The nasty split on the Right

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

In 1968, Trudeaumania returned the Liberals to power with their first majority mandate since the Louis St-Laurent years. While Atlantic Canada was impervious to it and strongly favoured the Conservatives, even the West got enthralled, to the point that four Liberals were elected in Alberta and two in Saskatchewan. But by the 1972 election, the honeymoon was long over. Through the 1970s, Atlantic Canada gradually drifted towards the Liberals, while the West returned to its pattern of overwhelmingly supporting the right-of-centre. After a series of policy measures seen as working against their economic interests, and on-going resentment about having both English and French appear on their cereal boxes, the West felt increasingly alienated from the rest of the country.

The decisive tipping point from which echoes are still heard in the 21st century was the imposition of the National Energy Program in 1980. However, lacking a viable right-of-centre alternative, the West begrudgingly continued to vote for the Progressive Conservatives, viewing them as the least bad option. That was until Preston Manning founded the Reform Party of Canada in late 1987. Running only 72 candidates from Manitoba westward in the 1988 elec­tion, the party didn't enjoy much success in an election that was dominated by a single issue: free trade with the United States. But in the following years, a long series of acrimonious (and failed) constitutional debates, and an increasing sense that Ontario and Québec dominated the political discourse at the expense of the West, brought the Reform Party to build a strong base for itself just in time for the 1993 election, and the split on the right of the Canadian political spectrum began in earnest. The infighting lasted a decade, and the Liberals profited from it by winning three majority governments in a row.

So let's begin with 1993, which saw the most consequential federal general election of the late 20th century. Two of the three main­stream parties collapsed. Before this election, the NDP held the most seats it had ever had in Parliament, but more importantly, the PCs had been the governming party with a comfortable majority. But both parties failed to win the 12 seats required to retain their official party status in the Commons.

Canada

35 → 1993 :: 25 Oct 1993 —  1 Jun 1997 — Majority  LIB  Summary Government Opposition Unproductive votes Party Votes Seats Party Votes Seats Party Votes # % % # # % % # # % Parliament: 35    Majority Majority=148  Ab.Maj.: +30  G.Maj.: +59 Population [1993]: 28,600,864 (est.) Eligible: 19,814,718  Particip.: 69.96% Votes: 13,862,010  Unproductive: 662,449 Seats: 295   1 seat = 0.34% ↳ Elec.Sys.:  FPTP: 295   ↳ By acclamation: 0 (0.00%) Plurality: Votes  LIB  Seats  LIB  Plurality: ↳ +3,088,707 (+22.60%) Plurality: ↳ Seats: +123 (+41.69%) Position2: Votes  REF  Seats  BQ  Candidacies: 2,156 (✓ 295)   m: 1,678 (✓ 242)   f: 478 (✓ 53)  LIB  295   BQ  75   REF  207   NDP  294   PC  295   IND  152   GRN  79   OTH  759   LIB 5,647,952 41.32 60.00 177 BQ REF NDP PC IND 1,846,024 2,559,245 939,575 2,186,422 20,343 13.51 18.72 6.87 16.00 0.15 18.31 17.63 3.05 0.68 0.34 54 52 9 2 1 IND GRN OTH REJ ABS 89,050 32,979 346,081 194,339 5,952,708 0.65 0.24 2.53 1.40 ——  OTH  →  NP  171   NLP  231   CHP  59   LBT  52   ABOL  80   CAN  56   CWC  59   ML  51  !!!  99 (33.56%)

Jean Chrétien's Liberals obviously performed better than any other party, but hidden behind their 30-seat majority is the fact that they obtained only 41.32% of the popular vote nationwide. That could hardly be called a massive love affair, although they were quick to counter that they had representation from coast to coast to coast. But while their sweep of all but one seat in Ontario certainly looked impressive, how much of it did they owe to vote splitting between the battered PCs and the fledging Reformers?

To find the answer, let's:

Thus we could conclude that there would have been 99 differences.

Indeed, vote splitting gave the Liberals 43 seats, with more than half (24) being in Ontario. And as sad as the New Democrats' per­for­mance was, they, too, benefitted from vote splitting in the West. They would have been reduced to only five seats if the right had been united, and one of them would NOT have been Svend Robinson's!

The grievance that Canadian conservatism had been dominated by the East at the expense of the West had gained credence by 1997. Conservative-minded spirits in the East viewed the Reform Party as too extreme, while those in the West viewed the Progressive Conservatives as too soft. There were indeed two solitudes within the conservative family, but when­ever one of them dared to suggest a rapprochement, they expected that it would be on their terms. The PCs wanted to believe that the spanking they received in 1993 was simply a result of the wear of power, and people would eventually return to the party of John A. But Reformers believed that they represented the real future of conservatism in Canada. History would reveal that the latter were right, but they would have to wait six more years before seeing an end to the split. In 1997, the civil war within this political family made its members blind to the vulnerability of the Liberals who had angered a lot of people in their first mandate.

