Weekly Writ 7/30: Liberal majority not at stake in byelections, not yet (and not likely soon)
The trio of byelections will not impact Mark Carney's majority.
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On Sunday, the Liberals set the date for three federal byelections that will fill three of the four vacancies currently in the House of Commons. As with all byelections, there’s lots at stake for every party — from winning the seats outright to putting up a respectable result.
But what’s not at stake is Mark Carney’s majority government.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’m taking a couple of weeks off this month, so the next projection update, episode of The Numbers and edition of The Weekly Writ will be coming out during the week of August 10th. There will likely also be some disruptions in the usual publishing schedule during the week of August 17th. Thanks for your understanding and I hope you’re enjoying your summer!
This is a bit of a pedantic post but one that I felt compelled to write when a few media outlets reported that the Liberals needed to win one of three byelections in order to retain their majority, a claim that was picked up and repeated elsewhere.
With all the moving pieces involving current and upcoming vacancies, I can understand the confusion. We also talk so much about the “magic number” of 172 seats needed for a majority government that we might easily conclude that dropping below 172 means losing a majority.
But the magic number for a majority is not 172, it’s the simply half the number of total seats occupied in the House of Commons.
To have a majority in the House, the government needs to hold more seats than the opposition parties. When there are resignations and subsequent vacancies, the number of seats needed to retain a majority can change. At the moment, there are four vacancies. That drops the number of seats needed for a majority down to 170. When the vacancies are filled, the number will jump back up to 172.
Regardless of the number of current vacancies in the House, the Liberals already hold 172 seats. Granted, the Speaker (who is a Liberal MP) only votes to break ties, so the governing caucus only has 171 votes. But the opposition caucus numbers 167. And with three byelections at stake (in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, Beaches—East York and North Vancouver—Capilano), even if the Liberals lost all three they’d still have 171 MPs in the governing caucus against 170 MPs on the opposition benches.
That’s not a comfortable majority by any means, but it is a majority. That’s because there is a fourth vacancy that will not be filled on August 31. The Liberals opted not to call a byelection for the riding of Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, which was vacated by the Bloc’s Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay on June 19 (the same day Jonathan Wilkinson resigned his North Vancouver—Capilano seat). If the Liberals had called that fourth byelection, then theoretically if the opposition had won all four seats they would move back into a tie with the governing caucus at 171 votes apiece, with the Speaker required to break that tie. That tie-breaking vote would prevent the government from being defeated and dissolved, but it wouldn’t pass new legislation, as Speakers are bound by convention to support the status quo.
I was on Power & Politics on Tuesday to discuss the byelections. You can watch my appearance below:
But there will be more vacancies between now and August 31. Cathay Wagantall, the Conservative MP for Yorkton—Melville, has said she will resign on August 31. Alexandre Boulerice, the formerly-NDP MP for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, will resign to run for Québec Solidaire in Quebec’s provincial election, which will officially kick-off a few days before the federal byelections. And Liberal MP Steven Guilbeault has said he’ll resign his Laurier—Sainte-Marie seat in August as well.
That means that when voters go to the polls on August 31, the Liberals will be down to 171 seats (including the speaker) and the opposition will be down to 165 seats. So, in the unlikely scenario that the Liberals lose all three byelections on August 31 they will still outnumber the opposition 171 to 168.
When the House finally returns in September, the Liberals will have their majority intact, even if the trio of byelections goes against them. In the more likely scenario that they retain their two seats of Beaches—East York and North Vancouver—Capilano, they will have 173 seats against 166 for the opposition. That will give them a quite comfortable majority for the subsequent months as they (presumably) wait for the end of the Quebec provincial election and, possibly, the municipal elections in Saskatchewan before holding the quartet of byelections in November or December. And if those four go against the Liberals, they’d still have a majority going into 2027. (If the Liberals win Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, their majority will be padded even further.)
The only way the Liberals’ majority would be lost as a result of all of these byelections would be if they lost all seven of them. (If they lost six of seven, they’d have to rely on the Speaker to break ties.) It seems unlikely that, with three of the seven contests being in very safe Liberal ridings and at least two of the remaining four being winnable for the Liberals, Carney is in any real danger of dropping back into minority territory in 2026. But if the odds are slim of that happening by year’s end, they are zero that it’ll happen on August 31.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
A deep, deep dive into the three byelections and what is actually at stake in them.
Federal polls disagree on the toplines, but not the trends. Also, where things stand in Ontario and in Toronto’s mayoral race.
#EveryElectionProject: The “quietest Provincial election campaign in the history of Nova Scotia”.
THE NUMBERS: When politics and the stars align
We did something a little unusual on The Numbers this week. Philippe is always quizzing me on political history, so it was my turn to put him through his paces on one of his passions: astronomy! (With, of course, a dash of politics.)
We did this episode for members of our Patreon, so if you’d like to view it and support our joint project, you can join here.
NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Three byelections to test all four parties
As long-time readers of The Writ know, I am a big believer in byelections. They’re easy to dismiss (as they often are by partisan pundits in full spin mode) as localized, low-turnout affairs that are not reflective of broader trends.
In reality, byelections tend to follow those broader trends relatively closely. The people who vote in byelections are a smaller subset of people who vote in general byelections, but there is no real indication that those people vote all that differently than the general voting population. If that were the case, byelections would routinely produce surprising results that contradict broader polling trends. That rarely happens.
In the end, these are real votes by real voters and the results can’t be dismissed. And, as discussed above, with the House of Commons as divided as it is each of these contests can have big implications — if not in the short-term, then potentially in the longer term.
So, while these byelections will not change the standings in the House of Commons this fall, the four major parties do all have something at stake in these contests. For three of the parties, it’s about winning and losing. And, for all four, its about demonstrating their strength.