Switching out unpopular leaders to stave off electoral defeat is an old — and sometimes successful — Canadian political tradition.
Here in Alberta, it worked like a charm in the old PC Party, until it suddenly didn't.
The most famous example of it most definitely not working was Kim Campbell's last-minute tagging in for Brian Mulroney as PC leader in 1993. The party had hemorrhaged its support to two new parties: Reform in the West and the Bloc in Quebec. But Campbell's substitution suddenly reinvigorated the PCs, putting them in contention with Jean Chretien's Liberals.
The quick blood transfusion of support in the polls quickly evaporated as people remembered that they still hated the PCs. The rest is history. The PCs disintegrated and went from a majority government to just two seats, the worst defeat for a governing political party in the history of the world.
Today's Liberals are attempting a similar leadership transfusion and have received a boost in polling support. How much support there is varies wildly depending on which poll you are looking at. You see, dear reader, the polls are drunk right now.
EKOS pollster Frank Graves believes the Liberals are about to win a historic super majority government in every region outside of Alberta (although his results don't seem to include Saskatchewan and Manitoba.) Graves' credibility as a pollster leaves a lot to be desired and he is almost certainly incorrect. Still, other polling firms have shown the Liberals closing the gap or even matching the Conservatives.
IPSOS Research shows the Liberals at 38%, a statistical tie with the Conservatives at 36%.
Meanwhile, Abacus Data has the Liberals making a much more modest comeback to a distant second place at 28%, still far behind the Conservatives at 42%.
So yeah. The polls are blotto. People will likely believe whichever poll favours the party they support. But two things are clear.
First, the Liberals have seen increased support since Trudeau stepped aside so that the Liberals could hold an open and democratic leadership race anoint Mark Carney. How significant an increase that is, however, impossible to tell at this time.
Second, most of those Liberal gains have come at the expense of Jagmeet Singh's NDP.
The NDP elected Singh as their leader largely because they thought he had a hip TikTok vibe like Trudeau. Having spent the last six years as a parliamentary appendage of the Liberal Party, the NDP is left with more of the Trudeau vibe around it than Mark Carney's Liberals.
Life and politics just aren't fair.
Mark Carney's appeal — as with the Liberal brand generally — resonates most strongly in Eastern/Central Canada, where there is a deep yearning for the Laurentian elitist. And Carney fits that bill — probably better than a dictionary definition.
Highly educated, rich, polished, progressivist, internationalist, and intelligent. In many ways, Carney is like Trudeau, but smart.
Carney has also smartly thrown overboard two highly unpopular Liberal policies: the consumer half of the carbon tax and the increase in the capital gains tax. It was just months ago that he was claiming that we would all die without a carbon tax, but voters can have a short memory.
Politics isn't fair.
And, there may just be enough voters east of Winnipeg who want a Liberal government but were just sick of Trudeau's backpfeifengesicht.
Maybe.
Trump hasn't helped the Conservative case either. His chaotic, on-again, off-again trade war has deeply unsettled Canadians, including many who are otherwise sympathetic to him.
However much the Liberals have dragged the Canadian flag through the mud over the last nine years, they appear to have successfully wrapped themselves in said flag and have caught some traction in labelling anyone who opposes them as traitors.
Exhibit A: Albertans who are unwilling to sacrifice the oil industry as a pawn for the East.
Polievre is no Trump, but he is a right-populist, and that may be enough to convict him in the eyes of swing voters who want to be protected from the Bad Orange Man.
The Liberals have given themselves a shot at survival by switching out their leader. History has examples of both triumph and tears for what comes next. Will Canadians remember that they still hate the Liberals? Or will they fall in line?
