Since Trump, Poilievre’s odds of becoming PM has fallen to 1% from 99%

Hanging out with Jordan Peterson just days before Trump was sworn in was a foreseeably dumb idea to everyone except Poilievre and his coterie.

The likelihood of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives landing a parliamentary majority has crashed from near certainty to virtual impossibility since Donald Trump became U.S. president on January 20, according to seat projections by 338 Canada.

From the start of the new year to February 2, the odds were 99 per cent that Poilievre would score a majority as several reputable pollsters found Conservative support at 47 per cent in mid-January.

Polls from Angus Reid, Leger and IPSOS released this week found Conservative support at 37, 39 and 36 per cent, respectively.

Jordan Peterson showed Poilievre’s big blind spot on Canadian identity

Trump had made his affection for tariffs clear in the presidential election. He first threatened 25 per cent sanctions against Canada in November. He began talk of annexing our country in December.

But Poilievre failed to react to the fundamental change to Canada’s political discourse until February, when he launched his “Canada First” rebrand, a cheap knock-off of MAGA’s “America First” slogan.

In January, Poilievre’s biggest impact was to trek deeper into MAGAland by videoing his 100 minute jaw-wag with Jordan Peterson, who only weeks earlier announced his move to Trump’s America to protest Canada.

The foreseeably dumb move probably resulted from Poilievre surrounding himself with MAGA true believers, such as his campaign manager, lobbyist Jenni Byrne (pictured below).

Believing themselves inevitably sailing to power on Trump’s historic tailwinds, they completely missed the hurricane of anti-Trump patriotism building and uniting Canadian identity.

Chance of PM Poilievre now literally one in 100

The projections from 338 Canada now show 55 per cent odds of a Liberal majority and a 44 in 100 chance of a minority parliament. With parliamentary support from the NDP or BQ ruled out and the Liberals, as the incumbent government, getting first shot at proving Commons confidence, anything less than an outright Conservative majority is extremely unlikely to get Poilievre into the prime minister’s office.

And the odds of a Conservative majority this week fell to a one in 100 chance, according to 338 Canada.

The low odds don’t just flow from lower popular support. Seat projections are based on underlying models of vote distribution, and in that Conservatives have poor vote inefficiency.

In both 2018 and 2021, Conservative candidates received over 200,000 more votes than the Liberals. But the massive vote pile-ups in southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba resulted in about 35 fewer MPs.

If he must, Carney will prefer to lose ground to his left rather than his right

Mark Carney has adopted key Poilievre positions: “axe the tax,” reduce tax on annual investor income over $250,000, cut the public service and “slay” the deficit. His policy moves have allowed about 10 per cent of voters, who until March were holding with Poilievre, to move to the more pleasant conservative who doesn’t arrogantly munch apples or proudly hold court with charter members of the MAGA army.

A good chunk of past NDP supporters have also moved to Carney, likely overlooking or disregarding his conservative leanings in gleeful appreciation of Carney presiding over Poilievre’s demise. This week’s polls show NDP support at nine or 10 per cent, well down from a peak at about 20 per cent last fall.

Simultaneously attracting votes from the left and the right is quite the feat. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has begun raising red flags about Carney’s conservativism. If his contrasts force the PM to choose between placating the left with policy or maintaining position on the right, Liberals will this time prefer the latter option to keep Poilievre out of contention. So if Singh can open that space, the NDP has room to recover and even grow.

Of course, Carney would prefer to not choose, instead maintaining his conservative policy position while working to close the political space to his left using polarization. Liberals will pump the deep well of enmity for Poilievre held in many NDP hearts. He’ll then demand they vote for the nice conservative to stop the nasty one.

In the most dangerous supplement to keep this strategy working, the Liberals may even hand wedges to Poilievre to use against themselves in order to keep the Poilievre threat alive and the NDP vote obedient.

How this tension between Singh’s red flags and Carney’s polarization resolves will likely determine whether Carney will win and govern without check or with the NDP hedging him from the left in a minority parliament, something missing when Paul Martin gutted healthcare.