Some people get upset when I say the Conservatives will win the next election. It’s a probabilistic statement, not meant to be fatalist as much as it’s meant to be a description of the state of things as they stand. If I looked outside and it was dark and cloudy and the leaves were doing that thing before it rained, I’d say “Hey, I think it’s going to rain.” I’d pack an umbrella.
It might be more accurate, if less succinct, to say the Conservatives, as things stand, are clear favourites to win a majority government some time in 2025 subject to Events™. Campaigns matter, events can change things, nothing is guaranteed, opponents should still try to beat the Conservatives and citizens should organize to do the same, etc., etc., etc. But ask yourself, if you had to put down $5,000 at 2-to-1 odds on who’s going to win the next Canadian election, who are you betting on? As a thought exercise it, ah, focuses the mind. My money (figuratively, never literally when it comes to politics) is on the Conservatives. I wish it wasn’t so. Yet it is. But the victory could be short-lived.
As I wrote for Time last weekend, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is an angry man for an angry time. He’s capitalizing on the unpopularity of the Liberal government and Justin Trudeau — a downturn in support that’s a function of being in power for the better part of a decade, with all that entails. Trudeau’s decline is probably also due in part to a post-pandemic ant-incumbent backlash fuelled by an affordability crisis that’s been common around the world. That’s hard to survive, especially when you cling to power as long as Trudeau did.
Poilievre’s approach to defeating Trudeau entails focusing on pocketbook issues, the sorts of issues people tend to care about above all else no matter what they tell the pollsters or anybody else. It’s an iron law in politics that people tend to care about how much things cost and how they feel about how much things cost before other concerns. Poilievre dips into culture war nonsense — he simply can’t help himself — but his primary message is about cheaper housing, food, and gas, and more “powerful” paycheques.
That’s a message that resonates right now; one that a plurality of voters may be willing to tolerate being wrapped in barbed wire.
But for how long? Not for long, I think...
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