The second week in the Canadian election campaign might have been overshadowed by goings-on in London and Washington. Indeed, the campaign needle did not move much in Canada, with apparently minimal fallout over the blackface/brownface revelations.
The Liberals remain the party to beat in Central Canada, which will prove critical in the overall election’s outcome. While my model had some adjustments, slightly trending more Liberal as last week I tried to factor in some fallout over the revelations against the Prime Minister, it essentially remains a locked race. At most 30-40 ridings remain in truly in play at this point, and unless the polls move markedly away from the Liberals it is likely not to change.
I keep thinking it will be a close enough race on election night that one commentator will wryly observe if Jody Wilson-Raybould (re-elected as an Independent) will rejoin the Liberals to keep them in power – that it will come down to one seat. Likely, however, the Liberals will be able to win a sufficiently large plurality and join forces with the NDP and Greens to maintain their hold on government.
My model is still needing some fine tuning, I believe, as I think York Region will end up being more bell weather and Liberal red than this map portrays, likewise I am thinking that around the Lac St. Jean region that there might be lighter shades of blue and Bloc sea-green than Liberal red.
The graph below shows that sheer voter efficiency in Central Canada is vital to the Liberals retaining their hold on power. As shown below, the overall percentage of the vote for victorious candidates shows that the Liberals have even a handful of seats won by less than 30% (many of them in Quebec); while few wins are over 60%. By contrast, the Conservatives are showing no wins with a candidate getting less than 30%, notably less MPs being elected with between 30-40% of the vote compared to the Liberals, and on the upper end around two dozen MPs being elected by over 60% of the vote. Therefore, even if the Conservatives edge the Liberals out in the popular vote, which many polls as well as my model suggest, it will be less efficient with wider, deeper blue margins in Western Canada, while the Liberals win on lighter shades of red in Central Canada.
Riding Winner Overall % of Vote
At this point, my model overall is saying
Liberals – 33% and 159 Seats
Conservatives – 35.4% and 134 Seats
NDP – 14% and 26 Seats
Bloc Quebecois – 5.1% and 14 Seats
Greens – 9% and 3 Seats
People’s Party – 2% and 1 Seat (M. Bernier’s in Beauce)
and Ms. Wilson-Raybould, in Vancouver Granville, as an Independent M.P.
This is my first attempt at predicting the upcoming election … some fine tuning and revisions are probably in order for the duration of the campaign … right off the bat I am thinking about revising some of my predictions around York Region in Ontario and the Lac St. Jean region in Quebec – i.e. the Conservatives and Liberals might swap colours on the map.
I am trying to keep a colour scheme such that the sea-green Bloc seats can be distinguished from the bluer Conservative ones.
At this point, trying to build into my model the potential fall out over the brownface incidents, I am showing:
Liberal – 32.1% and 145 Seats
Conservative – 36% and 144 Seats
NDP – 14% and 25 Seats
Bloc – 5.1% (22.3% in Quebec) and 20 Seats
Green – 9% and 3 Seats
People’s Party of Canada – 2.3% and 1 Seat (Bernier’s)
Projected Popular Vote for Canada’s October 21, 2019 Election
The first week of Canada’s 2019 election campaign has already gone by, and there really appears to be no essential change in the electoral landscape. The Liberals are tied with the Conservatives – most polls showing a slight lead for one or the other party within the margin of error. This is seen as favoring the Liberals, with greater vote efficiency in Central Canada, (smaller margins of victory) whereas the Conservatives can expect more lopsided margins in the western provinces.
This is not to say that things can change, indeed the Liberals, having the edge in projected seats, have the greater risk of losing ground, particularly the seat-rich 905 suburban ring around Toronto which will likely prove critical in the next government’s formation.
Several developments that might have some bearing on the election campaign include the inclusion of Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party in upcoming leaders’ debates, which could adversely impact Conservative vote share (especially in very marginal Ontario seats); the other significant event was today’s revelation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had donned a brownface costume while a teacher at a British Columbia private school back in 2001. This could adversely affect the Liberals, who have insinuated that the Conservatives have recruited some questionable candidates and raised the issue of Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s previous opposition to same sex marriage back in 2005. With this latest revelation, the Liberals could find themselves on the defensive and their attacks on the Conservative’s perceived lack of inclusiveness could fall flat. Should this gain additional traction, it is probably more likely that potential Liberal vote losses would result either from migration to the other left-of-centre parties or depressed voter turnout rather than a ground swell of support to the Conservatives.
