Weekly Writ for May 1: NDP fundraising doesn't point to election readiness
Plus, a surprise resignation in Quebec.
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.
It never fails.
The filing deadline for the federal parties’ quarterly fundraising reports approaches and I eagerly prepare to dive into the numbers. The clock ticks. A few filings are posted on Elections Canada’s website, but as the sun moves across the sky it becomes clearer and clearer that it’s just not going to happen. Some of the filings won’t make it up onto the site on deadline day.
But that won’t stop us from taking a look at the data we do have as of my filing time.
The New Democrats raised $1,349,484 over the first three months of 2024 from 14,699 individual contributions. That’s an average donation of $92 a pop, though this doesn’t take into account donors who made multiple contributions since the beginning of the year. By comparison, last year the Liberals averaged $121 per donation and the Conservatives averaged $182.
This haul does show some growth for the New Democrats since last year — this is a 7% increase on their fundraising over the first three months of 2023. But the party still does not appear to be gearing up for an election campaign, as their fundraising in this first quarter is rather typical of past first quarters since Jagmeet Singh became leader in October 2017.
Fundraising in Q1 2024 is up from Q1 2023, but is lower than it was in 2021 and 2022. Take out the lows of 2017 (when the NDP was in the midst of a leadership race) and 2020 (when the pandemic caused a slump in fundraising for all parties), and the NDP is doing just about as well as it usually does. That’s not bad news, but it’s also not good news for a party that is perennially hard-up for cash.
Perhaps the New Democrats will surprise us and vote down the Liberal budget, precipitating an election. But these fundraising figures do not suggest the NDP is in any better financial position to kickstart an election campaign than it is in the polls.
Also posted were the fundraising figures for the Bloc Québécois, which raised $342,998 from 2,149 individual contributions. Like the NDP, this is an increase from its first quarter fundraising in 2023 but a decrease compared to 2021 and 2022. To put the Bloc’s fundraising into context, on a per capita basis this is the equivalent of a pan-Canadian party raising a little less than $1.5 million.
Lastly, the People’s Party has reported $240,026 in fundraising from 3,024 individual contributions so far this year. They’ve only been required to file quarterly reports since 2022, but this is the lowest first quarter result for the PPC since then and part of a downward trend. This $240,000 is down from $297,000 in Q1 2023 and $409,000 in Q1 2022. Based on my own estimates of the PPC’s quarterly fundraising since it was founded, this is likely the party’s worst start to a year since 2020 — the moment that COVID-19 gave Maxime Bernier’s outfit a new lease on life after its paltry showing in the 2019 election.
Though they’ll be old news by then, I’ll update the fundraising figures for the Liberals, Conservatives and Greens in next week’s edition of the Weekly Writ. But before I do that, let’s look at what is in this week’s instalment:
News of a surprise resignation in Quebec and updates on three upcoming byelections in Toronto, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador.
A quick rundown of the latest national voting intentions and issues polls, along with new provincial numbers out of British Columbia and Ontario.
Majorities for Pierre Poilievre, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon and David Eby if the elections were held today.
Baie Verte-Green Bay riding profile.
The “coup d’état” that led to the 1878 Quebec election in this edition of the #EveryElectionProject.
IN THE NEWS
Québec Solidaire co-leader quits
In a surprising move on Monday, newly-named co-spokesperson for Québec Solidaire, Émilise Lessard-Therrien, announced she was stepping down from her role little more than five months after winning a close contest in November.
QS has a unique leadership model in that it has a male and female co-spokesperson, rather than a single party leader. In election campaigns, QS designates one of those two spokespeople to be their candidate for premier, and that person represents the party in leaders debates. In 2022, that designated leader was Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
Lessard-Therrien had stepped away from her responsibilities in March for health reasons. Saying she was mentally exhausted in her resignation announcement, Lessard-Therrien cited the “small team of professionals” around Nadeau-Dubois that prevented her from moving the party in the direction that she wanted to take it in.
It’s a blow for the left-wing party that is struggling to make headway in the polls in Quebec. The third party in the National Assembly but the recipient of the second-most votes in the 2022 provincial election, QS has not been able to take advantage of the drop in support of the governing Coalition Avenir Québec. Instead, the Parti Québécois has been the sole-beneficiary of the CAQ’s slide.
It’s also a blow for Nadeau-Dubois, who was criticized last year by former MNA Catherine Dorion for his leadership style.
The leadership system used by Québec Solidaire is perhaps especially vulnerable to these kinds of difficulties, particularly since Nadeau-Dubois leads QS in the National Assembly while Lessard-Therrien was seatless. Ruba Ghazal, who finished just three votes shy of Lessard-Therrien in the November leadership vote, does hold a seat in the legislature — though it is right next-door to Nadeau-Dubois’s on the island of Montreal. If she wants to take another run at the co-leadership, she would start out as the odds-on favourite to replace Lessard-Therrien.
