Explaining the 2011 Federal Election II: The Recipe for Orange Crush
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The weekend of Jack Layton's funeral last August, Toronto bartenders created a cocktail in his name: Jack Daniels and Orange Crush on ice. But now, political scientists think they've found the recipe for Orange Crush itself. In Québec at least, it was 2 parts values, 5 parts policy, and 3 parts the smiling late leader.
At the annual Canadian Political Science Association conference in Edmonton the other week, lead investigator for the 2011 Canadian Election Study (CES), Patrick Fournier of the Université de Montréal, attempted to account for the fortunes of the various parties, and particularly to explain the orange wave in Québec.
He listed seven potential explanations for the rise that emerged in the days and weeks following the election, and then sought to either rule them in or out as feasible hypotheses for further study based on the CES data. The seven takes that Fournier and his co-authors considered were:
- "Fluke polls" – This was the explanation offered by then-Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe in his first interview after the election. According to Duceppe, a fluke poll that circulated near the beginning of the campaign startled the voters and drove them into the arms of the NDP. CES investigators couldn't figure out which polls Mr. Duceppe might have meant, however, since there were not really any rogue polls of the Québec electorate. All the poll results in the public domain were matched by the CES' daily rolling cross-sectional survey results during the campaign.
- Campaign Events – The leaders' debates did not seem to be associated with movements in party support in Québec either, the CES team reported. Typically, academic studies have found that if a debate has an impact on vote intention, it is both immediate, and shows up differently in those who watched the debate from those who didn't. Some public domain pollsters reported finding a debate effect in 2011 based on weekly polling both before and after. But Greg Lyle from Innovative Research told the Market Research Industry Association post-election panel last fall that because of the different deadlines he was working to based on the publication schedule of his client, Macleans Magazine, he was able to be in the field *between* the french debate and the PQ convention where Duceppe gave his three-steps-to-sovereignty speech.
Lyle claims it was the PQ convention which was more closely associated with the second big jump in NDP support in Québec, and not the french debate, a finding with which the CES data also agree. Other campaign events that CES investigators found were proximate to jumps in NDP Québec vote intention were Jack Layton's appearance on Tout le monde en parle (TLMEP) near the beginning of the campaign, and two speeches on sovereignty given by Jacques Parizeau and Gérald LaRose towards the very end. [Though Lyle does speculate that Layton's debate performance may have scored points with Liberals and Greens that wound up paying off later, as well.]
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Rejection of Sovereignty – This explanation also seemed unlikely for two reasons. In the first place, support for sovereignty had only declined by two points (from 42% to 40%) in the period between the 2008 and 2011 elections. Second, and moreover, Québec NDP voters weren't only federalists: 38% of 2011 NDP support in Québec would have liked to see Québec become a country (compared to 29% in 2008).
[And as Bélanger and Nadeau noted in their contribution to the Carleton University book on the 2011 election, the Bloc's support in elections has always trailed support for sovereignty, meaning that sovereignists have supported other federalist parties in Québec before.]
Campaign week 1 and week 4 surveys by Innovative Research showed that the Bloc still retained 77% of the hard sovereigntist vote towards the end of the campaign (though down from 81% earlier on), while the highest the NDP scored amongst that group was 13%. Their overall findings were consistent with the CES data, namely that NDP support came mainly from the ranks of the soft sovereignists and the soft federalists.
Fournier and his co-authors believe that sovereignty was no more or less dead during the 2011 election than it had been in 2008, but that the orange wave in Québec signalled "the weakening of [sovereignty's] power as the structuring dimension in federal electoral politics in Québec. The fact that so many sovereignists were willing to vote for the federalist NDP indicates that the national question was no longer their overriding motivation".
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Increased Left-Right Polarization – This explanation was refuted by the finding that there were overlapping distributions of answers by different parties' supporters on the survey questions about a general orientation towards market liberalism, and little change in the opinions of Quebeckers as a whole on those questions between 2008 and 2011. What Fournier and his colleagues found is that the NDP simply took the left away from the Bloc, not that there were more left-wingers in Québec, per se.
