The races that matter most
OTTAWA • A National Post analysis of the 2019 election shows that the Liberals’ search for a majority this year will likely come down to a handful of ridings in B.C., Ontario and Quebec.
The analysis of all the results from 2019, and two byelections last year, show where the closest ridings in the country are, and they’re mostly in those three provinces.
On election day in 2019, the difference between first and second in Port Moody-coquitlam, the tightest race in the country, was just 153 votes.
Conservative MP Nelly Shin won the closest riding in the country with 31.21 per cent of the vote, but NDP candidate Bonita Zarrillo was close behind with 30.93 per cent and the Liberal candidate was not far back with 29.06 per cent of ballots cast.
When Trudeau was first elected, 29 million Canadians were governed by Liberal provincial governments. That number has shrunk to just over 500,000 in Newfoundland and Labrador and Yukon.
Talking to veteran Nova Scotia politicians, one thing is apparent — this was a POST-COVID election.
Voters told candidates on the doorsteps that they thought former premier Stephen Mcneil and Iain Rankin, who took over from Mcneil in February, did a great job during the pandemic. They then proceeded to vote Conservative.
This was at odds with all the polling evidence pre-campaign.
The PCS were briefly ahead in the polls in fall 2019 but by the time COVID hit, Mcneil’s no-nonsense approach saw an ever-widening gap between the parties. One poll in June put the Liberals as much as 28 points ahead.
But Houston reminded voters what had upset them about the Liberals before the pandemic and he ended up with a majority government of 31 MLAS in a legislature of 55.
It was a topsy-turvy campaign. Rankin campaigned as a fiscal conservative who would repair the finances within four years; Houston promised to spend $533 million in his first year on commitments as diverse a $500 tax credit for rescue dog adoption and a $500 seniors’ care grant for snow removal and lawn care. In mid-campaign, he aligned himself with Trudeau’s COVID spending and distanced himself from the Conservatives.
But the policy that appears to have resonated with voters intent on looking forward not back, was Houston’s primary commitment to fix health care. The Progressive Conservative leader tapped into growing frustration with a lack of family doctors, ambulance delays and a shortage of long-term care beds.
The result highlights the perils of calling a snap election for no good reason, other than that the polls suggest you might be able to convert a minority into a majority.
This is all good news for federal Conservative Leader Erin O’toole, whose platform says he will meet with premiers in the first 100 days of a Conservative government and propose a new health agreement that would boost the annual growth rate of the Canada Health Transfer to at least six per cent a year (from three). The promise is buried deep in the text of the platform but in effect it commits the Conservatives to increase health transfers by $60 billion over 10 years. It is strange that O’toole has barely mentioned it so far, but if Nova Scotia is any guide, it may prove so popular that the Liberals are forced to match or trump it.
This is the first incumbent government not re-elected since the pandemic hit and it suggests the public mood has indeed shifted, if not dramatically. The Nova Scotia PCS secured 38.9 per cent this time, compared to 36.7 per cent in 2017, while the Liberals fell to 36.8 per cent from 39.5 per cent.
Another worry for Trudeau is that in 11 Nova Scotia ridings where new candidates ran in the stead of retiring MLAS, the Liberals won just three. Since 2015, the federal Liberals have seen such stalwarts as Rodger Cuzner, Mark Eyking and Scott Brison retire; in this election former Speaker of the House, Geoff Regan, is not re-offering in Halifax West.
The popular wisdom is that the Liberals need just 15 or 16 seats to win a majority. That is true as long as they don’t lose any incumbents, but few who know the political landscape in Nova Scotia believe the party will emerge unscathed.
In Eyking’s former riding of Sydney-victoria on Cape Breton Island, Jaime Battiste won by 1,309 votes last time and is likely to be in a tough scrap with former MLA Eddie Orrell this time.
In 2019, Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan won by 7,000 votes in South Shore-st. Margarets. But her policy on a moderate livelihood fishery for First Nations has won her few friends in the fishing community and she is tipped to go down to defeat by some N.S. Liberals.
Andy Fillmore won the Halifax seat from popular NDP MP Megan Leslie in 2015 but saw his plurality drop four years later. If the sizable Green vote were to defect to the NDP, it is conceivable Lisa Roberts, a former MLA and CBC journalist, could win it back for the New Democrats.
We are in day four of the federal campaign and very few Canadians are paying attention. It may be that the forces that carried Houston to office were unique to Nova Scotia — the combination of a good campaign, a good platform and a good leader.
But the provincial election will foster doubts among some Liberals that their leader has misjudged the enthusiasm the public has for seeing him around for four more years.
It will certainly embolden those Conservatives who believed they were roadkill before the writ had even been issued.