Sean Speer, The Hub’s editor-at-large, joins co-founder Rudyard Griffiths to analyze Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre’s decisive by-election victory and its implications for CPC dynamics going into his leadership review. They also discuss the fundamental challenge in expanding Conservative support after the latest polls still show strong support for Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals.
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RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: A big by-election win for conservative leader Pierre poilievre, heading back to the House of Commons for September, but some disappointing polling results for the Conservatives showing a surge in popularity for Mark Carney coming out of last spring’s election. To help break it all down, I’m joined by Sean spear, my co founder and editor at large here at the hub. Hey Sean.
SEAN SPEER: Hey Rudyard. Great to connect.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Let’s start with the by election win. Pierre Poilievre. We had some some interesting write-ups, some stats from Howard England, one of our great contributors here at The Hub. I was amazed to see just how definitive, decisive Pierre Poilievre’s win was. Did that surprise you?
SEAN SPEER: A bit. There’d been a lot of commentary and reporting leading up to the race profiling some of the different candidates who were running against him. The fact that he was running as a party leader in a by-election had brought dozens and dozens of candidates into the race. I think in the end, there was something north of 200. And so I think there was some question about not so much whether he’d win, Rudyard, but whether he’d fall far below where the conservative incumbent had won in the election just just months ago. And of course, in the end, the answer is no. Poilievre won it rather decisively, and at least for now, removed one of the potential threats to his leadership. Had he underperformed this race, I think it would have necessarily contributed to growing talk about whether there were just inherent limits in his candidacy as party leader. He’s overcome that obstacle, and now, as you say, faces new ones in these in these recent polls that show that Carney is outperforming even where he was in April’s general election.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah, before we get to those polls, interesting to note in the by election, a couple of results that, again, suggest maybe something about where this party and leader is headed. First, Sean, we saw a really a dismal result for the so called separatist movement in Alberta and their preferred candidates coming in. I mean, you’d almost need to get out a particle accelerator to see the trailings of their support. And then let’s have you talk about, you know, Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party, again, just obliterated in this by election.
Program Transcript
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SEAN SPEER: It’s such an important point, Rudyard, and I’m glad you raise it, because there there is an instinct in a lot of mainstream commentary to argue that Pierre Polly of audit just moved to the centre, that that is, self Evidently, the path to reaching new and different voters on the party’s left flank, particularly in parts of the GTA and other in and around other major cities. What a lot of that analysis fails to grapple with is that the party does have an opponent on its right flank, the People’s Party, and in the 2021 election campaign, when Erin O’Toole carried out the strategy that a lot of those commentators are calling for the People’s Party sought support go up to 5% nationally and to play a critical role, or in theory, a critical role, in different ridings across the country, whatever one thinks of Pierre Polly his efforts to reach new and different Voters on the party’s left flank, he has decisively, for all intents and purposes, obliterated Roger the people party as a threat to the party’s right. And that’s that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Any successful conservative leader is going to have to do two things, one, protect against risk on the on the right flank, and polyev, as you say, has decisively did that, including in this most recent by election, and at the same time try to reach these new and different voters that he needs to push the party support up north of the 42% that it got in last election campaign. Striking that balance is really at the heart of the project, ahead of of polyev and the conservatives. And no one should take for granted how difficult that is.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah, such an important point. And you know, for all the progressives watching, and there are some tuning into The Hub’s podcast channel, you have to give Poilievre of his due. He is the kind of rank populist Giant Slayer, like if you don’t like Donald Trump, if you don’t like MAGA, this is the guy that is like pesticide for that political movement which we don’t want in Canada, and which is unfortunately out there in the ether, is in the pod space, the manosphere. You pick it. Canada’s being infiltrated by all kinds of ways, and it shows up in things like the existence of the People’s Party or Alberta separatism. And this guy just pounds the rubble Sean when it comes to these two twin threats from the right in Canada, rank populism, MAGA-style and, you know, ridiculous, you know, separatist movements in Western Canada.
SEAN SPEER: That’s right. A lot of times, I think, for people who are not thinking along those lines, they watch and see things that Poilievre does or issues that he accentuates, and think, What the heck is this guy doing? You know, this is not going to appeal to the median voter in Scarborough or something like that, and the truth is that when he’s doing those types of things, it’s not directed at the median voter in Aurora or Scarborough or something. It really is on protecting against the party’s right flank. He’s successfully done that time and time again, as you say, for all intents and purposes, shutting down the populist right the challenge for polyev and something we’ve talked a lot about Rudyard is moving forward. I worry that there’s almost like a one for one, zero sum trade between those voters who he needs to win the next election, and the new and different voters in the GTA that he needs to win the next election. The types of things that appeal to those voters risks turning off the other and vice versa. And that’s why, I think the open question looming over polyev leadership is, is there a path to pushing this number up north of 42%. How does he get to 45% in a world in which the NDP is not competitive, and it’s not self evident to me that you can do that, that there’s a risk that he is, in effect, optimised as far as he can push this political vehicle as he’s stuck between the party’s base on one hand and those accessible voters that he needs to reach on the other hand.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah. And as they like to say, no good deed goes unpunished Sean, so even though he’s crushing populism and crushing separatism, look at these tracking numbers. Let’s get those up on the screen. This is the Nick Nanos Party Power Index. So those of you listening, I’ll describe it to you as a graph going all the way back to 2013 and tracking Liberal, Conservative, and NDP block support, and what you see way over on the right hand side is this huge surge up of the Liberal Party since the arrival of Mark Carney, the exit of Justin Trudeau, and what’s happened since then, if we focus again, way over on that the most recent last six months of tracking data from Nick Nanos, you see support for Carney as preferred Prime Minister at 63%, almost up near his election highs, and Pierre poilievre has come down to revisit his election low at 45%. So, an over 15% gap in first choice to be PM, with the momentum, seemingly staying with Carney and yeah, sliding with Pierre Poilievre. What do you make of it all?