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Increase in Political Cynicism – The CES includes a set of six questions designed to assess political disaffection or cynicism ("are you very/fairly/not very/not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in Cda", "I don't think the govt cares much what people like me think", "how do you feel about politicians on a scale of 0 to 100", etc.). Respondents scoring high in political disaffection spiked the Green vote in 2008 outside Québec, for example, and underwrote support for the Canadian Alliance in 2000, and both the Conservatives and NDP in 2004, though not to a significant level in any of those cases. But in 2008 in Québec, high scores on both cynicism and regional alienation were associated with support for the Bloc Québcois; and by 2011 those two groups had switched to the NDP. And while the levels of cynicism outside Québec did not increase measurably between 2008 and 2011, they did grow in Québec over the same timeframe (and arguably have continued to do so since last year's election).
To reinforce the significance of this factor, the authors found that while cynicism was up amongst all parties' supporters, it was up the most amongst the NDP's. People who switched from another party to vote NDP in 2011 in Québec had higher disaffection/cynicism scores that those who stuck with their 2008 choice. And newer NDP voters scored higher on cynicism that previous NDP voters. Still, voters who switched to the NDP did not hold more negative assessments of other parties than non-switchers. The authors concluded that the environment of distrust in politicians was shaking loose the partisan affiliations of voters, but not by itself driving voters towards the NDP.
That said, the values profile of 2011 NDP voters in Québec was higher political disaffection, lower support for market liberalism, higher support for racial minorities, higher regional alienation, lower personal religiosity, lower moral traditionalism, and lower support for Québec sovereignty — many of which categories they were winning for the first time (and winning away from the Bloc). The combination of those values was worth 6 points out of the total 30.7 percentage points by which the NDP vote share increased in Québec between 2008 and 2011, and thus they represent the first part of the recipe for Orange Crush.
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"Layton mania" – While partisanship (aka "party ID"; the "which party do you feel closest to" question) did not strongly predict a 2011 NDP vote in Québec (it was more likely to win the votes of Liberal and Bloc partisans, for example), no-one could deny the impact of Jack Layton on the party's success in producing that outcome. It's said by insta-pundits that the orange wave was all his doing — that "they voted for Jack Layton; Jack Layton is dead".
But consider this: there is no doubt that Jack Layton was very popular in Québec in 2011, but he was not all that much more popular there than he had been in 2008. His ratings did go up during the 2011 campaign, but not all that much. Outside Québec, the party's vote rose consistent with his improving leadership scores, but in la belle province there were no gains sufficient to explain the NDP surge.
What did change though was voters' evaluations of Gilles Duceppe. Duceppe and Layton were equally popular in 2008, but the NDP's gains in Québec in 2011 tracked the growing gap between Layton and Duceppe. Moreover, NDP voters in Québec, to a rarely seen level, cited Jack Layton as their main reason for voting NDP. Favourable impressions of Jack Layton drove other-party-switchers and non-voters to vote NDP, particularly where the other-party-switchers had a negative impression of the leader of the party they voted for in 2008.
Thus, it was the relative, rather than absolute ratings of Jack Layton which made a difference for the NDP, explaining a further 9 points of the 30.7, and forming the second ingredient in the recipe. Note that no other party leader contributed as much as a single percentage point to his or her party in Québec in the same study (the Prime Minister included).
- Issues and Policy – Worth as much as the values and leadership questions combined, however, were Quebeckers' positions on three key policy issues that matched up well with the NDP. According to CES researchers, issue positions rarely turn out to be the explanations of vote choice – usually it's values, partisanship and leadership. But this time was different, and three key issues drove support to the NDP in Québec in 2011 (in order of influence)
- support for increased healthcare spending
- support for increased spending on the environment
- support for higher corporate taxes
Because these were all popular positions with Quebeckers, it was a big pond for the NDP to be able to fish in, and most of the gains again came at the expense of the Bloc Québécois, especially in the first two cases.
