Hats off to Paul Wells for finally doing the math and figuring out that the Conservative Party is actually kind of a, well, flop.
I know how odd that sounds. Aren’t the Conservatives riding high, buoyed in the polls and nipping at the Liberals’ heels? They’re certainly doing better than either the Alliance or the Progressive Conservatives — the two ingredients in the CPC recipe — were doing before the Alliance takeover.
But that’s well short of what the United Right was supposed to achieve. The combined party is polling a whopping 12 points below the 37 per cent that both parties received in total in the 2000 election.
In other words, in an election with no Groupaction scandal to drag the Liberals down and a truly godawful campaign by Stockwell Day, the Right did almost 50 per cent better than they’re doing now.
If that’s momentum, keep it the hell away from me.
The boosters of the United Right (a.k.a. “everything other than the right currently represented so ably by the Paul Martin Liberals”) were hoping for some kind of synergy — a whole that would be greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one was supposed to equal three.
Instead, it isn’t even making it to two. Appropriately enough, Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper turned the Progressive Conservatives into the Conservatives by getting rid of the progressives.
Yet Joe Clark’s call to support Paul Martin instead — tepid though it was — rings a little hollow. As the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson points out today, “the irony is that the Liberals have never been less progressive themselves…. Progressives have no reason to feel at home in the Liberal Party. The only movement that would honestly welcome the remaining Red Tories, the only party that truly understands their soul, is the NDP.”
This would be the party currently polling eight to 10 points ahead of where it finished in the 2000 election.
I’m admittedly biased. But it looks to me like progressives from both the Liberals and PCs may be finding a new home.
Paul Wells was kind enough to reply to this post. Unfortunately, when I switched over to Blogger’s new commenting system, his words of wisdom were lost to the ages…
…until I resurrected them a few moments ago. Here’s what he had to say:
Thanks for the nice words. Now let me nuance my argument a bit:
There’s a pretty robust decade of history behind the analysis that Reform/Alliance always did better during an election than between election. Preston Manning’s Reform used to reliably stink out the joint every summer, drawing single digits before rising nicely in the 93 and 97 elections. Stock Day’s Alliance rose less spectacularly, but still quite smartly, in the 2000 election.
If that trend holds ? and seriously, allllll bets are off in what should be a fascinating Election 2004 Or ’05 ? the Conservative vote could be expected to grow to, what, 30 or 33 per cent. Which would be devastating for the Grits.
But the NDP as the unacknowledged trend winner of the last four months? Yeah, I think that’s a perfectly valid observation. cheers pw
Thanks, Paul — and yeah, this is going to be the most interesting election in years.
