Upstart People’s Party had little impact on election results: Analysis

OTTAWA – Conservatives worried the upstart People’s Party of Canada would result in a vote-split on the right can rest a little easier.

A riding-by-riding analysis by The Canadian Press shows while the upstart People’s Party may have cost the Conservatives a handful of seats in Monday’s federal election, it wasn’t enough to affect the overall results.

While People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier in his concession speech on Monday suggested his party was not dead, his defeat, the party’s paltry election-night results and the high cost of running an election is likely to make any resurgence difficult.

Assuming every vote cast for the People’s Party went instead to the Conservatives – and that’s no sure thing – the Tories would have taken six additional seats that went to the Liberals, and another won by the New Democrats.

That shift would have brought the Conservatives total to 128 seats instead of 121.

Yet the Liberals would still have enough seats under this scenario to work with the NDP or Bloc Quebecois to keep their minority government alive in the coming session of Parliament.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2019.

The Canadian Press