The combination of the three issue positions accounted for 15 of the 30.7 percentage point hike in NDP support in Québec, and comprise the third and final ingredient in last year's Orange Crush in the province.
The overall impression is of a federalist social democratic party whose charming leader finally persuaded Quebeckers to notice how much they shared its values and policy agenda, at the very peak of their disillusionment with the government of the day, the other political parties, the emphasis on the sovereignty project, and a growing dislike for the leader who championed it.
Now NDP partisanship did not follow a 2011 NDP vote in most cases, according to the CES data – they're still just dating. But dauntingly for their only real competitor in this values and issue space, Bloc partisanship dropped substantially amongst those 2008 BQ voters who voted for another party in 2011. In fact the Bloc retained only 30% of its identified partisans who switched their vote in 2011, as compared with 60% for the other three major parties.
The other political parties will have to carefully consider what unique values and issues space is open to them in Québec, and/or whether they want to compete with the NDP on what looks increasingly like its own ground on the left in that province.
But with the Bloc holding the 24% of hard sovereignists, and the NDP occupying the centre-left of the soft sovereignist-soft federalist ranks in Québec, the opportunities for the Liberals will probably have to come out of right-field for now. And I for one would love to have heard the advice former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had for the current Prime Minister on a Québec strategy this past week.
Tags: 41st (2011) General Election, Canadian Election Study, Data Analysis
On issue 1
The polls were quite clear in Quebec. I was following them multiple times a day. First, the Liberals went up, then stalled, then back down. This was only about 5 points provincewide. However, when the Liberals went up, it was the Bloc that went down those 5 points. When the Liberals went down again, it was not the Bloc, but the NDP that gained those 5 points. A few days after this whole thing, the NDP gained another few points from the Bloc, putting the party in 2nd in the province. It was at this point that I started to notice and began commenting online, and a day later, that the other political watchers began to notice and put stories in the MSM about it. From there on it was all uphill for the NDP.
Issue 2 : this would be that second jump for the NDP I mentioned above.
On issue 6: I argue part of the Orange Crush was a rejection of Iggy. ROC polls jumped for the Liberals (from the Tories) early in the campaign, and at the same time the Libs lost that few points in Quebec, they lose it on ROC as well. The difference is that in ROC those points went back to the Tories. My read is that voters wanted something different, and tried Iggy, but did not like the taste, and only after Iggy failed that taste test did they turn to Layton. (sorry for the multiple messages, commenting as a I read)
On issue 7: The NDP has always had policies that are popular in Quebec. The difference is the other issues plus this.
My personal read of the Orange Crush is thus:
Iggy failed terribly. (Federalist) Voters in Quebec decided they wanted some change but did not like Iggy. Soft Nationalists meanwhile became fed-up with the Bloc. I actually this the NDP’s “mouse running around” ad had a much larger impact than people realize.
Outside Quebec, there is a similar story. Iggy failed, people decided they did not like him. When news hit that the NDP was doing well in Quebec, only then did the NDP’s numbers raise in ROC. Along with this was a slight bump for Harper – people who would have otherwise voted Liberal but decided they needed to “stop Layton”.
In short, the Orange Crush was a result of the Liberal Party’s inability to grasp the problems it faces. It was defeated in 1984 for good reason. 1988 was a free trade fluke, 1993 though 2004 were helped by the split on the right and the western base of the new Tories… in effect the Liberals have been a losing party for 30 years and the party is willing to unable to face why and make the required changes. Both the NDP and CPC have adapted in their own ways, while the Liberals have not. The orange crush, IMO, is just a very delayed reaction that started in 1987 – Voters realized that they no longer liked nor wanted the Liberals and thus switched to the NDP.
Well Teddy, for many elections and particularly since the sponsorship scandal, the Liberals have not done well in Quebec. Quebeckers are more progressive and didn’t see “right-leaning” Iggy – no matter how their faux progressive campaign tried to portray the real right-leaning when in power rule practices – in other words, the gig was up long ago for the libs in Quebec.
