out of 308 overall.
Since 1993, the nationalist Bloc Québécois (BQ) had dominated elections in Quebec on a platform of provincial sovereignty, regularly winning more than 50 of the province's 75 seats. Nationally, divisions on the right had kept the Liberals comfortably in power from 1993 to 2004, but the combination of a revamped Conservative Party (also known as the Tories) and BQ's continued dominance caused three straight elections without a majority government leading up to 2011, one led by the Liberals followed by two run by the Conservatives.
BQ's 18 years as the province’s leading party came to an end in 2011, as voters tired of the party's focus on its singular animating cause, on which it had made no progres since a 1995 referendum on independence went down to a narrow defeat. Having lived under a Conservative government since 2006, progressive Quebec voters shifted decisively toward the NDP, which was led by the charismatic Quebec native Jack Layton.
When the dust had settled, the Conservatives had won their first majority government since 1988, and the NDP became the Official Opposition after winning 103 seats, including 59 in Quebec alone. Meanwhile, the Liberals were licking their wounds and Bloc Québécois lost official party status with just four members of Parliament (MPs).
Mulcair and Trudeau Arrive on Stage
After 2011, the Liberals were in desperate need for a fresh face who could also provide strong leadership. For this they looked to party’s past successes and elected Justin Trudeau, the eldest son of the long-serving Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau became leader with only five years' experience in elected office, but he'd been in the public eye for far longer, similar to a Chelsea Clinton (had she ever served in the U.S. House).
Trudeau has brought youth and excitement back to his party, though Conservatives have consistently attacked him as inexperienced and unready to lead. In the wake of his election as party leader 2013, Liberals took a clear lead in the polls after having languished in third since their 2011 loss, a lead they held onto until early 2015.
The NDP should not have needed a new leader in the wake of Layton’s stunning success in 2011. In fact, it’s fair to argue that had fate not intervened, he would have been the favorite to become prime minister this fall. But tragically, Layton passed away just three months after the 2011 election, after the cancer he had previously beaten returned.
Thomas Mulcair, a former provincial Liberal in Quebec who had joined the NDP in 2007, won the election to succeed Layton. Mulcair was seen as the more moderate choice and campaigned on broadening the appeal of the NDP; his rival for party leadership focused on staying true to the NDP cause. Muclair was also one of the few NDP MPs who had previously served in government at any level, as Quebec's minister of the environment.
Polling Shifts in Early 2015
Little changed in the polls between Trudeau’s election and the first part of this year, with the Liberals consistently in first, Conservatives in second, and the NDP in third. But the 2015 would prove far less stable as the elections grew closer.
In the wake of two lone wolf terrorist attacks that each left a Canadian soldier dead, the Conservative government introduced anti-terrorism legislation, which critics called "Canada’s Patriot Act.” The bill was initially popular and the Liberals came out in support of it while the NDP opposed it. As fierce debate over the bill continued, eventually passing with small changes, its popularity nosedived, primarily hurting the Liberals to the benefit of the NDP.
Around the same time, the NDP won a shocking victory in Alberta's provincial elections, which Conservatives had dominated for 40 years. These two boosts of publicity shot the NDP into first place nationally and made an NDP led-government a real possibility for the first time in the party’s existence.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives struggled with a combination of scandals, poor economic news, and an electorate tired of 10 years of Harper. The party took 40 percent of the vote nationwide in 2011, but since 2013, it has struggled to get much above 30 percent in the polls; it's stayed in the fight mostly because the Liberals and the NDP have been splitting the remainder of the vote fairly evenly. As the official campaign started in August, the NDP held a slim lead over the Conservatives, with the Liberals just behind them.
The Campaign Period
It was always going to be a challenge for the NDP to maintain its advantage through the campaign to Election Day, as it had less money than the other two major parties and fewer long-term committed supporters it could count on no matter what. As an upstart party (despite its "Official Opposition" status), winning the election was going to require an impressive high-wire act because one negative story could snowball. But no expected that a debate over, of all things, a Muslim religious garment called a niqab would start that snowball rolling.
On September 15, a Canadian appeals court ruled that Zunera Ishaq should be allowed to wear a niqab (a scarf worn by some Muslim women that covers the face except for the eyes) during her citizenship ceremony, which the Conservative government had banned in 2011. While this ruling was broadly unpopular in Canada, it was particularly unpopular in Quebec, which shares France's distaste for any sort of public religious displays.
While the NDP and the Liberals both supported the ruling, the public debate has cost the NDP far more because it depends on Quebec as a significant chunk of its votes and seats. Without a dominant showing in Quebec, the NDP has no chance of coming in first and forming a government. The Conservatives, meanwhile, initially benefited from the controversy and the weakening of the NDP, but that was short-lived.
The Conservatives took a small lead in late September as the NDP dropped, but that same shift sparked a surge of Liberal support. The NDP continued to drop as anti-Harper votes moved from the NDP to the Liberals, who were now seen as the best chance to defeat the Conservatives. October saw the Liberals rise 5 percentage points to take a small but clear lead over the Conservatives while the NDP took a matching 5 percent drop into the low 20s, as you can see in the chart below:
The niqab controversy sent the NDP into a series of setbacks as bad headlines caused dropping poll numbers that caused more voters to turn away as the NDP became less likely to form a government. They are now likely to lose seats from their 2011 high, though they're on track for a good showing for the party given its history.
