This week on The Numbers, we discuss some new poll numbers that suggest Conservative voters might be souring a little on the party’s leader. We also take a look at the national polling scene and break down some new numbers out of Quebec. We then close with a Quiz.

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Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

The next election in Quebec is still the Parti Québécois’s to lose, but that has become increasingly likely the closer the province gets to the October 5 vote.

Two new polls over the last week showed the PQ and the Quebec Liberals neck-and-neck, with newly-installed premier and CAQ leader Christine Fréchette giving her party only the smallest of bumps (if any).

The polls come from Léger for Québecor and Pallas Data for Qc125. I wrote a little about the Pallas poll last week but want to delve into it a bit more deeply today.

Pallas, which was done immediately after Fréchette’s victory, gave the Liberals a three-point lead (31.8% to 28.5%, rounded off to 31% to 29%) with the CAQ still stuck at 14%. The Léger poll, conducted a few days later, put the PQ at 31%, followed by the Liberals at 28% and the CAQ at 17%.

Since the beginning of the year, Pallas has the Liberals up eight points, with the PQ down five points and the CAQ down two points. Léger, meanwhile, has less movement — the PQ down one point and the Liberals up two, with the CAQ unchanged. The more recent trend for Léger has shown the Liberals catching up, and then taking a hit following the arrival of Fréchette at the helm of the CAQ. But until we see a sustained trend, it’s perhaps safer to say that the PQ and Liberals have moved into a tie.

A tie benefits the PQ, as shown by the party’s support among francophones above. The Liberals dominate among non-francophones, but these voters are concentrated in a limited number of ridings. It’s unlikely the PLQ can really compete for government without being closer to at least 23% or 25% among this part of the electorate. While they are currently below that mark, they are a lot closer to it then they were just a few months ago.

The potential for a PQ minority or a Liberal win changes the game not only in Quebec but in the rest of the country, as the former would likely put a referendum on Quebec independence on hold (and, of course, the latter would take it off the table entirely).

But the polls continue to show that a referendum would likely not go the PQ’s way. Pallas finds support for independence at just 31%, the lowest it’s been in Pallas’s tracking, while opposition is at 63%, the highest it’s been. The poll also found that 70% of Quebecers do not want to see a referendum held in the PQ’s first mandate, which means there are some Quebecers who would vote YES in a referendum but would prefer not to have to make the choice.

It does put PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon in a bind, as his promise to hold a referendum in a first mandate puts a low ceiling on his party’s support. It might not be low enough to prevent the PQ from forming a government, but it might put a majority out of reach. Léger found that the promise to hold a referendum is indeed the obstacle to a clear PQ election win. When respondents were asked how they would vote if the PQ promised not to hold a referendum, the PQ’s narrow three-point lead ballooned to a 14-point stomping, 39% to 25%.

St-Pierre Plamondon has already ruled out backing down on his pledge, but that is an easier thing to do while he is still ahead than it might be if he falls behind. The Liberals’ Charles Milliard might have lost a step according to the latest Léger poll, but if that’s just a blip and this election remains a horse race, the next few months could have some surprises in store.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on how First Nations feel about the removal of Indigenous names from three ridings. Plus, a new candidate joins the Ontario Liberal leadership race, rejected ballots played little role in Terrebonne byelection and the Supreme Court makes a ruling that will impact the next provincial election in Quebec.

• Polls show the status quo federally, but not so status quo within Conservative ranks when it comes to Pierre Poilievre’s leadership. Plus, some polling numbers out of Ontario before the ‘Gravy Plane’ took flight.

• #EveryElectionProject: PCs hope for a PEI harbinger in 1979.

• Upcoming milestone for Obby Khan.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Indigenous riding name changes opposed in two of three cases

Earlier this month, I wrote about the name changes coming to 19 federal ridings across the country, including the removal of newly-added Indigenous names from three ridings: Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga and Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong. At the time, I reached out to the three MPs who proposed the name changes to their own ridings, as well as the three First Nations whose names were being removed.

Of my six inquiries, I only got two responses: one from Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong MP Marilyn Gladu and the other from the Six Nations of the Grand River. The latter said they approved of the removal of ‘Six Nations’ from the riding as they had never approved of its addition in the first place. Gladu said the First Nations in her riding were fine with the removal.

Thanks to some further inquiries from The Hill Times, it turns out that, while the Six Nations repeated to The Hill Times what they said to me, the story in Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong does not seem to align with what I was told.

Read more

This and other #EveryElectionProject hubs will be updated as more historical capsules are written.

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1890 Prince Edward Island election

A win that wasn’t a win for long

January 30, 1890

Sometimes, even the closest of elections aren’t the most heated of contests, aren’t decided over controversial issues or don’t feature engaging, charismatic leaders.

Take the 1890 election in Prince Edward Island, for example.

Called for January 30 of that year, it came very shortly after Neil McLeod was sworn in as premier of the small province. He took over from W.W. Sullivan, who resigned from the post in late 1889.

The Conservatives, under Sullivan, had been in power since 1879. McLeod was a member of Sullivan’s cabinet and was relatively progressive for his time, promoting labour-friendly legislation while in office. Though some Conservatives didn’t appreciate this direction, McLeod was nevertheless the only real contender for the job when Sullivan stepped aside.

McLeod’s opponent during the campaign was John Yeo, the leader of the leaders. But according to Frederick Driscoll, writing in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the Liberal leader “did not announce much by way of policy and campaigned against what [he] thought to be the weak record of the government”.

As would often be the case in PEI politics, McLeod instead touted his party’s links with the government in Ottawa which, in 1890, was still run by John A. Macdonald and the Conservatives.

The 19th century (and into the first decades of the 20th century) was a time of a deeply partisan press — every party had its allied newspaper, and those newspapers often went to war with the newspapers supportive of the opposing party. The Daily Examiner, out of Charlottetown, was no exception. A Conservative-aligned newspaper, the Examiner often railed against whatever charges were being made in the Liberal-aligned Patriot.

But reporting on election day, the Examiner tried to keep things cordial — at first.

“In the city the contest was close and exciting from the beginning,” wrote its correspondent. “The candidates were, personally, very well matched. Few had a word to say against any of them. Each was respected and popular. The contest was between the parties not between the men.”

It wasn’t long before the Examiner cast some aspersions on the means by which the Liberals (or the “Oppositionists”, as they were termed) got their vote out.

“Following their usual tactics, [the Oppositionists] ‘put their best foot foremost,’ and brought early to the polls every floating voter whom they could, by any means, command.”

Of course, the Conservatives wouldn’t stoop to such tactics. And while the Liberals might round-up vagabonds and drifters with the aid of a little booze, the Conservatives got the support of the right kind of people — at least according to the Examiner:

“By two o’clock—after the intelligent voters, who man our workshops and factories, our counting-houses and stores and offices—had polled their votes, McLeod…had obtained an advantage which the Oppositionists, with all their force and ability, and their ‘human devices’, could not overcome.”

The result was incredibly close, with the Conservatives winning 16 seats and the Liberals claiming 14. The popular vote was also nearly evenly divided between the two parties, with little having changed since the previous election of 1886.

A note on sources: Researching early elections is often difficult, as sources (when they can be found) do not always agree and newspaper reports from the time are unreliable. The Wikipedia page for this election, for example, lists both the Liberals and Conservatives as winning 15 seats — perhaps why the 1890 election was often referenced as PEI’s first minority government when Dennis King’s PCs won a minority in 2019. Elections PEI also lists the breakdown as 15 seats for each party in their historical references. But the document includes pencil marks, showing that an elected member recorded as a Liberal was actually a Conservative, which would put the count as 16-14. This is the result listed in several other sources, including the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Other sources refer to the McLeod government as being re-elected in 1890, rather than ending in a tie, and James William Richard, the member corrected by pencil in the Elections PEI document, is listed in the Canadian Parliamentary Companion for 1897 as a Conservative. For that reason, I believe the 16-14 result is the correct one.

McLeod’s narrow majority was not built to last. When Macdonald called a federal election in early 1891, three members of McLeod’s provincial caucus opted to run for a seat in the House of Commons. Two of the three byelections subsequently held to fill these vacancies went to the Liberals, with the third going to an Independent Conservative.

The byelection defeats meant McLeod had lost his majority in the legislature. Losing a motion of non-confidence, he asked for a dissolution, the lieutenant-governor refused, and McLeod resigned. Frederick Peters of the Liberals was asked to form a government and his party would remain in office in Prince Edward Island for another 29 years.

1904 Prince Edward Island election

When the premier’s seat ended in a tie

December 7, 1904

At the turn of the 20th century, the Liberals were well-ensconced at the top of Prince Edward Island’s politics. By 1904, the party had been in power for 13 years and Arthur Peters, installed in 1901, was only the latest in a string of Liberal premiers.

A lawyer “born into what passed for an aristocracy in 19th-century Prince Edward Island”, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Peters also happened to be the brother of Frederick Peters, who had governed the province from 1891 to 1897.

That’s not to say that there weren’t challenges for the Liberals in Prince Edward Island. While the province’s economy had been booming in the 1880s, by the 1890s it was stagnating on the edges of a country that was increasingly looking westwards. As fortunes worsened, P.E.I.’s politics turned to how the Island could get a better deal from the federal government.

Representation in the House of Commons was one point of contention. The province’s declining population as a share of the country’s as a whole had decreased its allocation of seats from six to just four by 1903, and Peters was a vocal opponent of Prince Edward Island’s falling clout.

Peters also pushed for P.E.I. to get a bigger subsidy from the federal government. That government just happened to be run by a Liberal prime minister in Wilfrid Laurier, and when Peters called an election for December 7, 1904, he had no qualms arguing that voters would ensure a better deal for P.E.I. by electing a Liberal government in Charlottetown to match the one in Ottawa.

The Canadian Annual Review analyzed the situation facing both the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition.

“Against the Government was the increasing taxation and indebtedness, the prevailing lack of prosperity amongst the Island farmers and leadership of the Conservatives by a young and talented man. As to actual performance the Liberal party had to its credit the abolition of the Legislative Council, or rather its curious amalgamation with the Assembly; the obtaining of some important financial re-arrangements from the Dominion; and the passing of a fairly popular, though not always enforced, Prohibitory Liquor law.”

John A. Mathieson, the young man leading the Conservatives, had hopes for a breakthrough. In the federal election held in early November, the Conservatives had won three of P.E.I.’s four seats. Surely that ‘Dominion’ success would translate over to the provincial sphere, even if Robert Borden’s Conservatives were still on the opposition benches in the House of Commons.

In the words of The Globe’s correspondent in Halifax, “the election was one of the most exciting ever held in the Province, and both parties worked hard, fine weather and good roads bringing out large votes.”

The Liberals brought the most votes out.

Peters secured a result very similar to the one his predecessor had won in 1900. The Liberals were ahead in 21 seats with 54.1% of the vote, a small gain of 0.6 percentage points. The Liberals swept Prince County, gaining a seat from the Conservatives, but lost one seat in Queens County.

Kings County remained the region of strength for the Conservatives, as it was there that they won seven of their eight seats.

But the most interesting result was in 2nd Kings, where Peters faced a tough fight. When the special votes were counted — people were allowed to vote wherever they held property, even if they had also voted where their primary residence was located — Peters found himself in a tie with the Conservative candidate, Harvey David McEwen, at 515 votes apiece.