I am curious as to the effect of the “Coalition Question”. The public response to the 2008 attempt made it clear that the Rest of Canada would not accept a coalition that included the BQ. As the campaign unfolded and it became clear that the Liberals/NDP would fall short of the goal on their own, to what extent did this create the ignition which allowed the “soft” BQ support to migrate to the NDP?
When pundits call Liberals dead in Quebec, I’m reminded of this poll from 4 MONTHS ago –
Thursday, March 1, 2012
NDP third in Quebec
When Forum Research last reported on the federal voting intentions of Quebecers, it made some waves by placing the New Democrats second behind the Liberals. Those waves continue to roll, as their latest survey of 1,589 Quebecers puts the NDP third behind the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals.
Forum was last in the field on February 6, and since then the New Democrats have slipped three more points to 22% support in the province, 21 points behind their May 2011 performance.
The Bloc Québécois has picked up nine points and stands at 29%, followed closely by the Liberals, down two points since early February.
The Conservatives are down seven points to 17%, while the Greens stand at 4%.
It might come as little surprise that a poll that found the Parti Québécois leading by nine points would also show decent results for the Bloc. Perhaps intentions are shifting back to the two sovereigntist parties in the province, or perhaps the poll’s focus on provincial issues influenced respondents. However, the same has not appeared to happen in polls from CROP and Léger that survey the federal and provincial voting intentions of Quebecers at the same time.
Most significantly, the Bloc has moved ahead in the francophone electorate with 32% support, well ahead of the Liberals (23%) and the NDP (22%). Among non-francophones, the Liberals are dominant with 46% support to 22% for the NDP and 17% for the Conservatives.
The Bloc leads outside of Montreal and Quebec with roughly 33% support, compared to 23% for the Liberals and 22% for the NDP.
The Liberals are ahead in Montreal with 30% support to 26% for the Bloc and 24% for the NDP, while the Conservatives lead in Quebec City with 37%. The Bloc trails with 22% while the Liberals are third with 20%.
The significance of this poll is reduced by the fact that the NDP has not chosen its next leader – but it does give an indication of how low the party can dip if the choice does not jive with Quebecers. This same poll shows that Quebecers want Thomas Mulcair to lead the party. No other leader comes close to his numbers.
Just as the NDP’s generally uniform support throughout Quebec in 2011 helped them win the vast majority of the province’s seats, this uniformity means it loses the vast majority of their seats when they drop below their rivals.
With these levels of support, the New Democrats would be reduced to only four seats from their current haul of 58. The Bloc Québécois would fall just short of a majority with 37 seats, while the Liberals would win 22 and the Conservatives 12.
In other words, an unmitigated disaster for the NDP. Assuming nothing else would change outside of Quebec, this would reduce the NDP’s representation in the House to only 47 seats, placing them third behind the Liberals, who would have 49 seats. There are, however, enough close races to make it possible for the NDP to retain its position as the Official Opposition, but this is a very simple demonstration of just how important their Quebec support is if the NDP is to keep that role.
Jim, This was discussed a lot at the conference, but not in the CES paper. I’m away from my computer just now, and can’t check whether the CES asked about the coalition this time, but it was agreed to have been widely popular in Québec, and therefore to have faciitated just the movement you hypothesize.
It is mood of Harper haters that will overcome any rational analysis. The NDs have and will continue to be the Anti-Harper which will increase both their vote and the Tory vote.
In 1988, in BC 2/3s of the PCs vote went with the Reform wave and elected a lot of NDs. By 1993, they saw the PCs were not coming back and most of the 1/3 went Reform and took away those seats from the NDs.
The provincial NDP govt helped, something we’ll probably see again in the next fed election as Dix will alienate large portion of the ND vote that expects them to keep the unrealistic promises he is making now.
The Libs are in that same situation as the PCs were, it’s hard to say if they have reached the critical point the blind faith is lost, has been reached or it will take the next lowering of their seats/votes to do so.
