New seat maps or not, Tories will win next vote
Last week, there was a (smallish) chance we could have seen a federal election called.
That’s because any election called from here on out will be fought using the new 343-seat map, instead of the old 338-seat map used for the past three general elections.
Why would adding five seats make a difference to when the election was called?
Because three of the five new ridings are in Canada’s fast-growing province, Alberta, which isn’t exactly friendly turf for the Trudeau Liberals. And the other two — one each in B.C. and suburban Toronto — aren’t looking good for the Grits, either.
Every riding counts in a Parliament where the margins between parties are ultra-thin.
So Alberta receiving three more seats (increasing from 34 to 37) could play a disproportionately important role in whether the Trudeau Liberals can retain even a minority government.
Ontario gets one new riding in the Greater Toronto Area.
Since this area votes predominantly Liberal, even in the suburbs, the addition of a new seat might blunt the advantage the Conservatives get in Alberta.
Or it might not. According to most polls in the last three months, the Liberals are behind the Conservatives by 12 to 15 points in the ring of suburbs around Toronto and Mississauga (the famous (905) where Grits currently hold nearly all of the seats.
Now every suburban Toronto riding has to be said to be at risk of going Conservative.
In the entire country, the only places that seem to be clinging tenaciously to Justin Trudeau and his party, are the cores of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.
Not the suburbs of those cities, just the cores, which together have nowhere near enough seats to re-elect the Grits.
British Columbia is the other province to receive an extra seat.
Liberals there are facing stiff challenges from New Democrats in Vancouver or Conservatives everywhere else.
Or at least they would be if the riding boundaries weren’t being redrawn deliberately to give Liberals candidates the best possible chances of being elected or re-elected.
Areas that poll strongly Liberal are being kept together on the new map in Vancouver proper.
Suburban Vancouver, which typically splits three ways between the three main parties, gets the new B.C. seat (and probably a new Conservative MP given the way the polls stand), while any ridings that have Vancouver in their names have been gerrymandered to keep as many as possible Liberal red.
Outside of Vancouver proper, the Libs tend to be running a distant third behind the Conservatives and NDP. There would appear to be little chance of a single Liberal winning in B.C.’s vast interior, for instance.
In Alberta, currently 30 of 34 seats are Conservative. Even in Edmonton (which has 20 out of 20 provincial MLAs who are New Democrats) the majority of seats are Conservative.
There is a solid chance that after the next election, 36 of 37 will be painted blue.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is in Edmonton this week door-knocking in core Edmonton ridings in the belief that if all of the city’s provincial constituencies vote New Democrat, than more of its eight federal ridings should be competitive for his party, too.
It’s a nice, but foolish, theory. Nowhere in the country are the Liberals hated more than in Alberta, were some ridings vote nearly 80% Conservative.
And with Singh’s party seen by Alberta voters as lackies to the Liberals who are keeping a very unpopular government in power, it’s hard to see how the New Dems grow their seat total.
Indeed, I suspect they will lose one of their two current seats, leaving Heather McPherson in Edmonton-Strathcona as the only non-Conservative from Alberta.
According to the polling analysis site, 338Canada.com (which hasn’t changed its name yet), all of these machinations mean the Conservatives should win 207 of 343 seats, and perhaps as many as 231.