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Why the Conservatives aren't worried — at least not yet — about vote-splitting with Maxime Bernier's PPC

For one thing, it is not as simple as just assuming that a rise in PPC support is coming at the Conservative Party's expense

Sep 11, 2021September 11, 20215 minute read 368 Comments
People's Party of Canada supporters protest that leader Maxime Bernier was not invited to the two official federal election leaders debates held at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, September 9, 2021.
People's Party of Canada supporters protest that leader Maxime Bernier was not invited to the two official federal election leaders debates held at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, September 9, 2021. Photo by Patrick Doyle/Reuters

Here are two statements that may or may not be true, depending on who you ask.

One: Maxime Bernier's hard-right populist People's Party of Canada is seeing a surge of support in this election. Two: the rise of the PPC will cause vote-splitting on the right, and potentially cost the Conservative Party seats in close battleground ridings.

Over the past week, these claims have been debated publicly and behind the scenes by pollsters and political strategists. Some people believe both are true; some believe neither is true; and some believe the first claim is true but the second is not.

Almost everyone agrees that as the election campaign enters its final stretch, the race is incredibly tight between the Liberals and Conservatives and could still break either way. "It is dead even in terms of our seat modelling," one Conservative official told the National Post this week. "It is very, very close."

This also means that the question of whether the PPC will sap Conservative strength is a crucial one to answer.

At the moment, the polls do not agree on how popular the populists are. Recent reports by EKOS Research and Mainstreet have put the PPC in the range of eight to 11 per cent nationally. Other polls by Abacus Data, Leger, Angus Reid Institute, Nanos Research and Campaign Research have the PPC substantially lower, around three to five per cent.

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"From our polling, it's been pretty consistently moving between two and four per cent, that's their range," said Andrew Enns, executive vice-president at Leger — the firm whose final polls came closest to correctly calling the 2019 election.

"I do see pockets where there is vocal opposition to certain government matters related to the pandemic, and I see some of that opposition galvanizing around the PPC," Enns said. But he believes this is mostly happening in regions where the Conservatives ran up huge margins of victory, and thus won't be hurt by a few percentage points of vote share moving to the PPC.

Polling methodology may be playing a role in the conflicting numbers. Both EKOS and Mainstreet are using interactive voice response (IVR) — in other words, automated phone surveys — to conduct their polls, and are finding much higher PPC support.

Leger, Abacus and Angus Reid use online panels to conduct surveys, meaning that if PPC supporters are less likely to sign up and participate in these panels in the first place, their support might be undercounted. Nanos, meanwhile, uses live callers for its surveys and has found PPC support around five per cent.

All of this is subject to quite small sample sizes of PPC voters in these surveys, meaning it's difficult to weight the PPC accurately in the overall numbers.

In a podcast published Friday morning, Abacus Data CEO David Coletto told polling analyst Eric Grenier that he believes the PPC's real number may fall in the middle of the polling methodologies.

"Our online polls are probably underestimating (the PPC) support right now out there, and I think the IVR polls are probably overestimating it," Coletto said. "I think Nanos had 5.6 per cent this morning. That seems probably at a more reasonable place, because now you're talking to a live interviewer so that might take some of the response bias out of it."

People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier prepares to speak at a protest against COVID-19 restrictions, in Toronto on May 15, 2021.
People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier prepares to speak at a protest against COVID-19 restrictions, in Toronto on May 15, 2021. Photo by Chris Young/The Canadian Press/File

Even if the PPC are only at 4 or 5 per cent, however, that would still be a marked increase from the 1.6 per cent the party pulled in 2019. In general, it's safe to say the PPC are benefitting from the anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown movement to some extent, and thus expanding their support base.

But where exactly that support is drawing from is a whole other question — and it is not as simple as just assuming that a rise in PPC support is coming at the Conservative Party's expense.

For one thing, even the polls that have the PPC in double digits don't show the Conservatives suffering. In a poll published this week, EKOS had the PPC up to 11 per cent — but still had the Conservatives at 34 per cent, three points higher than the Liberals and broadly in line with other polls.

Nick Kouvalis, who frequently does polling for right-leaning parties, argues the PPC is primarily made up of an anti-establishment vote.

"I think the PPC is taking voters from all the parties," he said. "Wherever disaffected voters are, that's where they're getting them from."

Yes, some of that is coming from the Conservatives, Kouvalis said. But it's coming from all over the place, and it's not clear how many of these voters are committed enough to actually cast a ballot. Kouvalis' Campaign Research firm has the PPC at four per cent nationally, and he is deeply skeptical of the narrative that the PPC are surging beyond that.

The Conservative campaign team is also well aware of this narrative. From the outset of the election, they've been watching two fringe factors that could impact their vote: the cratering of Green Party support (including that the Greens aren't even fielding a candidate in 86 ridings this year), and the potential rise of the PPC vote.

"We've been keeping a very close eye on both, we've been looking very closely at those voters," said one Conservative, discussing internal data on condition they not be named.

At least for now, the PPC aren't expected to cost the Conservatives seats, the source said. "They're not at that point…The hardcore PPC people obviously hate us, and the run-of-the-mill guy who's attracted to the PPC is going to come home when there's a binary choice between Erin O'Toole or Justin Trudeau."

The Green Party collapse was potentially more worrisome in that it could boost the Liberal vote. But the Conservatives found that the second choice of Green Party voters ranges widely, with the NDP taking the largest portion of it. (This lines up with public polling data as well.)

In fact, the falling Green support (the party has lost about three to four percentage points since the 2019 election) is likely helping the PPC, the Conservative source said.

"A sizeable minority (of Green support) is going to the PPC," the source said. "When you probe a little bit more, they're just anti-establishment, f*** everybody, we just want to blow things up and whatever party best represents that is where we're going."

Ultimately, the much bigger impact on Conservative fortunes is expected to be a familiar issue: how strong the NDP vote will be. If the NDP continue polling above 20 per cent, it's trouble for the Liberals.

Even so, when the election is as close as this one appears to be, small changes in vote shares can make a big difference in key ridings. That's why the Conservatives can't ignore the PPC factor.

"There are a lot of swing seats, a lot of battleground seats, that are very, very, very close," one Conservative said.

• Email: bplatt@postmedia.com | Twitter: btaplatt

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What Does Ppc Stand for in Politics

Source: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/election-2021/will-a-rising-ppc-split-the-vote-on-the-right-why-the-conservatives-arent-worried-yet