That was me above
If my memory is correct, it was people who had previously voted NDP who in 1993 provided the biggest block putting Reform over the top in BC.
A goodly chunk of those folks continued to name the NDP as their party of identification as they voted Reform through the Nineties. CES studies of that period showed more NDP identifiers in BC voting Reform than NDP.
That tendency apparently stood with these folks for quite a time- because with the merger into the Conservative Party, a lot of those Reform voters in hinterland BC began moving to the NDP.
One of the beauties of the CES studies is that they burst so many bubbles of the two dimensional punditry assumptions.
Jim says “I am curious as to the effect of the “Coalition Question.” As am I. Anecdotally, and as laid out by Brad Levigne, Layton’s coalition efforts laid the groundwork for the brilliant “hamster spinning in his wheel” and “barking dogs” ads, and for everything else that followed:
http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/jun12/lavigne.pdf
But Jim also says “The public response to the 2008 attempt made it clear that the Rest of Canada would not accept a coalition that included the BQ.” This is a media myth, that is, an oversimplification given credibility only by incessant repetition. In fact, as the media belatedly started explaining Canada’s parliamentary system, the hysteria against the coalition largely vanished after Christmas, 2008. By Jan. 15 – 17, EKOS found 50% support for the Coalition, while 43% would prefer the Conservative government to the Coalition, and 6% were undecided, although only 36% would vote Conservative:
http://wilfday.blogspot.ca/2011/03/canadians-supported-coalition-in.html
I argue that, when Ignatieff spent the campaign saying “you’re looking at the guy who turned down the last coalition. I could be standing here as prime minister of Canada. I turned it down” this helped scare 17% of his voters away from a coalition with the NDP, but also helped persuade the 78% of Liberal voters who liked the idea of an NDP-Liberal coalition to switch to the NDP. They weren’t all in Quebec.
http://wilfday.blogspot.ca/2011/08/coalition-canada-almost-had.html
Agreed w/Teddy that it was the early “NDP in 2nd in Quebec” polls that marked the psychological tipping point–though at the time it seemed more like a statistical fluke (with all three non-Bloc parties bobbing in the teens, and the NDP not all *that* much higher than their 2008 12%); and furthermore, conventional projection models suggested that the party’s Quebec support was rather inefficient–even at a high-teens second place, the NDP wouldn’t score much beyond Outremont and Gatineau, or so it seemed…
Many people here tend to overthink too much especially from those who don’t understand well Quebec politics at the federal level. Voters are not very ideological in Quebec, they usually vote for the party leader and maybe in some areas because of a popular MP.
I talked to quite a few people in Quebec about this and ideology don’t seems to be a big factor except among a minority of voters especially in Montreal. I am sure that 75% of new NDP voters in Quebec in 2011 had few ideas was the party platform was like except for 2-3 things at most.
The NDP vote in Quebec was also not a class/revenue vote at all, so I think the ideology thing is more spin from the NDP. It’s similar to NDP voters who voted Reform/Canadian Alliance federally in BC.
In fact, seen a couple of polls during the election campaign saying that a great number of NDP voters in the Montreal’s suburban areas were ADQ voters in the 2007 provincial election.
And yes, a good number of NDP voters in Quebec were soft nationalists (like those who supported Mulroney in 1984 and 1988), but I tend to see that the ”hard” nationalist vote did not voted NDP.
So, how to explain the ”Orange Crush” in Quebec?
1)Elimination. The Bloc and Duceppe were becoming very negative. The Tories never had the Quebec media on their side since the 2008 electoral blunder and with the lack of good lieutenants to help explain their policies.
The Liberals are still associated to the Sponsorship scandal especially in Quebec. So, the NDP with ”le bon Jack” was the best choice left and he was able to do a good prestation at Tout le monde en parle which is an uber-popular Sunday talk show.
In the last week, it was too late for the Bloc to attack Layton and they did but it didn’t want well because it was getting really dirty in the last few days.
