Weekly Writ for Feb. 21: The seats that would give Poilievre a majority government

What the tipping-point (and cushion) seats would be for a Conservative majority if the election were held today

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.

With the kinds of polling numbers we’ve seen over the last few months, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are knocking on the door of 200 seats.

But it’s a big leap to go from the party’s current caucus of 117 to 200 or more. And while hitting 200 seats would be a psychological threshold of some importance, it otherwise doesn’t mean much. The real number that matters is what gets the Conservatives to majority status. Anything else is just gravy for the party.

So, let’s take a look at what are the seats that would tip the Conservatives into majority territory — and which seats would simply provide some extra padding.

In this analysis, I am using a simple swing model that takes the results from the 2021 election and adjusts them according to where the polls stand today. As any election held within the next two months or so would be fought over the current 338-seat electoral map, rather than the expanded 343-seat map, I’ll stick with what’s in place right now.

Getting the Conservatives up to around the 170 seats needed for a majority government is not a challenge, considering where the polls stand right now. If those numbers were replicated at the ballot box, the Conservatives would win dozens of seats from the Liberals: in Prince Edward Island and rural Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, in places like London, Kitchener and on the Niagara Peninsula, in the Greater Toronto Area suburbs north and east of the city, and in the suburban outskirts of the B.C. Lower Mainland. From the New Democrats, the Conservatives can easily flip a few seats in the B.C. Interior and on Vancouver Island.

That puts the Conservatives around 165 seats. Now, let’s look at the 10 seats I’d qualify as “tipping-point” seats — the ridings ranked roughly 165th to 175th on the Conservatives’ list, winnable in the current climate by between five and 10 percentage points.

These tipping points were nearly all won by the Liberals in the last election. They include four ridings in Toronto and in the GTA, seats that are on the outskirts of the urban core of the city — the Conservatives can already be assumed to have won the likes of Whitby, Newmarket–Aurora or Vaughan–Woodbridge and starting to encroach on Toronto itself when they get to majority territory.

To get to 170, the Conservatives also need to win suburbs in some other parts of the country that have been harder to break into: Nepean, Hamilton East–Stoney Creek and Burnaby North–Seymour. In the last two, the Conservatives would beat not only the Liberals but also keep the New Democrats from taking advantage of the incumbent government’s weakness.

Rural seats with traditional Liberal electorates also need to slide into the Conservative column. The stellar numbers for the party in Atlantic Canada mean a riding like Cardigan on Prince Edward Island would be on the bubble, as would Glengarry–Prescott–Russell and its Liberal-voting Franco-Ontarians.

Finally, a Conservative majority includes a gain in Quebec. Trois-Rivières was very close in the last election. The polls point to an increase in Conservative support in the province, but they also disagree on whether the Bloc Québécois is up or down. If it is up, then the Conservatives might only flip Trois-Rivières if they are in 170-seat territory. If the Bloc is down, then Trois-Rivières becomes one of the seats that gets them to the threshold rather than over it.

I’ll get to the next tranche of seats after the paywall break. Before getting to that, here is what’s included in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• A new paper on why parties shouldn’t worry about running younger candidates.

• Polls on the Alberta NDP leadership, as well as federal voting intentions and provincial voting intentions in Ontario. We also have some issue polling on trans rights and medical assistance in death.

• Doug Ford risks losing his majority if the election were held today.

• A riding profile of a key swing seat in New Brunswick.

• David Peterson becomes leader of the Ontario Liberals in the #EveryElectionProject.

The seats that would pad Poilievre’s majority

The Conservative seats ranked around the 170 mark are the ones that the party needs in order to win a majority. But the polls suggest those seats are far down the list of what’s winnable for the Conservatives at the moment. Let’s move on to those seats that the Conservatives don’t need for a majority, but which would help give them some alternative options when mapping out a path.