While the result kept the premier out of the legislature for a few months, he was eventually able to claim the seat in a byelection called in early 1905. By then, it was agreed that Peters would win by acclamation and McEwen, a prosperous businessman, would go back to his life outside of politics.

But Peters didn’t get to enjoy being premier for much longer — he died of Bright’s disease at the age of 53 in 1908. Mathieson, the “young and talented man”, would eventually get his turn as premier in 1911.

Still, Peters would leave at least one lasting legacy. By 1914, Prince Edward Island was at risk of losing yet another seat in the House of Commons. His campaign to maintain P.E.I.’s representation finally bore fruit when the government of the day decided it would not decrease the number of seats P.E.I. had, but instead stipulate that no province could have fewer seats in the House of Commons than it does in the Senate. That rule has survived for over a century and, today, Prince Edward Island’s seat allocation remains unchanged, and very generous, at four.

1919 Prince Edward Island election

Unrest in the midst of unquestioned prosperity

July 24, 1919

While it included some Liberals, the Unionist government of Robert Borden was primarily Conservative. It had successfully led the country through the First World War but not without leaving a few scars, and when soldiers returned from overseas they expected to be treated like heroes — and that things would change.

That desire for change swept up governments across the country. And many of them were Conservative, regardless of what moniker the Dominion government might have adopted.

The cyclical nature of Canadian elections is not a new invention, and shortly after Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberals were removed from office in 1911 following a long stint in power, Prince Edward Islanders did the same with their Liberal government, sweeping in the Conservatives under John A. Mathieson in 1912.

Mathieson and the Conservatives were returned to power in 1915 but with a much-reduced majority. Two years later, Mathieson resigned to take up a judicial appointment and his attorney general, Aubin-Edmond Arsenault, was chosen as his replacement.

Across the aisle from Arsenault sat a veteran of PEI politics. John Howatt Bell had been first elected as a Liberal in the 1886 provincial election. But he was a troublemaker, quarreling with his own premier. He left provincial politics at the end of the century to try his luck at the national level, successfully at first when he ran in a federal byelection but he was defeated in the next general contest. He stepped aside from politics for about 15 years before returning as a Liberal MLA in the 1915 provincial election.

The Liberals hoped to capitalize on Islanders’ discontent with the government. The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs said that the Conservatives had “against them the general unrest and high prices countered, however, by unquestioned prosperity.” Things were going well in Prince Edward Island, but Islanders weren’t feeling it.

The high cost of living — as it was termed even then — and the soldiers’ feeling of ill-treatment upon their return from France were key factors in this “general unrest”. Farmers were also upset with the government, but unlike elsewhere in Canada they failed to organize themselves into a party in PEI. (In 1920, provincial United Farmer candidates would be elected in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.)

Also at play was sectarian prejudice. The Annual Review said that Arsenault’s Acadian background and Roman Catholicism raised “certain Orange prejudices and grievances”. The Orangemen were also upset that Arsenault appointed an “alleged Sinn Feiner” as secretary to the superintendent of education instead of a Protestant.

Bell and the Liberals ran on providing cleaner and more efficient government, including new investments in education (to promote the “patriotic spirit of the pupils”) and co-operation with farmers’ organizations to lower the costs of goods.

The Conservatives were primarily swept-up in the desire for change. When the election was held in “glorious weather”, in the words of the Charlottetown Guardian, the voters turfed Arsenault and his Conservatives.

The Liberals won 24 seats, a jump of 11 since the previous election. Their candidates captured 51.7% of the vote, up less than two points. But, in a very evenly-divided province, that was enough to ensure a landslide victory.

The Conservatives, down four points to 45.7% of the vote, lost 12 seats, winning only five. Three were on the east coast, one in Summerside and the fifth being Arsenault’s — won in the part of PEI where the province’s francophones are still concentrated to this day.

One Independent was also elected: John Alexander Dewar, a former Conservative who failed to win his party’s nomination, and ran and won in his old district — thanks in large part to the Liberals, who didn’t put up a candidate of their own.

Observers at the time concluded that the soldier and Protestant vote went strongly against the government, while the Guardian blamed the “prevailing unrest and the unlimited promises of Liberal candidates”.

With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is clear that this election result was also part of a broader movement against the Conservatives. The party governed five provinces and in Ottawa at the outbreak of the First World War. By 1921, the Conservatives would be out of office not only in Charlottetown, but in Ottawa and in every other provincial capital across the country, too.

1959 Prince Edward Island election

PEI goes with the flow

September 1, 1959

It was 1959 and Prince Edward Island was in an awkward spot. For the first time since the 1920s, the province had been governed for an extended period of time by a party that also didn’t hold sway in Ottawa.

That had to be fixed.

First elected in 1935 a few months before Mackenzie King’s Liberals returned to federal office, by 1959 the PEI Liberals had been in power for 24 years under four different leaders. The latest was Alex Matheson, who took over in 1953 and won the 1955 election.

Louis St-Laurent was the Liberal prime minister at the time. But in the late 1950s the country had swung to the Progressive Conservatives. John Diefenbaker was elected with a minority government in 1957 and he quickly turned that into a landslide majority the year later. That landslide included a sweep of all four seats in Prince Edward Island.

Undaunted, Matheson sent the province to the polls to boast of his “forward-looking program”, which included free text books for elementary school children, pensions for unmarried women and widows starting at the age of 60 and new trading relationships abroad.

All well and good, but what about Diefenbaker?

All four of his PEI MPs actively participated in the campaign to help elect their provincial cousins, now under the leadership of Walter Shaw.

A 71-year-old farmer and retired deputy minister of agriculture, Shaw didn’t have a seat in the legislature when he took over the opposition PCs, who had just a handful of seats. Matheson obliged Shaw by giving him a bench he could sit on on the floor of the legislative assembly in order to provide some guidance to his MLAs.

Shaw’s platform included the provincial government taking over the portion of teachers’ salaries paid by cash-strapped local school boards. He also pledged support for fishermen and farmers and called the PCs the “party of the causeway”.

Of course, Diefenbaker had merely promised an engineering study about a possible causeway linking Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick, but Shaw made it seem that a vote for the PCs meant a vote for a causeway that was definitely going to happen (it didn’t).

Shaw leaned hard on the notion that PEI needed a friend in the prime minister’s office, saying that Islanders “see the advantage of keeping the province in line with a generous Conservative administration in Ottawa.”

With some degree of self-interest, Matheson said that provincial and federal politics should be kept separate. But his campaign understood they were swimming against the current and instead put a “Matheson government” forward in its advertisements rather than the Liberal brand. Shaw and the PCs, meanwhile, featured Diefenbaker prominently in their advertisements.

It was an unsubtle message, but it worked.

After winning only three seats in 1955, the PCs captured 22 in 1959. The Liberals were reduced to just eight seats, six of them in the southeast corner of the island.

Despite the lop-sided seat result, the voting was actually quite close — the PCs took 50.9% of the vote, a gain of six points since 1955, while the Liberals took the remaining 49.1%.

Bagpipers and 2,500 supporters greeted Shaw for his victory speech, but the results were also greeted warmly in Ottawa. Though they had won a thumping victory only a year before, the Diefenbaker PCs needed some good news. The Liberals had successfully been re-elected on an anti-Diefenbaker message in Newfoundland the month before and new Gallup polling was showing support for the federal PCs slumping. An upset win in PEI improved the mood.

But it wouldn’t last. Diefenbaker’s government became unpopular and was reduced to a shaky minority in 1962. Similarly, Shaw experienced the loss of a few seats when he took Islanders back to the polls that same year. But he held on and in 1966 tried to secure a third mandate for his PCs.

Except by then there was a big problem for Shaw.

The Liberals were back in power in Ottawa.

1968 Prince Edward Island Progressive Conservative leadership

When the premier and opposition leader were neighbours

September 21, 1968

In the 1966 provincial election, Prince Edward Island swung narrowly from the Progressive Conservatives to the Liberals, ending the premiership of Walter Shaw. It wasn’t a decisive defeat, however, as Shaw’s PCs retained 15 seats in the 32-seat legislature.

But by 1968, Shaw had been leading the PCs for over 11 years — and he had his eye on retirement. He’d be turning 81 by year’s end (though the newspapers couldn’t quite get his age right, with three different articles pegging him to be 79, 81 and 83 years old) and he thought that was the time to go.

“I have been under no pressure to retire from the party,” he told the press when he announced his intention to step aside, “but I am at an age when one should consider retirement.”

Somewhat grimly, Shaw pointed out that “no one should hold on until other circumstances, either ill health or death, intervenes. It would be most unfair to stay on until something happens.”

So, the PEI PCs were off to find another leader. Five different candidates came forward, but by voting day only three were still in the running.

They were led by George Key. He wasn’t an MLA and was just 37 years old. But he was the mayor of Summerside, PEI’s second-largest city, and was seen as a centrist Tory.

His main competition was Cyril Sinnott, an internal medicine specialist and the MLA for Kings 5th, which he won by a single vote in the 1966 provincial election. If Key was the moderate, Sinnott was the right-winger (which he himself admitted).

Also on the ballot was Ivan Kerry, the party’s president. With his deep ties in and knowledge of the party, he was seen as a wildcard. But the Charlottetown correspondent for The Globe and Mail felt that Key and Sinnott were the front runners, as they had “launched strong campaigns for the leadership and each cites support from provincial party leaders.”

Over 1,300 voting delegates attended the convention held on September 20 and 21 at the Kennedy Coliseum in Charlottetown. Party members were treated to a speech by Robert Stanfield, who had taken over the national party the year before but was only a few months out from his crushing defeat at the hands of Pierre Trudeau in June 1968 (except in PEI, where the PCs carried all four seats).

But with just three candidates on the ballot, the only question was whether it could be settled on the first one.

It was, with Key winning 691 votes, or about 52% of all those who cast a vote. Sinnott finished second with 36%, with Kerry taking just 12% of the vote.

So, the PCs had their leader — a young man who could take on the Liberal government of Alex Campbell, himself only 34 years old. And who would know how to beat him better than his own neighbour?

Yes, Prince Edward Island is a small place. And it just so happened that George Key shared a lot with Alex Campbell.

“Premier Campbell and I are neighbours in Summerside,” he said in answer to reporters’ questions after his victory. “We attend social functions at each other’s home and we’ve even taken our vacations together. However, I’m afraid I don’t agree with his policies.”

It would’ve been even more awkward to run directly against Campbell in his own riding, so Key opted to run elsewhere. It didn’t help — he would go down to defeat by a mere eight votes as Campbell’s Liberals expanded their narrow majority to a landslide victory in 1970. The PEI PCs would be reduced to just five seats in that campaign, with both Sinnott and Kerry among the defeated, and the PEI Liberals would remain in office for the rest of the 1970s.

1976 PEI Progressive Conservative leadership

PEI PCs go for the steady hand

September 25, 1976

The Progressive Conservatives in Prince Edward Island had been going through a rough patch ever since they lost the 1966 election to Alex Campbell’s Liberals. It had been a close fight in that campaign, but the party was reduced to just five seats four years later. In 1974, the PCs only did a little better, winning six of 32.

That wasn’t good enough for PC leader Melvin McQuaid, and he quit as opposition leader two years later. A seat on P.E.I.’s Supreme Court bench was waiting for him.