At the end, some people at the Bloc were very reluctant to even GOTV in the ridings in fear that it could help Layton.
The Bloc didn’t played their game well by thinking they could win 40 seats with 35-38% of the popular vote in Quebec by keeping their base.
2)Also, the NDP was able to form of coalition to win seats by having a proportion of all other parties. Yes, the Bloc had lost a lot of votes in 2011 to the NDP, but the 2008 popular vote was not very good to start for the Bloc, which leaded many pundits to say that they could be wiped out if they go down in popular vote from their 2008 level.
I am not the only one to say that, but many small/c conservatives in Quebec had voted NDP only to show the door at their Bloc MP as strategic voting. They are not really socialist to start with. Outside of Montreal, voters in rural or small-town Quebec are not really as social democrats in term of ideology as some outside Quebec would except. To give you an example, Québec Solidaire are a fringe party outside of the Island of Montreal.
3)The question of media: Many pundits tend to forget that many voters outside of Montreal don’t speak English, and when do they don’t watch news or read newspapers in English. Was there a bubble effect created by the media for putting the NDP and Jack Layton as flavour of the month?
Again, one must remember that Layton was leader since the 2004 election (and the NDP slate of candidates was not really better since 2004 except for a few exceptions in Quebec) and I do believe that Layton rise had a lot to do that he was the one able to beat Duceppe (and this to the fact that very few know who were the rest of his team except for Mulcair).
The conclusion is this one, history have showed us that voters in Quebec could quit a party as fast as they adopted you.
The truth is that it’s always been the NDP that would, if anyone would, knock off the Bloc in Quebec. Remember though that it’ll be the Liberals that’ll knock the Tories off in Calgary, but the party is so far from that it is laughable – but it is the same thing. The NDP was always the best positioned to knock off the Bloc in Quebec but they were never able to even come close.
The “Orange Crush” only happened because they were finally able to get close.
Put another way… Quebec has ALWAYS had shared values with the NDP and has ALWAYS supported their issues and ALWAYS thought Layton was awesome. The only reason this “Orange Crush” happened in 2011 and not in 2008 or 2006 or 2004 was that Quebecois finally said “hey… maybe I should consider voting NDP”
Take the Greens for example. How many people give a vote for the Greens a serious thought? Not many. I used to be in the PEI NDP and understand this. Sometimes, voters don’t even consider your party when thinking about who to vote for. The “Orange Crush” was set up by all those things in the image, but the trigger was Quebecois finally saying “hey, there’s an NDP in the race”. Finally considering them a party that they could vote for, a possibility that exists on the ballot.
All this analytic is paralytic.. so what is the macro-political landscape now in Canada?
As I see it, the Red Grit vote has been sliding over to the NDP over the last several elections. In the RoC (excluding Quebec) the NDP gained some 7 MPs (37 to 44), which is a respectable increase but not earth-shattering. If things had gone normal, they would have only elected 45 MPs, and the BQ would have probably been the OOP!
So now we look at the Quebec l’Orange Crushez aberration where the NDP won some 59 seats! Here we have dying, lying Jack Layton telling Quebecers what they wanted to hear and they flocked over to him in droves.
I question the rationale of the Quebec voters, and expect they may well flip again in 2015. Also voters in the RoC may just abandon the NDP in fear of another RC lawyer from Quebec (Mulcair… Trudeau/Mulroney/Chretien/Martin) ruling all of Canada.
But what about the remnants of the Liberal party if their Red Grit vote has abandoned them over the last several elections? Is it only the 2,783,175 Blue Grit voters who supported the Liberals in the last election? What will Blue Grits do in 2015 if Liberals have another leadership snafu? Are the Blue Grits clinging to the Liberal party and too confused to realize the ship is sinking?
Sorry for the rant and going from the present to the future, because I tend not to learn much from past history when going forward into a chaotic future.
