Weekly Writ for June 5: Battleground spotlight on Atlantic Canada

Conservatives well-placed to make big gains on east coast, plus B.C. United continues to fall apart.

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.

When the polls shifted last summer, nowhere was the movement as dramatic and consequential as in Atlantic Canada.

The Liberals were losing support across the country, but it was only in Atlantic Canada that the Liberals went from having a clear lead over the Conservatives to trailing Pierre Poilievre’s party by a wide margin. Hoping to salvage things, and under pressure from his MPs from the region, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an exemption on the carbon tax for home heating oil — a move that disproportionately benefitted Atlantic Canadians.

It didn’t reverse the trends.

In fact, it might have accelerated them, signalling that the Liberals were indeed in desperate times calling for desperate measures. Tallying up the potential Liberal seat losses in Atlantic Canada last fall was gobsmacking, considering the party’s dominance of the region since 2015. Now, it’s a given that much of the east coast will be shaded blue on election night.

Let’s take a look at just how much of it could change hues.

In the last election, the Liberals won 44% of the vote across the four Atlantic provinces. The Conservatives were well behind at 32%, followed by the NDP in third with 17%.

The polls now show an average of about 45% support for the Conservatives, with the Liberals down to 31% and the NDP holding steady at 18%. That net swing of 26 points between the Liberals and Conservatives (and 14 points between the Liberals and NDP) could flip a lot of seats.

Every so often in the Weekly Writ, I take a deep dive into one region of the country and how it is shaping up ahead of the next federal election, using my model from the If The Election Were Held Today section of the newsletter to classify seats as as likely, lean or toss-up. A riding that is projected to be a likely win for a party is one in which the party is projected to lead by 15 points or more. A ‘lean’ is a riding with a margin of between five and 15 points, while a toss-up is a riding with a margin of less than five points. In the chart below, the little boxes next to each riding denote which party won them in 2021.

In addition to the eight seats the Conservatives already hold, they appear very well-positioned to easily gain another eight from the Liberals, including much of Newfoundland, all of Cape Breton Island and the urban New Brunswick seats in Fredericton and Saint John. There will need to be a serious swing away from the Conservatives to put these locks in doubt.

There are a few other seats that look favourable to the Conservatives, but are not so certain: Cardigan, Egmont and Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island (Malpeque looks more likely to flip) and Kings–Hants in Nova Scotia, along with both Labrador and Avalon in Newfoundland & Lab.

Altogether, the ‘likely’ and ‘lean’ seats would give the Conservatives a total of 22 in Atlantic Canada — the most the party has ever won in the region since Brian Mulroney’s 1984 landslide.

These are mostly rural ridings and those with small-to-mid-size cities. They are predominantly anglophone in New Brunswick. There are a few other seats that are on the bubble, pointing to the Conservatives’ potential to break into the Halifax suburbs and parts of New Brunswick with more francophones. These are Halifax West and Sackville–Bedford–Preston around Nova Scotia’s capital, and Madawaska–Restigouche and Moncton–Dieppe in New Brunswick.

This would get the Conservatives up to 26 seats in the region, and that is where they start to hit their ceiling. The Liberals can’t be absolutely assured of wins in Cape Spear or Beauséjour, but they are likely to hold them (thanks in part due to the candidacies of Seamus O’Regan and Dominic LeBlanc), as is also the case in Acadie–Bathurst.

But their drop in support could put the NDP in range of a few pick-ups, even if the New Democrats aren’t much stronger today than they were in 2021. The fall for the Liberals has been so steep that St. John’s East and Halifax look ripe for the NDP’s picking, while Dartmouth–Cole Harbour could be on the bubble, too. If the Liberals lost all of these, they’d be left to a few personalities and their last Acadian base, leaving part of St. John’s and Halifax to the NDP and the rest to the Conservatives.

With the polls closing first in Atlantic Canada on election night, we’ll get an early indication of what might be in store in the rest of the country. In 2015, the Liberal sweep suggested the party was on track for a majority. In 2019 and 2021, the inability of the Conservatives to make more inroads suggested the Liberals would at least be capable of winning a minority. In 2025, how much of Atlantic Canada goes Conservative will prepare us for what to expect in the rest of Canada.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News of continued drama in B.C. politics.

• Polls continue to show largely stable national numbers, though with a hint of a trend, plus there are new numbers out of B.C., Quebec and Alberta.

• David Eby’s majority projection if the election were held today grows from last week.

• Patterson vs. Patterson in this week’s riding profile.

• The rise of Clyde Wells in the #EveryElectionProject.

• A new milestone for Justin Trudeau, with more to come if he stays on through the summer.

IN THE NEWS

BC United loses two MLAs to Conservatives

It’s been a heady few days in B.C. politics and it seems likely that things will continue to simmer for weeks to come as B.C. United implodes.

