Provincial Liberal governments can also provide a proving ground for candidates and political staff who land later in Ottawa. Strong provincial partners, however, bring volunteers and money at federal election time. There has also been a pattern for either party in power in Ottawa to lose ground provincially. Fierce rows have sometimes defined relations between Liberal premiers and Liberal prime ministers. In British Columbia, although there is a “Liberal Party” as the Official Opposition, that party is an unwieldy coalition of people who dislike the New Democrats more than they like each other.įederal-provincial political fidelity, it should be noted, does not always bring harmony. The Liberals’ standing on the Prairies is so weak that one might paraphrase what prime minister John Diefenbaker once said of his Progressive Conservatives in that region: The only laws protecting Liberals are the game laws. In Ontario, the party finished third in the last two provincial elections. The once-mighty Liberal Party of Quebec is now a rump largely confined to non-francophone ridings. Conservatives are in power in the other Atlantic Canada provinces. They govern only one province in Canada: Newfoundland and Labrador. A new Nanos poll, released this week, puts the Liberals at 30 per cent, six points behind the Conservatives.Īt the provincial level, the Liberals are in desperate shape. An Angus Reid Institute survey, taken at the same time, showed the Liberals with 30 per cent, seven points behind the Conservatives. In a late-September poll this year by Leger, the Liberals stood at 28 per cent, six points behind the Conservatives. Martin, and 42 per cent under Pierre Trudeau. Put another way, Liberal victories under Justin Trudeau were won with an average share of the popular vote of 35 per cent, compared with 39 per cent under Mr. Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s father, led the party in five elections from 1968 to 1980, during which the party’s share of the popular vote was 45.5 per cent, 38.5 per cent, 43 per cent, 40 per cent and 44 per cent. These totals compare unfavourably with popular-vote shares amassed by Liberal prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin in winning the elections of 1993, 1997, 20: 41 per cent, 38.5 per cent, 41 per cent and 37 per cent. In 2019, they took 33 per cent, a six-point slide from 2015 when they attracted 39.5 per cent. In the last election, the Liberals won 32 per cent of the vote. In two consecutive elections, the Liberals won fewer votes than the Conservatives but enough seats to form minority governments. These majorities, however, provide fewer seats than the ones captured by the Liberals in and around Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and especially Toronto. The Conservatives pile up huge majorities of the popular vote on the Prairies, and in rural British Columbia and Ontario. Under Canada’s first-past-the-post system, seats rather than share of the popular vote dictate which party forms the government.
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