Polling evidence favours Liberal victory: Lyle

VANCOUVER—After a tumultuous, negative, and generally unsatisfying election, the two main parties are limping to a photo-finish. While it is close enough that I would not make a big bet or take odds, all evidence we see points to a Liberal victory on Monday night. The Liberals led the CPC by between two and four points in two separate polls conducted from Oct. 15 to 18. We do see some indications that turnout favours the CPC, particularly among people who have already voted. But this turnout advantage is not sufficient to overcome the Liberal advantage in vote distribution. Both polls agree the Liberals hold a significant lead in Ontario, which is the critical factor in assessing a likely win for the Liberals. In the Atlantic, the polls agree the Liberals are in the lead, but disagree on how much. The CPC will gain seats from the Liberals, but we can’t be sure how many seats. The Greens are polling at 15 per cent, so we will also keep an eye out for local surprises for the Greens in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island as seen in recent provincial elections. Quebec is another area with some uncertainty. What is clear is that in francophone Quebec there is a pitched battle between the Bloc and the Liberals. It appears to us that the Bloc have the edge, particularly in francophone Quebec outside of Montreal and Québec City. As we have seen from the beginning of the campaign, the NDP will be lucky to save two or three unique local seats. The CPC has lost ground and may actually lose seats in Québec City and the Beauce. Alberta and the Prairies remain strongly Conservative, but there is some sign of an NDP rebound in their urban and northern seats. B.C. is also a close race with strong regional dynamics. The Greens are in the race with the three main parties, but it looks like the Liberals and NDP may be able to hold the Greens to one or two seats in the south, while the CPC hopes are in the north island seats. The Lower Mainland is a tight race. The Liberals have the edge and should be able to hold many of their 2015 gains. The CPC should be able to regain a few of their 2015 losses, but the exact seats they win may well depend on local factors. The NDP have rebounded but remain in tight fights. Even the interior seats could be interesting. The Liberals have been showing a strong second to the CPC. Whether they win any seats or not in our models depends on whether the results are grouped by past election results or by region. The NDP are also up and may be able to win a seat or two with the right splits. The fact that the result is uncertain the weekend before the election, begs two questions: How the Liberals descend from their sunny days honeymoon to being unsure as to whether they will win? And how could the CPC fail to take advantage of the opportunity created by Liberal troubles? Bad habits are hard to break The Liberals and Conservatives are the only two parties in contention for government, not because they ran great campaigns, but because their traditional supporters are engaging in Olympic-level mental gymnastics to justify their vote. The Liberals have consistently held an advantage over the Conservatives on the question of how voters identify themselves. Image courtesy of Innovative Research Group The key driver of the vote in this election, as in most elections, is the political equivalent of brand, party identification. Three quarters of both the Liberals and CPC votes come from people who feel closer to those parties than any other. The problem for the Tories is that the Liberals consistently have a five or six point lead in party identification. The CPC need to either win more non-aligned voters than the Liberals, or win over more defectors than the Liberals to pull ahead. How the mighty have fallen Following Justin Trudeau’s election in 2015, Canada saw its greatest political honeymoon since the last Trudeau became prime minister. For the better part of two years, close to half of the country felt Trudeau was best to be prime minister. Almost half said they would vote Liberal, 10 points above their election night performance. It was sunny days. But in politics, friends come and go, while enemies accumulate. Those high Trudeau and Liberal numbers were buoyed up by non-Liberals who felt conflicted in providing that support, and who were open to new information that would pull them back to their traditional loyalties. The India trip was the first big effort by the Liberals to push voters away. SNC-Lavalin was the second. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh finished the election campaign with the highest net rating among voters of any party leader. Image courtesy of Innovative Research Group In the fall of 2018, Justin Trudeau was still seen as best PM by 47 per cent of the electorate. By March 2019, he had dropped to 39 per cent. The bigger problem was his favourable. Dented by the India trip, in the fall of 2018 Trudeau was still liked by seven per cent more Canadians than disliked him. By March 2019, his unfavourable rating was 19 points higher than his favourable. Trudeau and the Liberals were vulnerable, but still ahead in our polls. NOT time for a change Neither the Tories nor the progressive opposition parties have been effective at driving the public desire for change. Throughout the campaign, the share of Canadians saying that it is time for a change in government has remained steady, as has the share who think that despite their problems, the Liberals are still the best party to form government. More voters felt it was time for a change from Stephen Harper, after nearly a decade in power, in 2015 than currently feel that way about Justin Trudeau. Image courtesy of Innovative Research Group In 2019, 37 per cent of Canadians strongly agree that it is time for a change. In 2015, this number was 57 per cent. Similarly, in 2019 only 30 per cent strongly disagreed that the