Voting for the devil you know

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/08/2023 (799 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“When Pierre says it doesn’t matter who you know, or where you’re from but rather who you are and where you are going, these aren’t just empty words,” — Anaida Poilievre

The words are from a new Conservative Party of Canada biographical ad reintroducing Pierre Poilievre to Canadians. It is narrated by his wife, Anaida Poilievre.

We are only weeks away from the first anniversary of Poilievre winning the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. Recent polls from Abacus and Nanos show his party now has an estimated 10 point lead over the Liberals.

There was a time when a smaller lead wasn’t indicative of change in the wind because the Conservative margins of victory were considered inefficient.

There are no battleground ridings in rural Canada. They are all in the suburbs. And so it didn’t matter that Liberals were taking a whipping in rural ridings on the prairie and across Canada. None of that mattered to the contests the Conservatives were chronically losing in most of Canada’s suburbs outside of Saskatchewan and Alberta.

The latest polling data says many of those suburbs are now competitive for two very big reasons — food and shelter.

No matter how much a Liberal prime minister or anyone else tries to explain that inflation is a worldwide phenomenon and that Canada is doing well on inflation, relative to the rest of the world, those explanations don’t pay the bills at the grocery store checkout counter.

Canadians want less stress in their lives. That’s not easy to manage.

But few things are easier than changing where a voter marks the X on the ballot. It’s hard not to see change in the Canadian political winds, when polls show four out of every five decided voters looking for change in the next election.

Even if the price of putting a roof over one’s head and food on the table wasn’t seen as increasingly difficult, there is one factor no Liberal program or political ad can change. This prime minister has been on the job for nearly eight years. In 2023, there is something about that number which makes many think it’s time for the PM to clean out the desk. A politician can shuffle the cabinet. But it doesn’t matter if the voters at the national poker table want fresh cards.

In any liberal democracy, the voters regularly get the right to shuffle the deck in a way that no government wants to experience.

Some eyeballs on this column are undoubtedly asking about the famous gender gap.

For the longest time, the fortunes of the PM and his party were boosted by Canadian women. During the pandemic, it wasn’t unusual for the Trudeau Liberals to be ahead of the Conservatives by nearly 20 points among Canadian women.

COVID hasn’t vanished. But the female gender gap is gone.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, the news is the Conservative Party, which almost always does better than the Liberals with male voters, is now slightly ahead with women. The most recent Abacus survey has the Conservatives leading the Liberals by six percentage points with female voters.

What happened? The answer may be disheartening for Trudeau supporters, but inflation happened. Whatever women may think of the PM, and however they may find him more appealing than his key opponent, the price of groceries and housing is unappealing, and uninspiring. To many observers, it makes the Liberals unelectable today.

For Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his party, the only good news from the latest polling is that the election is not happening in the fall of 2023. It may not even happen in the fall of 2024. If the NDP continues to co-operate with the Liberal agenda, the next election is two years away, and it’s not overstating things to say that two years is a lifetime in politics.

Two years from now, inflation could be old news. Two years from now, Poilievre’s key message that he is more in touch with common Canadians than the PM could be as stale as bread that’s been in the basket for too long.

Two years from now, voters could be sick and tired of both Trudeau and Poilievre and simply vote for the status quo for the oldest reason in politics.

When voters are not happy with what’s on the menu, they frequently vote for the devil they know.

Here in Manitoba with the provincial election only 54 days away, nobody should be surprised if the status quo (the devil they know) wins the day.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster.

charles@charlesadler.com