Why some ‘frustrated’ NDP voters flipped to Conservatives in the election
As Liberal red and Conservative blue swept across the country in Canada’s federal election earlier this week, NDP orange dwindled.
While many voters who left the party turned to the Liberals, many others flipped to the Conservatives — with affordability being among the key factors.
In Monday’s federal election, the Liberals are projected to have won 168 seats — enough to form a minority government — and the Conservatives sit at 144.
But after winning 25 seats in the 2021 election, the NDP plummeted to just seven seats with their leader, Jagmeet Singh, among those who lost re-election.
And in ridings that flipped blue, union workers appear to have played a key role.
“What you’re seeing happening is this shift of people who are union workers who typically in the past might have gone NDP or Liberal,” said Terri Givens, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia.
“They’re frustrated with the last 10 years. They’re also looking for somebody who’s going to say the things they want to hear, and that’s something that Poilievre has really tried to do is to be the person who’s out there saying what people want to hear on things like housing and immigration and affordability.”
Windsor West is one such riding that saw a shift from the NDP to Conservative.
Despite outgoing MP Brian Masse having been elected since 2002, he came in third in that riding with 28 per cent of the vote, while the Liberals’ Richard Pollock garnered 31 per cent and Conservative MP-elect Harb Gill won with 39 per cent.
One pollster says it’s clear what drove that shift.
“If you’re a member of a working class union, particularly if you are a male member of a working-class union at least, they don’t feel that they have a place in that particular version of the New Democratic Party,” said Darrell Bricker, president of Ipsos Public Affairs.
Ipsos data provided to Global News shows of those who voted for the NDP in 2021, 19 per cent switched their vote to the Liberals this election, but five per cent went to the Conservatives, which could amount to more than 151,800 voters.
While five per cent might not seem like a lot, it could shift the balance when progressive votes split between the NDP and Liberals, and make the Conservatives more competitive, Bricker said.
“Normally, the strategy for the Conservative Party is hope that the Liberals and the NDP split the progressive vote and then the Conservatives unite on more of a western coalition with a suburban community coalition,” he said.
“And increasingly with a labour-based coalition, working-class type of coalition in industrial cities, that’s basically what they try to execute. And it seemed to me, just based on the results, that the Poilievre Conservatives were more effective doing that than the Ford Conservatives were.”
It wasn’t just Ontario, either: communities reliant on natural resources like the B.C. ridings of North Island-Powell River and Cowichan-Malahat-Langford also switched to the Conservatives, with the NDP only losing by a few percentage points.
Bricker said this is in part due to the Conservatives’ efforts to appeal to voters who were more focused on affordability.
“What we saw was working people who weren’t really motivated by the issue of what was going on with the United States, really focused more on the affordability question, which normally would be enough to keep them pinned down with the NDP,” Bricker said.
“This time around, they actually saw Poilievre and the Conservatives as being a viable option on that question.”
NDP strategist Kim Wright said the party’s policies were “solid” on issues like housing, but the political atmosphere changed voters.
“There are just sometimes political tsunami, as we like to say, that happen during certain times in campaigns,” said Wright, principal and founder of Wright Strategies.
She pointed to the 1993 federal election in which the NDP also lost official party status by falling to nine seats, with the Progressive Conservatives falling to two.
While she disagrees about policy being the driver for some NDP voters to Conservatives, there were still factors behind the switch, including strategic voting and comparisons to Liberals.
“We saw that certainly happening in Windsor,” she said. “The strategic voting plot and the strategic voting message not only depressed NDP voters, but then created other challenges with those blue-versus-orange switch hitters.”
One Conservative strategist argued that the orange-to-blue swap may also be from the NDP not drawing a clear enough contrast with the Liberals in their messaging.
“If you are given two versions of the same thing and one is orange and one is red, the benefit that the red team has as what I would argue the ‘natural governing party’ of Canada is: you’re going to get those progressive votes,” said Kate Harrison, vice-chair of Summa Strategies.
“So the NDP did not take the opportunity to draw contrast. I would say that they lost that opportunity the moment they signed into the supply and confidence agreement.”
That 2022 deal saw Singh agree to support the Liberals in a formal pact to keep them in power in exchange for passing several specific NDP policies.
With the NDP down to seven seats, and its worst result since the party’s creation, strategists and political experts say it could give the party time to rebuild.
Harrison noted the NDP form governments in B.C. and Manitoba, and opposition status in four provinces, as examples that the party’s support still exists.
But what the path forward looks like for the federal party is now the key question.
“This is not a party on life support if they make the decision that they want to govern and to do that I think they will have to look at that same group that the Conservatives just appealed to in order to try and get their core focus back,” Harrison said,
Wright said that provincial support for the NDP may be where the federal party can draw knowledge from.
“There is a lot to build upon and never underestimate feisty New Democrats in the House of Commons,” she said.
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