The initial frontrunner to replace McQuaid was David MacDonald, the four-term PC MP for Egmont. But MacDonald was a Red Tory, and the Red Tories held sway in the federal Progressive Conservative Party after Joe Clark’s leadership victory earlier that year. Though he mulled a move to provincial politics, MacDonald decided to stay in Ottawa as one of Clark’s frontbenchers. He’d eventually be rewarded for his loyalty by being named to Clark’s (short-lived) cabinet in 1979.

When MacDonald dropped out, another veteran from federal politics took advantage of the opportunity. Angus MacLean had an even longer track record in office. The MP for Malpeque had been elected for the first time in a 1951 byelection. A farmer and WWII veteran, MacLean served as the fisheries minister in John Diefenbaker’s government.

A “Tory of the old school”, according to Martin Dorrell of The Globe and Mail, MacLean was 62 years old and hailed from rural Prince Edward Island. The decline of the Island’s agricultural sector was his main concern.

In some ways, his opponent couldn’t have been more different. James Lee was just 39 years old. Though he ran for the PCs in 1974, he didn’t get himself a seat. He had to wait until a byelection in 1975 to get into the Legislative Assembly. But that victory finally gave the PCs an MLA from Charlottetown, the city they had been shut out of in both 1970 and 1974.

The Canadian Press correspondent in Charlottetown described the different approaches of the two leadership contenders:

“The convention was a contrast to the noisy, placard-waving type of affair common in most other parts of Canada. A ‘wild’ demonstration here usually involves no more than a few placards and a choice of music, with candidates usually choosing either the skirl of bagpipes or the rasping sound of fiddles and guitars.”

MacLean opted for the bagpipes, entering the convention hall “accompanied only by his wife and a piper”, while Lee attempted more of the “big city zip”. What that “zip” was wasn’t described by the CP correspondent, but it apparently did not go over very well.

Lee put up a decent performance, but the majority opted for the experience and simplicity of the veteran MacLean. He took 57.4% of the 1,026 ballots cast.

In response to Lee’s approach, MacLean said that “high tension campaigning is not my style. It doesn’t work for me. That kind of thing tends to create party divisions. I do it quietly at the kitchen table and not with hoopla.”

He promised to keep the party united and get its organization ready for the next election. MacLean would come up just short in 1978, but would lead the PCs back to power in 1979. He’d stay on for only two years. By then, the PCs were ready to pass the baton to someone who had gained experience: James Lee.

1978 Prince Edward Island election

A squeaker, all right

April 24, 1978

The year was 1978 and Alex Campbell, the premier of Prince Edward Island, was hoping to do something no other premier had ever done before in his province: win a fourth consecutive election.

Though only 44, Campbell was already the longest-serving premier in PEI’s history (a title he still holds today). He had come into office as a younger man in 1966 and had led the PEI Liberals to more wins in 1970 and 1974. But a fourth win in 1978 was not going to be easy.

The party had already lost a couple of seats to the Progressive Conservatives in byelections and the Tories seemed geared-up for the campaign. They had a new leader in Angus MacLean, though he was hardly new to politics.

MacLean had served a quarter century as a PC MP, in the job long enough to have served as fisheries minister in John Diefenbaker’s government. “A politician without flair or a sense of style,” in the words of Martin Dorrell in the Globe and Mail, MacLean was “a reluctant speaker and a man who had never been able to dispel suspicions that he had returned to the province to retire.”

But return he did, taking over the provincial party’s leadership in 1976 and getting himself into the legislature in a byelection. The Liberals were confident they could beat MacLean (the contrast in age between the two leaders was stark) but Campbell nevertheless recognized that “no one has this in the bag.”

The Liberals presented their budget and shortly thereafter dropped the writ. Campbell wanted to continue his work diversifying the economy, largely with the help of federal funds from the Liberal government in Ottawa. New industries would bring 2,000 jobs to the province, cutting unemployment by half.

MacLean, however, emphasised the old industries that had built Prince Edward Island: the fisheries and the family farm. While Campbell might want to spend Ottawa’s money on economic diversification, MacLean wanted more self-sufficiency and autonomy for PEI — and for Islanders themselves.

Despite Campbell’s modernity, politics could still be old-fashioned in PEI. The Canadian Press reported “a predictable element of old-style politics [that emerged after the writ drop] — a stream of highway repair trucks.”

Widely considered a bitter campaign, the most competitive since Campbell had come to power, the PCs emphasised the team around MacLean, while the Liberals put the focus on the premier.

The Liberals had many promises in their platform, denounced as a “shopping list” by MacLean, while the PCs spoke broadly about values and objectives but kept their promises unspecific and a platform was never even released.

That unorthodox approach contrasted with that of the Liberals.

“The party has also taken some hard knocks over the slickness of its advertising,” Dorrell wrote. “The campaign, conducted by an out-of-province firm, features a photograph of Mr. Campbell in which the bags and worry-lines around his eyes have been air-brushed away, leaving the unfortunate impression that he has never known a hard day at the office.”

The results were extremely close. The Liberals dropped nine seats to just 17, with the PCs picking up nine to finish with 15. The Liberals took just under 51% of the vote while the PCs took just over 48%. Only 50 votes separated the Liberals’ Ralph Johnstone from Flora Bagnall of the PCs in 1st Queens. Without those votes, the two parties would have ended in a tie.

The NDP, which ran a far smaller slate of candidates than it did in 1974, took less than 1% of ballots cast.

The Liberals lost seats across the island, but primarily in and around Charlottetown. Their block of seats in Prince County at the western extremity of PEI kept them in office.

Islanders were nearly evenly split — and in some cases they literally were. At the time, Islanders elected two members to the legislature for every seat, one a “councillor” and the other an “assemblyman”. In five of PEI’s 16 districts, voters elected a Liberal for one of those titles and a Tory for the other.

“It was a squeaker, all right,” Campbell admitted on election night.

For the PCs, it looked like the Liberal government was nearly done. MacLean commented that it was “just a matter of whether it’s going in one sweep or in installments.”

After 12 years as premier and facing a divided legislature — the Liberal speaker reduced the party’s majority to one — Campbell decided to resign later that year. It put the legislature in an even more unstable situation. Bennett Campbell, his successor as premier but no relation, called an election in early 1979 to settle the impasse. Islanders indeed broke the tie, and Angus MacLean became premier.

1993 Prince Edward Island Liberal leadership

A coronation for Catherine Callbeck

January 23, 1993

The 1980s and early 1990s were dominated by constitutional debates — Quebec’s referendum in 1980, the negotiations over the repatriation of the constitution in 1981, the Meech Lake Accord of 1987 and the Charlottetown referendum in 1992. It elevated provincial premiers to the national stage. While that might not have necessarily made them household names, even the premiers of Canada’s smallest provinces were national figures.

Joe Ghiz was one of them, having become premier of Prince Edward Island in 1986. His Liberals dominated the province, winning all but two seats in his 1989 re-election campaign and still being very popular in the polls as the next election approached. But Ghiz decided that was enough, and announced his resignation in October 1992.

A handful of provincial cabinet ministers were touted as serious contenders, but in the end there was only one: Catherine Callbeck. First elected as an MLA in 1974, after which she served in cabinet for one term before leaving politics for a time, Callbeck had been the Liberal MP for Malpeque since 1988. She was the first to enter the leadership contest and resigned her federal seat, starting the campaign with the support of half of PEI’s cabinet ministers and most of the Liberal caucus. Her show of force dissuaded others from throwing their hats into the ring, something Callbeck didn’t mind.

"If no one else chooses to throw their hat in,” she said, “it could make the transfer smoother because leadership contests can be divisive.”

As the deadline for entering the race approached, it seemed like the PEI Liberals were heading for an acclamation. But on the very last day, two men stepped up to challenge Callbeck.

One was Bill Campbell, a social activist and federal civil servant somewhat well-known in Charlottetown.

The other was a complete unknown. Larry Creed, in his late 20s, was an unemployed construction worker and called himself the “beans and bologna candidate”. He admitted he entered the race simply because it was heading for a coronation.

Neither Creed nor Campbell had any political experience and Callbeck was the heavy favourite. She ran a largely promise-free campaign (wanting to save those for the upcoming election), but there was some disagreement over the Confederation Bridge — Callbeck wanted it to go ahead as planned, while Creed wanted a plebiscite on it.

More than 1,500 delegates (a big number in a province of around 130,000 people) attended the convention in Charlottetown, but it was a “low-key convention with only token demonstrations and little sign-waving on a convention-room floor so packed with chairs that there wasn't much room for it anyway”, according to the Ottawa Citizen’s correspondent.

“While Campbell emotionally promised full employment in 10 years and Creed choked up when he mentioned his parents, Callbeck delivered a cool, straightlaced speech reflecting her meticulous personality and middle-of-the-road Liberalism.”

The result was a landslide victory — as expected.

Callbeck took 79% of the vote on the first ballot, easily beating both Creed and Campbell, who took 16% and 5% of delegates’ votes, respectively.

Callbeck had just become the premier of Prince Edward Island — and only the second woman to become premier in Canada’s history, having been beaten to the punch by British Columbia’s Rita Johnston by little more than a year.

She wasn’t intimidated at the prospect of being a woman in a male-dominated field.

"When I took my Bachelor of Commerce at Mount Allison,” she said, “I was the only woman in the class. When I taught at Saint John Institute of Technology, I was the only woman on the business administration staff. When I served in cabinet in Prince Edward Island I was the only woman. When I was in business, I dealt mainly with men."

Without a seat in the legislature, Callbeck didn’t waste any time before calling an election, setting a date for March. In the 1993 PEI election, she rode a wave of popularity (and a tide going against anything Tory blue at the time) to win 31 of 32 seats — another landslide victory, making her the first Canadian woman to lead a political party to electoral success.

1993 Prince Edward Island election

Prince Edward Island makes history

March 29, 1993

For Catherine Callbeck and the Liberals of Prince Edward Island, 1993 held little suspense.

After Joe Ghiz announced his resignation as premier, a job he had held since 1986, it quickly became apparent that Callbeck, the Liberal MP for Malpeque and former provincial cabinet minister, would be his successor. Some 1,500 delegates confirmed this in January 1993 when they overwhelmingly gave their support to Callbeck over her two little-known opponents.

A provincial election was expected shortly after Callbeck was sworn in as premier — and it set up a campaign unlike any other seen in Canada before, as two women leading parties of government faced off against each other.

The PEI Progressive Conservatives, who had been thrashed by Ghiz’s Liberals in 1989, had chosen Pat Mella as their leader a year later. A school teacher, Mella energetically critiqued the Liberal government from outside the legislature.

That’s because there weren’t many seats reserved for Tories in Charlottetown. In the last election, the Liberals had won 30 of 32. And even one of those two PC MLAs had been persuaded to resign in order to accept a government appointment from the Liberals. The other MLA, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, decided not to re-offer.

That meant Mella would be leading a cast of 32 candidates without a single incumbent among them.

“I think it’s time for a change,” Mella said, “and you might as well mean it literally.”

Politically, things looked good for the Liberals. But Callbeck had her own challenges to face as premier of a province with 18% unemployment and prospects of more job losses on the horizon.

One of those fears was that Jean Chrétien’s Liberals, widely expected to defeat the PCs in a federal election later that year, would put a stop to the building of a tax facility in Summerside to process the GST. Chrétien had pledged he would scrap the GST, which would put hundreds of jobs in Summerside in danger.

In the end, Islanders needn’t have worried.

Playing it safe, Callbeck ran a campaign of “splashy advertisements, bland speeches and personal contact with thousands of voters in muddy farmyards and chilly church basements,” according to The Globe and Mail’s Kevin Cox. Callbeck avoided controversy and detailed commitments whereover possible.

