The Pollcast: What to watch for in Monday's byelections

The five federal byelections being held on Monday are not expected to be nail-biters. They are taking place in traditionally safe seats for the incumbent Conservatives and Liberals.

But there are still some things to watch for when the votes are counted.


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The byelections are being held to fill the seats vacated by Stéphane Dion (Saint-Laurent), Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa–Vanier), John McCallum (Markham–Thornhill), Jason Kenney (Calgary Midnapore) and Stephen Harper (Calgary Heritage).

In the 2015 election, the closest contest of these (Markham–Thornhill) was still decided by a margin of 23 points — so a change in the seat count is not expected.

But there are a few questions that the byelections can help answer. Will the Liberals be hurt by the controversies surrounding the nomination processes in Markham–Thornhill and Saint-Laurent? Has the Conservative leadership race helped attract new support to the party, or has it put voters off? And will the NDP do better than the last byelection that was held, when the party finished with just one per cent of the vote?

I'm joined by the National Post's David Akin to discuss.

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The Pollcast: The race for the NDP leadership is on

The four candidates for the NDP leadership debated for the first time on Sunday. The event kicked off a race that has been dormant for nearly a year. It won't come to a conclusion until October, when New Democrats decide who should replace Tom Mulcair as their leader.

The debate was a collegial affair. But did it provide any clues as to how this campaign might play out for the next seven months?

Unlike the Conservative leadership race, which has 14 candidates in the running, so far the NDP has a more manageable group to showcase: MPs Charlie Angus, Niki Ashton, Guy Caron and Peter Julian.

But that group may grow soon.

To help navigate the NDP leadership campaign, I'm joined again by NDP insiders Sally Housser of Navigator and Robin MacLachlan of Summa Strategies.

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The Pollcast: Is Jason Kenney's bid to unite the Alberta right about to begin?

If Jason Kenney is named the next leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives on March 18, it could mark the end of the once dominant Alberta PCs — and the beginning of a campaign that could result in a single Alberta Conservative Party taking on the governing New Democrats in 2019.

But while the chances of Kenney succeeding in achieving his short-term goal look good, his longer term aim of merging the PCs with Wildrose, a party led by Brian Jean, the leader of the Official Opposition in the Alberta legislature, will not be so simple.

To help break down the state of Alberta politics and what to expect in the coming months, I'm joined by Alberta pollster Janet Brown and Graham Thomson, columnist for the Edmonton Journal.

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The Pollcast: 3 months to go in the Conservative leadership race

Kevin O'Leary was not one of the 13 candidates participating in the Conservative Party's leadership debate in Edmonton Tuesday, due to what he called its "bad format."

Those who did participate, struggled to be noticed on the cluttered stage — and with less than three months to go before the ballots are counted, candidates need to get noticed.

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O'Leary's decision to avoid the debate might have been the quintessential front runner's move, but O'Leary is far from being a runaway favourite for the leadership. Maxime Bernier is also widely seen to be in a strong position, while candidates such as Andrew Scheer, Lisa Raitt, Kellie Leitch, Erin O'Toole and Michael Chong are trying to secure second choice support that could keep them in the running.

Calls for the other candidates in the race to step aside are beginning to grow.

But will they be heeded?

To help lay out where things stand at this point in the race, I'm joined again by Conservative insiders Chad Rogers of Crestview Strategy and Tim Powers of Summa Strategies.

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The Pollcast: Behind the scenes of the Conservative leadership race

With 14 candidates in the running, more than a year of campaigning and over a dozen debates to be held before the votes are finally counted on May 27, the Conservative leadership campaign poses unique challenges to journalists.

How do we balance coverage when there are so many candidates vying for attention? Which events are the pivotal ones in the race? And how do we gauge how the actual decision makers — expected to be no more than 150,000 Conservative party members that are eligible to vote — plan to cast their ballots?

The CBC's Catherine Cullen, who has been covering the leadership race since its beginning, joins me to discuss these challenges and what she is hearing and seeing behind the scenes on the campaign trail.

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The Pollcast: How electoral reform fell apart

During the last campaign and in the months that followed, the Liberals pledged that the 2015 election would be the last fought under the first-past-the-post electoral system.

That promise no longer stands. So what happened?