Re the “non-ideological” nature of the Quebec voter (as per matvail2002)–look at it this way: a Maxime Bernier leading the federal Conservatives might be more capable of a Quebec sweep than a Justin Trudeau leading the federal Liberals…
Adam, as somebody who lives in Montreal, Maxime Bernier is only well liked in his riding of the Beauce and perhaps amongst a small group of rural right leaners around the Quebec City – Beauce area. Even then, I wonder if it’s more respect toward Maxime’s father, former radio show host and Tory MP under Mulroney for the Beauce, Gilles Bernier. Gilles Bernier was far more respected, according to what my friends from the area have to tell me. In fact, Maxime Bernier has been seeing his vote count drop since 2008 federal election. It dropped by 4.6% in 2008 and by over 11% in 2011.
Ken – that is a myth which since this is Pundit’s Guide where data rules over incorrect info spread by lazy media types, lets look at one I worked Voter ID in. Saanich Gulf Islands, typical of the 1988 ND ridings that went Reform in 1993.
There was a redistribution in 1987 so the two key elections had the same boundaries.
In 1984, pre Reform with a national PC sweep that pumped up their numbers. Parties with less than 1% of the vote excluded.
1984 64,376
PC 31,766
NDP 23,094
Lib 9,516
1988 64,771 votes
PC 21,900
Ref 8,165
NDP 23,168
Lib 11,538
1993 70,375
PC 8,222
Ref 26,480
NDP 13,414
Lib 18,442
Nat 3,817
1. The NDP 1998 win happened with only an increase of 74 votes but a PC decline of 9866 votes most became Reform vote but the Libs also picked up 2022.
2. The NDP 1993 loss happened with their loss of 9754 votes and with the PCs lossing another 13678. Reform gained 18315 votes and the Libs gained 6904. Importantly, there was also an voter increase of 5604 votes. The Libs were the primary receivers of the NDP loss. The new National Party which put itself between the Libs and the NDP picked up some of this loss as well.
3. As I mentioned in my prior comment, you can’t ignore the effect that a provincial wing has. By 1993, with Bingogate and other NDP misdeeds had doomed Harcourt and the Federal NDP brand took some collateral and voters punished the Party at their first opportunity. As the numbers showed, it was the core NDP vote that went down, not a gain in 1988 that was lost in 1993.
Funny thing, in now the only Green seat, they did not even run a candidate in any of these 3 elections.
You see the same pattern with the 1988 pickups of the NDP that they lost in 1993.
“In fact, Maxime Bernier has been seeing his vote count drop since 2008 federal election. It dropped by 4.6% in 2008 and by over 11% in 2011.”
(a) that’s probably more of a generic reflection of wilting Conservative strength in Quebec-at-large, and (b) his vote was so outsize and astronomical in the first place, and even after all that dropping he remained over 50%…
Saanich Gulf Islands did go from NDP to Reform, but it is not all typical of the ridings that did that which were home to the BIG [decisive] blocks of NDP identifiers who mostly voted Reform for a 3 or 4 election period.
Most of these ridings are a swath in the Interior. North Island seems to fit in as well. And to a degree, some of the exurban Fraser Valley.
SGI was and is a different kettle of fish.
Party identification that the CES picks up tends to be pretty long term, and to not be effected by things like Bingogate. It IS understandably effected by things like the replacement of the Reform Party. That did not matter materialy in Saskatchewan, but it did in hinterland BC. It takes a LOT of blows like Bingogate over an extended time frame- such as Liberal identifiers were been subjected to- to shake party identification.
Perhaps, Ken you can provide actual data from one riding that supports your opinion?
I dont think that SES breaks down the data by riding.
I guess that I would suggest it can provide templates.
So we have the fact that for a long time more BC NDP identifiers voted Reform than NDP. There is no reason to assume this dynamic was evenly distributed across the regions in BC.
After the merger of Reform and the PC’s there are a significant number of Interior ridings where you see the Conservative vote drop below the Reform vote [let alone Reform plus PC]. And you see a parallel recovery in the NDP vote [part, but not all of that being the slipping Liberals].