Furthermore, the traditional ideological lines of Canadian political discourse have been blurred by decidedly non-traditional campaign messaging from Harper's foes. In an effort to broaden his party's appeal beyond its traditional organized labor and social democratic bedrock, Mulcair committed himself in late August to supporting a balanced budget in the next fiscal year.
Trudeau, whose Liberals have long represented themselves as the "sensible" compromise between the business-friendly policies and fiscal conservatism of the Tories and the social welfare politics of the NDP, has seized on the opportunity to out-flank Mulcair on the left, aggressively embracing a Keynesian-influenced economic plan for increased deficit spending on infrastructure projects to lift Canada out of its recession, while increasing taxes on the wealthiest Canadians. As much as the niqab issue has exposed unhealthy divisions among the electorate, at least some credit is due to the Liberals for seizing on a key policy opportunity.
Polling and Potential Results
Recent polls have split between a small Conservative lead of 1 to 2 points and a more comfortable Liberal lead of 3 to 6 points; on average (as you can see in the chart above), the Liberals are in the mid-30s while the Conservatves are in the low 30s. NDP polling has been inconsistent as pollsters try to capture the extent of the party’s recent sharp drop in support, but it's generally been polling between 20 and 25 percent, significantly behind the other two parties. No poll since Oct. 1 has shown the NDP in anything other than third place.
Bloc Québécois and the Green Party are the other two parties to register support in the polls. Both have hovered around 5 percent, which would be a small decrease from BQ’s terrible 2011 showing but a small increase in overall Green support. BQ had been polling even lower until a 1-2 point bump in recent weeks, likely due to the niqab controversy and the NDP’s slide.
Two notable websites have taken on the challenge of translating the election’s polling results into seat projections. As we’ve seen with the United Kingdom and occasionally in the U.S., multi-party elections in a first-past-the-post system can make predictions very difficult. A party with 30 percent of the vote could win 50 percent of the seats or 30 percent of the seats or 10 percent of the seats, depending on how the votes are distributed and how the other parties do.
ThreeHundredEight.com, styled after FiveThirtyEight.com, has partnered with CBC News to create one projection, while the Globe and Mail has produced another. Both sites emphasize seat projections with a range of possible outcomes, and with a campaign this tight and volatile, small changes in voting intention could create very different results. Below you can see ThreeHundredEight's:
Both sites currently project the Liberals to win the most seats of any single party, which would likely result in a Liberal minority government that would then have to rely on the NDP to pass most legislation through parliament. However, there are some issues where the Liberals agree with the Conservatives but not the NDP, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which the Liberals support. (Bloomberg
took a deeper look at areas where the Liberals and NDP are on the same page and could move legislation forward.)
Both sites also agree that there is still a significant chance that the Conservatives take the most seats, though still well short of a majority. It’s less clear what would happen under those circumstances, and much would depend on the scale of the Conservative victory. If the Conservatives only beat the Liberals by a handful of seats, the Liberals and the NDP will almost certainly work together to bring down the Conservative government and install Trudeau as prime minister. Whether that would be through an official coalition, a so-called "confidence-and-supply" arrangement, or something even less formal, Harper will almost certainly not survive such a result.
The most uncertain outcome would involve a Conservative surprise that sees the party take significantly more seats than Liberals, perhaps even paired with an NDP rebound that further sets the Liberals back. If the Conservatives wind up with 30 or 40 more seats than the Liberals but are short of a majority, and the Liberals are fewer than 20 seats ahead of the NDP, uncertainty would reign.
Harper would claim a mandate to continue as prime minister, and it’s unclear how the Liberals and NDP would react. A minority government of only one-third of parliament would be difficult to swallow, so a more formal Liberal-NDP coalition might be needed to prove a clear alternative to the Conservatives. This could even result in a Harper government temporarily limping along until the Liberals and NDP find the right issue and move to take power.
Other outcomes, such as a Conservative or Liberal majority government or an NDP second-place showing, are still conceivable but highly unlikely. BQ is expected to maintain a single-digit number of MPs, while the Greens will likely return just their sole MP to Parliament.
The Election Landscape
As mentioned above, Canada uses a first-past-the-post system similar to that used for the UK's parliament and most U.S. elections. There are 338 MPs elected from ridings (single-member districts) of roughly equal population, which is an increase of 30 since the last election. That bump allowed Parliament to accomodate population growth in Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta without taking away seats from any other provinces (though it rendered ThreeHundredEight.com's name anachronistic).
Ontario (121) and Quebec (78) are by far the most populous provinces and combine for over half of all MPs elected, while British Columbia (42) and Alberta (34) also send significant numbers of parliamentarians. The four Atlantic provinces (New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador) collectively send 32 MPs to Parliament; Saskatchewan and Manitoba in the country's midsection combine to send 28; and the three sparsely populated territories in the far north (Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) send a single MP each.
The three major parties each have provinces that make up their base of support. The Liberals dominate the Atlantic provinces (which helped save them from oblivion in 2011), while the Conservatives dominate the western interior provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The NDP is expected to remain the largest party in Quebec, though with its recent slip, it may not dominate there the way it did in 2011. That leaves British Columbia on the West Coast and the grand prize of Ontario as the main provincial battlegrounds that will decide the election.
Check back Monday evening when the polls close at 7 PM ET as Daily Kos Elections liveblogs what’s sure to be an exciting election night!