SEAN SPEER: I’d say a couple of things, Rudyard, and that I’d be interested in your perspective. The first is, there’s only one prime minister, and there’s just an inherent advantage to being the prime minister, particularly when you’re out on issues like the Canada-U.S. relationship and some of the other files where the Prime Minister is self evidently out leading, and it’s difficult for the opposition parties to compete for attention, particularly when Pierre Poilievre Is is outside of Parliament, which, of course, will change after this week’s by election. So part of it is, I think, a built in advantage for the Prime Minister. The second point, though, I put on the table is I recorded an interview for CBC’s The House, it’ll run this weekend. And I don’t know what parts of the conversation they’ll ultimately use, but they asked me what needs to happen for Pierre Poilievre and the conservatives to win the next election campaign. And I sat silently for a while, and the only conclusion I could reach Rudyard is that the NDP has to come back. That if you accept my hypothesis that the conservatives have pushed their support up in the 2025 election, almost to a high water mark, where the room for growth is really inherently limited, then the only hope for the party is that the NDP comes back and starts to chip away at Liberal support such that wherever the Conservatives end up, it’s enough to win in a third party race, and in that sense, one wonders if this week and the issues around the Air Canada, work stoppage and the perceived heavy hand on the part of the Carney government to intervene at the expense of collective bargaining rights may be part of a broader set of issues that ultimately galvanise the NDP and the progressive left, and in so doing, inadvertently advantage to the Conservatives.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah. Well, my answer to this gap that’s emerged is to look at our next chart. Which tracks preferred PM for Liberal prime ministers, starting with Justin Trudeau and going right through to Mark Carney. And there you see Sean, again, for our podcast listeners, what we’re what we’re seeing here is a squiggly red line that has Justin Trudeau elected in 2015/2016 and he hits his high 70% as preferred PM, and then it is a long but slow journey down to 30% when he exits politics. And Mark Carney, where is he today? Well, he’s he’s not, in fact, at Justin Trudeau, post election high after his first victory, that remarkable comeback from third place. And I think the trend is not your friend in politics, and that we will see, in a sense, from Mark Carney, a similar journey for as long as he is in politics. It’s a rough game. He’s going to go from the top of the chart, you know, in the in the left upper quadrant to the bottom of the chart, in in the right bottom quadrant and and that is politics. That is, you know, the 1001 cuts that your opponents and forces that you can’t control, like Donald Trump or an Air Canada strike extract from you over time. So I think the thing to watch maybe isn’t so much, is Pierre Poilievre down because, look, he’s he lost the election. He’s just getting back into parliament. There’s lots of things I think that can happen for Pierre poilievre, good, bad or ugly between now and, let’s say, this time next year. But I think the bigger story is that Mark Carney has come off the election high. He’s not as high as when Justin Trudeau started out his political career. And boy, does he have, and we’re sympathetic to him, does he have a tough issue set in front of him, from trade to a moribund economy to a party that he leads, which has some pretty powerful cliques in it, from progressives to environmentalists to business liberals to others, and trying to keep that all together. We’ll talk about it on the Roundtable this week. There’s some crack showing, isn’t there, Sean?
SEAN SPEER: Great analysis. I think all of that is precisely right. I mentioned the inherent challenges with the government’s decision to intervene in the Air Canada work stoppage. We saw some public and private grumblings from liberal members in response to that decision. I think the budget Rudyard is going to be a big possible flashpoint for the government, if it really is committed to cutting spending as deeply as the Prime Minister has signalled, I think that is going to produce not just tensions within the caucus, as you say, but a huge reaction from the various stakeholders who ostensibly would be affected by those cuts, and then, as you say, there is the eventual outcome in the Canada-U.S. negotiations, if the deal looks anything like the one signed with the European Union, that is going to be tough to square with the government’s elbows up ethos. So I think you’re precisely right. This may be a high water mark for Prime Minister Carney and his government and and I think the Conservatives can take some solace in that, but I also think they need to be clear headed in their own the own challenges that they face. I think there’s a an operating assumption that the 2025, election outcome is a new base, a new foundation for the conservatives to build on. I think there’s a risk that actually it represents a high water mark. And as we started the conversation discussing this inherent tension between the party’s base and non-traditional conservative voters that they need to ultimately win, particularly in a two party race, represents, I think, a conflict that may ultimately be insurmountable for Pierre poilievre and the conservatives.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Well said, Sean. Well, thanks for coming on. Hub Hits, breaking this all down. Parliament resumes next month, the gladiator games commence, and the Hub will be here each and every step of the way. We’ll catch you next time soon.
