Some thoughts on

The Recent Federal By-Elections

Recent federal by-elections in Bourassa, Toronto Centre, Brandon-Souris and Provencher brought good and bad news to the Harper Conservatives. The good news? They held their two seats in Manitoba and did not do as badly as some polls had predicted they would. The bad news? Almost everything else.

To begin, the Conservative share of the vote in these by-elections in all four constituencies was the lowest it has been since the constituencies were first contested on their current boundaries in 2004.

Second, the non-Conservative vote seems to be coalescing around the Liberals. In federal by-elections (in Calgary Centre, Durham and Victoria) just over a year ago, the Conservative share of the vote declined in all three constituencies but gains were fairly evenly split among the opposition parties. The Liberals and the Greens both significantly increased their vote share in Calgary Centre. The NDP share was up slightly in Durham, and the Greens substantially increased their share of the vote in Victoria, almost allowing the party to capture the seat from the NDP.

Shortly after the election of Justin Trudeau as Liberal party leader in April 2013, a by-election was held in Labrador. The Conservative share of the vote fell again by 7.4 percentage points. The Liberal share rose by 8.9 percentage points, and the share of both the Greens and the NDP fell slightly. This swing of 16.3 percentage points moved the seat from a narrow Conservative victory in the 2011 general election to a solid Liberal gain.

In the most recent by-elections, Liberal gains accounted for more than all of the Conservative losses in Bourassa and the two Manitoba constituencies. Again the NDP share of the vote fell sharply in Brandon-Souris and Provence and modestly in Bourassa. The Bloc Quebecois share of the vote also fell in Bourassa, and the Green share of the vote was little changed from 2011 in all four constituencies. The NDP share of the vote rose by 6.2 percentage points in Toronto Centre, but the Liberal share increased more, by 8.1 percentage points.

In short, over the past eight federal by-elections, there has been a consistent decline in the Conservative share of the vote indicating a “time for a change” feeling among the electorate in six provinces from Newfoundland and Labrador to British Columbia. However, while in the first three of these by-elections there was no consistent pattern in  which opposition party benefitted most from this anti-government trend, the last five by-elections show the Liberals as the clear choice of anti-Conservative voters, even to the point of drawing support from the other opposition parties, notably the NDP.

What would happen if this pattern persisted into the next federal election? If the swing in Provencher (where the Liberals did not do nearly as well as in Brandon-Souris) were applied uniformly across Manitoba, five of its 14 seats would go Liberal, compared to 1 in 2011.  The Conservatives would fall from 11 seats to 7. Even more startling, the Brandon-Souris swing would produce 10 Liberal seats in Manitoba, leaving the Conservatives with only 4 of their current 11, with the NDP losing both their current seats to the Liberals.  

The 2015 federal election is still many months away, and much can change in the intervening time. But for now, Liberal leads in national polls are confirmed at the ballot box even in what should be the safest of Conservative seats. Justin Trudeau may not have done much yet to earn this support. But voters’ reviving comfort with the Liberal brand and not being Stephen Harper seem to be enough to make him the clear beneficiary of the “time for a change” mood in Canadian politics. On the other hand, Conservatives have good reason to reassess the strength of Stephen Harper’s coat-tails.