There were two controversial moments in the past week of the Canadian election campaign. The biggest, of course, was the revelations of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau wearing blackface makeup a couple of decades ago. But that is something that will have to be discussed in next week’s Deep Dive, as we don’t have enough polling data with surveys done after the news broke.
The other controversial moment was the decision by the Leaders’ Debates Commission to invite People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier to the two official debates next month. The invitation was extended after the party was able to convince the Commissioner, David Johnston, that it had a legitimate chance of electing more than one candidate to the House of Commons.
So how plausible is it?
National Polls
There are two major inputs to a seat projection: the national polls, and the party’s results in the last election. As the People’s Party is a new party, there are no previous results for us to look at, meaning it’s difficult for us to pinpoint specific ridings where the party is most likely do well.
Can we look for a precedent to which to compare? The precedent that comes to mind is the Green Party’s first seat at a general election in 2011. Can we compare the Green Party’s vote shares in 2011 to the People’s Party’s polling now to see what the prospects of gaining a seat look like?
Nationwide, the People’s Party is polling at an average of 3.5%, which is comparable to how the Green Party polled in 2011. However, the 3.9% that the Greens achieved in 2011 is actually down from their 2008 result, where they failed to win any seats.
With the Greens, though, there has been particular success in British Columbia. When the party won their first seat in 2011, they did so with 7.7% of the vote in that province. For the People’s Party, they’re polling consistently between 3–5% in all provinces, which is well below the Greens’ figure.
So while national opinion polls cannot be a reliable indicator of whether or not a relatively new party can win seats, they are short of the recent precedent shown by the Green Party to get very far into Parliament.
Riding Polls
The Debates Commission also looked at surveys conducted in five ridings which the PPC felt they had the best chance of getting elected.
The obvious first choice for the party is Maxime Bernier’s riding of Beauce. Bernier was elected as a Conservative with nearly 60% of the vote in 2015, and so how much of this vote stays with Bernier, and how much stays with his former party, will be key.
The Commission cited a poll conducted by Mainstreet Research in August, which appears to show an even split between the PPC and the Conservatives (28.7% vs 27.7%, respectively). So while it’s not a clear-cut re-election for Bernier, it’s a realistic prospect.
The Commission was also asked by the party to consider four other ridings, all of which were won by the Liberals in 2015 by comfortable margins. For these, Ekos was asked to conduct surveys in these ridings to ascertain how likely voters were to vote for the People’s Party.
The surveys showed 10–15% of voters in these ridings were certain to vote for the People’s Party, with 25–35% saying it’s at least a possibility. It is possible to win a riding with 30% of the vote when there is a significant split between two parties (as we may see in Beauce). While this might be enough for the People’s Party to have a reasonable chance in these ridings if they were held by Conservatives, I’m unconvinced that 30% would be enough to overtake the Liberals in any of these ridings (barring a 2011-like collapse, of course).
So does the People’s Party have a realistic chance of two seats? On the evidence I have seen, I think one seat is a plausible result, and while the party winning two seats cannot be ruled out entirely, it’s not a result that looks likely to me based on the polling evidence currently available.
