An Election in 2021 Likely to Result in Another Stalemate

Although it seems to be the consensus among political pundits and poll analysts that currently Erin O’Toole has little chance of beating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it is noted less often it also seems quite unlikely at this point for Trudeau to win himself back a majority government. 

Some polls show Trudeau walking away with a thumping majority in parliament, but the general trends seem to be indicating that an election in 2021 would be more or less a practice of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. 

All the polls back in February showed the Liberals with anything from a 1 point lead over the Conservatives to a 7 point lead. Outside of outlier polls, the Liberals tend to sit around 34-36 percent of the vote, and we remember that 34 percent was what the Conservatives won the popular vote in 2019 with while still losing the election, proving the range Trudeau currently sits in is far away from a sure majority. 

What often goes unnoticed is the significant growth in the NDP’s polling numbers since 2019, as well as steady Bloc Québécois support.

The Bloc finished with a majority of seats in Quebec with an overall vote share of 7.6 percent and currently, they are polling typically between 7 and 8 percent still, indicating they will probably keep their current seats and potentially grab up a couple more. 

The NDP on the other hand is polling as low as 15 percent in some polls and all the way up to 23 percent, with most polls placing them at around 20 percent. This is great news for the NDP as in 2019 they only received 15 percent of the vote, and knowing their voters tend to be in urban ridings just a gain of a few points overall across the country could signal they could pick up several seats in an election this year.

Even the Greens polling is holding steady at around where they were in 2019, and due to their new leader Annamie Paul still needing to win a seat, the Greens could see themselves flipping a downtown Toronto Liberal riding in 2021.  

Right now the Conservatives who are polling around 30 to 31 percent are destined to likely lose a handful of seats, potentially to the Liberals, NDP, potentially the Maverick Party in the West, and have Maxime Bernier steal away his old riding of Beauce.

Currently, the polling aggregator 338 shows an average projection of seats after a future election which still shows the Liberals still 11 seats below a majority, which is likely being slightly generous to the Liberals as the act of Trudeau calling an election will probably shrink the Liberal’s popularity. 

Conservatives who are fearing going into another election fearing that Trudeau may win back his 2015 majority have reason to relax based on what the current polling numbers indicated. Despite O’Toole’s unpopularity, it seems that while Conservatives may lose some seats the Liberals will be balanced out by growth on his left flank, essentially shifting seats around while changing very little, except who may be the Conservative leaders after the 2021 election.