Liberals are the best party to form government, while in 2015 this figure for Harper was 44 per cent. With only four years in government, the desire for change is far from the levels seen 2015. Define or be defined The biggest, wildest card in this election was Andrew Scheer. Early in the campaign he was viewed positively and negatively by equal numbers of Canadians, and more than 30 per cent either did not have an opinion, or had a neutral one. Whether by his own doing or because of Liberal attacks, Andrew Scheer is perceived more negatively by Canadians at the end of the campaign than he was at the start. Image courtesy of Innovative Research Group This presented Scheer with the opportunity to define himself to Canadians, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he let opponents and third parties create their own narratives around him, driving up the share of Canadians who feel he is too negative and dishonest, and preventing him from building a brand as competent or a strong leader. No party is an island, sufficient unto itself The Conservative Party of Canada has painted itself into a corner. It has no friends. If you are not with the Conservatives, you are against them. No party has enough brand loyalists to win majority government by itself. The Liberals are closest, but even they need support from unaligned voters and some defectors for either the right or the left. But the Liberals have room to grow—a third of NDP voters say that the Liberals are their 2nd choice, and another fifth of Green voters say the same. The Conservatives, however, are on their own. Four in ten Conservative voters don’t have a second choice, 10 per cent higher than any other party. And voters for other parties are not likely to switch to the Conservatives—only 13 per cent of Liberal and NDP voters say the Conservatives are their 2nd choice. Another NDP moral victory The NDP is ending this campaign in far better shape than they began. At the beginning of the election, the NDP were on the verge of being wiped out. Thanks to Jagmeet Singh’s personal performance, the NDP are back in the game. They have a good chance to make official party status. If they fail to do so, it will likely be with a fair number of narrow losses. Singh has built a strong personal brand that reaches across party lines and continues to grow as the campaign winds up. As a result, the NDP are the top second choice of every other party. Even the Bloc. The NDP was the second choice of supporters of all other parties at the end of the campaign. Image courtesy of Innovative Research Group The question now is will the NDP faithful judge Singh by comparing their low seat count in this campaign to the last two campaigns, or will they look forward and consider how to build on the potential and brand Singh has built? The next weeks and months will tell. Dodging the bullet one more time Like Singh, Yves-Francois Blanchet’s personal performance has re-invigorated a party at death’s door. Many English Canadians are unaware that in 2018 the Bloc had a revolt against their previous leader, and at one most of the sitting Bloc MPs had quit the party. Yet despite that turmoil, Blanchet was able to use his opponents’ mistakes and a strong debate performance to bring his party back from the dead. The Bloc rise and fall based on the relevance on the single strength of their brand. They will always do what they feel is best for Quebec. They will never compromise Quebec’s interest. The two major parties set the stage to make that brand relevant yet again. Andrew Scheer just didn’t connect with Quebecers. Mainstream Quebec is a socially progressive space. Scheer’s ‘why should I march in your parade’ approach to the LBGTQ community, and his inability to say he respects a woman’s right to choose put him on the defensive from the start. His commitment to build a pipeline through Quebec pushed Quebecers away. While no federal leader has had the courage to stand up in defence of Charter rights against Bill 21, Trudeau decided to use his position, that one day he might have the courage to intervene, against Singh’s position that he will probably not intervene as a wedge in the one and only English debate. Blanchet was able to spin the idea that Trudeau says one thing in English and another in French in the following scrums, and the Bloc had a second issue to demonstrate their relevance. The dogs that didn’t bark The Greens will likely be disappointed with the outcome of this campaign. While we are not ruling out the possibility of a handful of seats, the NDP have decisively beat the NDP in the race for third. The heart of the Green problem is that both the NDP and Liberals were seen as being strong defenders of the climate change agenda. The Greens were unable to advance the case that only they would meaningfully advance that agenda in Canada. Maxine Bernier failed to connect with voters. His unique combination of libertarian economic values and nativist populism simply didn’t have a large enough base to support a party. However, that doesn’t mean Canada is special compared to the rest of the word. People's Party Leader Maxime Bernier wasn't able to generate any meaningful momentum during the campaign. Image courtesy of Innovative Research Group A more fluent, charismatic leader who combined nativism with authoritarianism and traditional political populism could have enjoyed considerably more success. The dark forces behind Trump and Brexit struck out in this campaign. But they get another at bat in the next election. These are the results of an online survey conducted between October 15th to 17th, 2019. This online survey of 3,094 adult Canadians was conducted using INNOVATIVE’s Canada 20/20 national research panel with additional respondents from Lucid, a leading provider of online sample. The results are weighted to n3,000 based on Census data from Statistics Canada. Greg Lyle is the owner of the Innovative Research Group. The Hill Times