The voters are restless.
This should come as no surprise to those who have been paying attention to what’s been going on over the last few years in our provincial politics. But this restlessness, this desire among many in the electorate for something new on their political menu, will be a key force shaping the year ahead in federal electoral politics.
In its most recent pulse-taking of voters, Ipsos asked survey respondents how willing they might be to vote for a federal political party that was not the Liberals, Conservatives or NDP. (Ipsos added the Bloc Quebecois to this list for Quebec respondents.) The answer was a remarkable 51 per cent. More than half of the electorate is hungry for something new.
We saw the clearest manifestation of this disregard for the old guard and a preference for something new in the recent New Brunswick provincial election. The vote was held on Sept. 24 and, a month later, it’s still not entirely clear which party will form the government. Why? New Brunswickers gave three seats each to the Green Party and to a party unique and new to that province called the People’s Alliance.
Brian Gallant‘s Liberals, the incumbent governing party, won 21 seats, one less seat than Blaine Higgs’ Progressive Conservatives and, while they sort out who will command the confidence of the 49-seat legislature, surely both of those old-line parties must ponder the significance of the fact that nearly 30 per cent of all those who cast a ballot in New Brunswick did not cast one for either the Liberals or PCs.
As recently as 2003, nearly 95 per cent of voters were picking red or blue on New Brunswick’s election day. Last month, barely 60 per cent made that choice.
Move west to Quebec where, last week, a party that had never held power — the Coalition Avenir Quebec or CAQ — was sworn into office, given a majority by Quebec voters that seemed thrilled to have a federalist option on the menu that was not named the Liberal Party of Quebec. That party and its long-time sparring partner, the Parti Québecois, crashed to all-time lows in popular support.
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In Ontario, a desire for change was so strong that the electorate hardly seemed to care what the opposition Progressive Conservatives stood for. While Patrick Brown led the party, he advocated in favour of a carbon tax and was rewarded with polls that kept his party averaging in the low 40s in popular support. Then Brown got ousted, Doug Ford took over and promised to attack any idea of a carbon tax. That didn’t make one bit of difference to PC popular vote support and, on election day, Ford won his crushing majority with 40.5 per cent of the vote.
It’s hard to imagine a more clear desire for change among an electorate than watching a party maintain such a strong lead over a rival, despite a late-stage flip-flop on such a key issue. Brown? Ford? Who cares? Just change!
SEE BELOW: Results from an Ipsos poll done in early October 2018 in which respondents were asked if they were willing to consider supporting a federal party that was not the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP or, in Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois.
More interestingly, the voters of Guelph elected Ontario’s first Green MP, another example where a Liberal, a Conservative, or a New Democrat was simply not enough choice.
And what happened to that grand old political institution, the Liberal Party of Ontario, a party that is as old as Canada? Like its cousin in Quebec, it, too, crashed to its lowest-ever level of popular support.
Of some note, neither the Ontario Liberal Party nor the Parti Québecois even have official party status in their respective legislatures.
Of course, one could argue that this recent trend, in which a provincial electorate goes in a completely new direction, started in Alberta — a vibrant political culture in Western Canada has made it the birthplace of so many political movements that influence federal politics — back in the spring of 2015 when electors there probably shocked themselves, along with the rest of the country, in giving a majority government to the Alberta NDP.
WATCH BELOW: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley calls for action from UCP Leader Jason Kenney on candidates who express hateful views
Alberta will get a chance to confirm or overturn that 2015 decision next spring and, if it decides to overturn, yet another new party is the odds-on favourite to form a government, the United Conservative Party. But Albertans, like New Brunswickers, will have other options. There’s an Alberta Party led by former Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel, the Alberta Liberal Party led by David Khan, and the Freedom Conservative Party led by ex-UCP MP Derek Fildebrandt. All of those parties have at least one seat now in Alberta’s legislature.
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives, and Jagmeet Singh’s NDP must look out on this variegated political landscape and wonder how their fortunes will fare over the next year with restless Canadian voters.
Scheer is already dealing with the potential leaks on his right flank to Maxime Bernier’s political party and in that Ipsos poll, 47 per cent of those who identified themselves as Conservatives said they were willing to consider getting behind a non-mainstream party. Good news for Mad Max.
As worrisome as that might be for Scheer, it is worse for Singh because 62 per cent of those who identified as NDP supporters told Ipsos they would think about putting an “X” beside a candidate that is neither NDP nor Conservative nor Liberal.
And while only 40 per cent of Liberals say they would consider a non-mainstream option, Ipsos noted that desire for extra options on the political menu was strongest among millennials, among those from Generation X and among those from Atlantic Canada — three groups that went strongly Liberal in 2015.
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