The underlying dynamics still strongly support a Liberal win, however, as a majority government in it’s first term has in Canadian political history seldom been denied the chance to continue with a second mandate, even if in a minority position. For all of the recent tarnishing of the Liberal, and more specifically – Trudeau brand, Scheer has thus far not been able to decisively run away with the race on the question on who would make the best Prime Minister. The Conservative brand has not been able to move ahead, in part because of the underlying dynamics to support an incumbent government, and also in part due to the unpopularity of Ontario’s current PC Premier, Doug Ford.
The latest revelations about Trudeau’s brownface soiree nearly two decades ago will undoubtedly make the race more interesting, and potentially much closer, but there is still a lot of campaigning left, and more opportunity for other leaders to make their own gaffes. In Canadian politics many elections have been won not by one’s strength but by one’s opponent’s weaknesses. Nearly five weeks in an election campaign can be an eternity.
Next week we will have available a detailed riding map projecting our winners based on polls, and in subsequent weeks those forecasts will be updated until the week before the election.
Due to a technical glitch on ericvotes.com, we couldn’t update the website with Manitoba predictions, however we did post our pre-election predictions to facebook:
4/6 September 10th … Manitoba General … Pallister wins re-election as NDP gain a few urban seats … PCs 43% and 33 seats; NDP 34% and 21 seats; Liberals 14% and 3 seats; Greens 7 % and no seats; First, Forward and Communists, others, etc. 2% total and no seats
5/6 … Manitoba … Liberal seats include Burrows; River Heights and St. Boniface
NDP seats … Assiniboia, Brandon East, Concordia, Elmwood, Flin Flon, Fort Gary, Fort Richmond, Fort Rouge, Keewatinook, McPhillips, Notre Dame, Point Douglas, St. James, St. Johns, St. Vital, The Maples, The Pas-Kameesak, Thompson, Tyndall Park, Union Station, Wolseley
6/6 Manitoba … PC majority seats include Agassiz, Borderland, Brandon West, Dauphin, Dawson Trail, Fort Whyte, Interlake-Gimli, Kildonan-River East, Kirkfield Park, La Verendyre, Lac du Bonnet, Lagimodiere, Lakeside, Midland, Morden-Winkler, Portage La Prairie, Radisson, Red River North, Riding Mountain, Riel, Roblin, Rossmere, Seine River, Selkirk, Southdale, Springfield-Ritchot, Spruce Woods, Steinbach, Swan River, Transcona, Turtle Mountain, Tuxedo, Waverley
The end result was close, a total of 50/57 seats predicted correctly. The popular vote was a bit wider of the mark, with the PCs winning nearly 50% of the vote, compared to the 43% I had predicted.
Predictions were somewhat complicated by the fact that there was a redrawing of the ridings, with several new ridings in the Winnipeg area where, lacking a transposition of votes from the 2016 election, it was difficult to plug such new ridings as McPhillips in a standard swing model.
The end result was not a surprise – the governing PCs retained a strong majority although they lost some ground in Winnipeg et environs. Manitoba has historically returned majority governments for at least another term, with the one noted exception being Sterling Lyon’s one term PC majority government, 1977-81, essentially dividing the NDP Premierships of Edward Schreyer and Howard Pawley. It was further worth noting that this election was held one day prior to the writs being dropped for the Canadian election, with the federal climate suggesting a chill on Trudeaumania 2.0, some retrenchment in federal NDP support, along with a slight shift towards the Greens, while the Conservatives continued a strong hold on the rural areas. While Manitoba does not always align provincial and federal voting patterns (despite the federal Liberals often winning the popular vote in recent elections, their provincial counterparts have not held power, independent of the Progressives, in nearly a century), in this instance the general direction of the province towards retaining the PCs might translate into some margin gains for the Conservatives at the federal level.
Amidst a backdrop of multiple failed attempts to pass a Brexit deal on the part of Theresa May’s Conservative government, Tory support has dropped precipitously in the run up to a UK EU Parliament vote, (which wasn’t even slated to occur had Brexit been realized by this point). Much of that support has gone to the Brexit Party, which led by former UKIP Leader Nigel Farage, is set to make the most gains and with the Liberal Democrats making a modest recovery in support. The Labour Party, having largely failed to capitalize on sagging Tory fortunes, will seek to limit losses, while the smaller parties such as the Scottish Nationalists, Greens and Plaid Cymru are largely expected to have steady levels of support.