But for a party that has struggled to expand beyond its urban Montreal base, Lessard-Therrien held some promise for broadening that base as a former MNA in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region. Instead, QS might need to consolidate the seats it has as the PQ surges and the sovereignty issue comes to the forefront — an issue that could boost the Quebec Liberals in some of the ridings QS currently holds.
ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS
The federal Liberals will hold their nomination meeting tonight in Toronto–St. Paul’s. It’ll pit Leslie Church, who has been campaigning for the nomination for months, against newer entrant Emma Richardson. Church is considered the favourite to win it. Does the nomination here suggest the Liberals will call the byelection to fill Carolyn Bennett’s seat sooner rather than later? There are two other vacancies in Elmwood–Transcona and LaSalle–Émard–Verdun without a Liberal nomination battle in sight, so if the Liberals do call the Toronto–St. Paul’s byelection it could prove to be a solo contest.
Effective May 6, former Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson will resign as the MLA for her Winnipeg riding of Tuxedo. She led the party to defeat in the October provincial election and subsequently stepped down as leader of the Progressive Conservatives. In the midst of a post-election honeymoon, the Manitoba New Democrats might want to take their chances at flipping this seat as soon as possible. Stefanson won Tuxedo by just 2.7 percentage points last year.
Another provincial byelection is coming in Newfoundland and Labrador on May 27 in the riding of Baie Verte-Green Bay. This call comes just a few weeks after the governing Liberals suffered an upset defeat at the hands of the PCs in Fogo Island-Cape Freels and the byelection will fill the seat vacated by Liberal MHA Brian Warr in March. The district is the subject of this week’s riding profile below.
THIS WEEK’S POLLS
I’ve been feeling unwell this past week, so I hope you will forgive an abbreviated rundown of the recently-published national polls.
Conservatives hold their lead
According to the Angus Reid Institute, the Conservatives led in the days after the release of the budget with 43%, followed by the Liberals at 23% and the NDP at 19%. Since March, when the ARI was last in the field, this represents a gain of three points for the Conservatives and stagnation for the Liberals. Not exactly the bump the Liberals were reportedly hoping for.
EKOS Research, however, came out with a narrower gap and stronger NDP numbers in their first voting intentions poll of 2024. EKOS awards 37% support to the Conservatives, followed by the Liberals at 26% and the NDP at 23%.
The four-week rolling Nanos Research poll goes in the opposite direction, with the Conservatives leading with 44% and the Liberals trailing with 24%. The NDP is even further back at just 16%, while the spike in support Nanos had been recording for the Bloc appears to be tapering off, as the party is now down to 8% nationally (regional poll results are paywalled).
Finally, the Innovative Research Group, which also did not publish regional results, awarded the Conservatives 41% to 26% for the Liberals and 17% for the NDP.
More data from the ARI survey shows Pierre Poilievre is trusted over Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh by wide margins on the issues of deficit/government spending, the economy, energy/natural resources, immigration and housing affordability. The gap was modest between Poilievre and Singh on healthcare and income inequality, while it was a three-way race on climate change and Indigenous issues.
Thumbs down on budget, thumbs mixed on budget measures
Polls show that a plurality of Canadians don’t like the budget as a whole but do support some individual measures. Léger found 49% of Canadians holding a negative opinion of the budget, with just 21% positive. But two-thirds of respondents liked the “investment of $8.5 billion in housing” and the “$900 million increase for greener homes and energy efficiency programs“. A majority of respondents also thought that increased military spending, the increase of the capital gains tax and the forgiving of some student loans were good things.
Spark Advocacy found 34% of respondents think the budget was bad for Canada compared to 21% who thought it was good — nearly half were unsure. By margins of more than two-to-one, Canadians thought the budget would be negative rather than helpful to them and would be harmful rather than helpful to the economy.
The Innovative Research Group compared reactions to this budget with budgets going back to 2008, finding that it scored a net -30% on satisfaction. Only Stephen Harper’s budget in 2012 scored worse (Justin Trudeau’s budgets in 2017 and 2018 were nearly as unpopular). On the capital gains tax changes, the IRG found 46% agreeing that “raising taxes on capital gains is a mistake that will discourage investment and hurt the economy” compared to just 31% agreeing with the statement that it was “a good way to help fund social programs and keep the deficit down.”
POLLING NEWS BRIEFS
What’s going on in British Columbia? Mainstreet Research published a poll that had the B.C. Conservatives leading over the incumbent B.C. New Democrats, 39% to 36%. Except, not really. Mainstreet did the worthwhile exercise of testing ballot choices if Kevin Falcon, leader of B.C. United, was named as the leader of that party for one segment of respondents and as leader of the B.C. Liberals (who no longer exist) for another segment. It found that naming Falcon as leader of the B.C. Liberals actually boosted support for the B.C. Conservatives. Inexplicably, though, Mainstreet presented the combined scores of these two questions as their topline results, rather than focusing on the actual ballot line-up. If we focus on the smaller sample ballot question with the correct party names and leaders, we see that the Conservatives and NDP were tied at 38% apiece — still a much more competitive race than we’ve seen from other pollsters.
