Plagued by no clear ballot box question and a “one-two punch” delivered by a high-profile premier, the 2021 election campaign will be remembered for delivering the same parliamentary hand to party captains despite being held against the backdrop of several “anomalies,” say experts and politicos.
Speaking to Parliament Today, veteran pollster Jean-Marc Léger noted “it looks like nothing happened” since the dust settled on September 20.
“The change in the campaign was at the beginning, two weeks into August. After that, the last two or three weeks were really stable,” said Léger last week. Save for a People’s Party of Canada “surge” in support, which was the “main issue for pollsters” to quantify and analyze this time around, the 36-day affair was marked by a “stable” neck-and-neck race between the two frontrunners.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals rebounded from a slow start after forecasting a “cakewalk” of a campaign against Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, who’s since made open pleas to keep the top job in hopes of leading the squad into another vote.
While pollsters painted a tight race between the two in the tail end of the campaign, the Grits started off five points ahead of the Tories, per Léger’s figures, before seeing that lead evaporate a “couple” days after O’Toole shared his platform. A “huge change” occurred when the Conservatives moved ahead of the Liberals by roughly the same margin, but once the national debates hit in September, it became increasingly likely the country would opt for either a blue or red minority regime.
Léger said he saw the vote as a referendum on Trudeau’s pandemic performance “but also on the fact that he called an election that nobody wants,” meaning a “clear ballot box question” was lacking — or at least a strong one.
Before Labour Day, the Tories appeared to have hope, as voters were deciding “if they could trust them or not,” though that was rebuffed with a full-court press from Trudeau’s entourage on O’Toole’s stance on abortion, gun policies and the child care file.
As detailed in the Toronto Star recently, the Grits seized the campaign as an opportunity to highlight social conservative voices within the blue tent and a Tory platform pledge to repeal their 2020 cabinet order to ban 1,500 firearms. The Liberals also warned the Tories would nix the several deals Ottawa had already inked with most provinces to deliver more child care spaces.
“You had a moment of the campaign where it was possible for the Conservatives to win the election, but they lost this magic moment,” said Léger.
Per the Star, Liberal insiders then felt the PM “knocked it out of the park” in his TVA French debate performance while squaring off with Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet, warning him he does not have a “monopoly” on the Quebec identity and interests — a quip that had the chattering class buzzing for days as O’Toole faded into the shadows as a “robot,” said Léger.
The pollster likened that remark to the closing act of a “one-two punch” kicked off by Quebec Premier François Legault’s earlier endorsement of a minority regime headed by O’Toole, which came just hours before captains readied themselves for the English debate.
But the star of that evening’s affair had leaders riled up for days and weeks later, after moderator Shachi Kurl suggested that Quebec has to contend with a racism issue in relation to its controversial so-called secularism law, Bill 21.
After the debate, Legault commended the BQ captain for standing up to the question and reiterated that Quebec voters should opt to support the Tories or Blanchet, who was visibly upset by the question and frequently used it to rail against what he called the rest of the country’s disdain for Quebec.
While the Bloc had been losing about one point per week since the beginning of the campaign in Léger’s polling numbers, “they started to increase their vote” in the region after the debate, said the pollster. “These two elements combined to create this trend in favour of the Bloc,” allowing it to pick up enough seats to retain its third-party status in the House.
