Deep Dive into the Impact of the People’s Party on the Conservatives
In 2017, Maxime Bernier nearly won the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, before being defeated in the final round by Andrew Scheer. Fifteen months later, he left the Conservatives to form the People’s Party.
The People’s Party has yet to register any significant support in any part of the country, and as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, has slim prospects of winning more than Bernier’s seat (and even that’s not guaranteed) thanks to the first-past-the-post system Canada uses.
But in a first-past-the-post system, there are always close ridings. It will always have ridings where smaller parties taking enough votes away from a larger party that causes said party loses it. But will there be enough to make the difference between the Conservatives winning and losing this election?
At the moment, the Liberals hold a very slim lead in the popular vote, but thanks in part to the fact that the Tories aren’t gaining votes in the right places, they are on the edge of winning a majority in Parliament. To see how big an impact the People’s Party will have, we need to find those seats where the Conservatives are trailing by a margin smaller than the People’s Party share of the vote.
There are 17 seats which, on the current seat projections, the Conservatives are set to lose by such a smaller margin. Of those 17 seats, 14 of them are on track to go to the Liberals, and three to the NDP. This would be enough to rule out any prospect of a Liberal majority, and while it opens up a slim possibility that the Conservatives could become the largest party, the Parliamentary math would make it too difficult for the Conservatives to form a government even if they did finish ahead.
Overall, if anything, the People’s Party’s presence might make the difference between the Liberals forming a majority or minority government. But the seat count would need to be a lot closer than it is now in order to mean the difference between a Liberal and Conservative government.