EU Parliament elections in Europe are more challenging to model since seat distribution is determined not by the traditional first-past-the-post system but instead with 12 multi-member constituencies where a total of 73 Members of European Parliament (MEPs) are elected by a more complex highest-of-averages D’Hondt method of computation in each constituency. Coupled with the fact that historical polling data is more limited for EU Parliamentary elections and the multimember constituency method is more recent, beginning in 1999, it is not as straightforward to anticipate which constituencies will reflect a given party’s support in terms of elected MEPs. In using a map of counting areas for the last 2 EU Parliamentary elections plus a review of the statistics of where increases and decreases of national party support have figured in the constituency results, I have developed a rough approximation of where each of the main parties can expect to elected MEPs. (see below)
The immediate impacts of the election will be hard to determine since there is a three day lag between the end of voting (May 23rd) and the announcement of the results (May 26th), and during that time the not insignificant occurrence of Prime Minister May’s resignation was announced after another failed attempt to get the UK Parliament to pass a Brexit deal. However it is anticipated that the stark result in the EU Parliament elections might force the Conservatives into a survival mode, with a high probability that a hardline Brexiteer might succeed May in order to stave off a challenge from Farrage’s Brexit Party. Historically EU elections have trended against the government of the day, with the end result that they are not always a portent of elections to come at Westminster. Indeed, the Tories swept the EU elections in 1999 and 2004, only to lose to Labour in a UK general election shortly thereafter. What makes this EU election particular noteworthy is the magnitude of the defeat of the party in power in Westminster, and how it might change the dynamics with the upcoming Conservative leadership election, both of which are unprecedented. Conservatives are undoubtedly hoping that relatively poor track record of EU elections predicting the victor in the next national elections is the one precedent that holds.
At this point, the Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) election appears to be a tossup, with perhaps a slight edge to the PCs in public opinion polls. If the PCs are successful, it would mark the 6th consecutive provincial vote where an incumbent government was tossed from power, an ominous sign for the federal Liberals as their provincial counterparts would have been removed from power in 5 of those 6 elections. This is also unusual for NL in that incumbent governments have been reelected at least twice after their initial win.
At this point, polls have consistently shown that the incumbent Liberal Premier, Dwight Ball, is not overly popular. The Liberals since regaining power in 2015 slipped fairly dramatically after their first austerity budget, although they have recovered moderately since that time. The PCs have at least partly succeeded in rebranding themselves after the Muskrat Falls debacle during their last government with Ches Crosbie, son of the national icon John Crosbie at the helm. Perhaps more remarkably, the NDP under Allison Coffin has managed to field only 14 candidates out of the 40 seats up for grabs, this is largely attributed to the snap election call Premier Ball made earlier this spring that limited the NDP’s recruitment and nomination process. The Newfoundland and Labrador Party, with nearly a comparable number of candidates to the NDP, has likewise been unable to make much headway despite a widespread feeling of malaise with both parties.
Thus the election might be seen as more in line with other recent provincial results from British Columbia and New Brunswick, where the incumbents were thought to have a decent shot at reelection, perhaps won the popular vote but narrowly lost in seats. In contrast with New Brunswick, PEI and Quebec, however, the disenchantment in NL will not likely lead to a dramatic breakthrough for new parties.
The last election was characterized by lopsided margins in many ridings, chiefly won by the Liberals, including 3 ridings won by over 90% of the vote (very unusual for contested parliamentary elections). This lack of voting efficiency might prevent their return to power, but if a swing to the PCs is modest and consistent throughout the province, a wide margin in 2015 might also serve to limit their loses. The PC gains will likewise be limited by the fact that the NDP is not on the ballot in 26 out of the 40 ridings, making the Liberals a likely repository of progressive votes that might otherwise have gone NDP orange.
At the end of the day, however, the modest swings necessary to pick up seats in St. John’s and environs, and the Avalon peninsula, will likely push the PCs to at least a plurality, if not a majority of seats. The model shows that while a PC majority is the most probable outcome, a Liberal minority (propped up by the NDP) is also quite possible. Less probable is a PC minority (if they get 19 or 20 seats and persuade an opposition member to assume the speakership), and last in the order of probability would be the Liberals returning to power with an overall majority.
While St. John’s environs and the Avalon is key to PC prospects of winning, Labrador may ultimately prove decisive in the overall result. The model currently shows the PCs winning Labrador West by 6 votes over the NDP (their only realistic hope outside of St. John’s), and Lake Melville by 3 votes over the Liberals. Other areas of critical PC gains would be certain ridings in Eastern and Central Newfoundland, such as Placentia West – Bellevue and Grand Falls-Windsor-Buchans.
