Why Poilievre's Tories Are Still on Track to Win Canada's Election

The writer is in Australia.

Canada’s looming election will take place on Monday April 28th, five days before Australia’s. It seems to me that a lot of commentators here in Australia don’t really understand the key differences in the two countries’ electoral and voting systems and so make fundamental errors when commenting on what’s happening in the Great White North. So let me run through the divergences that really matter before telling you how I think the Canadian election is shaping up.

First off, you need ID to vote in Canada. You must go to your assigned voting station or you apply for a postal ballot (which also requires ID). As far as I know no Canadian politician claims that asking to see the ID you’d need to buy an alcoholic drink somehow disenfranchises anyone.

Secondly, unlike the US and here in Australia, the Canadian electoral system does not make ‘one vote of equal value’ much of a priority. In Australia for the lower house, the important one, you take the total number of voters, divide it by the number of districts and each district has to have electoral boundaries that put the number of its voters within 10% of that figure. The idea is that each voter’s vote has an equal worth – as near as practically possible – to all others. Tasmania is a small exception. But that’s the idea. Not in Canada. There the allowed variation is normally a pretty whopping plus or minus 25% (not our 10), and it can be an even higher variation than that if the boundary drawers wish. In blunt terms, three provinces tend regularly to get screwed (as the disaffected voters in the oil rich province of Alberta would put it), and Alberta is one of those three. Quebec’s voters are disproportionately favoured.

Thirdly, the conservative vote in Canada is highly concentrated in the prairie provinces. In the last two elections the Conservatives won every single seat on offer in Saskatchewan and virtually all in Alberta. How many people know that the Canadian Tories got more of the popular vote than Trudeau in the last two elections? But they got a lot fewer seats? Basically, their vote is not spread out across Canada enough.

Fourthly, in essence no country is silly enough to copy or to want Australia’s preferential or ranked-choice voting system. (I call it a protection racket for the two main parties, a voting system that forces you to pick between the two established parties even when they are much of a muchness and so makes reform very tough.) Canada has the long-established First-Past-the-Post system of Britain and the US, which has stood the test of time because its flaws are less egregious than those of proportional systems and of ours. (By the way, all voting systems are flawed. We have to pick our poisons in this regard. And only Australia and a tiny south pacific nation pick ATV or preferential voting.) One important thing to note here is that Canada is the only country I know of that uses the First-Past-the-Post system and yet has three, not two, big political parties. That’s patently not true in the US. It hasn’t been true in the UK, although Nigel Farage and the Reform Party are pushing to create a Canadian-style three party system. Why does this matter? Because in the Canadian/US/British voting system all that matters is which candidate gets the most votes in each district. There are no second preferences. If I get a third of the overall vote, but get one more vote than you and two more than her, I will win. Vote splitting is crucial to outcomes.

And that’s what so many Australian commentators don’t seem to understand. Back before Justin Trudeau stepped down, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives were over 20 points up in the polls. But that was 20 points ahead of the Left-wing Liberals. The third party, an even more Left-wing party the NDP, was between 15-18% in the polls and just behind the Libs. If you added their tally to the Liberal Party’s then even at its apex the Poilievre Conservatives were barely better than the two Left-wing parties combined. That’s because Canada’s median voter is considerably more Left-wing than Australia’s (or Britain’s and way, way more Lefty than the median US voter – Canada overall would be to the left of California, which tells you Mr Trump has no real desire to incorporate Canada and its Lefty voters). This means it is really hard for the Conservatives to win elections in Canada. The Lefty Liberal Party has been in power almost all of the last 120 years.

What has happened since pretty boy Justin resigned and then Trump started mocking Canada is that the NDP vote has collapsed to under 10%. And Quebec’s separatist party has tanked too. All those progressive voters have fled to the Trudeau replacement Mark Carney’s Liberals. In some polls the Liberals are at 45%, a total they haven’t hit since the 1968 election. But here’s the thing. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party has not moved much in the polls at all since when it was way ahead three or four months ago. The Tories are hovering just below 40% from maybe a 43% high at the end of Justin Trudeau’s time. (For context, Stephen Harper won his only Tory majority government in 2011 with 39.6% of the vote.)

The keys to what will happen on April 28th are these. 1) Will the NDP vote recover? 2) Will there be a big voter turnout or small? (Canada is like the preponderance of the democratic world and has voluntary voting. A bigger turnout will help Poilievre I think.) 3) By how much, if at all, are the polls under-counting the Tory vote? Because the pollsters usually do downplay the conservative vote, undercounting the Right-leaning vote in the recent Saskatchewan provincial election by 10 points. (To be fair, the job of pollsters is harder with non-compulsory voting because you’re trying to divine who votes and who doesn’t.) 4) Will the talk of the increased appeal of Alberta’s, and even Saskatchewan’s, separating-from-Canada movements affect Ontario’s voters? (Ontario and Quebec voters win general elections and since Canada federated in 1867 the centre has got a better deal than the western provinces.) Alberta’s economy was devastated by Trudeau and no one is sure what will happen there if the Libs win this election for a fourth consecutive term. 5) Lastly, will some voters move to the Left because of Trump’s taunting and tariffs?

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the most important factor is the NDP vote. If it improves to 13 or 14% then the Tories win. Then there’s turnout. The 2019 Canadian election saw 67% of voters vote. In 2021 it was 62%. Both were minority Trudeau wins, though the Tories won the popular vote both times. If the voter turnout gets over 70% I think the Tories win.

The betting markets are pointing to a Carney/Liberal win as I write this. But I’m sticking with my prediction that Poilievre and the Tories prevail.

James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University.