On foreseeability

Warren Kinsella asks whether anybody managed to anticipate the NDP's gains in Quebec (which look to create the prospect of a strong ripple across Canada). And the answer is...yes, some of us did.

Not to say that I've made any strong predictions about what might happen. But the signs of a possible NDP surge have been readily visible for some time, even if the odds of a sea change actually coming to pass have never been clear.

Let's start after the 2008 election, when I noted this in discussing the NDP's path forward:

(T)he most obvious source of strength for the NDP is...the progressive Libs who for now have hooked onto a party which they see as more likely to take power. But the draw for those people has to be a strengthened NDP from other sources to persuade them that they don't have to accept playing second fiddle to the centre-right in order to win power.
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Perhaps most intriguing is the question of whether the Bloc could be largely brought on board. If leftish Bloc members have any interest in joining a Canada-wide government in the making in order to boost progressive efforts both inside and outside Quebec, then the balance of risks and rewards would look to be by far the most favourable.
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In sum, the NDP certainly should be building connections into all of the other "left" parties, and continuing to frame a message of unity similar to the Unite 4 Change concept which received some mention during the most recent campaign. But its efforts are almost certainly better directed toward winning individual supporters one by one, rather than looking to any formal merger as a short cut to the same final goal.

And it didn't take long for polling to show the NDP as the second choice of Bloc voters, hinting at the type of shift that's now taking place:

(B)oth the NDP and the Greens would seem to have ample room to make inroads among current Bloc supporters, with the NDP leading the way at 19%. And with so few current Bloc voters having any interest in either the Cons or the Libs, it would stand to reason that the solid second-choice numbers for the NDP might only be amplified if current "no second choice" voters find reason to start looking elsewhere - say, if Gilles Duceppe makes a long-anticipated departure which gets taken as a sign that the Bloc is on the decline.

Combined with the apparent fluidity between NDP/Lib/Green voters on the nominal left and the Libs' likely move to the right, that figures to open up plenty of opportunities for the NDP to build itself up by focusing its efforts on current Green and Bloc supporters in hopes of building up a 32% minority as a progressive alternative to both the Cons and Libs.

Meanwhile, the talk last year about the Cons and Libs both having reason to abandon any efforts in Quebec opened the door for the NDP to take its shot at winning over a broad swath of support in the province:

(T)he Libs' standing as the default federalist party in Quebec allowed them to build up both substantial riding-level war chests and incumbency advantages in dozens of seats. So their results from 2006 and 2008 can fairly easily be seen to reflect the most resources the party can possibly expect to put into the province - and the result was to come up somewhat short even at a time when less of the vote was being split with the NDP.

Which means that one can make a fairly strong argument that the Libs might have better luck directing their resources toward provinces where they might break new ground, rather than re-fighting the same battles they've lost over the past few election cycles.

And the same goes for the Cons, if perhaps to a lesser extent. In the absence of particularly strong riding-level operations, they poured in money from outside the province to support star candidates like Michael Fortier in Vaudreuil-Soulanges - only to see that effort fall flat as soon as the party became the Bloc's main target. And that largely explains their choice to direct efforts toward flipping Lib seats in B.C. and Ontario rather than launching another all-out attack on the Bloc.

All of which leaves the NDP as the only national party that can claim to be within striking distance of gains in Quebec without having yet tested the limits of its ability to win votes.

And finally, some modeling from earlier this year tested what might happen in the absence of a Bloc, and fits nicely into the projections we're now starting to see:

(In the absence of the Bloc,) the social democratic NDP would take the place of the social democratic Bloc Québécois in the province, winning 30 per cent of the vote in the next election. The Liberals, at 29 per cent, would not be far behind while the Conservatives would take 24 per cent of the vote. This would result in the NDP winning 34 seats in the province, most of them coming in francophone Quebec outside of the two main cities. The Liberals would win 23 seats, mostly in and around Montreal and in the Gaspé, while the Conservatives would take 17 seats, concentrated around Quebec City and the Saguenay region.

Using current projections for the rest of the country, this change in Quebec would boost the Tories to 146 seats nationally, still short of a majority government. The Liberals would win 104 seats. With more than half of their caucus from Quebec, the NDP would win 57 seats. It would give the Liberals and New Democrats the possibility of forming a majority coalition.

Of course, many a commentator has looked silly for predicting the end of the Bloc over the years. But it's worth noting that the Bloc looks to be the one opposition party whose share of votes and seats would lead to an almost certain change in government if distributed along current voting lines - and wondering whether a strong message about the need for progressives to work together inside and outside Quebec (regardless of the party structures involved) might serve to get things moving in that direction.

Again, none of the above is to say that anybody much anticipated the magnitude of the NDP's gains so far in the election campaign - to say nothing of those which may yet develop.

But the factors which have come together to give rise to the NDP's surge have been visible for quite some time for those of us who have looked past the conventional wisdom of perpetual Bloc dominance in Quebec. And there's plenty of reason for optimism that the second part of the overall NDP growth strategy - being a shift from the Libs to an NDP which is finally seen as a contender for government based on its Quebec gains - will similarly change expectations across Canada as election day approaches.