Sunday, May 19, 2019

Not So Sunny Anymore - Liberals in the Red


The recent polls do not look good for PM Justin Trudeau, at first glance. His party has been dropping steadily at the polls ever since the SNC Lavalin scandal broke, and they have not appeared to stop the bleeding. The good news, if any, for the Liberals is that the Scheer Conservatives have only brisen by 2 points even as the Liberals have dropped by 9. The deficit, rather strangely, has not been picked up by NDP but by the Green party. This means there is a soft vote that is angry at the Liberals, concerned at the environment but does not want to vote Conservative. During crunch time in an election campaign, there may be a way to get these votes back. For the Conservatives, they must be alarmed at why they are not growing in support. Their strategy so far has been to shore up their base. Thus they have MPs attending pro-life rallies, their leader has strongly associated himself with Ford and his fight against the carbon tax, and they have not criticized Trump or the Republican party politics down south. They are betting that the Liberals will drop even further, so they can pick up the pieces. The NDP are also the big losers in the whole mess. Their leader, while being smart and doing nothing as Trudeau scored own goal after own goal, has not been able to grow the party. In fact, he has not even dominated any news cycles. There's no fresh ideas from the NDP, and they seem to be playing a waiting game. They could play a waiting game for a long time. The Greens are the big winners. They have had positive coverage of both the party and the leader. They have won a byelection in BC recently. They have grown the party, picking up Liberal pieces. If they play their cards right, this could be a breakthough election for them. So after all of this, we come to the two most common adages about elections. Governments Defeat Themselves. Campaigns Matter. We will know in October 2019.