Benchmarks for the Cloverdale–Langley City byelection

What to watch in the federal vote taking place today in B.C.

There’s a federal byelection happening today in Cloverdale–Langley City. It’ll almost certainly result in the Liberals losing their third consecutive byelection contest.

But, unlike their previous two defeats, this one is unlikely to sting all that much.

The vote is being held to the fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Liberal MP John Aldag. Seeking greener pastures, Aldag ran for the B.C. New Democrats in the October provincial election in the riding of Langley-Abbotsford, but his plan went awry when he lost by a margin of 22 percentage points to the B.C. Conservatives’ Harman Bhangu.

His successor as federal Liberal candidate in Cloverdale–Langley City appears to be on track for a similar fate.

The reason a Liberal loss in this B.C. Lower Mainland riding won’t sting as badly as the party’s defeats in Toronto–St. Paul’s and LaSalle–Émard–Verdun is simple: unlike those other two, Cloverdale–Langley City was never a safe Liberal riding.

It takes no mathematical wizard to figure out that Aldag’s 3.1-point margin of victory over the Conservatives in 2021 is unlikely to withstand the roughly 20-point net shift in the polls in British Columbia since then. The seat has been a swing riding over the last few elections, voting Liberal in 2015, Conservative in 2019 and Liberal again in 2021, so even if the Liberals were competitive with the Conservatives in national polling (and they’re not), this seat would still be a tough one for the Liberals to hold.

In the current context, it’s nearly impossible.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be things to watch in the results tonight. As always, byelection results can be useful barometers to stack up against the polls — will the Conservatives put up a number that matches their polling? If not, how do the results differ from expectations? Could they give us an indication of how well other Conservative candidates might do in the swathe of suburban ridings in the Lower Mainland?

And in just how much trouble might other Liberals be in and around Vancouver? The results will give us some hints.

So, let’s set the benchmarks for this contest — one that the Conservatives should easily win.

Philippe and I will not be covering the results live on YouTube tonight. The polls close at 9 PM Pacific time, a little too late for those of us dwelling in the Eastern Time Zone. But I’ll have a full analysis of the results up in Wednesday’s Weekly Writ!