A look into the surge in Liberal Party support

In 1922, electoral history was made in the United Kingdom as the Liberal Party failed to finish first or second in a general election for the first time in its history, as the relatively new Labour Party surpasses them to become the major party on the left.  Neither the Liberal Party, nor its successor the Liberal Democrats, have done better than third in any general election since.

In the aftermath of the 2011 federal election in Canada, many were asking if the Liberal Party of Canada was following in the same path as their British counterparts.  The party finished in third place for the first time since Confederation, finishing with only 34 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons.  The only worse result in Canadian history (at the federal level at least) is the Progressive Conservative party in 1993, when the Progressive Conservatives dropped from a majority government to just two seats.

If you look at the polls now, one can come to a conclusion that the Liberal Party has rebounded.  Since Justin Trudeau announced his intention to stand for the leadership, support for the party has nearly doubled, from the low 20s in October last year to 40% now.  If there were a general election now, the Liberals would be set for a majority government.

Where is this support coming from?

Let's take a look at the state of the polls at the moment.

(A quick note regarding the number of seats: the seats being used for this projection are the same ones used in 2011. This is because, if there were an election today, that is what would be used.  The order creating the new 30 seats is expected to be signed by the Governor General in September, and at that time, projections will be adjusted accordingly.)

Where are these seats coming from?  Mostly from Ontario and Quebec.

 

The polls are showing a swing from the NDP to the Liberals in Quebec of 22%.  To put this into context, this is twice the swing between the two parties nation-wide in 2011.  Put another way, you need a margin of victory of at least 45% to protect yourself from that kind of swing, and very few Quebec MPs have this.  Even Thomas Mulcair, who until 2011 was the NDP's only Quebec MP, would lose his seat under that kind of swing.

In Ontario, the Liberals are up 41 seats, mostly at the expense of the Conservatives.  This is about a third of their total gains, which is around par for the course considering that Ontario has about a third of the ridings in the country.  However, what's interesting here is that the swing in the vote in Ontario is much smaller than it is nationwide - nearly 4 percentage points smaller, in fact.  Because of the large number of close seats in that province, those 4 percentage points could mean another 10 seats at the election, turning a working majority into a comfortable one.

Who could be at risk?

Assuming the polls are roughly right and swings within each province are roughly uniform, these Cabinet members could be at risk of losing their seats:

• Joe Oliver (Minister of Natural Resources) - 20.5% behind in Eglinton-Lawrence (ON)
• Keith Ashfield (Fisheries Minister) - 14.1% behind in Fredericton (NB)
• Gail Shea (Revenue Minister) - 13.8% behind in Egmont (PE)
• Leona Aglukkaq (Minister of Health) - 11.8% behind in Nunavut (NU)
• Diane Finley (Human Resources Minister) - 3.0% behind in Haldimand-Norfolk (ON)
• Julian Fantino (International Cooperation Minister, former OPP Commissioner) - 2.6% behind in Vaughan (ON)
• Lisa Raitt (Labour Minister) - 0.3% behind in Halton (ON)
• John Baird (Minister of Foreign Affairs) - ahead by only 0.2% in Nepean-Carleton (ON)
• Peter MacKay (Defense Minister) - ahead by only 2.8% in Central Nove (NS)

And from the Shadow Cabinet:

• Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe (Seniors Critic) - 41.3% behind in Pierrefonds-Dollard (QC)
• Robert Chisholm (Fisheries Critic) - 32.1% behind in Dartmouth-Cole Harbour (NS)
• Helene LeBlanc (Industry Critic) - 29.7% behind in LaSalle-Emard (QC)
• Sadia Grouguhe (Immigration Critic) - 21.8% behind in Saint-Lambert (QC)
• Francois Lapointe (Tourism Critic) - 14.6% behind in Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Riviere du Loup (QC)
• Thomas Mulcair (Opposition Leader) - 12.5% behind in Outremont (QC)
• Megan Leslie (Environment Critic) - 7.9% behind in Halifax (NS)
• Peggy Nash (Finance Critic) - 7.9% behind in Parkdale-High Park (ON)
• Nycole Turmel (Opposition Whip, former interim leader) - 6.2% behind in Hull-Aylmer (QC)
• Alexandre Boulerice (Labour Critic) - 3.3% behind in Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie (QC)
• Francoise Boivin (Justice Critic) - ahead by only 2.7% in Gatineau (QC)

Not so fast, though...

Gaining 128 seats in a single election is huge, and would be only the second time that a party has gained over 100 seats in a single election (the other being the Progressive Conservatives in 1984 under Brian Mulroney).  But bear in mind that Justin Trudeau is still enjoying his post-election honeymoon, and it's unlikely that all of this support will still be there come the general election.  Recall that it only took a week during the 2011 campaign for the NDP to go from fourth place in seats to second, and we're still two years away from the federal election.  Mr. Trudeau will have to tread carefully to ensure his party's poll ratings don't go down as quickly as they went up.

It's also worth bearing in mind that, during a good portion of the last few elections, opinion polls have been biased (in the statistical sense of the word) against incumbents.  The 2011 federal election was pointing towards a Conservative minority when they in fact got a majority.  The Liberals in Quebec, the Progressive Conservatives in Alberta, and the Liberals in British Columbia were all also underestimated, in the latter case massively, by the pollsters.  So we have to beg the question how much these polls can be trusted.  After all, these projections are no better than the polls that are fed into them.

Finally, turning back to the Liberals in the UK, they were leading the opinion polls in the early 1980s during Margaret Thatcher's first term.  This never did materialise into an election victory, though, as the Falklands War gave the Conservatives the largest of their four consecutive victories.  There is plenty of time for things to change, but if these trends continue, the Liberals could return to government in just two years' time.