Where this happened the most, is where the NDP first takes BC seats from the Conservatives. But I know that I have seen it in the historical shifts of seats that the Conservatives still hold- albeit with slimmer margins.
[FWIW: my guess is that we've already seen the end of this historic 're-balancing' of effects from long term voter preferences/identification.]
Ken is right on this one George. Here is a list of 7 ridings chosen at random from non-island, non-vancouver BC ridings.
Considering every riding fit the criteria Ken set out the phenomenon seems pretty robust:
Abbotsford, Chilliwack – Fraser Canyon, British Columbia Southern Interior, Okanagan – Coquihalla, Prince George – Peace River, Cariboo – Prince George, Skeena – Bulkley Valley.
Compare 2000 to 2004.
All feature NDP gains well above the +7% national swing the party enjoyed.
All feature CPC performance BELOW reform performance and well below ref+pc.
Ken you’re not suggesting the merger was what led to the NDP rise though are you ?
I think the switch was based on a recovering NDP provincial brand and then the strategic choices of leaders.
Harper has always wanted to just hold down the west and target seat rich Ontario and Quebec.
Layton, on the other hand, saw BC as a growth area and spent more time here than any other party leader.
You’ve referring to apples and oranges. The point was how the NDP gained seats in 1988 and lost them in 1993 which the myth is that Reform took them. The 2000 and 2004 has nothing to do with it.
Again pick a riding and provide data for a riding from one of these seats that supports your opinion. The ‘84, ‘88 and ‘93 elections which overwhelming show the same as SGI. That was no significant change in the ND vote but Reform taking a large piece of the PC vote which allowed ND wins which were lost when Reform took most of the rest of the PC vote.
A bigger view would be the whole provincial vote.
1984 28 seats total
PC 19 seats 46.6%
ND 8 seats 35.1%
Lib 1 seat 16.4
1988 32 seats total
PC 12 seats 34.4%
Ref 0 seats 4.8%
ND 19 seats 37%
Lib 1 seat 21.3%
1993 32 seats
Ref 24 seats 36.4%
PC 0 seats 13.5%
ND 2 seats 15.5%
Lib 6 seats 28.1
The wall between the Reform and PCs were the weakest as the wall between the Lib and NDs were.
Don’t forget a third BC element in 2004: the Paul Martin Liberals making claims to both camps–the NDP end with the assistance of figureheads like Ujjal Dosanjh; as well as exiled PCs/Red Tories and even a few ReformAlliance “moderates”, which resulted, among other things, in the momentary Grit gains of long-elusive N and W Van…
Ken you’re not suggesting the merger was what led to the NDP rise though are you ?
I think the switch was based on a recovering NDP provincial brand and then the strategic choices of leaders.
Harper has always wanted to just hold down the west and target seat rich Ontario and Quebec.
Layton, on the other hand, saw BC as a growth area and spent more time here than any other party leader.
I think all those things obviously matter.
I put a lot of stock into the CES digging into what drives voter intentions. That is pretty dramatic: across a few elections that in BC more NDP identifiers voted Reform than NDP.
Granted, that could mostly be what is loosely called ’strategic voting’- the NDP wasn’t going to win, so people voted their second choice who they liked for somewhat different reasons. [And this would be a more or less uniquely BC hinterlands phenomena... having come from there, it makes sense to me.]
But those people deserted the NDP already in 1993- before it was apparent the NDP would have trouble winning any but the diehard urban seats. So I think there is good reason, with the CES studies as important back-up, to chalk that up to Reform being a very good competitor to the NDP on the values that matter most to this group of people. The NDP’s Charlottown stand would still have people very pissed off in 1993.
Looking at the Reform merger into the Conservatives: I think all those factors mattered in the recovery of the NDP, but decisive in people shifting is that Reform and what they liked about it was gone. [With Stephen Harper sealing that.]
Everybody needs to bear in mind that this ‘prototypical’ Reform/NDP swing voter was and is antithetical to both the old PC’s, and to the base of the Conservative Party that came from Reform.