We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Harris breathes new life into Democratic Party. Could someone do the same for Canada’s Liberals?
When President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he would not seek reelection, his decision, albeit a little late, was quickly applauded by Democrats as a service to his country — and party.
In the higher-minded rhetoric, Biden was cast as a modern Cincinnatus, putting duty above personal interest. Perhaps the writing was already on the wall, with Biden unlikely to resist the growing calls for him to step aside. But the immediate effects of his decision are the same either way: Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, an energetic change candidate, and the party has enjoyed an immediate reenergizing.
After Biden dropped out, the Dems raised an astonishing $150 million from big donors, as well as $81 million from small donors in a record-breaking 24 hours. As many joked on X, Harris outgrossed “Twisters” in her opening weekend. Of note, much of the money came from smaller individual donations of $200 or less — 888,000 of them, in fact.
The Harris campaign immediately rallied tens of thousands of volunteers, hitting 28,000 by Monday, many in battleground states. Scripps News reports that’s 100 times greater than the campaign average. A Zoom call with Black women who support Harris drew 44,000 participants — a staggering number that exceeded the company’s limit of 1,000 people and required it to move the group to a webinar.
The energy boost Democrats are enjoying may have Canadian Liberals wondering if a similar outcome might be possible for them. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insists he’s staying on as leader, readying to fight in the fall 2025 election despite being roughly 20 points behind Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. By the time the vote rolls around, Trudeau will have been in power for a decade.
Trudeau has been asked to step down by a few notable sources within his party, but the pressure to leave hasn’t risen to the level Biden faced. That could be because the election is still more than a year away, or because Poilievre doesn’t present the existential threat to democracy and rights that Dems say Trump poses. Liberals may also think that for all their misfortune, they could still turn things around and that Trudeau is their best bet for doing so. But things don’t look great.
Election projection site 338 Canada’s Philippe Fournier projects the Conservatives will win 212 seats compared to 74 for the Liberals. That’s based on a popular vote projection of 42% for Poilievre’s side compared to 24% for Trudeau’s, a spread that reflects federal polls that routinely find the Conservatives ahead by 14 to 20 points or more. Trudeau’s approval rating, meanwhile, has sunk to all-time lows.
The Conservatives are leading their rivals in fundraising by a lot. In the first three months of 2024, the party brought in just under CA$11 million from 51,000 donors, which was triple what the Liberals managed and more than all opposing federal parties combined. Political donations in Canada are a fraction of what they are in the US, but the Conservative numbers are high for the country. In 2023, Poilievre broke records with roughly 200,000 donors pledging over $35 million. The Liberals managed $15.6 million.
As bad as things look for the Liberals, however, there doesn’t seem to be much hope that anyone else could turn the Liberal campaign around like Harris looks poised to do in the US.
“There’s pretty good data to suggest that when incumbents are replaced by a successor [in Canada,]” says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group, “the successor has much lower chances of reelection than the original incumbent, especially when that original incumbent’s poll ratings are below a certain threshold where they’re doing pretty poorly.”
Perhaps the most infamous example was in 1993, after Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney stepped down amid plunging poll numbers and was replaced by Kim Campbell. The PCs lost that election to the Liberals, dropping from 156 seats to two.
The United Kingdom’s recent election is further evidence of the phenomenon. The unpopular Conservatives dropped to 121 seats from 365, losing control of the government to an ascendant Labour Party after roughly 14 years in power — and after cycling through five prime ministers.
Thompson says it’s unlikely there’s anyone in the Liberal Party who could replace Trudeau and turn the ship around. Those within Trudeau’s Cabinet are tied to his government and record, painted with the same brush. And those outside the party would face their own challenges, including time.
“Somebody would have to come in and distance themselves from the government here up to this point," he says, "and embrace a set of policies and a style which would have to be very different.”
“I don’t think that just putting a new coat of paint on the same sort of decrepit structure is going to change the fundamentals. You would really have to be a new government, and that’s going to be very hard for somebody who has been a member of that government up to this point who doesn’t have a long runway to prepare that pivot or transition.”
Thompson also points out that for external candidates, like former Bank of Canada and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney — with whom sources say Trudeau recently met in a bid to get him to join his government — there are few if any incentives to hop on a sinking ship. Moreover, no replacement candidate of Harris’ caliber seems ready, willing, and able to serve.
The numbers bear out that analysis. A recent Nanos poll found that while 19% of respondents chose Carney as the most appealing Liberal leader, followed by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland at 19%, and Trudeau himself at 9%, a quarter chose “None of the above” and another 20% chose “unsure.”
