A Dog's Leg in the Polls

 

It seems to me that things have been breaking the Conservative way in the last few days of the Canadian election campaign. I thought Trudeau was the loser in the debates; everyone was criticizing him, he took a few zingers, and he looked too hot for that cool medium. Jody Wilson-Raybould just released her book, and wrote an op-ed, reminding everyone of the Lavalin scandal. Former Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes announced on TV that she was going to vote Tory. Quebec Premier Legault urged Quebeckers to vote for O’Toole.  Could things have gone any better?

Yet two recent post-debate polls show the Tories dropping, and the Liberals retaking the lead.

One possibility is that they are outliers. Polling, we all know, has grown unreliable in recent years. If so, these deceptively low numbers may also be to the advantage of the Tories. They give permission to voters who prefer the NDP, but fear the Conservatives, to go ahead and vote for Singh.

Here is another possibility. The polled vote for the PPC seems to have risen at the same time, and to roughly the same extent, as the Tory decline.

The debates may have helped Bernier most of all. O’Toole’s tactic of storming the centre may have been wrong after all. People are angry, not just at Trudeau, but the ruling class. We have seen this clearly enough recently in Britain, the US, or France. This may well be a “change” election, a “send them a message” election.

In this case, hugging the middle and sounding unthreatening may not work well. If you’re really upset, why vote O’Toole? He is promising nothing will change. O’Toole benefitted earlier from being the obvious alternative to Trudeau, just as Biden, even if an empty suit, won for not being Trump in a referendum election. But over time, as voters listen, his pale persona may be wearing thin—since there is an alternative to vote for in Bernier.

By being excluded from the debate, Bernier was clearly identified as the best place to cast a protest vote.

The likely effect will be to pull enough votes from O’Toole to throw the election to Trudeau.