Weekly Writ 6/26: Poilievre sets himself the easiest byelection test — ever
Plus, some conflicting signals from a trio of provincial byelections in Alberta.
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.
Pierre Poilievre is planning to use the upcoming (yet to be called) byelection in the riding of Battle River–Crowfoot as his springboard back into the House of Commons.
The result in this rural Alberta riding is a foregone conclusion — Damien Kurek, who resigned his seat so that Poilievre could fill it, took 82.8% of the vote in the April election. That was the Conservative Party’s second-best result in the country. Kurek’s nearest rival finished 71 points back with 11.7%.
So, it should be an easy win for Poilievre. But it’s also the easiest challenge a seatless leader has given himself to get a seat — ever.
The chart below shows the byelections that seatless party leaders have used to get themselves into the House of Commons, byelections that were explicitly forced to provide those leaders with a seat. They show the share of the vote their respective parties took in the previous general election, ranked from highest to lowest.
Battle River–Crowfoot is at the very top of this list, and comfortably so. Every other vacancy that has ever been opened up for a seatless leader has been in a tougher seat to win than Battle River–Crowfoot is for the Conservatives.
The next closest was when Stephen Harper ran in Preston Manning’s old riding after he took over the Canadian Alliance and needed a seat in 2002. Manning had won his seat with 64.8% of the vote in the previous election. Robert Borden in 1905, George Drew in 1948 and Mackenzie King in 1945 also ran in seats that had been previously won with 60% of the vote or more.
There’s a dash of historical irony in the fact that seatless opposition leaders have twice earned their way into the House of Commons via Carleton, the seat that Poilievre lost.
With the sole exception of Arthur Meighen in York South in 1942, all of these leaders were successful in their bids to return to the House. (Cape Breton was a multi-member riding in 1896. The MP who resigned his seat was one of four candidates vying for two seats in Cape Breton, and he got 29.5% of the vote.)
In the end, we don’t really know if anyone else offered their seats up to Poilievre or if Kurek was “voluntold” to step aside. The Conservatives won 41 seats with 60% of the vote or more, so there were plenty of other easy options for Poilievre had they become available.
But it is an interesting little bit of trivia that Poilievre will be running in the safest seat that a seatless leader has ever run in, shortly after his party set the date for his leadership review vote in the height of winter in Calgary, smack dab in the centre of the Conservative heartland.
No one could accuse Poilievre of trying to make it hard on himself.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
A look at the results of the three Alberta byelections held on Monday, plus the Yukon Liberals have chosen the territory’s new premier and John Rustad’s and Maxime Bernier’s leaderships are reviewed.
Polls on the Carney/Poilievre contrast, how the Arthabaska byelection in Quebec is shaping up, and countrywide views on separatism.
#EveryElectionProject: The Liberals win again in the 1917 Saskatchewan election.
Upcoming milestones for Carla Beck and Doug Ford.
NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Status quo in three Alberta byelections
The Alberta New Democrats held their two seats in Edmonton and the United Conservatives held their seat in rural Alberta, just north of Calgary — as expected. But the shift in the vote does provide us a few (somewhat contradictory) clues about the state of play in Alberta politics.