Harris may be able to continue to inject life into the Democratic Party. She may have a real shot at turning the Democrats' campaign around. But she still has to prove she can stand up to Trump on the national stage.
It doesn’t seem that anyone can — or wants to — do the same for the Liberals, which means Trudeau looks likely to stick around, go down with the ship, and leave the reinvigoration and rebuilding to a successor, who’ll find themselves not on the government side but in the opposition seats.
President Joe Biden addresses the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on July 24, 2024, about his decision to drop his Democratic presidential reelection bid.
Biden passes the torch to veep and voters
In his first address to the nation since ending his reelection bid last weekend, President Joe Biden framed his decision to bow out of the race as a sacrifice for the sake of American democracy.
“I revere this office but I love my country more,” he said in a historically minded address from the Oval Office on Wednesday night. “This task of perfecting our union is not about me … it’s about ‘we the people.’”
While calling for unity, he framed the November election as a pivotal choice for American voters between “hope or hate” and said that while he felt his experience and record justified another term, it was time to pass the torch to “a new generation of leaders.” Vice President Kamala Harris, he said, is “experienced, tough, and capable.”
To help shape her campaign, he pledged to focus his remaining months in office on key Democratic themes: protecting the right to abortion, reducing gun violence, accelerating the fight against climate change, brokering a cease-fire in Gaza, and reducing prescription drug prices.
He also reiterated his intention to reform the Supreme Court – with term limits for justices and an ethics code likely to be on the agenda.
Why Biden’s exit gives Democrats a fighting chance
I have little doubt that President Joe Biden’s belated but essential decision to bow out of the 2024 presidential election on Sunday will go down in history as a patriotic act.
Following his infamous debate performance on June 27, an overwhelming majority of Americans – including two-thirds of Democrats – came to the conclusion that the president was no longer physically and mentally fit to serve another four-year term in office. As things stood last Saturday, Donald Trump – fresh off a failed assassination attempt and a triumphant Republican convention – looked set to retake the White House and likely control both houses of Congress, with little an ailing Biden could do to turn things around.
By finally agreeing to step down when his term ends in January, Biden jolted the race 100 days out and gave his party a fighting chance to protect the country – and the world – from what he sees as the existential threat of an unrestrained Trump. Only he had the power to do that, and when push came to shove (and there was plenty of shoving), he met the moment. It was a fitting capstone to a lifetime of public service.
This is what leadership looks like. Contrary to what many are claiming, there was nothing inevitable about Biden’s decision to withdraw. Yes, he was under immense pressure from his party and the media to step down. Yes, all evidence pointed toward near-certain disaster in November if he stayed on. Yes, his legacy was on the line. And yet … he still had a choice. His exit was not preordained. No one forced his hand – in fact, no one could force his hand. It was entirely up to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden alone, to do the right thing. This couldn’t have been easy – if it was, everyone would do it. And we know for a fact that not everyone would’ve made the same choice – least of all Trump, a man who is constitutionally incapable of putting party and country above himself.
Did Biden come to his decision reluctantly, and only after weeks spent in anger and denial? No doubt. It’s hard enough for anyone to voluntarily give up power, but it’s even harder for a person with Biden’s life history who’s also coming to terms with his own mortality. Should he have withdrawn much sooner? Absolutely – I never thought he should have run for reelection in the first place, and I said so publicly many times. Will this delay end up costing Democrats the election? It’s possible, though we may never know.
But we shouldn’t forget the “better” in “better late than never.” What matters most is that he finally got there. Biden could’ve held on until the bitter end, consequences be damned. Instead, he chose to put America first. It was a decision worthy of a leader. Not a winner, but a leader. He deserves credit for it – as does the Democratic Party, which has shown itself to be a much healthier and more functional institution than anyone thought. Can anyone seriously imagine today’s GOP launching a coordinated pressure campaign to depose Trump, even though so many Republicans privately criticize him as unfit and believe him to be an electoral drag?
It gives me a little hope in a country where politicians don’t often do the right thing, and where political parties all too easily bend to the will of their leaders even when it becomes clear they serve only themselves.
Harris or bust. Shortly after announcing his withdrawal, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the nomination. The entire Democratic establishment – with the notable exception of Barack Obama – quickly followed suit and rallied behind her. Within 24 hours, Harris had been endorsed by every viable potential challenger as well as an overwhelming majority of Democratic governors, members of Congress, and state party chairs. By Monday evening, her campaign had raised $150 million from major donors and $81 million from small donors, and she had secured more than enough pledged delegates to become the party’s presumptive nominee.