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After more than a year of speculation, debate, committee hearings, town halls and an online survey that was roundly panned by critics, the Liberals decided to abandon their promise to change the way Canadians vote.

What was behind the decision to renege on that campaign promise? Did electoral reform ever stand a chance of succeeding?

To break it down one last time, I'm joined by the CBC's Aaron Wherry and the Ottawa Citizen's Kady O'Malley. 

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The Pollcast: Does leadership race polling mean anything?

Kevin O'Leary is the favourite for the Conservative leadership, says one poll. Only he can defeat Justin Trudeau, says another. A majority of Canadians aren't familiar with most of the 14 contestants in the running, according to a third.

But do these polls tell us much about who will actually win the Conservative leadership race?

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While most leadership race polling takes all Canadians or supporters of a party as its sample, in the end the only people who will cast a ballot in the upcoming Conservative and NDP leadership votes are party members.

A small and dwindling portion of the population, members are difficult for pollsters to find — so the potential for pollsters to gauge a leadership race correctly is limited.

And it isn't much easier for those in the midst of a leadership campaign.

To discuss the challenges of polling a leadership race, as well as the role of the media in reporting on these polls, I'm joined by Paul Adams, associate professor of journalism at Carleton University and David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data.

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The Pollcast: Question period is back next week, so how can it be fixed?

After taking questions directly from Canadians in town halls across the country for two weeks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returns to Parliament Hill next week to face opposition questions in the House of Commons.

To some, the town halls seem to be a better way of holding the prime minister to account than the daily theatre of question period. So does what happens in the House of Commons — unwatched debates, pre-determined votes, unanswered questions and all the heckling — matter?

Peter Milliken was the Speaker of the House of Commons from 2001 to 2011. He joins me to discuss the importance of what happens in Canada's Parliament, the role of the Speaker and how decorum in the House might be improved by the current Speaker, Geoff Regan.

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The Pollcast: Kevin O'Leary, French debate shake up Conservative leadership race

The Conservative leadership campaign was shaken up on Wednesday when businessman and reality television personality Kevin O'Leary finally joined the race — just in time to miss Tuesday's French-language debate.

What impact will his candidacy have on a campaign in which none of the 13 other contestants have taken the mantle of the front runner?

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O'Leary faces many challenges. Name recognition, however, is not one of them — unlike some of his rivals. But O'Leary speaks little French and has just two months to sign up new members, while some of the other contestants, such as Maxime Bernier and Kellie Leitch, have already been at it for the better part of a year.

His lack of French was the reason he opted out of joining the campaign before the French-language debate. But apart from demonstrating the questionable linguistic skills of some of the contestants who participated, did the debate change the dynamics of the campaign in Quebec and outside of it?

To explain the significance of O'Leary's entry into the race, Conservative insiders Tim Powers of Summa Strategies and Chad Rogers of Crestview Strategy are back on this week's episode of the Pollcast.

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The Pollcast: What the cabinet shuffle means for electoral reform

This week's cabinet shuffle signals the Liberal government's reaction to the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump as the new U.S. president. But will it also mean a change in direction on the troubled electoral reform file?

Maryam Monsef, the beleaguered minister of democratic institutions, was shuffled out of her portfolio to become the new minister of status of women. Her replacement is Karina Gould, the former parliamentary secretary to the minister of international development.

Joining me to discuss what the shuffle means for the future of electoral reform is the CBC's Aaron Wherry.

Note: I mentioned at the end of the episode that we'd have a regular episode later this week. Unfortunately, we had a scheduling issue with our planned guest and we weren't able to cobble together a show in time. So, this will stand as this week's episode!

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The Pollcast on the year in politics: Leadership races, Trudeau and Trump

It was a year for change. A new government getting settled in Ottawa, a new president on the way in the United States, and two opposition parties searching for the next leaders to take on Justin Trudeau.

But if there was one lesson to take from 2016, it is that politics can be unpredictable.

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What were the successes of Trudeau's first full year in office? What were some of his failures? What has the Liberal government's new approach and the election of Donald Trump taught the media about what matters most to people outside of the political bubble in Ottawa or Washington, D.C.?

And what to make of the candidate-less NDP leadership race and the cavalcade of contestants in the running for the Conservative top job?