Mella, by comparison, was a lively speaker and sharp critic, and her detailed platform included many promises to Islanders, including attention-grabbing ones like ending political patronage and funding kindergarten. But she wasn’t able to move the dial much in her favour, and having to apologize for some radio ads that went after Callbeck personally — attack ads were just not how things were done in PEI — did not help matters.

In a climate of insecurity and uncertainty about the province’s economic future, Islanders opted for the status quo — and nearly awarded the Liberals a sweep.

The Liberals captured 31 seats, a gain of one from the previous election. The party captured both of the seats vacated by the PC MLAs but left one on the table: Pat Mella’s.

It was a disappointing result for the PCs, who had hoped to make a breakthrough. But Mella was able to get herself a seat in the legislature and increase her party’s share of the vote by four points to 39.5%. The Liberals dropped nearly six points to 55.1%, but it didn’t matter much. Callbeck had coupled her leadership landslide in January with an electoral landslide little more than two months later.

Her victory didn’t make her Canada’s first female provincial premier, as Rita Johnston beat her to that title in 1991 in British Columbia. But Johnston and her Social Credit Party went down to defeat later that year. Avoiding that fate made Callbeck the first woman to become premier with an electoral mandate of her own — not that Callbeck thought much about it.

“I can honestly say I don’t feel that type of pressure,” she said. “I’m the sort of person that I take on a challenge and I do the best I can, that’s what I’m going to do as premier of Prince Edward Island.”

2003 Prince Edward Island Liberal leadership

A second Ghiz for the Liberals

April 5, 2003

The 2000 provincial election in Prince Edward Island was one the PEI Liberals wanted to forget.

Against Pat Binns’s incumbent Progressive Conservative government, Wayne Carew nearly led the party to complete destruction. The Liberals were reduced to just a single seat (and that won by just 157 votes) and 34% support. At the time, that represented the worst performance for the Liberals in the party’s long history. (The party reached a new low this past Monday.)

Carew held on as leader for a few months, but by the fall of 2000 he decided it was time to step down.

"It will always be something that you wish you could have another crack at," he said. Ron MacKinley, the lone Liberal survivor from 2000, took over as interim leader.

There wasn’t much of a rush to fill that job in a province dominated by Binns and the PCs. Not until February 2003, just a few weeks before the nomination deadline, did two candidates come forward.

Alan Buchanan was the first. An MLA for 4th Queens from 1989 to 1996, Buchanan had served as a cabinet minister in the Joe Ghiz and Catherine Callbeck governments, taking on important portfolios like health and justice. Since leaving politics ahead of the 1996 campaign that brought the PCs to power, Buchanan had been working in the private sector. He launched his leadership campaign in his hometown of Belfast in front of 250 supporters.

A few days later, Robert Ghiz joined the fray.

A familiar name in Prince Edward Island as the son of Joe Ghiz, premier from 1986 to 1993 (he passed away from cancer in 1996), Robert Ghiz was just 29 years old. While the family name was well-known among Islanders, his was also a well-known face in Liberal circles, as Robert Ghiz served as Atlantic advisor to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

"We need a resurgence of energy that has been the backbone of our party,” he told the 275 or so supporters gathered for his campaign launch in Charlottetown. “We need a leader who wants to work hard, a leader who will bring about dramatic change in this organization — a change in attitude, a change in mind set."

Ghiz, however, was not banking his strategy on nostalgia for the years of his father, who led the Liberals to big victories in 1986 and 1989.

"I'm not my father,” he said. “I just hope I can learn from some of the good things he did on PEI."

The convention at the Charlottetown Civic Centre was very well-attended, as nearly 4,000 Liberal party members would cast a ballot.

"I didn't know there were this many Liberals left on P.E.I.," one delegate joked to the CBC.

While Ghiz pitched the message of renewal, Buchanan leaned into his experience. During his convention speech, he argued that "I am ready to lead this party. I have earned my stripes and my apprenticeship is over." But decisions he had made when in government, particularly a pay cut for public sector workers, were still haunting him.

With 3,979 ballots cast, Ghiz emerged as the favourite — but only just. He earned the support of 2,065 delegates, giving him 52% of the vote. Buchanan was only 161 votes behind with 1,904, or 48%.

"The Liberal Party is ready for change,” Ghiz said in his speech before the ballots were cast. “The province is ready for change, the Tory era is ending and I am here to offer this party a fresh start.”

"We need to learn from our past, live in the present and build now for the future. Today is the start of a new page in the history of our party."

He was right about that, but that new page wouldn’t be turned just yet.

In the 2003 election called a few months later, Ghiz would improve the Liberals’ standing, win himself and three other Liberals a seat in the legislature and increase the party’s vote share by eight percentage points. Unlike Carew, he would get another crack at the premiership. But he’d have to wait four more years before occupying the same office that his father once did.

2003 Prince Edward Island election

A hat trick for Pat Binns

September 29, 2003

After two consecutive majority governments for the P.E.I. Progressive Conservatives, premier Pat Binns decided to go for something no Tory had managed before in P.E.I. since the 19th century: three wins in a row.

The omens for Binns and the PCs looked good in mid-2003. The last election had only been three years earlier, but unemployment in Prince Edward Island was low (by P.E.I. standards) at 11% and the number of jobs had increased significantly since the PCs had come to office in 1996. Polls put satisfaction with the Binns government around 80% and, just to leave nothing to chance, the PCs had spent the months before the election call announcing new reductions in fees and taxes, such as the capping of auto-insurance rates. That had been a thorny issue which hurt other PC premiers in the Maritimes, and Binns wasn’t going to take the risk.

A bean farmer and one-term PC MP during the Brian Mulroney years, the 54-year-old Binns announced the expected election at his own nomination meeting. His was the last of the 27 PC nominations that needed to be lined up.

Against the PCs, the Liberals had a fresh face in their new leader — though not an unfamiliar name. In April 2003, the party had chosen the 29-year-old Robert Ghiz, son of former premier Joe Ghiz, who had governed from 1986 to 1992 and had passed away in 1996. Robert Ghiz won by a margin of 161 votes over former cabinet minister Alan Buchanan in a contest in which 4,000 Islanders cast a ballot.

Despite the interest, the prize at the time was not particularly glittering.

The Liberals had been out of power for seven years and had been shellacked in the last election when they had been reduced to just a single seat in the 27-seat Legislative Assembly. Only 157 votes in that one riding had prevented a clean sweep of the island by the PCs.

But P.E.I. had only ever known two parties of government — the Liberals and the Tories. If Ghiz wasn’t the favourite to win the upcoming election, he would eventually get a good shot at becoming premier.

While young, Ghiz boosted the party’s fortunes. His father had been a popular premier, though his son rarely spoke of his father on the stump as he wanted to steer his own course. He gave the moribund Liberals new energy and criticized the government for increased electricity rates, one of its few vulnerabilities. He also put the premier on the defensive during the leaders debate.

The Liberals started the campaign about 20 points behind the PCs in the polls, but by election day the race was looking closer. No one, though, doubted that Binns would prevail in what had been widely seen as a low-key, dull election without any major controversy or decisive issue.

On voting day, the damage from Hurricane Juan couldn’t keep Islanders from casting a ballot, as turnout still managed 83% despite nearly half of households losing power. Even Binns had to watch the results on a small TV powered by a generator.

Those results gave the PCs its third consecutive majority government with 23 seats, a loss of only three since the previous election. The PCs still managed to win a majority of ballots cast despite dropping nearly four points.

Ghiz and the Liberals put up a decent fight, gaining three seats (two of them in Charlottetown, including the district in which Ghiz was running) and increasing their vote share by eight percentage points, ending with just under 43%.

The New Democrats, under rookie leader Gary Robichaud, managed just 3.1% of the vote. The party had failed to run a full slate and finished no better than third in any riding, barely clearing double-digits in just one district.

For Binns and the PCs, the gamble of an early election had paid off nicely. On election night, Binns joked that “sometimes it's called P.E.I., sometimes it's P.E. Island. But tonight I want to call it P.C. Island."

I guess you had to be there.

NOTE ON SOURCES: When available, election results are sourced from Elections Prince Edward Island and J.P. Kirby’s election-atlas.ca. Historical newspapers are also an important source, and I’ve attempted to cite the newspapers quoted from.

There’s been reporting on the fears within the Conservative caucus that Pierre Poilievre’s poor polling numbers have put their seats in danger. It’s undoubtedly been one of the factors contributing to the loss of four MPs to the Liberals through floor-crossing, with perhaps more to come. But some MPs are in greater need of a bounce back by the party (and have more reason to be tempted by the life raft of the Liberal benches). Who are they?

As it stands, the Conservatives would likely see their holdings in the House drop significantly if an election were held today. This week’s update to The Writ’s Vote and Seat Projection puts the party ahead in just 83 seats, representing a decrease of 57 seats from the 140 the Conservatives currently hold. Even the party’s Avg. Projection, which takes into account the likelihood that the Conservatives would outperform their polls, would still have the party losing 40 seats.

There’s been little change in the projection since last week. The Liberal lead now stands at 12.4 points in the vote projection (46.3% to 33.9%), with the NDP stuck at 8.8%. The Liberals are projected to be leading in 226 seats, a gain of three since last week that has come equally from the Conservatives, Bloc Québécois (22) and NDP (10).

That things have not deteriorated further for the Conservatives might be a silver lining for the party — but for a lot of MPs, that just means that the party is currently bottoming out at levels that put their own seats on the chopping block.

For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:

Let’s get to those seats that are most at risk. The Riding Projections classify seats from Safe to Toss. There are a lot of Conservative seats projected to be Liberal Tosses, but those could go either way. Instead, let’s focus on the Conservatives who are in most need of a comeback for their party and are in the greatest danger of losing — even if they beat their polls.

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Full regional breakdowns and tracking charts are available for subscribers below, as are complete riding-level projections. A full methodological explanation of how the vote and seat projection model works can be found here.

The Vote Projection is based primarily on a weighted average of all publicly-available national and regional polls. Complete listings of published polls can be found at 338Canada or on the Wikipedia page for polling in the next federal election. The weighted average is then used to project the outcome in all 343 ridings across the country, taking into account local candidates. Those individual riding-level projections are then weighted by the number of eligible voters in each riding and past turnout to determine the national vote projection for each party.

The Seat Projection shows the number of seats in which each party is projected to be ahead. Parties are assigned a range of likely vote share in each riding based on past polling and modelling errors and 10,000 simulations are run to assign to each party a number of ridings in which they are in contention. The High and Low ranges take into account 95% of all likely outcomes, while the Avg. Projection shows the average number of seats each party wins in these simulations.

Wondering how to interpret the Seat Projection and the Avg. Projection? While the Seat Projection is The Writ’s “official call”, the Avg. Projection is an important guide to understanding the projections, in conjunction with the high and low ranges. Seat projections are rarely right on target, so the Avg. Projection should set expectations. In other words, if the Seat Projection for a party is 25 seats but the Avg. Projection is 21.2, your expectation should be that the party will win around 25 seats, with a greater likelihood that the party under-performs that target rather than beats it.

The percentage of simulations in which each party wins a majority or a plurality of seats is shown below.

