We’re now more than halfway through the federal election campaign, and I think it’s fair to say that things aren’t going to plan for the Liberals. At the start of the campaign, polls were implying a 50:50 likelihood of them winning a majority government; if the election were held now, those odds would now be practically zero.
For a brief period last week, the Conservatives had taken a narrow lead in the central seat projection. That lead has since reverted back to the Liberals, but it is still well within the margin of error.
A few weeks ago I looked at the Liberals’ path to a majority government. Now it’s time to look at the Conservatives and where they need to focus in order to win government.
Target Seats
The Conservatives need to gain around 20 seats in order to surpass the Liberals as the largest party. If we look at the 20 seats that the Conservatives lost by the smallest margins in 2019, they can be roughly divided into thirds geographically: Ontario (7), Atlantic Canada (6), and everywhere else (4 in the west, 2 in Québec, 1 in the north). It would take a modest, though not particularly large swing to the Conservatives of around 2.7% to take Newmarket — Aurora, a seat just north of Toronto, which is #20 on that list.
As we know, though, swings in Canada are not uniform, and so it would be prudent to target some seats just beyond the top 20 to serve as an insurance policy. When we examine seats 21–30 on the list, half (5) of these are in Ontario, with the rest being in Atlantic Canada (2), British Columbia (2), or Québec (1). It would only take an extra percentage point of swing to get these extra Ontario seats, which could be enough if they fall a percentage point short elsewhere in the country. An extra percentage point elsewhere in the country wouldn’t be as helpful to them.
Getting to a Majority
However, it is harder for the Conservatives to form a minority government under our system than it is for the Liberals. That’s largely because the Conservatives are the only right-of-centre party in the House of Commons, making it harder in a minority parliament for Erin O’Toole (Conservative Leader) to find enough common ground with other parties to form government than it would be for Justin Trudeau (Liberal Leader). Meaning the Conservatives wouldn’t just want to be the largest party, but an overall majority.
The Conservatives finished 49 seats short of an overall majority in 2019. Seat #49 on the target list for the Conservatives is Mississauga — Lakeshore, just west of Toronto. Taking that seat would require a swing of around 5.5% from the Liberals; on a national basis, that swing is not a very common one (the swing in 2019 was around 4.5%).
Twenty of these 49 seats are in Ontario, eight of which are in the suburbs of Toronto. Thirteen of these seats are in British Columbia, most of which are either in Metro Vancouver (7) or on Vancouver Island (4). There aren’t any seats in Québec or Atlantic Canada on their path from minority to majority, and only a small handful in the west. But just as it was in a minority, the insurance policy for a majority is Ontario. There are another eight seats that can be taken with an extra 1½% swing, so they’ll want to put extra effort in that key province.
How Things Look Now
The Conservative picture is a story of two halves, with polling broadly suggesting that they are down in western Canada compared to the 2019 election, while being up in eastern Canada.
While the Conservatives are down in the popular vote compared to the last election, that is being driven primarily in two provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, where there is a high amount of wasted vote. Even though a small number of seats are being lost there, it does mean they need to make up the difference elsewhere in the country. To win a majority on eastern Canada alone, a swing of nearly 8% would be needed, which is a very large swing indeed by historical standards. At the moment, they’re not even achieving half of that.
The Conservatives are starting to make the right inroads in the right places that they’d need to win a majority government. But they’re simply not far enough along those inroads to win government, and time is running out to do something about it.
Canada’s 44th federal election will be held on Monday, September 20, 2021.
