Can’t they both lose? I asked, irritably, in my last column. As it turned out, they both did. Never before have both major parties taken such a small share of the vote. Never before, in my memory, have both declined steadily and together throughout a campaign. Their platforms landed with the same dull thuds, their leaders failed to impress in roughly equal measure.
The Liberals, then, did not so much win this election as lose it less. They gave up roughly 30 seats, yielded half a dozen points in the popular vote — but not to the Tories, whose vote remained as steady, or as inert, as ever. Rather, it was to the benefit of the other parties on the left: the Greens, the resurgent NDP and especially the Bloc Québécois. It was left-of-centre voters, not those in the centre or right, that administered this rebuke — enough to humble the Liberals but not to remove them from power.
The story of this election is likewise not of any surge in support for the Conservatives, but of the restlessness and rootlessness of voters on the left, whose partisan attachments would seem as permanent as a breeze. In 2015, the Liberals had rounded up just enough of the progressive vote to win a majority, on the strength of an ambitious, left-leaning platform and an idealistic young leader. But by 2019 much of the platform, especially the signature electoral reform promise, had been abandoned, and the leader was neither so young any more nor so idealistic.
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See Also:
(1) A Trudeau win means a divided Canada
(2) It’s not Scheer’s fault the Tories lost. Blame the dreck that passed for his platform
(3) Electing Trudeau means more carbon taxes
(4) Post-election, it’s time for a dose of humility
(5) The Banana Vote Song: Tallying Time
(6) Maxime Bernier tried, and failed, to ride the populist wave to victory
Let the bastards freeze in the dark.