Canada Election: Ontario to Decide Justin Trudeau’s Fate
The 43rd Canadian Federal Election will be held on 21st October 2019. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals after four years of governance seems to be on a shaky ground. None of the opinion polls seems to favor his return to power, however, none of the opinion polls seems to give majority to any political party. In the recent opinion poll both Liberals and Conservatives seems to be locked in a tight race with Conservatives polling around 31% vote share and Liberals close to 30% vote share. Jagmeet Singh’s New Democratic Party, who seems to favor Liberal’s in case of hung assembly may poll around 20% as per recent opinion poll.
In 2015 Federal Election, Liberal’s rebounded from third place in the House of Commons with 36 seats to a strong majority government with 184 of the 338 seats in the expanded Commons. Garnering around 40% vote share, Justin Trudeau went ahead to become the Prime Minister of Canada. Liberals victory was backed by its performance in province of Ontario. Ontario carries the highest number of seats as compared to rest of the provinces in Canada. The 121 seats of Ontario plays an important role deciding the Government. In 2015, Liberals won 80 of the 121 seats of Ontario.
Since Justin Trudeau came to power, Canadian Economy has been doing well. Along with-it unemployment has been at the lowest in decades and inflation has been bought under control. However, these things don’t seem to favor Trudeau’s return to power. The country that heavily relies on oil and gas industry, the new taxes and regulations introduced by Trudeau government has met with extreme resistance. Mr Trudeau abandoned his pledge to reform Canada’s electoral system to do away with the first-past-the-post system. The SNC-Lavalin controversy seems to hurt the Liberals a lot.
How Ontario Changed for Liberals?
In 2011 Federal Election, of 106 seats of Ontario (now 121) Conservatives won 73 while Liberals were reduced to only 11 seats. In 2015, of 121 seats Liberals bagged 80 while Conservatives were reduced to 33 seats. Ontario in reality created a path for Trudeau to become the Prime Minister of Canada. However, since 2015 things have changed drastically for Liberals in Ontario. In 2018, the General Election held in Ontario province proved to be disaster for Liberals. The party that had won 55 seats in previous election was reduced to single digit. Liberals won only 7 seats and was pushed to third position. The Conservatives tripled their seat number. From 27 seats they went on to win 76 seats. The result clearly showed that Liberals have gradually lost their ground in Ontario. If the province follow the similar trend even in the upcoming Federal Election, Justin Trudeau might be out of the power.
The Google Trend data for the last one month for the Ontario province clearly indicates the rising popularity of Conservatives while at the same time declining support for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.
Crowd’s Verdict
In our prediction platform, Andrew Scheer as New Prime Minister of Canada has seen sharp rise in last week. If the data holds true, Canada may be heading towards formation of new government.
Outcome
The Conservatives have never formed government on it own in Canada. Their government has always been the coalition one. Even the recent opinion polls show that Conservatives may be ahead however fail to touch the majority number. On the other hand, smaller parties like NDP and Bloc Québécois seems to be gaining at the behest of declining popularity of Liberals. NDP may support Liberals on the other hand Bloc Quebecois, which is more popular in oil rich province of Quebec may support the Conservatives if they fall short of majority.
Nitesh Singh