A friend asked me what I thought about the candidates in the leadership race for the Conservative Party of Canada. I found I had more to say than was strictly reasonable to post in a Facebook comment. I posted it anyway – because I’m sometimes unreasonable – but I found I also wanted to record my thoughts in a more organized manner that’s easier to link to.
Right now, I think there are a few meaningful ways to split up the candidates. You can split them up based on what block of the party they represent.
The way I see it, you have:
- Michael Chong representing the wonkish Progressive Conservatives
- Maxine Bernier and Rick Peterson representing the wonkish libertarians
- Steven Blaney and Dr. Kellie Leitch with a more nativist message
- Lisa Raitt, Andrew Scheer, and Erin O'Toole running as unobjectionable compromise candidates
- Andrew Saxton and Chris Alexander running as clones of Steven Harper
- Pierre Lemieux and Brad Trost running as social conservatives
- Deepak Obhrai running against xenophobia
It might be possible to collapse these categories a bit; unobjectionable compromise candidates and Harper clones don’t have that much difference between them, for example. But I think I’m clustering based on salient differences in what the candidates are choosing to highlight, even when their policy positions or voting records are very similar.
I’ve also been clustering based on ability to win the thing. Here I think there are two clear groups: the haves, and the have-nots. In no particular order, the haves are: Chong, Bernier, Leitch, Raitt, Scheer, and O’Toole. The have-nots are everyone else. I’d give 20:1 odds against any of the have-nots winning.
There are a few things I can infer about the haves based on all the emails I’ve been getting from them.
Chong (polling at 4% in the first round) is hoping that he signed up enough people and is enough people’s second/third/nth choice to win. That currently feels pretty unlikely, but we’ll see. I’d bet on Chong at 12:1 odds.
Raitt (5%), O’Toole (11%), and Scheer (22%) are fighting viciously for the post of compromise candidate, with varying degrees of poll and debate success (Raitt has done much better in debates than her polling suggests). Given the bitter divisions in the party, I personally think the race will go to one of these three on the third or fourth ballot, but I’m low confidence here. More emails in the past few days have attacked Scheer, so between that and his poll numbers, he’s the one I think most likely to win. I’d bet on Scheer at 3:1 odds, O’Toole at 10:1 odds, and Raitt at 12:1 odds.
Bernier (31%) is the current front runner, but I personally expect him to have a lot of trouble picking up subsequent round votes, even with O’Leary’s endorsement. I really wish there was more polling of second and third round intentions in this thing. Without those data, I’m going to put Bernier as second most likely to win, with betting odds of 4:1. I would very quickly change my tune if I saw any evidence he had strong support in the latter rounds.
Leitch (8%) has her own very dedicated cadre of um, “very patriotic” (read: virulently xenophobic) supporters. She also has a lot of people who hate her. Is that >50% of the party? I’m not sure. From her last email (where she urged everyone to consider at least ranking her), I think her internal polling is showing that it isn’t. Reading between the lines, I think her campaign thinks she won’t pick up many 2nd or 3rd votes but that she might have staying power into the late rounds. It seems like her strategy is to win on the 7th, 8th, 9th, or even 10th ballot after everyone else is exhausted. For this reason, I’d recommend she be left entirely off the ballots of anyone who joined the party to pick good candidates. I’d even at this point recommend leaving Bernier on the ballot as a last-ditch Leitch stopper. I do think Leitch is suffering from losing all that free air time to O’Leary and from the loss of her campaign manager a few months ago. He seemed to be able to reliably get her in the news in a way that her new campaign manager has been unable to replicate. I’d take Leitch at 10:1 odds.
Given all this I’d order the candidates from most to least likely to win thusly: Scheer, Bernier, O’Toole, Leitch, Chong, Raitt.
I diverge slightly from the polls of first round intentions because:
- I think Bernier lacks second and third round support in a serious way. I especially expect him to suffer in rural ridings, where I'm given to understand supply management is popular.
- I have Raitt below Chong because I think she is the weakest member of her bloc. If someone else in her bloc isn't winning, I think it would signal a serious weakness in the bloc itself, such that she shouldn't be in a position to be beating anyone.
When it comes to my personal ballot, I plan to rank nine candidates in the following order: Chong, Raitt, O’Toole, Scheer, Obhrai, Bernier, Saxton, Alexander, Peterson. I’m ranking each candidate based on their respect for the environment, their votes on Bill C-279 (protecting gender identity) and the Woodworth Committee (redefining when life starts), any relevant experience they have in politics or adjacent fields, the tone they’ve struck, their overall level of wonkishness, how much policy information they have on their websites, and their level of bilingualism
I’ve sprinkled this post with betting odds. I’m willing to risk up to $100 on bets about have-not candidates winning and $100 on bets about the other candidates. The only requirements I have for betting are that you must have access to Interac or PayPal (for fund transfers) and you must be willing to post publicly that you’re betting with me (preferably including the odds you’d have put on the event we’re betting on). I’ll add details about any takers in the comments of this post.