IT’S HARD TO SAY WHAT WILL HAPPEN ON ELECTION DAY
By all accounts, we are headed for an exciting and unpredictable federal election. Though the main players claim to ignore the polls that are thrown at them almost daily, the horserace heading into the October vote has been fluid and closely watched by all party leaders in Ottawa. And they tell a story of three leaders in contention for what could become the most unpredictable result in a long time.
Though the main federal parties have their strongholds—Conservatives in Alberta and the Prairies, the NDP in Quebec, Liberals in big cities and Atlantic Canada—much of the country is characterized by three-way races. Dozens of local campaigns across the country will come down to impossible-to-predict vote splits to determine the eventual winner and the post-election makeup of the House of Commons.
All the ingredients make for an uncertain and competitive campaign.
One of which is a long-in-the-tooth incumbent government, saddled by the inevitable ethical accumulations of long-serving administrations, though with a lengthy policy record on which to run. Another is genuinely popular and impressive opposition leaders competing for the substantial anti-government vote. Finally, crystallizing policies that demonstrate clear differences each party would take the country, if elected.
These factors, along with polls that for months have put no party in a position to win a majority of the seats in the newly-expanded House of Commons, make for an election that could produce a wide array of plausible morning-after scenarios.
For a majority victory, a party will have to win 170 of the 338 seats in the House, which is gaining 30 additional ridings for the 2015 election as a result of population increases and shifts.
Current polls put no party within striking distance of that number, but of course that can change. Various minority scenarios with either the Liberals or the Conservatives holding the most seats are well within the realm of the possible.
As it has stood for many months, those are the only two parties with a realistic shot of ending up with the most seats in the House. The NDP—though still strong in Quebec under Thomas Mulcair—are almost certainly too weak in the rest of the country to come out on top in October, unless something dramatic happens.
Of course, no one can predict what will happen in September and October with the campaign in full swing. No one, for example, predicted a huge NDP majority in Alberta until it was almost a fait accompli in early May. Similarly, at the federal level, few were the pundits who predicted the NDP wave that crashed over the province a few short months before Jack Layton’s untimely death in 2011.
Any predictions for the result Canadians wake up to on October 20 have to be qualified with the old clichés: anything can happen, and campaigns matter.
If, as it seems likely, no party wins a majority of the seats in the Commons, all sorts of scenarios become possible. If the Conservatives win a plurality but the Liberals come a close second with a strong third-place showing by the NDP, there will be substantial pressure from the majority of the electorate that did not support Stephen Harper to unseat him as Prime Minister. And it will be possible without the sort of formal coalition that the Liberals have sworn against.
As the David Peterson government in Ontario in 1985 demonstrated, parties that together constitute a majority of seats in the legislature can agree to governing terms, without a formal coalition.
For months, polls have indicated no party is likely to win that majority on their own in October.
Though anything can happen between now and then, any politician who tells you they ignore the polls until Election Day is engaging in a creative form of truth telling, especially this year.