Complete riding and sub-regional projections are available for subscribers of The Writ:

A full breakdown of the methodology behind the vote and seat projection model can be found here:

Vote and seat projections broken down by region and tracking charts going back to the 2025 election are available for subscribers of The Writ below 👇

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Detailed projections for all 343 ridings across the country, as well as vote projections for smaller regions within each province, are available for subscribers below 👇

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This week on The Numbers, we discuss the current polling landscape and the fallout from Monday’s byelections and what they could mean for the longevity of this Parliament. We also chat about our experience at the Liberal convention in Montreal and how it contrasted with the NDP convention in Winnipeg (as well as the CAQ convention in Drummondville). We then break down new provincial polling numbers from Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia and end with another edition of The Quiz.

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The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

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Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

Byelection results are easy to dismiss when they don’t go your way. They’re referendums on the government! They’re safe seats for the incumbent! Turnout is low! Local dynamics are at play!

There are some kernels of truth there. But that doesn’t mean the Conservatives shouldn’t be worried about the results of the byelections in Terrebonne, University—Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest, in which they put up their worst byelection performances in over a decade.

By now, you’ve probably already pored over the results in these three seats. (And if you didn’t, you can check out the hot takes from early Tuesday morning that Philippe and I shared on The Numbers).

The Liberals won a close fight in Terrebonne, taking 48.4% of the vote to the Bloc’s 46.8%. The Liberals haven’t had this much support in this part of Quebec since the 1980 federal election, when Pierre Trudeau won 74 of 75 seats in the province.

University—Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest were landslide Liberal wins, with the party increasing its vote share in both. In Scarborough Southwest, the Liberals’ 69.9% of the vote was their best result since at least the 1960s when a riding somewhat resembling today’s Scarborough Southwest was first created. The NDP managed to work its way to second place in University—Rosedale, though its respectable nine-point gain represented only half of the support the party lost here between 2021 and 2025.

The Conservatives, however, tanked. They dropped 11 points in University—Rosedale and 12 points in Scarborough Southwest, taking their smallest share of the vote in these seats ever. And in Terrebonne, the Conservatives absolutely collapsed by 15 points to just 3.3%. The only time the Conservatives have ever done worse than this in the area that is now Terrebonne was when the Liberals won by acclamation in 1917 and 1953 and there wasn’t a Conservative on the ballot.

In the context of these three ridings, these were worst-ever results for the Conservatives. But even more remarkable is that the losses the Conservatives suffered in these three byelections were the largest they’ve suffered in any byelection in over a decade.

Inspired by a social media post by Dan Arnold (credit where credit is due), I’ve compiled below the Conservatives’ performances in byelections since the 2015 election. Ranked from greatest losses to biggest gains, you can see that the top three worst performances for the Conservatives out of the 35 byelections held over the last 10 years all occurred on Monday night.

It’s not even that close. Before Monday, the Conservatives hadn’t lost more than 8.3 points in any byelection since 2015.

In fact, you have to go back to 2014 to find a byelection where the Conservatives lost more support. In the last years of Stephen Harper’s government, the Conservatives were routinely losing huge chunks of their vote share in byelections. It’s no coincidence that these big byelection losses were followed by Harper’s defeat in 2015.

If you look at the bottom of this list, you can see that five of the seven best performances took place in 2023 and 2024, when the Conservatives were riding high in the polls. Those byelections presaged what was supposed to happen in 2025 — the defeat of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. Those byelections were a reflection of the big swing that was taking place in public opinion.

This week’s byelections, then, might also be a reflection of what is happening in public opinion now. And they act as a corroboration of the Conservatives’ worst polling numbers, rather than of their best ones. Simply put, the Conservatives should not be dropping 11 to 15 points in these ridings if they are truly running only a few points behind the Liberals. Instead, these byelections suggest the double-digit leads we’ve seen in most polls just might be on to something.

One could counter-argue that, since the Conservatives were not in contention in any three of these ridings, it is natural that their voters didn’t bother to show up. Turnout was only around 33% in the Toronto ridings and was 51% in Terrebonne. But we’ve seen them show up in other ridings where Conservative chances were equally dim and where turnout was equally down.

In LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, the Conservatives had just 7.5% of the vote in the 2021 election. The byelection in 2024 was known to be a three-way race between the Liberals, Bloc and NDP (the Bloc won). But that didn’t stop Conservatives from going out to the polls. The party increased its vote share in this Montreal riding by four points to 11.5%. Similarly (and also in Montreal), the Conservative vote slid only marginally from 14.1% to 13.6% in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount in 2023.

One could then argue that these byelections occurred when Justin Trudeau’s government was unpopular and in a minority context, where an election could be around the corner and voters were engaged and motivated to send a message. But in the 2017 byelection in Ottawa—Vanier, when the Liberals were safely ensconced in majority territory and were still quite popular, the Conservatives only lost four points. On the same night in Saint-Laurent, where the Conservatives had zero chance of winning, their vote held unchanged at 19.5%.

If the Conservatives could manage to get their voters out and supporting them in these past byelections, why were they unable to do so on Monday?

Yes, the byelection in Terrebonne was polarized between the Liberals and the Bloc. The one-vote margin in 2025 might have hammered the point home to voters that they couldn’t waste their vote on a party that wasn’t contending to win. But that was not the case in either University—Rosedale or Scarborough Southwest. The polarization in Terrebonne might have further depressed the Conservative vote, but the results in the two Toronto ridings suggest that polarization was not the only factor at play. The Conservatives simply lost support, and to an extent that we last saw when the party was on its way out of power.

Of course, none of these ridings were particularly good ones for the Conservatives in the last election and would not be expected to be among those the Conservatives would win when forming government. The share of the vote the Conservatives received in the last election in Scarborough Southwest ranked the riding 246th out of the 342 ridings where the Conservatives ran candidates. University—Rosedale ranked 279th and Terrebonne ranked 311th. Even had Pierre Poilievre become prime minister last year, these three seats would have almost certainly been represented by opposition MPs.

But these byelection results, if they had occurred in the general election, would have ranked these ridings 311th, 337th and 342nd — dead last. The 3.3% the Conservatives obtained in Terrebonne would be the worst result the party had anywhere in Canada in April 2025. Their actual worst result, in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, was a towering 6.9% by comparison.

These byelection results should set off alarm bells within Conservative Party HQ. The circumstances of the byelections might have exaggerated the negative trend for the party, but they strongly suggest that the Conservatives are not competitive at the moment and that the polls that indicate the Liberals could win 200+ seats today are indeed an accurate reflection of where things stand.

Dismissing these results would be like denying the reality the Conservatives find themselves in. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t recognize there is a problem to fix.

Now, to what else is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• Brief news out of the CAQ and B.C. Conservative leadership races.

• Polls show the status quo at the federal level, though a new trend might be developing in Atlantic Canada. Plus, we have new provincial polling numbers out of Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta.

• #EveryElectionProject: An unexpected result in the 2000 Yukon election.

• Upcoming milestone for Tony Wakeham.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

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We recorded this extra episode of The Numbers just after we finished our livestream late last night, so our apologies ahead of time if our hot takes are a little … under-cooked. We’ll be well-rested and back at it on Thursday with a regular episode of the podcast!

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

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That being the case, I figured I should update the Vote and Seat Projection Model a day early. Not only will this give us a chance to take a look at what the model says we should expect in the two Toronto ridings of Scarborough Southwest and University—Rosedale and the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, it’ll also give us a baseline against which to judge the results.

Before diving into the numbers, let me take this opportunity to invite you to tune in to our coverage of the byelection results, starting as soon as the polls close at 8:30 PM ET tonight on YouTube!

We’re expecting a bit of a late night. We should be able to get through the two Toronto ridings fairly quickly before turning our attentions to Terrebonne, where a special write-in ballot will delay the count in what is expected to be a closely-contested seat. We might have to stick around until every vote is counted!

By then, though, we should already know if the Liberals get their majority government if the two Toronto seats are called relatively early. But, if the Liberals can take it, Terrebonne will provide them more cushion. Conversely, if the Bloc can win it back, then they will deal Mark Carney his first real setback since the April 2025 election.

Before getting to the byelections, here’s where the latest projection puts things nationally:

The Liberals have slipped 0.4 points in the vote projection and two seats in the seat projection since last week, but otherwise are holding steady with 45.9% of the vote and 223 seats. The Conservatives are up a small 0.3 points to 34.1%, but are unchanged at 84 seats. The Bloc is up one seat to 23, while the NDP is also up one seat to 11 and sits at 8.8% of the vote. That share of the vote is virtually unchanged from last week — and this is after the inclusion of a few polls conducted after Avi Lewis become NDP leader. In short, we’re seeing no Lewis bump just yet.

For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:

That’s the big picture. What about the three ridings holding byelections today? Below are the results from the last general election, when the Liberals’ Bill Blair won in Scarborough Southwest and Chrystia Freeland prevailed in University—Rosedale. In Terrebonne, Tatiana Auguste defeated the Bloc’s Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné by a single vote, a result that was overturned by the Supreme Court due to an error made by Elections Canada that could’ve impacted the result.

How do these three seats look today, and what benchmarks can we set to help us judge the results?

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Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

The addition of yet another Conservative MP to the Liberal caucus has made a majority government all but assured for Prime Minister Mark Carney once Monday’s byelections are completed, but these contests will nevertheless matter more than most byelections do.

For one, they will act as mid-term barometers of support for each of the parties and a rough accuracy check for the polls — if a party is up or down in the polls, we should expect them to be up or down in the byelections, even when the differences don’t change who wins or loses.

But, more importantly, these three byelections will change the complexion of the House of Commons and the control that Mark Carney’s Liberals have over it.

With Gladu, the Liberals now have a majority in the House of Commons. There are currently 171 Liberals in the House, with one of them (Francis Scarpaleggia) acting as the Speaker. This gives the government 170 votes, with Scarpaleggia able to cast a tie-breaking vote when required. But since the Speaker is bound by convention to vote in certain ways, Scarpaleggia’s vote can’t always be counted upon to be in the government’s favour.

There are currently 169 opposition MPs in the House, meaning the government technically has a majority as of this moment (though the House isn’t sitting this week). This is where the three vacancies being filled on Monday come in.

If the Liberals fail to win any of these three byelections (which is unlikely, as we’ll see), the Liberals will once again be outnumbered in the House. If they win one of the three byelections, the government and opposition benches will be tied at 171 votes apiece, with that tie being broken by Scarpaleggia. As the Speaker votes to maintain the status quo, that means the government would be safe from defeat in the House (assuming every MP votes). But it would also mean that the government would not get to do something like re-constitute the membership of committees, where the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois hold majorities.

If the Liberals win two or all three byelections, they will have 172 or 173 votes to 170 or 169 for the opposition and the Speaker would have no ties to break. In this scenario the Liberals would not only be safe from defeat but should also be able to pass a motion to change the make-up of committees and pass any legislation they like that would not put the Speaker in an awkward position.

In other words, going two-for-three would be good enough for the Liberals, even if it means only winning the two seats that should be safe for them. Going three-for-three would be icing on the cake — and give something extra for the Liberals to brag about when the House returns next week.

Take a look at the results from the last election. Terrebonne was famously close — it was decided by a single vote, a margin so insignificant that the Supreme Court ruled to annul the results because of errors Elections Canada made with some mail-in ballots. But Scarborough Southwest and University—Rosedale were not close at all. The Liberals should win them, so going two-for-three is the least they should expect.

