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Allan R. Gregg: 1993 redux? Not necessarily. How the failing Liberals may just win again

Commentary

Kim Campbell announcing her resignation as leader of the Progressive Conservatives, in Ottawa, Dec. 13, 1993. Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press.

Since Justin Trudeau resigned and plunged his party into a leadership convention that many suspect will take place mere weeks before the next election, there have been many comparisons between Brian Mulroney’s late-term decision to step aside as prime minister and whether the Liberal Party’s fate in 2025 will be the same as the Progressive Conservatives in 1993, reduced to just two seats in the House of Commons.

While some of us are old enough to witness both developments, and would like to think that our historic perspective gives us unique insights into current events (I for instance was the head of polling and communications for the PCs in 1993), we would also be wise to remember that these two leader’s decisions—while comparable on the surface—took place almost 38 years apart.

There are key similarities and differences. But, taken together, you might be surprised to hear the Liberals could still pull off a win.

Distinct differences

Canada’s socio-political culture has changed monumentally in the last third of a century.

More than 10 million new Canadians have arrived to our shores, making the country not only significantly more culturally diverse but also creating “enclaves” where a single ethnic group now makes up the plurality to a majority of voters in dozens of ridings, mainly in the suburbs of Canada’s major metropolitan centres. Probably the single most important factor in federal election victories in the last 20 years has been a party’s success in winning over new Canadians in these ridings.

When Jean Chretien challenged Kim Campbell in 1993, not only did new Canadians have a much smaller impact on election outcomes, but they also lived disproportionately in urban centres, were largely white and of European ancestry, and were, by and large, safely in the Liberal camp.

Today, new Canadians are the predominant swing vote in Canadian politics, voting disproportionately for Trudeau’s Liberals in the last three federal elections but also for Doug Ford in the last two Ontario elections. In B.C., they’ve alternated between the NDP and the new Conservative Party in the last two provincial elections.

Voters’ attitudes towards the political options available to them are also significantly different than they were in 1993. For a starter, the mood and outlook of Canadians are significantly bleaker today.

Even though Canadians were coming out of a prolonged recession in 1993, most could still afford to purchase their first home. Anxiety over the cost of living and an accompanying anger over government’s ability to do nothing more than virtue signal towards this problem is now at an all-time high.

While cynicism was on the rise and faith in government was starting to erode in 1993, the breadth and depth of these sentiments were nowhere near as profound as they are today. This is especially the case with young people, who back in the 1990s were the most likely to express optimism about the future, but in the last 10 years have come to conclude that the “system” is not only not working for them, but is actually working against them. This, more than anything else accounts for the massive swing of 18-29 year olds who catapulted Trudeau and the Liberals into power in 2015 and are now solidly in the Conservative camp.

And then there is the voter polarization that has swept the Western world and is conventionally viewed as at the root of the rise of right-wing populism.

Taken together, these deep changes in outlook and in our political culture have eroded traditional partisan attachment and have made Canadian voter choice far more volatile, unpredictable, and unrelated to past patterns of voter preference.

Add to this the fundamental fact that the political landscape in 1993 was also far different than it is today. The rise of the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois (BQ) meant that the PCs had to fight three campaigns simultaneously—against Reform in the West, the BQ in Quebec, and the Liberals in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

Today, with the PPC dead in the water, there is no significant alternative party to the right of Pierre Poilievre to siphon votes away from his Conservatives. Consequently, almost all voters who find a Liberal or NDP choice unpalatable today will find their way directly into his Conservative camp.

On the other side of the ledger, the Liberal and NDP base has become extremely porous and should one or the other stumble in the campaign, the one who is still standing and deemed to be most likely to stop a Conservative victory will capture the vote of the other.

So, before we quickly conclude that 2025 looks like “1993 Redux,” we should take into account the fact that the demographic profile, mindset, and the political landscape in Canada today have been turned upside down over the last 38 years.

Some similarities

That said, even though Canadians may be basing their voter choice on far different criteria today than they were in the past, how they make that decision remains largely unchanged. Indeed, all the research I have done on public opinion over the years indicates that while citizens (and consumers) may make choices emotionally and even subconsciously, the basis on which they make those choices is remarkably rational and involves an intersection of self-image and self-interest—basically voters ask: “Are they like me?” and “Are they for me?” In politics, in particular, voters tend to personalize these questions and make their partisan choice largely on their assessment of the party’s leader.

On this basis alone, the parallels between 1993 and 2025 are apparent. Both Mulroney then, and Trudeau now, were, and are deeply unpopular (Trudeau’s most recent approval rating stands at 22 percent and Mulroney’s was even lower at 12 percent) and formed the lightning rod for the profound dissatisfaction the electorate expressed towards their respective governments.

Campbell’s ascent to the leadership of the PC Party removed that lightning rod and by the time the writs were issued in the fall of 1993, it looked like she had a reasonable chance of returning to power.

But as we also know, “campaigns matter.” The PCs got off to a bad start, when, on the first day, Campbell acknowledged that most of the problems facing the country and troubling voters (unemployment and the deficit) would remain high until “the end of the century” and that elections were not “not the time” to “debate…very serious issues..”

By the middle of the election, she was trailing by 20 points and her campaign team decided to “go negative,” only to be accused of running advertising that was making fun of Chretien’s face, By the time the ads were pulled, it was clear that Canadians had re-reached a conclusion that they had already reached a short time previously—namely, that Conservative government was “bad government,” regardless of who led it.

Will the same fate befall Trudeau’s successor, regardless of who they are? If they do, there will be considerable irony in the drama we have witnessed over the last month. For all the agitation for Trudeau to leave, his eventual decision to comply means that he was doing himself a favour and his party and new leader a terrible disservice. He is still young and has his celebrity and—like Peter Lougheed, Mike Harris, or Mulroney, all who resigned without being defeated—he will likely go on to sit on corporate boards or be given an appointment to some international station. His party, on the other hand, who wanted him to leave, will be likely be left in rubble, its new leader likely quickly replaced and relegated to the dustbin of history.

Rising from the rubble?

However, because of the aforementioned changes the country and the electorate have gone through in the last decades, this need not be the new Liberal leader’s destiny. If he or she can convince Canadians that they have a comprehensive, centrist plan that can address voters’ concerns and that this plan is endorsed by credible third parties, they might be able to capture middle-of-road voters and relegate the Conservatives and NDP to the periphery,

If they demonstrate that they are like and for new Canadians in the suburbs, young people who are giving up on the system, blue-collar workers who are drowning in a sea of affordability, and the vast number of Canadians who answer “none of the above” to polling questions which ask “which leader is the most like you?” and “which leader is most for you?” then voter preference could still shift dramatically.

Recognizing that in a sea of cynicism, these are very big “ifs” and will also require that the Liberals will have to run a flawless campaign that out-performs their opponents

A good friend and former colleague recently reminded that the most effective campaign slogan ever penned probably was “Time for a Change.” That—much more than Pierre Poilievre—is who the new Liberal leader will be running against.

Allan R. Gregg

Allan R. Gregg is a principal at Earnscliffe Strategies and was a pollster for the PC Party of Canada from 1976 to 1993.

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