The Liberals would not be shut out in any NL region except for suburban St. John’s, where the PCs are projected to take all 6 seats. They would be strongest in western Newfoundland around the Humber region and Corner Brook. The NDP, for their part, could realistically hope to retain 2 St. John’s seats – those of St. John’s Centre and St. John’s East Quidi Vidi.
Overall, the NL election continues a trend of general disenchantment with Liberal provincial governments recently seen across Canada, but it will probably differ from many of the other previous provincial contests in that third parties, with small slates of candidates, have next to no chance of any dramatic breakthrough in tomorrow’s vote. The biggest reverberations could be felt nationally, however, where at the end of 2015 Liberals held power nationally and in 7 provinces … at the end of 2019 it may well be only Yukon and Nova Scotia with Liberal governments if the one time seeming invincibility of the Liberal brand erodes so far that the Liberals are dethroned in Ottawa as well. Liberal reelection in NL could help arrest that erosion of strength, but right now the signs point in the direction of yet further Liberal decline.
It is down to the wire in the elections in Canada’s smallest province and the Green Party has a solid chance of forming the next government.
The overall prediction takes into account the last poll showing the PCs closing the gap – coupled with a strong showing in eastern King’s County I predict a tie in seats and popular vote between them and the Greens. The Liberals, with the remainder of seats, could potentially boost the Green Party led by the popular Peter Bevan-Barker, into power.
I believe this would be the first instance of the Green Party winning power in the Western Hemisphere.
That said, the caveat is that 10 out of 27 total seats are very marginal, most of those with Green wins, this the range of plausible scenarios includes a small majority of either the Greens or the PCs. Since many of the races are localized, I will not pretend to be familiar with the local nuances of personality and politics on the island. This model is polls-based, and the smallest variance in competitive ridings could make a considerable difference in terms of the outcome.
That said, here is my prediction:
Green 34.8 % and 12 seats
PC 34.0% and 12 seats
Lib 27.5% and 3 seats
NDP 3.65% and 0 seats
I predict incumbent Premier Wade McLaughlin will loose his Charlottetown-area seat of Stanhope-Marshfield to the Greens, but the Liberals are likely to hang onto Evangeline-Miscouche, Tignish-Palmer Road and, less certain, Alberton-Bloomfield.
The PCs will be strong in the eastern King County area, with solid wins in:
Souris-Elmira, Georgetown-Pownal, Belfast-Murray River, Mermaid-Stratford, Stratford-Keppoch and Morell-Donagh. They are projected to have a narrow edge over the Greens in Montague-Kilmuir.
They are also slated to win Rustico-Emerald, Borden-Kinkora and Kensington-Malpeque, as well as the Charlottetown-area riding of Brackley-Hunter River.
Out in western Prince County they might edge out the Liberals in O’Leary-Inverness.
The Greens have consistently polled strong in both Charlottetown and Summerside, and are projected to sweep these areas. In addition, the Greens are projected to pull out tight wins in Cornwall-Meadowbank and New Haven-Rocky point in eastern P.E.I. and Tyne Valley-Sherbrooke in western P.E.I.
Both the Summerside ridings of Wilmot and South Drive are projected to go Green, with perhaps not as wide as a margin as what some polls might indicate.
The Charlottetown ridings of Belvedere, Victoria Park and West Royalty are believed to be more solidly Green than Winsloe and Brighton.
Hillsborough Park, after the tragic death of Green candidate Josh Underhay in a canoeing accident, will have a postponed by-election which will likely see a Green MLA from that riding as well.
Thus, election night may see the Greens with 11 actual wins, with the Hillsborough Park election potentially tying the PCs.
The Liberals may opt not to prop up a Green minority but given their competition for many of the same left-leaning voters and the excitement surrounding the Green breakthrough, they may find it more costly to not support the Greens.
As tragic as the circumstances were in causing the Hillsborough Park by-election postponement, a win there putting them over the top in the next several weeks may not seem like a long time, considering that Greens on this side of the Atlantic have had to wait decades before having any kind of breakthrough such as what we are expecting to see today.
It is certainly possible, but by no means a sure thing. Since Phil Bredesen’s first gubernatorial win in 2002, the map has gotten that much redder, the terrain that much steeper. As evidenced by the below graph, showing a weighted number of public office holders by party, Tennessee emerged from the Second World War with a super strong Democratic ascendancy, to relative bipartisanship between the 1960s and early 2000s, to a strong Republican ascendancy beginning to manifest itself towards the end of Bredesen’s governorship. But as the state’s politics continue to realign, it is possible that new combinations of voter support could push the former Governor over the finish line first.