Joining me on the last Pollcast episode of 2016 are Susan Delacourt, columnist for the Toronto Star and iPolitics, and Althia Raj, the Ottawa Bureau Chief of The Huffington Post Canada.

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The Pollcast: 6 months to go before B.C. goes to the polls

The next provincial election in British Columbia is six short months away, and the campaigning has already unofficially begun.

Will British Columbians decide to re-elect Christy Clark's B.C. Liberals, a party that has been in power since 2001? Or will they instead install John Horgan's New Democrats, setting off a possible confrontation with the neighbouring NDP government in Alberta over pipelines?

And will pollsters get redemption after missing the call in 2013?

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The B.C. election will be held on May 9. Polls suggest the race is close. While the New Democrats were leading in the polls by about 16 points at this point in 2012, the latest survey puts the gap between the two parties at just one point.

Clark has a booming economy on her side, but after 15 years in power the B.C. Liberal government is long in the tooth. Horgan still has a low profile, and is challenged from the left by the B.C. Greens, who hold one seat in the legislature and have designs on more.

Richard Zussman, the CBC's legislative reporter in B.C., joins me to break down the coming election season.

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The Pollcast: Electoral reform, like math, is hard

Some of the government's most controversial files — pipelines, fighter jets, a new health accord with the provinces — could seem like child's play when compared to the minefield of electoral reform.

Justin Trudeau's campaign pledge to ensure the 2015 federal election was the last held under the first-past-the-post electoral system is looking like one of his most difficult promises to keep. Time is running out, the opposition is howling for a referendum on proportional representation and the government has yet to give any indication of what it plans to do.

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Last week, the special committee on electoral reform put forward its recommendations after spending months hearing expert testimony and speaking directly with Canadians. The report recommended the government develop a proportional representation system and put it to Canadians in a referendum.

But the report was not without its contradictions, with a supplemental report from the Liberals on the committee suggesting that implementing a new electoral system before the 2019 federal election was unrealistic and casting doubt on the necessity of a referendum.

Further complicating matters, the New Democrats and Greens also included a supplemental report of their own questioning the necessity of a referendum.

Maryam Monsef, the minister for democratic institutions, then criticized the committee for not doing its job and falsely claimed the report recommended putting a mathematical formula on the referendum ballot. She subsequently apologized for the comments.

Now the government has launched an online survey to gauge Canadians' views on electoral reform. But the opposition has made a mockery of the survey's questions and raised privacy concerns.

So, what now?

Joining me again to discuss the ups and downs of the electoral reform file are the CBC's Aaron Wherry and Kady O'Malley of the Ottawa Citizen.

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The Pollcast: 4 byelections and many questions in Quebec politics

Voters head to the polls in four provincial ridings in Quebec on Monday. The contests will mark the first test for Jean-François Lisée, the Parti Québécois's new leader.

Byelections will be held in the ridings of Arthabaska, Marie-Victorin, Saint-Jérôme and Verdun. The last riding, held by the Liberals on the island of Montreal, is not considered to be at play.

But the Parti Québécois will be looking to hold their ridings of Marie-Victorin and Saint-Jérôme, while the Coalition Avenir Québec will try to defend its turf in Arthabaska. The CAQ may also try to make a play for Saint-Jérôme, a seat that Pierre-Karl Péladeau won away from the CAQ in the 2014 provincial election.

A few surprises could be in store. Will the results prove to be bad news for Lisée, could they blunt the gains that François Legault's CAQ has recently made in the polls, or will they turn out to be a shot across the Liberal bow, as the government's satisfaction ratings reach new lows?

Joining me to discuss Quebec's politics on this week's episode of The Pollcast is pollster Christian Bourque, executive vice-president of Léger.

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The Pollcast: Conservative leadership race begins to heat up

The list of contestants in the running for the Conservative Party leadership has ballooned to 12. One official debate has already been held and the contours of the race are starting to become clearer.

So who is standing out from the pack with six months to go before members make their choice?

The dozen contestants include four MPs from Ontario (Michael Chong, Kellie Leitch, Erin O'Toole and Lisa Raitt), two from Quebec (Maxime Bernier and Steven Blaney), two from Saskatchewan (Andrew Scheer and Brad Trost) and one from Alberta (Deepak Obhrai), along with two former MPs (Chris Alexander and Andrew Saxton) and Manitoba physician Dan Lindsay. 

