By Lori Turnbull

November 12, 2024

The byelection for Cloverdale-Langley City, a riding in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, has been called for December 16th. This is the fourth byelection this year and could be the fourth one the Liberals lose. But – and this might be a counterintuitive thing to say about any election – winning is not the only thing that matters. This byelection is a test of all three of the major political parties on the ballot in terms of their ground games, leaders, and platforms. No matter who wins or loses, they all need a relatively strong showing to prove their mettle in what will be a key battleground province.

Unlike Toronto St. Paul’s or Lasalle-Emard-Verdun, Cloverdale-Langley City is not a safe seat for the Liberals. Therefore, a loss here will not create the kind of shock waves that were felt earlier this year when these two ridings went Conservative and Bloc Quebecois respectively. The knives are already out for leader Justin Trudeau in terms of calls for him to step aside and a loss in Cloverdale-Langley City will not make this scenario demonstrably worse. However, a catastrophic loss would be a different story.

Created in 2012, the riding has gone back and forth between the Liberals and the Conservatives. But, given the Conservatives’ substantial lead in the polls, the riding is not considered a toss-up, as it normally would be. A respectable showing of second place with something like 30% of the popular vote would indicate that the Liberal base is still intact. Anything less would suggest a major problem and would likely put additional pressure on the prime minister to take his proverbial walk in the snow over the holidays.

Though the timing would be tight, it would give the Liberals enough runway to stand up a leadership convention and find someone new before going to election at the scheduled time of October 2025. This, of course, would likely require a prorogation of the House after the holidays so that the Liberals could sort themselves out without fear of losing a confidence vote with an interim leader, but such a thing is not without precedent. The Ontario Liberals did the same thing in 2012 to replace Dalton McGuinty with Kathleen Wynne.

But – and this might be a counterintuitive thing to say about any election – winning is not the only thing that matters.

The New Democrats are certainly not poised to win the Cloverdale-Langley City byelection but, in the last two elections, they’ve secured approximately 19% of the popular vote in the riding.  A similar or better result would indicate that the NDP can bring out their vote in British Columbia and perhaps could even move ahead of the Liberals with progressive voters and snag some of their 14 seats. However, anything less than what they normally get would be an embarrassment for Jagmeet Singh in his home province, where 13 of the party’s 24 MPs are elected.

According to virtually every pollster in the business, the Conservatives are set to put on a clinic in British Columbia in the next general election. They currently hold 13 seats there. Abacus Data says that 39% of committed voters tend to support the Conservatives compared to 27% for the NDP and 22% for the Liberals. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, if the Liberals secure in the range of 22% of the popular vote in the December byelection, this would indicate that the party is in deep trouble in the province and at risk of losing seats to both the Conservatives and the NDP.

For their part, the Conservatives will be looking not just for a win but a big one in order to ride their current momentum into 2025. The fact that the provincial Conservatives, a fringe party not long ago, won a whopping 44 seats in the British Columbia election last month bodes well for Pierre Poilievre.

The timing of the byelection is awkward because we are relatively close to the next general election so, no matter what the outcome, voters will be asked to come to the polls again in the near future. That combined with the fact that the holidays will be just around the corner could make for a low voter turnout, so the parties will need to work extra hard for every vote they can get. Poilievre and Singh will likely spend a lot of time in the riding, but the Liberals might keep Trudeau away. To be fair, they did that in Toronto St. Paul’s and Lasalle-Emard-Verdun and it didn’t help.

Though a holiday byelection might be easy to gloss over as people turn their attention to end-of-year events, it stands to be the most interesting byelection of the year. All of the parties need to show that they can compete, even if they don’t come first. With 42 seats in the balance, British Columbia holds the potential for significant gains and losses for each of the three major parties. The byelection will provide a sneak peak at how the general election might shake down in this province.

Policy Columnist Lori Turnbull is a professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University.