Weekly Writ for Apr. 10: How the loss of incumbents hurts the NDP
Plus, two Ontario byelections are called and new polls are out for B.C. and 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 Wednesday morning.
The New Democrats announced a trio of retirements last week, as Charlie Angus, Carol Hughes and Rachel Blaney all said they would not seek re-election when the country next goes to the polls.
With a smaller caucus to begin with, the NDP can hardly afford to lose three veterans of the party. All three MPs also represent rural or remote ridings that will be targeted by the Conservatives. The narrative was already setting in that the New Democrats in places like Northern Ontario and on Vancouver Island were under assault from the Conservatives. That three stalwarts aren’t going to try to hold Pierre Poilievre off will only make things more difficult for the NDP in these regions.
Regardless of where these retiring MPs are located, however, the NDP in particular suffers from the loss of incumbents.
Being a third party with a long-shot chance at power, the New Democrats are especially vulnerable when they don’t have a known quantity on the ballot. That is doubly so when an election gets polarized between the Conservatives and the Liberals and loyalty to the party might not be as strong as loyalty to the local MP.
This is demonstrated by how much the NDP has been hurt by the loss of incumbents in the last two elections.
In 2021, the NDP’s support grew by an average of 3.8 percentage points in ridings where they had an incumbent MP on the ballot. In the three ridings in which their incumbent was not running again, the NDP lost 9.4 points.
If we extend that back to 2019 to increase the same size, we see the same phenomenon: the NDP lost an average of 3.6 points where they had incumbents and 10.4 points where they didn’t.
Looking at 2019 and 2021 together, the swing from one election to the next was 8.5 points better for the NDP where they had an incumbent on the ballot than in ridings where their incumbent had retired.
That’s a big incumbency boost — one that we didn’t see the other two parties experience in the last election.
In 2021, the Liberals had an average increase of 0.4 points in ridings where they had an incumbent but lost an average of 3.3 points where their incumbent MP had retired. The incumbency effect is clear here but it was worth just 3.7 points, or less than half the impact for the NDP.
The Conservatives didn’t even have an incumbency effect — they lost an average of 4.2 points where they had an incumbent but just 2.1 points where their incumbent retired. (This is in part due to the low number of cases but also that their incumbents in safe ridings were often hurt by a rise in PPC support.)
Whatever the “normal” incumbency boost is, the NDP appears to have a bigger one than do the other two parties. That’s why the retirements of Angus, Hughes and Blaney (along with Daniel Blaikie, who resigned last month, and B.C. MPs Richard Cannings and Randall Garrison, who have already announced they won’t run again) have an amplified impact on the party.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
News on which parties will be missing the most incumbents in the next election, two Ontario byelection campaigns that have been kicked off, a floor-crossing that won’t happen, some important new data from Elections Canada, fundraising in B.C. and a new paper on the viability of an Alberta Pension Plan.
Polls show David Eby’s NDP still in control, plus new national and Alberta polling.
Still a massive Conservative majority if the election were held today.
A safe Ontario PC seat in this week’s riding profile.
The Ontario Liberals hope to go far with Farquhar in the #EveryElectionProject.