The margins in the two Toronto ridings were enormous in the last election and there is nothing in the polls to suggest they should be competitive today. Failure to win either of them would be a tremendous upset and blow to the Liberals, regardless of the implications for the House. The Liberals have held at least part of what currently makes up University—Rosedale since 1993 and, with the exception of the 2011 election, the Liberals have held Scarborough Southwest and its predecessor ridings since 1988. Losing them in the current context would be bizarre, especially since the party has put up two good candidates in high-profile physician Danielle Martin in University—Rosedale and former Ontario NDP MPP Doly Begum in Scarborough Southwest.

But Terrebonne was close last time and should still be close this time. My own projections classify Terrebonne as a toss that favours the Liberals by a single percentage point. That’s effectively unchanged from the overturned result of the general election. Monday will be a re-match between the Liberals’ Tatiana Auguste and the Bloc’s Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, and if the result is anything other than a nail-biter it would reflect some local dynamics at play that swung it one way or the other.

(Because of the presence of the Longest Ballot Committee, who have put up more than 40 candidates in Terrebonne, voters will have a special ballot where they will be required to write-in the name of the candidate.)

A win for the Liberals in Terrebonne would signal that Carney’s appeal in Quebec has endured, and that voters in this particular riding did not bristle at the thought of handing the prime minister a majority government. It would give Liberals reason to hope that, if they went into an early election campaign, they could count on winning a lot of seats in Quebec once again.

A loss here, however, would put into question the security of ridings in Quebec that they won by narrow margins. While the polls look promising for the Liberals elsewhere, uncertainty about their holdings in Quebec would force the Liberals to make good in an election on some of the very high (and perhaps unsustainable) numbers they’ve been putting up in places like British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. It would be folly for the Liberals to take for granted that they will gain a dozen seats or more between Vancouver and Winnipeg.

There are implications for the other parties as well. The Bloc’s standing as the main alternative and opposition to the Liberals in Quebec will be diminished if they don’t win back this former stronghold, especially in light of the help the party has gotten from the Parti Québécois as it prepares for an important provincial election in October.

Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have just suffered another blow with the loss of their fourth MP. Plus, they need some sign of a comeback after months of bad polls. They are not competitive in any of these three ridings. But can they improve their vote share, put some doubt in the polling numbers and give a discouraged and disgruntled caucus some much-needed good news?

The New Democrats are even more uncompetitive in these ridings, having finished in third place in the two Toronto seats and taking just 2.6% of the vote in Terrebonne. But they have a new leader in Avi Lewis. It would be a good start for him if he could show at least some improvement over the abysmal 2025 results, especially in Toronto where his message should have more appeal.

These three ridings, however, are quite different from one another — which will make it a little tricky to draw conclusions about broader trends.

While 83% of the population of Terrebonne does not belong to a visible minority community as defined by Statistics Canada, 43% of the population of University—Rosedale and 63% in Scarborough Southwest does. University—Rosedale has a significant Chinese community (18%) and a sizable Jewish one (6%), while Scarborough Southwest has a large South Asian component (26%) and is 19% Muslim. About 10% of the population in Terrebonne and 13% in Scarborough Southwest is Black, while it’s just 4% in University—Rosedale.

The vast majority of residents in Terrebonne speak French at home. The vast majority of residents in the other two ridings, of course, do not. University—Rosedale is right downtown (it’s where Queen’s Park is located), while Scarborough Southwest is an inner suburb of Toronto and Terrebonne is an outer suburb of Montreal. One of the only things tying these three ridings together is that they aren’t rural.

But the variation in these three ridings will make the results all the more fascinating to dissect. So, join me and my podcast co-host Philippe J. Fournier for a livestream of the byelection results starting at 8:30 PM ET on Monday night. You’ll find the livestream right here 👇

Have any predictions for what the outcome of the three byelections will be? Let us know in the comments!

Leave a comment

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• Where things stand in the CAQ leadership race, plus I hear back from the Six Nations on the removal of that name from the riding of Brantford—Brant South. We also have some numbers on advance turnout from the byelections and some news on political fundraising out of Newfoundland and Labrador, where everything is legal.

• Only a couple of federal polls this past week, plus some numbers on how provincial opposition leaders are viewed and where things stand in Ontario.

• #EveryElectionProject: The 1954 Ontario Liberal leadership.

LIBERAL CONVENTION - I’ll be on CPAC from Montreal over the next few days as part of their coverage of the federal Liberal party convention, so tune in! And, if you’re there, come say hello!

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

New Quebec premier, CAQ leader to be decided Sunday

This weekend, some 20,000 members of the Coalition Avenir Québec will choose the next leader of their party and the 33rd premier of Quebec. While the winner of the race between Christine Fréchette and Bernard Drainville will receive what is, on paper, a glittering prize, the reality is that the winner will also face a steep, uphill and perhaps insurmountable challenge when Quebec goes to the polls in October.

That being said, what does the data say about who is most likely to win?

Read more

Still, even with Gladu the Liberals need some wins to make their majority official on Monday night in the three federal byelections being held in the two Toronto ridings of University—Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest and the Quebec riding of Terrebonne.

Rarely are byelections so impactful. But beyond the question of whether or not the Liberals will win them, the three contests will be a gauge of where the Conservatives, NDP and Bloc stand in public opinion. Can Pierre Poilievre shake off his party’s poor polling numbers? Can Yves-François Blanchet take back Terrebonne, which was once a stronghold? And can Avi Lewis show any signs of life for his NDP?

Join us for a livestream of the byelection results on YouTube, starting at 8:30 PM ET on Monday!

We set you up for Monday’s byelections with some over/unders on this week’s (early) episode of The Numbers. We also break down some of the latest polls and discuss the final days of the CAQ’s leadership race, which comes to a close on Sunday.

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

Looking to add The Numbers to your favourite podcasting app? You can find it on:

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While there hasn’t been a significant amount of movement over the last week in the polls, what has occurred has pushed the Liberals above the 220-seat threshold in the projection. They are now projected to be leading in 225 seats in the model, up 10 seats from last week. Most of those gains have taken place in one province: Ontario.

But there’s a caveat.

The Conservatives have dropped down nine to just 84 seats, their lowest level in the projection to date since the last election. The Bloc is unchanged at 22 seats while the NDP is up one to 10.

In the vote projection, the Liberals have ticked up 0.5 points to 46.3%, followed by the Conservatives at 33.8% (-0.3) and the New Democrats at 8.9% (-0.3).

For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:

But the key number to look at in this week’s update is the Avg. Projection, which takes into account expected over- or under-performance of each party in an actual election. While the Liberals have jumped 10 seats in the number of ridings in which they are projected to be leading, their average projection has only increased by 2.9 seats to 212.1 seats, while the Conservatives have slipped only 2.8 in the average projection to 102.2 seats. What gives?

Read more

Stuff is about to get real out there.

This week on The Numbers, we discuss the latest federal polls and where things stand as this political spring starts to heat up. Plus, we take a peak at some leaked data about how NDP members ranked their ballot on the weekend. We also chat about a new poll out of Quebec, where the provincial election slated in October is looking tougher and tougher to predict.

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

Looking to add The Numbers to your favourite podcasting app? You can find it on:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Overcast

• Pocket Casts

• Podcast Addict

• RSS Feed

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

We’re going to dive directly into what’s on deck in this edition of the Weekly Writ. Here’s what’s on the docket for today:

• News on the ridings that will see their names changed and other amendments the Liberals are making to the Canada Elections Act. Plus, a B.C. Conservative MLA is booted from caucus and two endorsements are made in the B.C. Conservative leadership race.

• An update on the federal polls and a look at a new Léger poll that puts the PQ and Liberals neck-and-neck ahead of this year’s provincial election in Quebec. Plus, some new B.C. provincial polling numbers.

• #EveryElectionProject: The Ontario CCF chooses its first leader.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

19 ridings to change names, Indigenous names to be dropped in three

Is your federal riding about to change its name? If you live in one of 19 ridings across the country, that could very well be the case. Some of the changes are arguably good, some are quite plainly bad, and some others raise some questions.

The name swaps were included in a package of changes to the Canada Elections Act being proposed by the Liberal government. The text of the bill can be found here.

The bill includes a series of amendments regarding misinformation, foreign interference and privacy protections. For example, the amendments would make it illegal to knowingly spread false or misleading information intending to impact an election (with exceptions for parody and satire) and adds the use of “deepfakes” that impersonate an electoral official or candidate to the list of prohibited acts.

Also included are measures to protect the personal information gathered by parties and changes to the reporting requirements for fundraising events. For safety and privacy protections (the government’s claim), parties will no longer be required to give five-day advance notice of fundraising events or to post the exact address of the event. These requirements were put into place during the “cash-for-access” controversy during the Trudeau years.

Of particular note to readers of this newsletter (and anyone who tunes into our livestreams of byelection nights), a proposed change will limit constituents to signing the nomination papers of only one candidate, as well as requiring different official agents for each candidate in a riding. This is an attempt to head-off the Longest Ballot Committee. The imposition of unique agents will likely not have that much of an impact — the LBC did this for the Terrebonne byelection and still managed to recruit over 40 candidates — but the signature limits could make it much harder to ever get the list of candidates to the 200+ that we saw in Battle River–Crowfoot last year.

But the riding name changes caught my attention. In all, 19 ridings across the country will have their names changed when the bill passes. Some of the changes are good. Some of them are bad. And some of them are ugly.

First, some general comments on these changes.

We have an entire non-partisan process in place to name these ridings. The electoral boundaries commissions consult widely and go through a multi-stage process of proposing riding boundaries (and riding names), hearing feedback from constituents about the proposals, coming up with new proposals, hearing objections from MPs and then settling on the final map.

It seems against the spirit of this process for MPs to then decide to override the commissioners’ decisions and change the names of their ridings via an act of Parliament. Some of these changes might be good and might be the result of consultation with constituents, but it undermines the non-partisan process if, in the end, the elected MP can change the name of their own accord.

I also can’t help but lament that the net effect of these changes has been that these names got even longer. These 19 ridings contained 446 characters before and they contain 529 now. The changes in Quebec were responsible for most of the increase.

Lastly (and, yes, this is niche), the changes make working with riding data more cumbersome. Ridings are assigned an ID by Elections Canada after the redistribution and that ID never changes. The IDs of ridings are by alphabetical order within each province. Now, the riding names and IDs will no longer be in the same alphabetical order, which can get very annoying when you’re working with different datasets where some are ordered by the ID and others are ordered alphabetically. Won’t someone please think of the spreadsheets!

Alright, let’s get into some of these name changes.

• The Good

  • Cape Spear—Mount Pearl—Paradise

    • Cape Spear is a headland where no one lives, so it was a little odd to have the entire riding named after it, especially since the riding stretches from Cape Spear on the Atlantic coast to Conception Bay. Mount Pearl and Paradise are the two largest communities in the riding, so elongating the name to include them is fine by me.

  • The Eastern Peninsulas

    • Shortened and the vague “The Peninsulas” removed. Any shortening of riding names is generally for the better.

  • York—South Simcoe

    • There’s York—Durham and Simcoe North, so perhaps York—Simcoe South would have had greater symmetry, but I’m happy not to have to pronounce New Tecumseth—Gwillimbury.

  • Saskatoon East

    • Reasonable people may disagree, but I prefer simple, geographically-understandable names. There’s a Saskatoon South and Saskatoon West, so a Saskatoon East makes more sense than did Saskatoon—University.

  • Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent

    • Mercifully much shorter than its predecessor, describes the riding quite well and is a nice-sounding name (Upper St. Lawrence Valley in English).

