Support for the NDP has now inched ahead of support for the Liberals in some polls, particularly if Quebec results are excluded.
For instance, according to an Abacus Data poll released over the weekend, the NDP (10%) are the fourth party in Quebec behind the Bloc (37%), Liberals (28%) and Conservatives (22%). In the rest of Canada, though, the Conservatives lead with 50% support, followed by the NDP at 22% and the Liberals at just 19%.
Even in the Liberal fortress of Quebec, their support isn’t concentrard enough to win more than about 20 seats, down from the 33 they currently hold.
And in Ontario, where they trail Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives by 46% to 22%, they are on track to lose as many as two-thirds of the 75 seats they now have.
It would be a good time for most Liberal MPs to consider retirement planning.
Outside Quebec, the picture for the Liberals is even bleaker. According to Abacus they have fallen four points behind the NDP, and in the four western-most provinces, they are a distant third. In Alberta, Justin Trudeau’s party is polling at 7% compared to the Conservatives’ 62% and the NDP’s 25%.
My sense is that NDP support has not grown much since leader Jagmeet Singh tore up his consent-and-supply agreement with the Liberals at the end of August. Rather, Liberal support has merely continued to fall.
One calculation by polling analysts 338Canada.com, shows just 7% of the electorate remains enthusiastically supportive of the Liberals. That’s an indication that even in regions where the Liberals have (relatively) strong support, there is a very solid chance hundreds of thousands of Liberal voters will stay home, discouraged, on election day.
That stay-home factor is the equivalent of being four or five percentage points even lower in the polls.
So if things are that bad for the Liberals (the party could easily fall below its historic low of 34 seats in the 2011 election), how come the NDP aren’t pulling the plug? Their own iron may not be white-hot, but shouldn’t they at least strike while the Liberals’ iron is ice cold?
On Tuesday, the NDP voted yet again with the Liberals (and the Bloc) to defeat a Conservative non-confidence motion and keep the Trudeau government in power. Since tearing up their agreement with the Liberals, the NDP’s rhetoric has been more combative, yet there has not been one iota of change in NDP behaviour. Jagmeet Singh and his party remain content to serve as the Liberals’ willing toadies.
Clearly one of the reasons the NDP remain reluctant to go to voters is that the party has very little money with which to mount a campaign. In their most recent financial disclosures, the Conservatives had $16 million in cash on hand. The Liberals had $2.8 million and the NDP had a measly $289,000.
That’s a huge deterrent to going to the polls.
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But here’s another possible cause for Singh’s reluctance: He knows that once a Liberal minority is replaced by a Conservative majority – perhaps a majority of historic proportions – all his leverage evaporates.
For all of Singh’s delusion bragging about how he will be PM after the next election, the NDP have to know there will be a Conservative majority. And on the day a Poilievre government is sworn in, the NDP will no longer hold the balance of power and no longer be able to extract policy changes.
The Libs’ vulnerability has been the NDP’s only conduit to power. Whether they finish second in the next campaign or third in English Canada, they will have no leverage left.
Same with the Bloc. While the Poilievre government will be willing to cozy up to Quebec, particularly if they have 10-12 seats in the province, they will not be as open to Bloc blackmail as the very desperate Liberals are.
Neither of our smaller opposition parties has anything to gain (other than preserving their self-respect) by forcing an election.