Canada

36 → 1997 ::  2 Jun 1997 — 26 Nov 2000 — Majority  LIB  Summary Government Opposition Unproductive votes Party Votes Seats Party Votes Seats Party Votes # % % # # % % # # % Parliament: 36    Majority Majority=151  Ab.Maj.: +5  G.Maj.: +9 Population [1997]: 29,818,012 (est.) Eligible: 19,672,879  Particip.: 66.96% Votes: 13,172,106  Unproductive: 380,551 Seats: 301   1 seat = 0.33% ↳ Elec.Sys.:  FPTP: 301   ↳ By acclamation: 0 (0.00%) Plurality: Votes  LIB  Seats  LIB  Plurality: ↳ +2,481,197 (+19.11%) Plurality: ↳ Seats: +95 (+31.57%) Position2: Votes  REF  Seats  REF  Candidacies: 1,672 (✓ 301)   m: 1,262 (✓ 239)   f: 410 (✓ 62)  LIB  301   REF  227   BQ  75   NDP  301   PC  301   IND  76   GRN  79   OTH  312   LIB 4,994,277 38.46 51.50 155 REF BQ NDP PC IND 2,513,080 1,385,821 1,434,509 2,446,705 17,163 19.35 10.67 11.05 18.84 0.13 19.93 14.62 6.98 6.64 0.33 60 44 21 20 1 IND GRN OTH REJ ABS 43,596 55,583 95,140 186,232 6,500,773 0.34 0.43 0.73 1.41 —— Difference since the previous general election: +6 seats  OTH  →  NLP  136   CHP  53   ACT  58   ML  65  !!!  177 (58.80%)

On election night, as the results came in from Atlantic Canada, probably many were the Liberals who were clutching their pearls. They had swept up all but one of the region's 32 seats in 1993, the holdout being the one of two seats the PCs had managed to hold, namely Elsie Wayne's in Saint John. But in 1997, they exited the region with only 11 seats — five through vote splitting and two fewer than the PCs, but three more than — damn! — the NDP. It looked like it was going to be a long night!

Then encouraging signs emerged from Québec. The Bloc Québécois was still strong but dropped to 44 seats compared to their 52 in 1993, and the Liberals were winning the popular vote. The PCs also felt encouraged, picking up four seats in addition to their leader's. Moreover, "Fortress Ontario" was holding. But how much of that was due to vote splitting?

To find the answer, let's:

Thus we could conclude that there would have been 102 differences.

Fortress Ontario was partially a house of cards because, of the 38 seats the Liberals won through vote splitting, 28 were there. For its part, the NDP picked up four in this manner: two in Nova Scotia, one in Saskatchewan, and the Yukon seat. But what jumps out is that the conservative family would have formed a minority government, albeit an extremely weak one. Yet a "majority" government with only 38.46% of the popular vote? Talk about being lucky!

Come the 2000 general election, some movement had occurred since 1997, in that the Reformers, having much more representation in the Commons than the Progressive Conservatives, understood that they had to be the ones to take on the initiative of uniting the right. They had hoped that re­brand­ing themselves as the Canadian Alliance would attract right-of-centre sympathizers in the East, but former prime minister Joe Clark, who had returned to politics to lead the PCs, seemed to regard this attempt as presenting a wolf in sheep's clothing, and thus stayed the course with his party. Preston Manning had lost his bid to lead the Alliance, so instead Clark challenged Stockwell Day on his right and Jean Chrétien on his left. This con­tin­ued disunity suited the Liberal Party, making its own internal struggle to have Paul Martin replace Chrétien seem like a mere friendly dis­a­gree­ment. With the ink barely dry on the Alliance's certification papers, Chrétien called an early election, and the right remained confined to the opposition.

Canada

37 → 2000 :: 27 Nov 2000 — 27 Jun 2004 — Majority  LIB  Summary Government Opposition Unproductive votes Party Votes Seats Party Votes Seats Party Votes # % % # # % % # # % Parliament: 37    Majority Majority=151  Ab.Maj.: +22  G.Maj.: +43 Population [2000]: 30,594,030 (est.) Eligible: 21,211,657  Particip.: 61.27% Votes: 12,997,149  Unproductive: 429,654 Seats: 301   1 seat = 0.33% ↳ Elec.Sys.:  FPTP: 301   ↳ By acclamation: 0 (0.00%) Plurality: Votes  LIB  Seats  LIB  Plurality: ↳ +1,975,063 (+15.36%) Plurality: ↳ Seats: +106 (+35.21%) Position2: Votes  CA  Seats  CA  Candidacies: 1,808 (✓ 301)   m: 1,436 (✓ 239)   f: 372 (✓ 62)  LIB  301   CA  298   BQ  75   NDP  298   PC  291   GRN  111   OTH  348   IND  86   LIB 5,251,978 40.85 57.14 172 CA BQ NDP PC 3,276,915 1,377,727 1,093,853 1,567,022 25.49 10.72 8.51 12.19 21.93 12.62 4.32 3.99 66 38 13 12 GRN OTH IND REJ ABS 104,422 130,789 55,031 139,412 8,214,508 0.81 1.02 0.43 1.07 —— First general election that included the new territory of Nunavut.  PC  Last general election for the original Conservative Party of Canada.  CA  Only general election for this party (former Reform Party and future Conservative Party of Canada).  OTH  →  MP  73   ACT  70   NLP  69   ML  84   COMM  52  !!!  239 (79.40%)

The Liberals clearly did better than in 1997, garnering 2% more of the popular vote. As for Reform's rebranding as the Canadian Alliance, it utterly failed against Fortress Ontario, and the PCs lost some ground compared to '97 but at least managed to keep (barely) its official party status in the Commons. So what role did vote splitting play this time in handing the Liberals their third majority government?

To find the answer, let's:

Thus we could conclude that there would have been 102 differences.