It makes for a crowded field and a need for contestants to carve out a niche of their own. Leitch has pushed her screening of immigrants for "anti-Canadian values," while Bernier has proposed a series of libertarian-style policies. Chong has put forward a carbon-pricing plan and Blaney has endorsed a ban on the niqab in the public service and attacked Bernier over his views on supply management. Scheer and O'Toole have each touted a long list of caucus endorsements, while Trost has claimed the socially conservative ground in the race.

Is any of this moving the needle among party members?

To break it down, Conservative insiders Tim Powers of Summa Strategies and Chad Rogers of Crestview Strategy are back with host Éric Grenier on this week's episode of the Pollcast.

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The Pollcast: Were the U.S. polls right, wrong - or somewhere in-between?

The results of the U.S. presidential vote came as a surprise to many. Almost every national poll gave Hillary Clinton a lead over Donald Trump and the polls also suggested she held the lead in enough states to win the election.

Instead, though Trump lost the popular vote, he won the electoral college and will be America's next president.

As mail-in votes continue to be counted in Democratic-friendly states, Clinton's edge over Trump in the popular vote will likely grow — and the national error in the polls will shrink. Still, at the state-level the error was significant enough to up-end expectations.

What did the polls miss? Was there a problem with how polls — and the uncertainty intrinsic to the science — were interpreted? And where does the media and the polling industry go from here?

Joining me on this week's episode of The Pollcast is pollster David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data.

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The Pollcast: Two seasoned Canadian campaigners on the U.S. election

The American election is now just days away and polls suggest the race is the closest it has been since Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton secured their respective parties' nominations in July.

Whatever the result, what will this campaign mean for the future of the Republicans, the Democrats and the United States?

Joining me on this week's episode of The Pollcast are Bob Rae, former premier of Ontario and past interim leader of the federal Liberal Party, and James Moore, former federal Conservative cabinet minister.

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The Pollcast: When will the NDP leadership race get going?

When Peter Julian, an MP from British Columbia, stepped down as NDP House leader to explore a bid for the party's leadership, he immediately became the front runner.

That's because no one else has expressed any interest in the job.

Since Tom Mulcair's leadership was rejected at the NDP's convention earlier this spring, the race to replace him has yet to start. Even Julian has not officially thrown his hat into the ring yet.

But more names can be put forward as potential candidates, including current MPs Niki Ashton, Charlie Angus and Guy Caron. Jagmeet Singh, an Ontario MPP, has also been mentioned as a potential contender.

The campaign will be a long one, as votes will be cast throughout October, 2017.

Joining me to discuss the lack of candidates in the race and the list of names that could soon emerge are NDP insiders Sally Housser of Navigator and Robin MacLachlan of Summa Strategies.

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The Pollcast: Has the Liberal government given up on electoral reform?

Has Justin Trudeau given up on electoral reform?

In a recent interview, the prime minister explained that the appetite for electoral reform has diminished now that his government has replaced Stephen Harper's. Some have seen this as an admission that the Liberals have lost interest in changing the way Canadians vote now that the system has put the Liberals in power.

But others see Trudeau as laying down the gauntlet to the opposition parties that are in favour of electoral reform: find consensus or it won't happen.

So where do things stand on the electoral reform issue? Can it still happen? And if the government is backing out, why did it start this process in the first place?

Joining me to discuss the issue are the CBC's Aaron Wherry and Kady O'Malley of the Ottawa Citizen.

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The Pollcast: Yukon goes to the polls

Yukoners will go to the polls on Nov. 7, the day before the presidential election south of the border — or, in the case of the Yukon, west of it.

But though the Yukon election is tiny by comparison, the result might be just as unpredictable.

The right-of-centre Yukon Party has governed the territory of about 37,000 people since 2002. Party leader Darrell Pasloski is asking for his second consecutive term as premier and his party's fourth. The New Democrats under Liz Hanson and the Liberals under Sandy Silver are both vying to replace Pasloski's government.

But polls in the territory are few and far between. The last one is eight months old, and a majority of Yukoners at the time said they were undecided.

So who has the inside track?

Joining me to discuss the territorial election is Chris Windeyer, editor of the Yukon News.

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