I am not a big fan about reporting on polls, which makes me particularly aggrieved that we saw a few stories today about the latest Angus Reid poll that postulated a hypothetical “Western Canada Party” and how that would skew the vote for the established parties. Why a poll like this is especially irksome is because when you invite people to vote for a hypothetical that has no leader, or policies, or structure, or even raison d’être, then it simply becomes a repository for unicorns and pixie dust. You’re inviting people from four fairly disparate provinces to join forces, when you have separate grievances with the federal government, and you think you’d make a coherent political force out of it? Really? What exactly is anyone supposed to take from this message, other than people have vivid imaginations?
I would also consider voting for "The Party That Will Represent YOU," with no leader, candidates or policies to indicate anything concrete. https://t.co/y43DdFOs6Q
— David Reevely (@davidreevely) February 5, 2019
Of course, the idea is pretty ludicrous on its face – it could never be anything other than a protest party that couldn’t aspire to power by sheer mathematics – and it builds on some particular mythology around the Reform Party that I’m not sure necessarily reflects history. You have people like Deborah Grey who hears this and just sighs about the notion about splitting the Conservative party again (though there is plenty to debate about how we qualify the “reunification”). Should Andrew Scheer read this poll and take it as a warning that his Western base thinks he’s pandering too much to Quebec? We’ve already seen him embrace some outright tinfoil hattery because he’s been spooked by Maxime Bernier and losing those votes – will he crank up his faux-Saskatchewan credentials to eleven for the rest of the election to keep pretending that he’s one of them to bash away at the federal government? Will we hear big and small-c conservatives double down on the faux mythology of Alberta’s conservativism (and if you haven’t yet, please do read Jen Gerson’s exploration of that mythology here). “Ooh, but protest vote!” people will handwave. But BC and Alberta would be protesting against different things – and different parts of BC would have different protests at that. Grievance-mongering is not a path to sustainable politics. Polls like this just confuse issues and make people think that there are magic wands – or in this case, magical political parties that could somehow cure all of their woes by forcing Ottawa to take them seriously, somehow. But that’s not real life, and politics is hard work, which is not something that this kind of polling reflects.