Modeling Journey

I do not share in the gloom that many commentators (the chattering classes) and some Liberals seem to be wallowing in, with regards to the future of the Liberals in the coming election.

In fact, I am more hopeful than I have been for several years.

In 2008 the voters punished the Liberal Party for past sins, an unpopular leader, a badly handled green policy roll out, and an inept campaign.

Turnout dropped to a low 59.1% (with only 13.7 million voters out of 23.1 million bothering to go to the polls). The lower numbers voting hurt four out of the five parties, with only the Greens showing an increase over their 2006 total votes (up by 42%). The Liberals lost the most votes in absolute numbers (down by 851,525 voters, or by 19% over 2006). The Tory vote dropped by 165,278 (3%), the Bloc by 173,210 (11%), and the NDP by 76,711 (3%).

The Liberal loss of absolute votes was therefore almost 6 times higher than the Tories' loss.

What happened, and what does this mean for the coming election?

This is what happened:

"The 2008 election appears to have been a real success for the Conservative Party with a gain of 19 seats from the 2006 election. However, that success was entirely due to the woes of other parties, rather than any added support for the Conservatives. Indeed the number of Canadians voting for the Conservatives even dipped slightly.

The main factor in Conservative success was the big drop in turnout among Liberal supporters. While the Green Party managed to split the Conservative's opposition by capturing a number of defecting Liberals and NDPers, the Conservatives benefited even more from the hundreds of thousands of disenchanted Liberals who simply stayed home on election day.

The Conservatives picked up 11 seats in Ontario with an impressive gain in popular vote from 35 to 48%. However, the Conservatives won hardly any more votes in Ontario compared to 2006. Their gain in vote share came about because 500,000 Ontario voters went AWOL between the two elections, most of them Liberal, leaving the Conservative candidates better supported in comparison.

The Conservatives were not able to capitalize on the drop in Bloc support across Quebec, because they received 120,000 fewer votes in that province themselves.
The only province where the Conservatives made many gains thanks to a substantial increase in votes was British Columbia."

The election results were 143 Tory MPs, 77 Liberal MPs, 37 NDP MPS, 2 independents, and 49 Bloc MPs. An impressive 163 Bloc, NDP and Liberal MPs faced the minority 143 Tory MPs (a majority of 20 seats), while these three parties garnered an equally impressive 54% of the total votes cast compared to the 38% of the Tories.

Further, the margins of the winners were small:

"Only 25 out of the 308 winning candidates in the 2008 election were elected with a majority of the votes cast in their ridings. 41 of the winners were elected with less than 40% of the vote.

15 candidates were elected with less than 1% difference in votes between 1st and second place in their ridings."

What does this mean for the coming election?

In the 2006 election, the Liberals gained 30.2% of the vote, and 103 seats (26 more seats), while the Tories gained 36.3% (124 seats or 19 fewer seats). The NDP won 29 seats with 17.5% of the votes).

The 4% percentage drop in Liberal support from 2006 to 2008 therefore translated into a loss of 26 seats. The NDP 0.7% gain in NDP percentages resulted in a large 28% gain in MPs (up from 29 to 37).

These results show that a few percentage points change in any of the 4 parties' support can lead to a significant change in the number of seats. At the very least, a reversal of the Liberal-hand-sitters of 2008 to the more committed 2006 numbers could dramatically change the electoral landscape.

It is my belief that we will see a reversal in voting trends to past ones, with the Liberals being the big winners, gaining seats at the expense of the Tories and NDP.

I also believe that the Liberals can increase their share of the popular vote, and in fact match or exceed the number of Tory MPs, if certain events take place in the course of the next two or three months:

1. The Liberals need to concentrate on their framing of the debates both in Parliament and in the public space (the framing by Ignatieff of the Liberal reasons for deciding not to support the Tory government this time around was good – he wrapped the reasons around the twin frames of Tory incompetence and Tory untrustworthiness, both of which can be demonstrated with many, many examples).

2. The Liberals need to unveil a concrete, comprehensive and dynamic set of policies, which not only differentiate the Liberal Party from the do-little, anti-government Conservative Party, but contain concepts which will attract more Liberals to vote for the party, and other non-Liberals to vote, as well as increasing the number of voters who come to the polls.

Are these two things possible?

Damn right, they are.