WHITBY, ONT. – The most conspicuous movement in this most discouraging election campaign has been the flow of voters away from the Liberals and the Conservatives.
We don’t know who will win or how much popular support they will command on Monday. But the polling suggests the victor will have the lowest share of the popular vote in the history of Canadian elections.
Joe Clark’s Conservatives won 35.9 per cent of the vote in 1979, returning 136 MPs to the House of Commons. In the most recent Nanos Research tracking poll, the Conservatives and Liberals were tied on 31 per cent. Both parties are well off their highs since August 2 (the Conservatives high was 37.8 per cent; the Liberals 36.9 per cent). Meanwhile, the NDP and Bloc Québécois are at, or close to, their three month highs (the New Democrats were on 19 per cent and the Bloc on 6.2 per cent in the Nanos poll on Friday). One suspects most of that audience decamped from the two larger parties in despair, rather than rushed towards the NDP and Bloc in wild enthusiasm.
It’s not hard to see why. Andrew Scheer has tried to exploit Justin Trudeau’s flexible approach to transparency by suggesting this time around it is the Liberals that have a hidden agenda – that if re-elected, Trudeau would legalize hard drugs, raise the goods and services tax, and impose a 50 per cent capital gains tax on the sale of homes.
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See Also:
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(2) ‘Vibrant’ black market persists as legal pot marks its first full year in Canada
(3) Under the Liberals, Canadian government support for Kurds fighting ISIL ground to a halt
(4) ELECTION 2019: What could happen following Monday’s federal vote?
(5) Anti-Scheer coalition isn’t against rules – here’s why it’s still wrong
