Grumpy, indecisive voters left their mark on elections in 2019

Canadian voters were in an indecisive mood this past year, electing three minority governments in 2019.

They were also pretty grouchy. Two of those minority governments were elected as rebukes of the parties in power, robbing them of their majorities — and in two other provinces, sitting governments were booted from office.

To top it off, voters across the country had to choose from a range of unpopular and unpalatable options.

It was a busy year for electoral politics in Canada. In addition to October's federal vote, provincial elections were held in Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Alberta. Voters in the Northwest Territories went to the polls, too, and proved to be just as irritable as their neighbours to the south — defeating most of the incumbents who stood for re-election.

In short, it was another year in politics driven by sudden change. Governments have come and gone at a quick pace over the last few years — often because voters have taken chances on parties they hadn't supported in the past.

Minority governments are back in fashion

A new record was set in the spring when both Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador elected minority governments. That made them the third and fourth minority governments in the country, joining those elected in British Columbia in 2017 and New Brunswick in 2018.

Never before have so many legislatures in Canada been in a minority situation. The result of the federal election in October added a fifth minority government.

Dissatisfaction with sitting governments, coupled with the lack of a single alternative acceptable to enough voters, resulted in these hung parliaments. The governing Liberals were dropped to third party status in P.E.I., but a split between the Progressive Conservatives and Greens prevented either party from emerging with a majority of seats.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, Dwight Ball's unpopular Liberal government was reduced to a minority but not defeated, in part because of the unpopularity of Ches Crosbie, leader of the PCs.

And in the federal election, poor approval ratings for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contributed to his majority government being brought down to a minority. But even poorer ratings for Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer kept his party from capitalizing on the Liberals' weakness.

Voters disliked their options

In fact, this lack of enthusiasm for the options on the ballot was a common theme in this year's elections. The Trudeau-Scheer and Ball-Crosbie combinations were not the only cases of voters left to choose between two leaders they didn't like very much.

In April, Albertans booted out Rachel Notley's NDP government in favour of Jason Kenney's United Conservatives, though both leaders' net approval ratings by the end of the campaign were sub-zero. Now that the UCP is in office, things have not gotten much rosier for Kenney's party.

In September, most Manitobans voted for parties led by relatively unpopular leaders. Both Brian Pallister of the PCs and Wab Kinew of the NDP were more disliked than liked. Pallister's PCs were re-elected with another majority government — the only case of a party being given a second consecutive majority government this year — while Kinew was returned to the opposition benches.

Arguably, third parties did not take advantage of these situations as much as they could have. No other party won seats in Alberta's election, while the Manitoba Liberals were able to win only three of the 57 seats on offer. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the percentage of voters casting ballots for either the Liberals or the Tories was the same as it had been four years prior.

And in the federal election, the Liberals and Conservatives collectively won 278 seats — only five fewer than in 2015.

Liberals down, Tories up - but not always enough to matter

The Liberals took a hit in every election in 2019. Compared to the last time each province voted, the provincial Liberals dropped three points in Alberta, 11 in P.E.I. and 13 in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Manitoba Liberals held their share of the vote but dropped a seat, while the federal Liberals fell back in every region of the country — losing their majority government in the process.

Normally, that kind of bad news for Liberals is good news for Conservatives. That wasn't always the case in 2019, however.

The PCs actually dropped six percentage points in Manitoba and nearly a point in P.E.I. Those decreases didn't hurt much — the Manitoba PCs held their majority and the P.E.I. Tories were promoted to minority government status — but they hardly suggest a surge of enthusiasm. Similarly, the UCP only did three points better than the combined scores of its Wildrose and PC predecessors in Alberta's 2015 election.

Nationally, the Conservative vote share increased by 2.5 points. The PCs saw a significant boost in Newfoundland and Labrador — up 12.5 points. But in both cases, it wasn't enough to win the election.

Independents can win, populists not so much

Independent candidates typically face long odds — but three of them managed to win seats in 2019. Jody Wilson-Raybould was the most high-profile winner; she took the B.C. seat of Vancouver-Granville again after being removed from the Liberal caucus in the wake of the SNC-Lavalin affair.

Two others were elected in Newfoundland and Labrador — also former Liberals. Paul Lane and Eddie Joyce both handily re-secured their seats in the May provincial election as Independents.

But while these three were able to win without party affiliations, a series of populist parties failed to make much of an impact. The Freedom Conservative Party in Alberta, led by former UCP MLA Derek Fildebrandt, captured just 0.5 per cent of the vote in the provincial election. The upstart NL Alliance took just 2.4 per cent of the vote in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The biggest flop of 2019 has to be Maxime Bernier's People's Party. Despite running candidates in the vast majority of ridings and participating in two national leaders debates, Bernier's party captured only 1.6 per cent of the vote — too low to qualify for reimbursement of a portion of its election expenses. Bernier even lost his own seat of Beauce, a riding that had been in the family name for 26 of the last 35 years.

You can trust the polls (mostly)

It wouldn't be an election retrospective without a few words about the polls. The year went well for them — mostly.

The polls underestimated the size of the UCP's victory over the NDP in Alberta, but never suggested any party but the UCP would form government (the CBC's Alberta Poll Tracker gave the UCP a greater than 99 per cent chance of winning). The Manitoba PCs won by a slightly wider margin than the polls suggested, but their victory was hardly in doubt (the Manitoba Poll Tracker gave them a 95 per cent chance of winning). 

The polls in P.E.I. and Newfoundland and Labrador were less precise, over-estimating support for the Greens in the first case and for the PCs in the second. But the polls did capture the fact that both elections were close races.

Polling in the federal election was also broadly accurate.

The polls will be leaned on again in what could prove to be a busy year to come. Saskatchewan has an election in November and any number of Canada's five minority governments could fall.

Leadership races will be held to name the new leaders of the federal Conservative and Green parties, as well as the new provincial Liberal leaders in Ontario, Quebec and (probably) Prince Edward Island. The B.C. Greens and the Parti Québécois also will be naming new leaders.

And then there's also that big election taking place south of the border that will dominate the news in 2020. Judging by the tone of American politics lately, it's just the kind of thing to keep voters feeling irritable straight through to 2021.