Abortion refuses to disappear as an issue

For the rest of Election 44, the National Post will be sharing insights from Polly, an artificial intelligence engine developed at the University of Ottawa that was the only pollster to correctly predict the results of the 2019 election.

Unlike typical polls, Polly gauges public opinion through constant computer analysis of public social media posts. Today, a look at how abortion still roils through Canadian politics, even when politicians strenuously don't touch it.

The last time abortion rights saw any discernible movement in Canadian law was the R v. Morgentaler decision in 1988, when the Supreme Court struck down a Criminal Code ban on elective abortions.

A subsequent attempt by the government of Brian Mulroney to craft a new abortion law was then gutted by the Senate. The issue has effectively remained dormant ever since.

Three consecutive Conservative Party leaders have promised not to “reopen” the abortion issue, with current leader Erin O'toole now actively saying he's “pro-choice.” In the current election, there is only one registered Canadian political party that explicitly pledges to ban abortion: The Christian Heritage Party, which got only 0.11 per cent of the popular vote in 2019.

Nevertheless, even if abortion isn't on the ballot, Polly's data show that the issue still has a firm grip on the Canadian electorate.

Notably, abortion is a major issue only for the extremes of Canadian politics. A breakdown of Polly's data by political ideology shows that the far-right wants it banned and the far-left thinks it will be taken away, but the vast majority of Canadians in the middle don't really mention abortion at all.

This is in contrast to issues like cost of living or immigration, in which Canadians across the spectrum have an opinion. Or an issue like the green economy, which essentially only gets brought up by the far-left.

Still, there are three main issues that keep coming up in Election 44 whenever a Canadian social media user is posting about why they can't vote Conservative: Climate change, daycare and abortion. On the other side of the coin, meanwhile, the issue most likely to attract new voters to the Conservatives is Afghanistan.

And this week, Polly's analysis found that the Tories may have lost votes due to an issue on which the party had no influence whatsoever: A new Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks, before many women even know they're pregnant.

Overnight, Canadian social media posts about abortion went up by more than 1,000 per cent. And while most of these were specific to the situation in Texas, it did spur a noticeable rise in anti-tory sentiment on the abortion issue.

It's a change that's only noticeable at the margins, but the margins are where Election 44 is going to be won.