On Friday, Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Lorne Doerkson announced he was crossing the floor, leaving BCU and joining John Rustad’s Conservative caucus — increasing it from two to three.

Then, on Monday, Surrey South MLA Elenore Sturko announced she was also making the leap to the Conservatives. In a few days, the B.C. Conservatives doubled their caucus, entirely made up of MLAs originally elected under the B.C. Liberal banner.

Neither Doerkson nor Sturko are particularly right-wing, making their integration into the Conservative Party a little awkward and their decision electorally driven. Both cited the need to defeat the B.C. NDP government as their motivation for crossing the floor, Sturko going so far as to say that “we can only ignore the polls so long”.

But this does add momentum to the Conservatives’ campaign with little more than four months to go before election day. The polls have already shown a movement from BCU to the Conservatives, and these defections can only cement the perception that the Conservatives are now the real alternative to the New Democrats. They have two incumbents in the Interior in Rustad and now Doerkson, and two incumbents in the Lower Mainland in Bruce Banman and now Sturko. It’s hard to imagine anything other than an acceleration of the anti-BCU trend in the coming weeks. And perhaps more defections, too.

The closer the province gets to the campaign kick-off, however, the more complicated these defections will become. Doerkson will be the Conservative candidate in Cariboo-Chilcotin, but Sturko will instead run in NDP-held Surrey-Cloverdale as the Conservatives already had a candidate in place in Surrey South. There is some overlap between Sturko’s old riding and the new one as the electoral boundaries have been re-drawn, but the bulk of her old seat remains in the new Surrey South.

Where does Kevin Falcon and BCU go from here? They don’t have many good options. Attacking the Conservatives as a party that isn’t ready for primetime and is presenting a slate of under-vetted candidates gets more difficult with each former BCU MLA they have on the ballot. BCU remains well-financed, both from donors as well as their public subsidy, but the next set of fundraising data will give us a clear indication if the money will finally follow the electorate in moving over to the Conservatives.

A consolidation of the right-of-centre (or ‘free enterprise’, as it is often called in B.C.) vote reduces the re-election chances of David Eby’s New Democrats, but as BCU continues to disintegrate the NDP might want to start thinking of how many centrist BCU supporters they could woo over to their side.

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THIS WEEK’S POLLS

The tiniest of trends?

Last week, I tried to determine if the federal polls were showing any discernible trend — particularly one that was favourable to the Liberals. This was largely sparked by an Abacus Data survey that showed a narrowing gap, largely due to Liberal gains among young voters.

The numbers in last week’s polls were, at best, inconclusive. Abacus (and Nanos Research) were showing Liberal gains and Conservative losses, but they weren’t very big. And Ipsos showed little movement whatsoever.

A week later, there’s still not much indication of anything happening. Two polls were published, by Léger and Nanos Research. Léger shows no gains for the Liberals. It actually has them down three points since April to just 14% among those under the age of 35, and the party is doing poorly in Ontario and Quebec.

There is a case to be made, however, that the Conservatives might be coming down a little from last month’s highs. Léger has the Conservatives down two points since April, as does Nanos Research. Those are not statistically significant movements in isolation, but if we look at the polling done by Nanos, Léger, Abacus and Ipsos, the four pollsters in the field in both April and May, and compare their results from each of those months, we see the Conservatives are down a little more than a point and the Liberals are up a little more than a point.

Again, it’s not much movement. But the net effect is that the Conservatives had a lead of just over 20 points in April among these four pollsters, and now it is just under 18 points.

Does that matter? In the big scheme, probably not — and in all likelihood this is statistical noise. But it does suggest that, for the time being at least, the two parties might be stabilizing at around these levels of support. The Conservatives are settling somewhere around 41% to 43% and the Liberals between 23% and 26%. Not great news for the Liberals, but a month ago it appeared that the Conservatives were heading toward 45% or more as the Liberals drifted south. That movement has (probably) halted.

POLLING NEWS BRIEFS

Abacus Data and CPAC have put out a fascinating study on disinformation and misinformation in Canada. The poll has lots of interesting findings on how Canadians consume information and whether they themselves have wittingly or unwittingly shared “fake news”.

It’s been a good week for the B.C. Conservatives, but the most recent poll out of British Columbia is not one of their best. The Angus Reid Institute finds the New Democrats leading with 41%, followed by the Conservatives at 30%, B.C. United at 16% and the Greens at 11%. Regionally, the NDP is dominant in Metro Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, while the margins are closer between them and the Conservatives in the Fraser Valley and the Interior.

In Alberta, the UCP continues to lead over the NDP at 47% to 43%, according to a new Léger poll. While both parties only moved by two points since March, the margin between the two has shrunk from eight points to four points. The poll also found troubling numbers for Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek and Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, with just 12% and 16%, respectively, of their city’s residents saying they would vote for them again.

