Weekly Writ for May 22: A high-stakes byelection for Justin Trudeau
Plus, the Nova Scotia PCs score a big win and the Manitoba NDP looks for another one of their own.
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.
Over the long weekend, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set the date for the upcoming byelection in Toronto–St. Paul’s. Voters will go to the polls on June 24.
It’s a high-stakes vote. The betting money seems to be on the Liberals holding this seat, a bedrock stronghold that stuck with the Liberals even in their 2011 debacle. Some reporting suggests the Conservatives are down-playing their chances of pulling off an upset, a smart thing to do regardless of whether or not they believe they have a shot.
In elections, a win is a win. But a win for the Liberals in Toronto–St. Paul’s will not mean all is well — far from it. We’ve seen before that poor performances by governing parties in byelections can foreshadow a poor performance in the coming general election, even if their candidates prevail.
For the most recent example of this, look at how Stephen Harper’s Conservatives performed in four byelections held in 2014, the year before their 2015 defeat. They were the incumbent party in Whitby–Oshawa in Ontario and Yellowhead, Fort McMurray–Athabasca and Macleod in Alberta. All four would have been considered solid Conservative seats, especially the three in Alberta.
The Conservatives held all four seats in the ensuing byelections. Good news, right? Not really. The Conservatives lost an average of 14.3 points in these four byelections as the Liberals gained an average of 20.5 points. That’s a huge swing. It wasn’t enough to topple the Conservative candidates in any of them (especially in Alberta, where their victory margins were still enormous) but the results were a clear indication that the Conservatives were in real trouble and that the Liberals were on the upswing.
It doesn’t matter that the Conservatives held three of these four seats in the subsequent general election. It was the trendline that was telling. So, even if the Liberals hold on in Toronto–St. Paul’s (far from a given) in 2024, the results could still tell us a lot about how bad things could get for the party in 2025.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
News on the federal byelection calendar that is starting to fill up, the results of the Nova Scotia PCs’ big win yesterday in Pictou West, a minor leadership change in Saskatchewan, a provincial byelection in Manitoba and some membership numbers for the Alberta NDP.
New federal polls on voting intentions, leader impressions and views on abortion, along with more check-ins on the provincial scenes in British Columbia and Quebec.
Conservatives would win even more seats than they would have last week if the election were held today.
A black tie byelection in this week’s riding profile.
The B.C. Liberals choose a leader to try to take them out of third place in the #EveryElectionProject.