The suburbs around Nashville were instrumental in making what was previously a strong Democratic Middle division of the state more of a bipartisan swing state (helping George W. Bush win over native son Al Gore Jr. in 2000) and helped initiate the change of the State Senate from Democratic to Republican. In 2010, a watershed year to the state Republican party, the rural areas eventually followed suit en masse, with the effective collapse of the traditional yellow-dog centrist, rural Democratic vote in the remaining Middle and Western divisions of the state. Thus, while the Donald Trump Presidential ticket in 2016 carried several previously yellow dog (Mondale and McGovern voting) counties to record levels of support for the Republican Party, the phenomenon of Democratic Party decline in the rural counties predated the populist campaign of Trump and therefore should be seen as more of a long-term dynamic that will determine how each party positions itself to influence future elections.
This is not to say that there aren’t ‘yellow-dog’ recapture votes to be had for the Bredesen campaign. As previously noted in the 2017 Alabama Senate race where Doug Jones eked out a narrow win, his campaign was much more dependent on urban votes that has previously been the case for Democrats in Alabama. But several strong Trump (previously staunch Democratic) counties in the northwest portion of the state noticeably shifted towards the Democrats, even if they remained a lighter shade of red. This could well be the case for the Bredesen campaign in Tennessee, where some of the same yellow-dog counties which supported Trump in 2016 return to the Democratic fold. This could be seen as a nod to a more ‘traditional’ style of state politics which is less partisan and based on the personality of the candidate – the centrist Bredesen remains highly regarded for his two terms as Governor.
His opponent, U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn from suburban Williamson County, is by her own admission more partisan, at least in the sense that she has fully embraced the Donald Trump campaign and as seen as a staunch supporter of the President’s agenda. Even before Trump, Blackburn’s style of politics was seen as a shift towards a more ideologically defined approach than the traditional pragmatism of some of the state’s GOP elder statesmen such as Howard Baker Jr. In adding Trump’s confrontational style to the mix, however, Blackburn’s partisan and ideological edges are likely amplified, which account for a more polarized opinion about her persona than Bredesen.
Clearly every vote will count for Bredesen in what is now a much more red-leaning state than when he won his first mandate as Governor. Some traditional rural vote recapture will be necessary for him to win, and his campaign deliberately disavowing partisanship (to the point of openly opposing the Democratic party line on Brent Cavanaugh’s U.S. Supreme Court nomination and Chuck Schumer’s Democratic Senate leadership) could help entice more traditionalist Tennessee voters in the rural counties back in the fold.
In terms of number of votes, however, Bredesen is far more dependent on suburban and urban votes if he is to have a realistic shot at victory. In the same time that the rural areas have swung more sharply towards Republicans, there is some evidence that the larger urban counties – Knox and Hamilton/Chattanooga (which traditionally supported Republicans even as the state as a whole did not) are less instrumental in Republican wins, and have even trended away from the same increases in overall Republican support. Rutherford/Murfreesboro, more suburban and anchored by a large public university, basically had static levels of Republican presidential support between 2012 and 2016, and Williamson County was one of four counties statewide which saw a decrease in levels of Republican support during those same presidential election years. The largest cities – Nashville and Memphis, which at one time could contribute to Republican margins (more so in Memphis/Shelby than Nashville) have become increasingly Democratic in their support, with Hillary Clinton winning close to or over 60% support in each county in 2016. This could be likened to an I-24 strategy for a state Democratic renaissance, loosely based on the key cities on that section of interstate (Chattanooga, Murfreesboro, Nashville and Clarksville) that may increasingly trend Democratic and help make the state more competitive.
What a fairly tight Bredesen (Democratic) victory looked like back in 2002
What any Democratic victory in Tennessee would probably look like in 2018
This race will be indicative of overall state political trends in the future, since the Republicans have adopted with Trump a more aggressive, confrontational approach, which may or may not work for Republicans further down the ballot. In the larger urban areas, can the centrist Bredesen count on a large turnout of Democrats who might otherwise prefer a more activist, progressive approach? In the suburban areas and smaller metropolitan areas (i.e. Chattanooga) will the electorate, perhaps more preferential to moderation than firebrand populism, continue to trend more towards the Democrats? Will the rural areas, more amenable to conservative populism but also cognizant of actual candidates and their record, regardless of party, return at least in part to the Democratic fold?
For Bredesen, and Tennessee Democrats in the longer term, they need a decisive “yes” to all the above questions – an urban progressive base who can still be relied upon to support moderates, suburbs and smaller metro areas becoming increasingly more competitive, and rural areas, at least for the time being, who can still support centrist, pragmatic Democrats of an earlier era when the state was considerably more blue.