  • Longueuil—Greenfield Park

    • Greenfield Park is a defined area in this riding, while Charles-LeMoyne isn’t, even if lots of stuff in the riding is named after the founder of Longueuil, Charles Le Moyne. I prefer actual locations to riding names honouring historical figures, but your view may vary.

• The Bad

  • Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame

    • Was Central Newfoundland all that bad? It matched up pretty well with the Central region. Now we have the return of this long name. Though “Coast of Bays” has a Game of Thrones quality to it.

  • Halifax West—Peggy’s Cove

    • One of the unfortunate attempts to seemingly make a riding’s name help with tourism. Only a few dozen people live in Peggy’s Cove.

  • New Brunswick Southwest

    • Half of Saint John is in this riding, so including it in the name had some symmetry with Saint John–Kennebecasis. There is an argument to be made that St. Croix was not the right name to tack on to it, but New Brunswick Southwest is just so bland, and ignores that Saint John represents a big chunk of its population.

  • Cariboo—Prince George—Omineca

    • This one is a bit of a puzzle to me. The Omineca River and Omineca Provincial Park aren’t in this riding, but the riding forms part of the Omineca Region of the B.C. Interior — as so do some other ridings. Why add it?

  • Argenteuil—Papineau—Des Collines

    • The new additions refer to regional municipalities that make up the riding, so it isn’t an egregious change. But it’s a lot longer than it was and we already have a riding named Papineau which is in an entirely different location.

  • Saint-Augustin—Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier

    • Points docked for lengthening the name of the riding that has had the same name for more than 20 years just to include a town that isn’t in the regional municipalities of Portneuf or Jacques-Cartier and has always been in the riding.

  • Richmond—Arthabaska—Val-des-Sources

    • Another lengthening of the name of a long-standing riding to include a left-out town. At least this one won’t change the alphabetical order of the ridings like Saint-Augustin—Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier will.

• The Ugly

  • North York

    • Maybe it should initially have been North York Centre (though that’s weird) but the new riding of North York only includes a small portion of the old city of North York. It would be like calling one of the six Mississauga ridings “Mississauga” and letting you figure out which one it is.

  • Jonquière—Hébertville—Pays-des-Bleuets

    • We had a lovely, short riding name in Jonquière and now we have this. Hébertville is a town of less than 7,000 and, as far as I can tell, most of the actual things named the Pays-des-Bleuets are located in the neighbouring Lac-Saint-Jean riding. Is this another attempt at tourism-through-riding-name?

  • Rimouski-Neigette—Mitis—Matapédia—Les Basques

    • This part of the Bas-Saint-Laurent and Gaspésie has long been plagued by overly-long names that try to include as many different locations as possible in them. Rimouski—La Matapédia was an elegant solution, highlighting the two major features of the riding. Now we’re back to this 13-syllable monstrosity.

That leaves me with the three ridings of Brantford—Brant South, Hastings—Lennox and Addington and Sarnia—Lambton, which have been shortened by removing the Indigenous names of Six Nations, Tyendinaga and Bkejwanong, respectively.

The addition of Indigenous place names to a series of ridings was one of the new additions of the last redistribution. Some of them name Indigenous towns or reserves within the riding’s boundaries, some of them use historic names for a location and others include the name of an Indigenous nation. It seems to have largely been the brain-child of the commissioners in Ontario and Quebec as a way to honour Canada’s Indigenous people, and not something that originated from the Indigenous people in question, though their input was sought after the fact.

But I was surprised to see three ridings have their Indigenous place names removed. Not knowing the exact circumstances of all of the changes, however, I don’t want to be flippant about them.

On Tuesday, I reached out to the offices of the three Conservative MPs who represent these ridings (Larry Brock in Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, Marilyn Gladu in Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong and Shelby Kramp-Neuman in Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga) as well as the First Nations in these ridings (Six Nations of the Grand River, Walpole Island First Nation and the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, respectively).

As of writing, I have only heard back from Marilyn Gladu.

Gladu says that, during the redistribution process, she “consulted with the chiefs at that time from Walpole Island as well as the Aamjwinaang and Kettle and Stoney Point First Nations. Since the Aamjwinaang had been part of the riding for over 100 years, I thought they might want to choose a more inclusive or different name. However, they chose not to participate in the public input sessions and written inputs, and so the proposed name remained.”

Prior to the prorogation of Parliament and the calling of the 2025 election, Gladu says “there was a new chief elected for Walpole Island, and he had a huge problem with Bkejwanong being used, so I told him I would have it taken out” but she was unable to do so because of the election. She says that, since the election, there has “been a new chief elected at Walpole Island and when I updated her about the change she was not concerned.”

If I hear back from the other MPs and any of the three First Nations, I will update this in future newsletters.

Once the bill is passed by Parliament, the new names will come into effect after 90 days.

Round-by-round data from the NDP leadership

In case you missed it earlier this week, I was leaked some data from the NDP leadership vote showing how supporters of each candidate ranked the other candidates. The results show that Avi Lewis had broad support across the spectrum, but also that there was a divide between the Lewis camp (more closely aligned with Tanille Johnston and Tony McQuail) and the Heather McPherson camp (more closely aligned with Rob Ashton).

You can read the story and see all the data at the link above.

ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS

B.C. CON MLA BOOTED - Hon Chan, the MLA for the B.C. riding of Richmond Centre, has been booted from the B.C. Conservative caucus after being charged with assault. Chan intends to stay on as an MLA while he fights the charges.

ELLIOTT, FULMER GAIN ENDORSEMENTS - More movement in the B.C. Conservative leadership race took place this past week, as Caroline Elliott earned the endorsement of Darrell Jones, who is withdrawing from the contest. Meanwhile, Yuri Fulmer announced an agreement with OneBC leader Dallas Brodie that would reserve 88 seats for the B.C. Conservatives and five for the right-wing splinter party. Brodie was elected under the Conservative banner but was removed from caucus over her statements on residential school survivors.

POLLING HIGHLIGHTS

Liberals lead in new holding pattern

As discussed in this week’s projection update, the federal parties appear to have hit a new holding pattern in national voting intentions.

New surveys were published this week by Abacus Data, Léger, Liaison Strategies, Nanos Research and Spark. They don’t show any big changes in support for either the Liberals or the Conservatives with four of the five pollsters giving the Liberals a double-digit lead.

The Liberals have between 44% and 48% support in these five polls, with the Conservatives at 30% to 37% and the NDP between 6% and 11%. That’s a pretty broad consensus of the current state of the race with some healthy variation between individual polls.

There aren’t many consistent trends between these five polls, which suggests stability for the Liberals and Conservatives. However, the NDP is up, if marginally, in four of these five polls.

Here are a few other highlights from these polls:

• Abacus polled on Pierre Poilievre’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, finding that the Conservative leader’s performance was a net positive. The poll found that, among those familiar with Poilievre’s appearance, 39% had a positive reaction to it against 24% who had a negative one. Those under the age of 60 had an especially net positive reaction, while those over the age of 60 had a net negative reaction. On the whole, it seems like Poilievre going on the podcast won’t hurt him and will likely help a bit, though not among the electorate where he has the most ground to make up.

• On the top three issues in Abacus’s polling, the Liberals are either tied with the Conservatives (rising cost of living), hold a small lead (economy) or have a huge advantage (Donald Trump and the U.S. administration). No other issue among those tested by Abacus registered as a top three issue for more than a third of Canadians.

• Mark Carney’s positive or approval rating averaged 57% against 32% negative or disapproval in polls by Abacus, Liaison and Léger. Pierre Poilievre’s positive or favourable ratings averaged 38.5% in the Abacus and Liaison polls against 47.5% negative/unfavourable.

• Nanos continues to give Carney a lead of 30+ points on the preferred prime minister question at 54.5% to 23%. Avi Lewis should be added to Nanos’s four-week rolling poll starting with next week’s release, but it will take a month before Don Davies is entirely cycled out of the sample.

• Liaison found that 22% of respondents had a favourable impression of Lewis, while 17% had an unfavourable one. The majority of respondents were either unfamiliar with Lewis or did not have an opinion. Léger, meanwhile, found that only 32% of Canadians think that the NDP is relevant in Canada’s national political scene, while 43% said it was not.

Quebec’s election turning into nail-biter

A new poll from Léger amps up the potential drama that Quebec’s politics has in store as the next provincial election is just six months away.

The survey shows the Parti Québécois and Quebec Liberals in a tie at 33% apiece, the first time the Liberals have been tied for the lead in a poll in Quebec since 2018. The Liberals have gained 13 points since mid-December, nearly all of it coming at the expense of the CAQ, which now sits at just 9% support. That puts the governing party behind the Quebec Conservatives (15%) and tied with Québec Solidaire.

The PQ still has an advantage due to its 18-point lead among francophones, but the Liberals have been making themselves more competitive among francophones over the last few months. The party was at just 11% in Léger’s mid-December survey, but now stands at 23%. While that doesn’t put much pressure on the PQ in terms of winning the most seats, it does make a majority government less likely — regionally, the PQ is only decisively ahead outside of the Montreal and Quebec City regions.

The collapse of the CAQ is what has caused this tightening race. If you look at the long-term tracking chart from Léger, you can see how the CAQ’s decline first benefitted the PQ and is now benefitting the PLQ.

In other words, the CAQ first lost its nationalist vote to the PQ in 2023 and 2024 and then lost its federalist vote to the PLQ in 2025 and 2026. Throughout this time period, the Conservatives have hardly budged while QS has dropped a bit. It’s possible that QS has lost some of its federalist vote to the Liberals and some of its sovereignist vote to the PQ while the Conservatives have shaved off a bit of the CAQ’s more right-wing vote. But the biggest shifts have clearly been CAQ→PQ followed by the CAQ→PLQ that is happening now.

A second poll by Léger commissioned by Christine Fréchette’s campaign, reported by the Journal de Montréal, suggests that the CAQ’s ongoing leadership race could benefit the party once it is over. Fréchette, who is favoured over Bernard Drainville by a nearly three-to-one margin among CAQ voters in this survey, would boost the party to 16% — not nearly enough to save the party but enough to give the CAQ hope of surviving in some form after the campaign is over. Drainville would not boost the party, as under him it would be at 10%, virtually unchanged from its current standing.

Regardless of the outcome of this leadership contest, the march to a PQ victory and a Quebec independence referendum that seemed inevitable only a few months ago is no longer such a sure bet. This election will be important for both Quebec and Canada as a whole, but it’ll also be one to keep an eye on because it is up for grabs.

POLLING NEWS BRIEFS

TIGHT RACE IN B.C. - The Angus Reid Institute published more details from its mid-March quarterly poll, focusing on British Columbia. (Note, the sample is 499 so it is a bit smaller than your usual B.C.-only survey.) The poll found the B.C. Conservatives and NDP virtually tied at 44% to 42%, respectively, with the Greens in third with 9%. The poll found growing discomfort with the government’s approach to Indigenous issues, though it also found that this was not a top issue for many voters.

