Tories take two in by-elections

[daleo]

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives pulled off an amazing political upset in federal by-elections Monday night, stealing a rural Quebec stronghold seat from the Bloc Quebecois.

The Conservatives also reclaimed a traditionally Tory seat in Nova Scotia, ultimately winning two of the four by-elections held Monday.

The results suggest the minority Conservative government’s political fortunes are undimmed by the recession and far stronger than expected in Quebec.

In other races, the NDP handily beat back the Tories to hold on to the Vancouver-area riding of New Westminster-Coquitlam while the Bloc easily reclaimed its Hochelaga seat in urban Montreal.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-take-two-in-by-elections/article1357276/
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I don't know if any of this means much, in terms of a general election. An upset win in Quebec may tempt the Conservatives to look for that elusive Quebec breakthrough again, which could annoy some of their western base.

[BolivarianHero]

1. All 4 elections went exactly as expected...Let's take a more detailed look at what transpired.

Casey's old seat is a Tory stronghold where the anti-Tory vote has always split between the Liberals and the NDP rather than coalescing around a single opposition. The Tories losing here would have represented a Tory cluster**** that would have relegated the Prime Minister to a lifetime of smoky backrooms and dingy university halls.

The BQ's humiliation of everyone else in Hochelaga was a given. The riding is working-class and has always been extremely nationalist and quite left-wing. If the BQ didn't exist, the NDP would have taken this seat long before anyone outside of PLQ circles had even heard of Thomas Mulcair. The right will NEVER make a breakthrough in Montreal, as the city consists entirely of areas that are too solidly Liberal, that are too working-class, or that are too nationalist to ever be plausible Tory pick-ups. You might as well being asking Richard Dawkins to campaign for Stockwell Day.

From what I understand of Quebec Tory pick-up, Mr. Genereux is very personally popular in the riding and the region is among Quebec's most conservative, being Mario Dumont's old stomping ground. The result bodes fairly well for the Tories, overall, but it's certainly not a surprise and is likely not indicative of any meaningful trend in Quebec. At this point, however, the Tories only need a marginal breakthrough in Quebec to take them over the top, barring a major HST-inspired meltdown in either Ontario or British Columbia between now and next election (which could also hurt the Liberals as much as the Tories and lead to as many Tory pick-ups as losses in urban Ontario if it produces some bizarre Liberal-NDP vote-splitting scenarios) handing a bunch of ridings to Jack and the gang.

The NDP hold in British Columbia was completely expected, and I don't think it represents a major national swing, either in favour of the Tories or against the NDP. The riding has been trending more and more NDP for years, regardless of the relative overall performance of the parties in British Columbia, and the galvanization of the anti-HST vote in this by-election made the result here a given.

[daleo]

2. Good commentary

That's pretty much how I saw it too. Overall, it seemed to be pretty status quo.

The future of the BQ is a wild card, though I don't know enough about the Quebec situation to speculate.

[BolivarianHero]

3. Depends...

It has a bright future among nationalists who identify with social liberalism or with social democracy, which would be the majority of Quebec nationalists at this point in time. I'd imagine it also wins votes among various constituencies, predominantly among the left, who are not satisfied with the Tories or with the Liberals, but who don't see the NDP or the Greens as being a viable way of beating either in Quebec. (And indeed, I can think of an example from 2006 where the NDP was counterproductive: They ran a candidate against a labour activist BQ incumbent from Quebec City who proposed anti-scab legislation, carried over 7,000 votes, and saw the BQ lose that riding by just over 100 ... Both the BQ and the Tory candidates won over 20,000 votes....I see this as different from the arguments Liberals make against NDP vote-splitting in that the left wing of the BQ is ideologically very similar to the NDP, whereas the Liberals are not so much so...)

Where it could lose out to the Tories are among the remaining areas where conservative-leaning nationalism is still a viable ideology or if the Tories manage to paint themselves as a viable federalist alternative to the Liberals. The challenge for the Tories is that they can't do both, and that making themselves appealing to either could alienate more right-wing constituencies out West and in rural Ontario. They can also win the way they did with people like Genereux, Blackburn, or Bernier and clean up conservative-leaning regions by appealing to the personal appeal of their candidates.

[BolivarianHero]

4. A couple of other things I forgot to mention...

After making this post, I wrote a short research paper on the by-elections and their implications for my research methods course wherein I argued that the results did not show any sign of tremendous Conservative gains.

1. As an addendum to what I had written about the Armstrong's victory in Nova Soctia, the result, if we disregard Casey's victory as a conservative independent, was the 2nd worst for the riding's dominant centre-right party since the riding was formed.

2. As for Genereux's pick-up in Quebec, the riding in question saw the Tory numbers substantially improve in the 2008 election, bucking the province-wide trend of a marginal swing against the Tories relative to their 2006 results. Thus, we should view this riding as an outlier and not indicative of meaningful Conservative growth in Quebec.

I wish I could 10% as good at this as that Australian election pundit Anthony Greene. That guy's the king. :P