At least one of tomorrow’s two provincial byelections in Ontario could come down to the wire. Liaison Strategies finds Galen Naidoo Harris of the Liberals ahead of Zee Hamid of the PCs by two points in Milton, while Steve Pinsonneault of the PCs has a 31-point lead over Cathy Burghardt-Jesson of the Liberals in Lambton–Kent–Middlesex.
The Environics Institute, which is always putting out some interesting findings, has some unsurprising results to report on housing: people think both their federal and provincial governments are doing a bad job, and even have negative views about how their municipal overlords are handling it. Disapproval with both the federal and provincial/territorial governments was roughly even in Atlantic Canada, Ontario and the North (yes, Environics polls the territories!), while the provincial government scored slightly better than the feds in Quebec and British Columbia. In the Prairies (including Alberta), the federal government scored significantly worse. Municipalities had the lowest disapproval rating on housing of the three levels of government in every region.
IF THE ELECTION WERE HELD TODAY
A little movement in the national seat projections, as the Conservatives drop a few seats in western Canada and Ontario, while the Liberals fall in Quebec. The Bloc and the NDP pick up a few seats in the swap.
In Quebec, the Parti Québécois gains a few more seats, thanks largely to their strength outside of Montreal and Quebec City in the Léger poll, while in British Columbia the continued strong polling for the B.C. Conservatives flips another seven seats blue. David Eby’s NDP remains in a strong majority position, however.
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)
RIDING OF THE WEEK
Baie Verte-Green Bay (Newfoundland and Labrador)
The Newfoundland and Labrador Liberals will face a stiff byelection test on May 27, a contest that will provide another indication of the strength (or weakness) of the incumbent government, the toll that the Liberals’ record on the fisheries has taken and the extent to which Justin Trudeau’s unpopularity is rubbing off on Premier Andrew Furey.
The byelection in Baie Verte-Green Bay would have been one to watch even without the upset victory scored by the opposition Progressive Conservatives in the Fogo Island-Cape Freels byelection on April 15.
Brian Warr won this seat in north-central Newfoundland with 52.1% of the vote in 2021 — a decent score in a multi-party race, but a close result in the two-horse race that actually took place in the provincial election here. Lin Paddock of the PCs finished only 171 votes behind Warr with 47.9% of the vote.
That victory margin of 4.2 points was among the smallest in all of Newfoundland and Labrador in the last election.
Not unlike Fogo Island-Cape Freels, Baie Verte-Green Bay is a sparsely-populated riding on the north coast of Newfoundland with deep ties to the fishing industry. It incorporates the Baie Verte Peninsula and the Green Bay area, with its major communities being Springdale and Baie Verte. The rest of the population is scattered about the many outports along the shore.
Warr won this for the Liberals in three consecutive elections going back to 2015, but this was previously a solidly Tory part of the province. The PCs held the riding centred on the Baie Verte Peninsula without interruption from 1982 to Warr’s victory in 2015. The region also has a good PC pedigree, as Green Bay was premier Brian Peckford’s riding in the 1980s and the Baie Verte area belonged to his successor, Tom Rideout. The only blot on the Tory record in this region in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s was a single Liberal victory in 1996 in the riding of Windsor-Springdale, which overlapped with the southern portion of the modern Baie Verte-Green Bay district.
So, regardless of the broader context this byelection was always going to be a challenge for Furey’s Liberals.
But coming so soon after the byelection in Fogo Island-Cape Freels, one has to conclude that the Liberals might be serious underdogs.
The PCs’ Jim McKenna overcame a 24.5-point margin in Fogo Island-Cape Freels as support for his party jumped 21 points and the Liberals slumped 22 points — all while turnout in the riding actually went up. That makes the 4.2-point margin in Baie Verte-Green Bay look like child’s play, if the PCs can continue their momentum from the Fogo Island-Cape Freels byelection.
It could be part of a broader trend of the rural portions of Newfoundland and Labrador following the pattern of other provinces and swinging to the right as the Liberals see their vote concentrated in and around St. John’s. If the PCs flip Baie Verte-Green Bay, they will hold six of the seven ridings ridings on the north shore between White Bay and Trinity Bay, the sole exception being Lewisporte-Twillingate.
Both the PCs and Liberals have already nominated their candidates. Lin Paddock, a former commander in the Canadian Forces, will be running again for the PCs. The Liberals have nominated insurance agent and financial advisor Owen Burt. The NDP has not fielded a candidate in this riding in the last two elections.
ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject
The ‘coup d’état’
May 1, 1878
The relationship between the premier and lieutenant-governor of Quebec was tense in 1878. On the one side there was Charles Boucher de Boucherville, the patrician Conservative premier. On the other there was Luc Letellier de Saint-Just, the Liberal lieutenant-governor who chafed at his — technically, at least — non-partisan role.
Letellier had been appointed to the post by Alexander Mackenzie, the Liberal prime minister in Ottawa, who was sorry to let go of one of his top ministers. The Conservatives in Quebec didn’t like Letellier and disrespected him at every opportunity, refusing invitations to Spencer Wood, his official residence, and printing proclamations under his name that he never signed.
But it was a mutual dislike. Letellier wasn’t above descending into the political fray and the Conservatives didn’t see him as the neutral representative of the Crown that he was supposed to be.
When the Conservatives brought forward legislation that would compel municipal governments to contribute to the cash-strapped provincial government’s railway building plan, Letellier decided he had seen enough. Citing this overreach, as well as the general mismanagement he saw in Boucherville’s government, he dismissed the premier, inviting him to name his successor. When Boucherville refused, Letellier asked the leader of the Quebec Liberals to form a government.
That put Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotibinière in a delicate position. No less patrician than Boucherville — they were both old-fashioned seigneurs — Joly didn’t have anything close to a majority in the Legislative Assembly. So, a dissolution was requested and the province went to the polls.
Joly promised to bring Quebec’s finances into order, ending the corrupt practices of the previous Conservative government. The Conservatives, with future premier Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau leading the charge on the hustings as the prime spokesperson, railed against Letellier’s undemocratic coup d’état: “silence the voice of Spencer Wood,” he intoned, “and let the mighty voice of the people speak.”
Even many Liberals were squeamish about what Letellier had done, including Prime Minister Mackenzie. “We have always as Liberals fought against this,” he told one of his ministers. “The elevation of our friends [in Quebec] with a wrong principle to defend would be a very doubtful advantage.”
Likely agreeing with Mackenzie, Joly and the Liberals made the campaign about the record of the Conservatives, who they deemed the “taxationists”. Friendly newspapers (which were all partisan at the time) tried to made the case to readers.
“The eventful hour approaches,” wrote the editorialists of Quebec City’s Morning Chronicle, “which must settle the contest between the ins and the outs; between Mr. Joly and Mr. DeBoucherville; between the friends of retrenchment, economy and the honest administration of our public affairs, and the venal supporters of the late regime of dishonesty, reckless extravagance, taxation, illegality, pillage of the public chest and eventual bankruptcy.”
Perhaps sensing that the Conservatives had a weakness on this score, their friends tried to deflect. The campaign was not about the record of the government, claimed the Montreal Gazette, but about the outrageous actions of Letellier and the Liberals.
“We make a last call upon such of our Conservative friends … who may feel disposed to abstain, or to vote for the Joly Government in this election, to think better of such a resolution; and for two reasons,” argued the Gazette. “The first reason is that by so doing, they will be helping the Mackenzie Government … There is another reason. This election has nothing to do with Mr. DeBoucherville … The true and only issue of these elections is to endorse or disapprove of M. Letellier. Parliament decided that the people had to decide this constitutional question, and until was decided all other questions are in abeyance. Let our friends reflect on these simple truths, and we trust that not one of them will give his influence towards the infliction of Rouge-ism on this city and Province.”
The result showed a split down the middle in Quebec and one of the province’s closest elections ever. The Conservatives saw their seat haul cut by a quarter down to just 32 and their share of the vote drop by 1.5 points to 49.5%. The Liberals made significant gains, largely in and around Quebec City, jumping 12 seats to 31 and nearly nine percentage points to 47.5%.
But Joly did not win a plurality of seats — the Conservatives still had the most seats in the assembly and their newspapers cautiously proclaimed a narrow victory. Two Independents held the balance of power, and considering they were Independent Conservatives, presumably they would side with Boucherville.
They didn’t. The two Independents backed Joly and the Liberals formed what would be their first elected government in the history of the province. But a one-seat majority was no majority at all, and it wouldn’t be long before Joly lost the confidence of the legislature in late 1879. When that happened, the lieutenant-governor did not hesitate to ask Chapleau to form a government rather than go back to the polls and there was no scandal — because that lieutenant-governor was no longer Letellier. It was former Conservative MP Théodore Robitaille who instead had the good fortune of being named Letellier’s replacement shortly after John A. Macdonald’s Conservatives were calling the shots again in Ottawa.
That’s it for the Weekly Writ this week. The next episode of The Numbers will be dropping on Friday. The episode will land in your inbox but you can also find it on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting apps. If you want to get it early on Thursday, become a Patron here!
Why would Mainstream do that - combine two different questions and with one asking as if a party leader leading a party with its old name?