If there’s one place in Quebec where voters are divided, it’s Gatineau. A Segma Recherche/Radio-Canada poll found the Quebec Liberals leading with 24% in the city, followed by the CAQ at 23%, the Parti Québécois at 19% and Québec Solidaire at 16%. There are pockets of the city where each party has particular concentrations of support, but the general trend shows a big drop for the CAQ and gains for the PQ and Liberals. The CAQ holds four of the five seats in and around Gatineau.

The poll also found that Maude Marquis-Bissonnette leads Yves Ducharme by 14 points in the Gatineau municipal byelection taking place this coming weekend. Marquis-Bissonnette narrowly lost to France Bélisle in 2021, who resigned earlier this year over the threats and intimidation she received from the public after taking office.

Finally, Léger finds that Denis Coderre might not be the saviour the Quebec Liberals need. In February, 27% of Liberal voters thought he’d make the best choice for leader out of the presented options. Now it’s down to just 12%, with interim leader Marc Tanguay soaring to the top.

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IF THE ELECTION WERE HELD TODAY

Very little movement in the national seat projection, with a handful of seats changing hands. The Conservatives remain in a commanding position, while the NDP is at a new low at just 22 seats.

The polling in Gatineau helps flip one seat in the city from the PQ over to the Liberals, while in British Columbia the middling results for the B.C. Conservatives in the ARI poll sends them tumbling down eight seats, with the NDP being the main beneficiaries.

The seat estimates are derived from a swing model that is based on trends in recent polls as well as minor tweaks and adjustments. Rather than the product of a purely statistical model, these estimates are my best guess of what an election held today would produce. Changes are compared to last week. Parties are ordered according to their finish in the previous election (with some exceptions for minor parties)

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RIDING OF THE WEEK

Moose Jaw Wakamow (Saskatchewan)

The Saskatchewan Party’s dominance in the rural parts of the province makes their chances of holding on to power in October’s election very good. But they need a little help from the outlying suburbs of Regina and Saskatoon, as well as from a handful of small cities, to ensure another majority isn’t won by a razor’s edge.

Moose Jaw Wakamow is one of those ridings in Saskatchewan’s small cities that form the last line of defence for Scott Moe’s government. It’s also a must-win for the opposition New Democrats.

In 2020, Greg Lawrence of the Sask. Party won Moose Jaw Wakamow for the third consecutive time, taking 53.4% of the vote. The NDP’s Melissa Patterson took 40.7%. Candidates for the Progressive Conservatives and Greens took 3.7% and 2.2% of ballots cast, respectively.

Moose Jaw Wakamow is one of two seats in the city of 34,000 located about an hour’s drive west of Regina. It’s the more competitive of the two, as the Sask. Party won Moose Jaw North by nearly 30 percentage points in the last election.

Occupying the southern half of the city, Moose Jaw Wakamow has backed Lawrence and the Sask. Party since 2011. Before that, however, it was safe NDP country. From the time Tommy Douglas and the CCF stormed to power in 1944, the southern portion of Moose Jaw was represented by either a CCFer or a New Democrat for all but four of the next 67 years, the lone interruption coming when Grant Devine’s PCs won in 1982.

Lawrence increased his margin of victory over the NDP in each election after defeating long-time MLA Deb Higgins in 2011, from 3.2 points that year to 10.5 points in 2016 and finally 12.7 points in 2020. That could be a longer-term demographic trend that is working against the NDP, even if they are looking a little more competitive outside of Regina and Saskatoon than they have in some time.

The boundaries for Moose Jaw Wakamow have changed a little with the new electoral map but not enough to significantly impact each party’s base support. The margin might have increased by about a point, but even the 14-point swing needed for the NDP to win here is achievable, at least based on the most recent polls that have suggested a swing closer to 20 points outside of the two biggest cities.

The Sask. Party won’t have an incumbent this time, as Greg Lawrence announced in 2023 he would not be running for re-election after suffering an injury in a motorcycle accident. He subsequently left the Sask. Party caucus to sit as an Independent when it emerged he faces charges of assault.

Melissa Patterson, who works at Casino Moose Jaw and is involved with its union, is running for the NDP again.

The ballot might prove a bit confusing for voters as her main rival will be another M. Patterson: Megan Patterson, a business instructor at the local Saskatchewan Polytech campus and a director of the Moose Jaw Chamber of Commerce, will be carrying the Sask. Party banner.

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ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject

All’s well that ends Wells

June 6, 1987

For the first few decades of Newfoundland’s history, the Liberals were absolutely dominant. But once Joey Smallwood, the man who took the province into Confederation, couldn’t take the hint and outstayed his welcome in the early 1970s, the Liberal Party was in rough shape — internally divided and externally unpopular.

