Did Poilievre have a good night?

[Spartaculous]

- Leads the Conservatives to their highest share of the popular vote since the 1980s.
- Loses his own seat in the House of Commons.

Discuss.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Whether Poilievre had a good night depends on a lot on your priors.

His party outperformed most recent polls and denied the Liberals what looked like a solid majority.

But if you zoom out a little bit, his party also clearly failed to adapt to the change in the Liberal's leadership and Trump's nonsense, squandering a ~20 point lead in mere months.

But if you zoom out even further, you can see that the Liberals adopted half of the Conservative's policies. Moreover, this election devastated the NDP. Is that a win for Conservative policies, even if it didn't redound to the advantage of the Conservative party?

[Octavious]

There's only so much adapting you can do. If a major reason the opposing party is unpopular is because of a single man, and that single man buggers off, then you're in trouble regardless of what you do. If the US Democrats had had the gumption to remove Biden earlier and replace him with a candidate who was any good I imagine Trump would have lost as well.

I reckon the Conservatives did OK given the circumstances. Their leader was the right man for the job a year ago, but Carney contrasted well to both Trudeau and Trump, and in that environment a solid intellect and safe pair of hands is an attractive combination. Poilievre was the kebab and Carney was the cup of coffee, and Canada transitioned from the end of the night to the morning after. If Poilievre had tried to rebrand himself as a coffee he would have come across as insincere, and he'd never be as good a coffee as Carney anyway.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Oct's take is insightful, but it is probably too generous re: the Conservative's genuine strategic errors.

Should the Cons have had a career politician and annoying culture warrior as a leader? The polls suggested "yes" when facing clownshow Trudeau. But it was always a risky strategy to just hope the Liberal leader would be deeply unserious forever. The Cons haven't had a standout leader since Harper, reflecting a longstanding problem with attracting and promoting top talent within the party.

The Cons pitch to Canadians this cycle turned out to be rather thin: carbon tax bad + stop discouraging investment + a grab bag of culture war issues. The Liberals only needed like ~3 policy changes to undercut most of this agenda.

The Conservatives really backed themselves into a corner with Trump. They have been too deferential to a minority within their own base who love Trump. Their attempts to pivot against Trump in the past couple months were too little too late.

[Spartaculous]

So, ah, what are the nuances of setting up a minority government when you're just three seats shy of a majority?

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

The Liberals probably don't need an explicit supply deal. They can likely secure enough ad hoc support on confidence matters to stay in power without a coalition.

The Conservatives would need the support of both the Bloc and the NDP to outvote the Liberals. I'm struggling to imagine a policy issue where those two parties would align with the Conservatives against the Liberals.