Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, left, and Adam Vaughan, are pictured campaigning in Trinity-Spadina. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette No sooner had the federal Liberals begun putting up better-than-decent numbers Monday evening, a momentum shift not dissimilar to the one they managed in the four-byelection round last November, but the counter-spin kicked in. Turnout abysmal. Byelections meaningless. An election, Canada Day Eve? Pshaw. And on, and on.
That reaction of course, was to be expected. But the numbers don’t lie. No byelection is more than it is; one by itself doesn’t predict the outcome of a general election, nor do four, nor do eight. But they do tell us something about sentiment now. Low turnout notwithstanding, they mean something. The result Monday, as last November, was good for the Justin Trudeau Liberals, bad for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, and quite dreadful for Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats.
Let’s examine first the Toronto-area riding of Scarborough-Agincourt. In 2011, Liberal Jim Karygiannis, a constituency politician if ever there was one, took 18,498 votes, or 45.4 per cent of the popular vote. His nearest challenger, Conservative Harry Tsai, garnered 34.2 per cent. Monday, with 195 of 200 polls reporting, Liberal Arnold Chan had 11,927 votes – or 58.9 per cent of the vote. The second-place Tory challenger, meantime, had garnered 5,963 votes, or 29.5 per cent.
“Jimmy K”‘s departure, punctuated as it was by the now former MP’s public objections to Trudeau’s abortion policy, could have proven a thorn in Trudeau’s side. Instead, the opposite occurred. The NDP, in 2011, won 18 per cent of the vote. Monday, at this writing, the party’s challenger, Elizabeth Ying Long, had 1,750 votes, or 8.6 per cent.
Trinity-Spadina, a swing riding that is considered a bellwether of sorts because Liberal success there has historically presaged broader success, proved to be an easy win for well-known municipal politician Adam Vaughan. The contest between him and New Democrat Joe Cressy, in an echo of the neighbouring one last fall between Liberal Chrystia Freeland and New Democrat Linda McQuaig, saw Vaughan win 53 per cent of the popular vote, with 291 of 349 polls in, and Cressy just 33.9 per cent. That’s 12,574 votes, to 8,034; a decisive Grit win, despite the very low turnout.
Cressy made his party’s opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline a key issue, as McQuaig did last year. It doesn’t seem to be taking. The swing was substantial; in 2011, Olivia Chow won 54.5 per cent of the vote in the riding, while Liberal Christine Innes came second with 23.4 per cent.
In Macleod, near Calgary, the result was a very solid Conservative win Monday, as expected. At this writing, with 244 of 256 polls in, Conservative John Barlow had 11,332 votes, or 69 per cent of the tally. Second-place Grit candidate Dustin Fuller was well back at 2,797 votes, or a mere 16.9 per cent. But here too, compared with previous results, the shift favoured the Red team. On May 2, 2011, Tory Ted Menzies, now retired, garnered 40,007 votes, or 77.5 per cent. The Grits, meantime, won just 3.7 per cent. As occurred broadly last November, the NDP vote in this riding has slipped sharply, from 10.3 per cent in 2011, to less than five per cent per cent Monday.
But perhaps the most telling shift was the upswing in Liberal fortunes in Fort McMurray-Athabasca, even though the party’s candidate, Kyle Harrietha, still lost out by almost 15 percentage points. In 2011, the Liberals came third, at 10.4 per cent, behind the NDP who managed 13.3 per cent. Tory Brian Jean, meantime, walked away with 71.8 per cent.
Monday, the Conservative vote was trimmed to 47.7 per cent, with 186 of 203 polls reporting, while Harrietha managed 34.5 per cent. The NDP, meantime, saw their vote slip slightly to 11 per cent. Liberal gains were virtually all at the expense of the Conservatives – a sign, like the results in Provencher and Brandon-Souris in Manitoba last fall, that there is unrest in the Conservative heartland.
Is it a disaster for Harper and Mulcair, and a harbinger of certain victory for Trudeau next year? Not by a long shot. But it is, undeniably, another set of numbers that confirm the recent trend, which is also reflected in opinion polling. It indicates, yet again, that Trudeau and his team are doing something right, while Harper and Mulcair and their teams need to adjust their strategies, if they hope to slow the Liberals’ momentum.
The curious thing is that, as these little Liberal victories pile up, there is no apparent change in the game plan either in the Prime Minister’s Office, or on Mulcair’s part. Harper is as he has long been, his government as it has long been. The opposition leader’s strategy has not budged, meantime, since he became leader. Do they see the trend, and dismiss it? Or are they locked into positions they can’t now change, because of internal party dynamics?
Either way, the time for changing the playing field is limited. It looks increasingly as if the “Stop Trudeau” gameplan for both Conservatives and Dippers is to wait for a cataclysmic mistake, or a series of stumbles, or a botched debate performance, by Trudeau. None of which explains how they intend to manage if he doesn’t do those things.
mdentandt@postmedia.com
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