12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR

• April 12: Coalition Avenir Québec leadership

  • Candidates: Bernard Drainville, Christine Fréchette

• April 13: Federal byelections in University–Rosedale, Scarborough Southwest and Terrebonne

• May 11: Municipal elections in New Brunswick

• May 30: British Columbia Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Iain Black, Caroline Elliott, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Yuri Fulmer, Warren Hamm, Peter Milobar

• October 5: Quebec provincial election

• October 17: New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Daniel Allain, Don Monahan

• October 17: Municipal elections in British Columbia

• October 19: Alberta referendum

• October 26: Municipal elections in Ontario

• October 28: Municipal elections in Manitoba

• November 2: Municipal elections in Prince Edward Island

• November 9: Municipal elections in Saskatchewan

• November 21: Ontario Liberal leadership

• November 28: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership

• Byelections yet to be scheduled

  • ON - Scarborough Southwest (to be called by August)

  • PE - Cornwall–Meadowbank (to be called by September)

  • NS - Chéticamp–Margarees–Pleasant Bay (date TBD)

  • CA - Beaches–East York (potential resignation pending)

  • AB - Calgary Shaw (resignation pending)

• Party leadership dates yet to be set

  • Federal Greens (Elizabeth May announced on August 19, 2025)

(ALMOST) ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject

The Ontario CCF’s first leader

April 3, 1942

This was originally published on April 3, 2024.

As the Second World War raged across Europe, North Africa and the Pacific, Canadians sensed that things would not go back to where they were before the war had started — assuming the Allies could win, of course. The trauma of the Great Depression and the demands of the war demonstrated to Canadians that there was a need for a more activist central government, one that would ensure the well-being of everyone. If the government could mobilize massive resources to defeat enemies overseas, why couldn’t it do the same to guarantee a minimum standard of living at home?

This was the moment that the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation had been waiting for, and accordingly the CCF started to surge in some of the first political polls ever conducted in Canada.

Already established in Western Canada, the CCF was having difficulty breaking through in Ontario. But a byelection in the riding of York South provided an opportunity for the party.

The Conservatives had yet to recover from the defeat of R.B. Bennett’s government in 1935. His replacement as leader, Robert Manion, had no success in the 1940 election and the Conservatives went back to the drawing board. Rather than look forward, however, the Conservatives looked back and acclaimed Arthur Meighen, leader and briefly prime minister during the 1920s, as their party chief in 1941.

Assailed on his war record, Mackenzie King was desperate to see his old and hated foe go down to defeat. When a byelection was called in the riding of York South to get Meighen into the House of Commons, the Liberals opted not to run a candidate. To avoid splitting the vote, they left the field open to Joseph Noseworthy, the seemingly long-shot candidate of the CCF.

With a little help from the federal Liberals — though not the provincial Liberals, whose leader, Premier Mitchell Hepburn, backed Meighen — Noseworthy scored an upset victory in February 1942. It spelled the end of Meighen’s comeback attempt, but also created some positive momentum for the Ontario CCF.

The Ontario CCF wasn’t in the best of shape. In the last provincial election in 1937, the party had failed to elect a single candidate and took just 5% of the vote. But with support for the national party rising and fresh off the stunning win in York South, it was decided that the Ontario CCF needed to get better organized. To mark the 10th anniversary of its founding convention, the Ontario CCF decided they would finally name something they hadn’t yet had: a party leader.

A convention was set for April 1942, where the party would decide on platform policy and name its new leader. A total of 17 candidates were nominated for the post, including Noseworthy, future federal NDP leader David Lewis, then-sitting Ontario CCF president Sam Lawrence and Agnes Macphail, the first woman ever elected to the House of Commons.

In the end, all but two declined the nominations. One was Murray Cotterill, the 28-year-old secretary to the Toronto labour council and a stalwart of the CCF Youth Movement.

The other was Edward (Ted) Jolliffe, the vice-president of the provincial council of the CCF. “Tall and slender,” according to media reports, Jolliffe was born in China while his Christian missionary parents were in the country. Also young at just 33, Jolliffe nevertheless had an impressive resume. He had been a Rhodes scholar at Oxford (where he had founded an Oxford branch of the CCF with David Lewis), a journalist and a lawyer, and had twice stood as a candidate for the federal CCF.

Between the two, it wasn’t much of a contest. The delegates gathered at the Carls-Rite Hotel in Toronto, more than 100 strong, and overwhelmingly selected Jolliffe as the first leader of the Ontario CCF. The detailed results were not announced, but “it was learned reliably, however, that the majority was so sweeping as to show almost complete endorsation by the 107 delegates” according to the Canadian Press.

In his victory speech, Jolliffe attacked the Hepburn government, both on the premier’s unpatriotic position on the war effort (he had dismissed the U.S. Navy and predicted that the Soviet Union would be defeated) and his unwillingness to create a social safety net for Ontarians.

“We believe the C.C.F. has the policy and the C.C.F. is the only hope in this province,” he said, citing a previous meeting he had with Hepburn where the fate of those on unemployment relief was discussed. “There was contempt and hatred in his tone of voice,” Jolliffe charged, “hatred and contempt for the unemployed.”

“The time has come, following C.C.F. successes in other provinces and in the federal field, to open a ‘second front’ here in Ontario. And with the help of the workers and the farmers we are going to do it.”

Jolliffe would deliver on his pledge. Before the convention, one of its organizers had confidently predicted that the Ontario CCF could elect 15 candidates in the next election. When it was finally called in 1943, the CCF won 34 seats and formed the official opposition. One of those seats was Ted Jolliffe’s. He ran, and won, in York South.

More from the #EveryElectionProject

On Sunday, Avi Lewis won 56% of the vote on the first ballot of the NDP leadership race. Heather McPherson finished second with 29.5%, followed by Tanille Johnston at 7.3%, Rob Ashton at 5.9% and Tony McQuail with 1.3%.

The NDP leadership vote was a ranked ballot, meaning members could rank as many of the five candidates as they liked on their vote. But since Lewis won on the first ballot, it was not necessary to go to a second, third or fourth to determine a winner.

But that doesn’t mean the results weren’t recorded.

Today, I was provided with a ballot-by-ballot break down of the NDP leadership vote by one of the leadership campaigns. They show how each candidate’s voters ranked the other candidates from first to fifth.

The data shows that Lewis had broad support from each of the camps and was the top second choice of the supporters of McPherson, Johnston and McQuail, with only more of Ashton’s supporters ranking McPherson second. The results also show that more members ranked Lewis at least somewhere on their ballot than any other candidate, and that he had more first ballot support than any candidate had combined first and second choice support.

Let’s get into the numbers.

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The Liberals sit at 45.8% in the vote projection, down only 0.2 points from last week. The party has been sitting around 46% since the beginning of March, a new cruising altitude for the Liberals since rising from around 40% in January. The party is projected to be leading in 215 seats (and averaging 209.2 seat wins when taking into account potential polling and modelling errors), again largely unchanged since the beginning of the month.

While the Liberals have levelled out, it’s not clear that the Conservatives have. They’re down just 0.3 points from last week to 34.1% in the projection, but unlike the Liberals they have been on a steady (if slow) downward trend. With the exception of a few marginal upticks, they’ve been dropping almost every week since January when they were at 38%. This has pushed them down to 93 in the number of seats they are leading in and an average of 105 seat wins.

For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:

We’ll have to keep an eye on those Conservative numbers. Some polls have suggested that the party might be rebounding, but for every (relatively) good poll we’ve seen for the Conservatives lately there have been some bad ones.

The New Democrats are sitting at 9.2% in the vote projection and 11 seats, but just 8.2 seats on average when taking into account their tendency to under-perform the polls. These numbers are drawn from polling conducted before Avi Lewis’s leadership victory on Sunday but, as we can see from the regional breakdown, the NDP has a lot of work to do.

Read more

• LEADERSHIP RESULTS:

  • 56.0% - Avi Lewis

  • 29.5% - Heather McPherson

  • 7.3% - Tanille Johnston

  • 5.9% - Rob Ashton

  • 1.3% Tony McQuail

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It seems to be the consensus view among most of the roughly 2,000 delegates that I’ve spoken with who have gathered here in Manitoba’s provincial capital for this convention. Some argue that a path still exists for one of the other candidates — usually Heather McPherson, sometimes Rob Ashton — but it’s hard to escape the impression that even many of those supporting his opponents have reconciled themselves to the idea that Lewis will win.

There’s good reason for it. As I’ve tracked throughout this leadership contest, Lewis has been a fundraising juggernaut, at least in the more modest fundraising context of the New Democrats. He’s raised more money than any NDP leadership candidate in any previous party contest (for which data exists) and he’s raising as much money as the rest of the field — combined.

The second interim reports published by Elections Canada today, the last set of data that will be published before the result is revealed tomorrow, shows that Lewis has raised over $1.4 million. That’s double the $700,000 that has been raised by McPherson. Ashton comes in third with $392,000.

The second interim report from the Tanille Johnston campaign was not available as of writing, but she reported $192,000 in her first interim report. Tony McQuail brings up the rear with $123,000 in fundraising.

As a share of every dollar that has been donated to these five candidates, Lewis leads the pack with 51%, followed by McPherson at 25%. Ashton, Johnston and McQuail trail with 14%, 7% and 4%, respectively.

This seems like a plausible first ballot result, though some here in Winnipeg (including the candidate himself) are expecting an even bigger number for Lewis on the first ballot.

Fundraising is not a perfectly predictive metric, but it is the only bit of data we have from this race. There are some 100,000 members of the party eligible to vote, but the New Democrats haven’t released where those numbers come from. As membership between the federal and provincial sections is shared, it’s anyone’s guess how many of the pre-existing members who had signed up to support their provincial sections will be engaged enough in this contest to cast a ballot. If they don’t, that’s likely to benefit Lewis, as it has been suggested that he has recruited the most new members. But even if they do vote in big numbers, it’s not a given that their vote will go in a bloc to one of the other candidates, especially since Lewis appears to have a solid base of support in both British Columbia and Ontario, where a significant portion of the members (if not a majority) call home.

One of the arguments I’ve heard in favour of a McPherson upset is the notion of quiet supporters — those who might be engaged more provincially and who might not have bothered to donate to her campaign but will quietly vote for her. This assumes that the Alberta and Saskatchewan sections, which have a lot of members, will vote in big numbers. It seems unlikely that they have enough members to push McPherson to 50%, but if we see a higher-than-expected number for McPherson on that first ballot, then this could plausibly be the reason.

The same kind of argument applies to Ashton, but with labour members substituted in for Alberta and Saskatchewan and with the extra caveat that he would have to finish ahead of McPherson to get her second choices. But the more these alternative paths are played out, the more they start to stretch credulity.

If we instead more safely assume that Lewis will win this and become the NDP’s new leader on Sunday, one of the challenges he will face is to keep the party united behind him. There is an undercurrent of resignation among those who are not supporting him here at this convention, particularly among those who have a longer history with the party or its provincial sections. This isn’t without reason — Lewis has run a campaign with elements of an anti-NDP-establishment bent to it. How he will get along with those long-time New Democrats, and especially the provincial sections who might not want to have their brand tied to Lewis’s more left-populist policies, is an open question.

While the most monumental task ahead of Lewis, should he win, will be to rebuild the party and get it ready to wage, and compete in, a national campaign with a robust organization and quality candidates from coast to coast, the more immediate challenge ahead of him might be a little closer to home.

This week on The Numbers, before we both jet off to Winnipeg, we set our expectations for how the vote will unfurl this weekend. We also take a look at what some new poll numbers say about the candidates for the leadership as well as the future of the NDP. Then, we break down the new federal polls (including on views of Pierre Poilievre’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast) and take a quick look at some new provincial numbers out of Manitoba and Ontario before we close with an NDP-themed Quiz.

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

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