Things didn’t get much better when Smallwood finally called it quits as the Liberals went through a succession of unsuccessful leaders while the Progressive Conservatives, first under Frank Moores and then Brian Peckford, won election after election. The increasing unpopularity of the federal Liberals was also taking its toll.

In 1985, the Newfoundland Liberals lost another election, this time under the leadership of Leo Barry. He had been a PC cabinet minister but resigned from Peckford’s government in 1984 and found himself leading the Liberal opposition a few months later. Barry nearly doubled the Liberals’ seat total, but Peckford won another majority government.

Before long, Barry’s caucus was in open revolt against his heavy-handed leadership. They unanimously called for his resignation when he decided to make a trip to Boston while the House of Assembly was sitting and, in early 1987, he called for a leadership convention in June to settle the matter. He’d stand as a candidate, which pleased no one.

It was in the midst of this tumult that Clyde Wells finally decided to take the plunge. He had served as a minister in Smallwood’s government, but quit cabinet (along with John Crosbie) over his leadership. Crosbie would unsuccessfully challenge Smallwood for the title and eventually crossed the floor to the PCs, but Wells went back to practising law instead, first in Corner Brook, then in St. John’s.

He was often courted to run for the Liberal leadership, but he didn’t want to give up his lucrative practice. But he was finally ready to return to politics — for a price.

He announced his candidacy in April, backed by former leaders Steve Neary and Ed Roberts, along with the three MHAs. He was one of three candidates in the running, the others being Leo Barry and Winston Baker.

Baker was new to provincial politics, having been elected in Gander in 1985, but the Baker name wasn’t new, as his brother George had been the Liberal MP for Gander–Grand Falls since 1974.

The ballot got winnowed down to two before the end of April with the withdrawal of Barry, who blamed the caucus for causing him “irredeemable damage”. But he didn’t go without a parting shot at Wells, who wanted his lost income from leaving his practice (estimated to be about $200,000 at the time) to be covered by the party.

“Unless the funds come out of general Liberal Party revenues,” said Barry, “…the general party membership and indeed the general public must be informed of the source of such funds, keeping in mind that he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

It was really the only issue of the leadership campaign, and ahead of the convention Wells sent a letter to delegates explaining how a group of Liberal supporters had promised to raise the money to cover half of his lost salary.

“I suppose I could do it on $100,000,” Wells said. The salary for an opposition leader at the time was about $70,000.

The convention was held at the Mary Queen of Peace parish hall (“undersized”, according to the Canadian Press correspondent), and Baker agreed that he was the underdog. Nevertheless, he predicted he would get hundreds of ballots. Wells predicted he’d win an easy majority.

“If posters were any indication,” wrote Robert Martin in The Globe and Mail, “Mr. Wells is a shoo-in. His large, full-color [sic] portraits, featuring his startlingly blue, John Turner-like eyes, completely overwhelmed Mr. Baker’s modest little signs that said simply ‘Baker’”.

The result was an absolute landslide. Wells won 88% of the 643 ballots cast, with Baker managing only 67 votes. Ted Noseworthy, a marginal candidate who didn’t even show up to a leadership forum the day before the convention, received 10 votes.

It was the result everyone was expecting, and Wells told the audience to “take heart, Newfoundland, the Liberals are coming.”

But after the party’s recent history of revolving-door leadership, Wells also had a warning for the delegates.

“The days of saviors [sic] and messiahs are over,” he said. “If ever they existed, they don’t any more.” He alerted the delegates that winning the election would be the work of more than one man.

Whether or not he was the saviour, Wells did bring the Liberals to the promised land. It wasn’t quite the same landslide victory that he scored in the leadership race, but Wells would lead the Liberals back to power in 1989, promising to forego his salary top-up if elected premier.

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MILESTONE WATCH

Trudeau moves up the table

On Monday, Justin Trudeau will surpass Louis St-Laurent as the ninth longest serving prime minister of Canada.

St-Laurent served as prime minister from 1948, when we took over from the retiring Mackenzie King, to 1957, when he was defeated by John Diefenbaker in that year’s upset election. Unlike Trudeau, however, St-Laurent only led the Liberals through two winning campaigns (1949 and 1953).

It will be a summer of milestones for Trudeau, as he will pass Robert Borden and Brian Mulroney in August, which will rank him as the seventh on the all-time list. If he finishes out his term through to the next election, he’ll pass the prime minister he beat in 2015: Stephen Harper.

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That’s it for the Weekly Writ this week. The next episode of The Writ Podcast will be dropping on Friday. As always, the episode will land in your inbox but you can also find it on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting apps. And don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel, where I post videos, livestreams and interviews from the podcast!