Although an ostensibly competitive and democratically legitimate nomination process would have ultimately benefitted Democrats by ensuring the winner had what it takes to take on Trump and appeal to a broad swath of voters, the speed with which the party coalesced around Harris ensures next month’s convention in Chicago will be little more than a coronation ceremony. With only 54 delegates currently undecided and a minimum of 300 needed for any would-be nominee to compete, it’s impossible to imagine a challenger not named Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips emerging.
And that’s … not a disaster for the Democrats. Harris may not have been the best possible candidate Democrats could’ve put forward a year (or four) ago, but she was the most viable candidate to replace Biden, unite the party, and avoid a down-ballot bloodbath at this late stage.
What can be, unburdened by what has been? The question now is not whether there was a better Democratic candidate than Harris, but whether Harris can beat Trump. And on that front, the jury is still out. We simply don’t have enough recent polling data on this matchup yet to get a decent idea of where things stand today.
Here’s what we do know: This is an incredibly tough environment for an incumbent’s successor, with a majority of voters telling pollsters they are unhappy with the state of the country. And Harris is no Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, or Ronald Reagan – a generational talent with the charisma and vision to work political miracles. So she starts as the underdog accordingly. But off the bat, she has dramatically better odds than Biden because she solves the president’s biggest electability challenge: his age. And she has more upside than Trump, who remains a historically unpopular candidate with a hard ceiling of 45% of national support. By contrast, nearly 10% of Americans don’t even have an opinion of her yet, so she has room to define herself.
Can Harris break above Trump’s ceiling? She’s neither a proven national candidate nor a distinguished campaigner, having fizzled out before reaching the Iowa caucus during the 2020 presidential primaries. She has plenty of weaknesses for Republicans to exploit, including unpopular Biden administration policies (notably on the border) for which voters may blame her. And there’s a chance she could lose more older, white, and moderate working-class voters relative to Biden than she picks up young, nonwhite, and progressive ones.
But at 59, Harris is able to string together full sentences, give cogent stump speeches, campaign vigorously, and effectively deliver the abortion and democracy messages that worked well for Democrats in 2022. She can also play offense on Trump’s age – he’s 78 – and mental fitness, now an exclusively Republican liability that 50% of all voters found disqualifying in the former president nary a week ago.
How this will all net out in November, no one knows yet. Think about all that’s happened in the last two weeks, and imagine all that could change in the next 100 days. That’s an eternity in US politics – certainly longer than entire general election campaigns normally take in most other democracies.
All we can say for sure is Biden has given the Democrats a fighting chance and made the election both more competitive and more uncertain than it was a week ago.
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump is assisted by the Secret Service after gunfire rang out during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, PA, on July 13, 2024.
Electoral violence comes out of the shadows
The brazen assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump this weekend has pulled from the shadows an inevitable implication of the country’s polarization: the risk of political violence. In this consequential US election year, with questions of institutional legitimacy hanging in the air, misinformation flooding social media, and worries about the fitness of at least one of the candidates, we have now been alerted to how real the threat of violence is for the months ahead.
Elections offer voters an opportunity to express something fundamental about what they expect from their government. This is at least the theoretical underpinning for conducting elections. But in each election, losers also have a responsibility. At its core, democracy is a system in which groups lose elections. Votes are held, results are counted and respected, and turnovers take place. Losers consent to being losers in any given election cycle because they believe they will have the opportunity to be winners in the future.
If, however, the institutional framework does not allow losers to become winners later, the system’s legitimacy erodes. Losers may withdraw their consent and pursue alternative strategies to access power. Sometimes this leads to boycotting elections, but sometimes the strategy is the use of force.
When winners repeatedly win and losers repeatedly lose, or if winners are perceived to repeatedly win and losers to lose, ballots may be replaced by bullets. In fact, according to data from the National Elections Across Democracy and Autocracy Dataset, in more than 4,000 global elections between 1945 and 2020, just under 19% of them involved significant violence. Nearly one in five elections over the past 75 years turned violent. Already in this pivotal election year, we have seen violence in the run-up to elections in Senegal, Pakistan, South Africa, Mexico (at historic rates), and France.
In the US, grievances that have been stoked around the legitimacy of the system and how well it is serving voters, travel through the existing fault lines in American politics – particularly political party identification – activating them further. It is now a near-truism that there is little common ground between the two political sides, and the gap is widening.Survey data from 2022 and 2023 has repeatedly found that a wide swath of the US population believes the system is rigged, and as much as a quarter of those polled agreed that it may soon be time to take up arms against the government. In 2021, these realities culminated in the Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol. In 2024, this blueprint heightens the likelihood of civil unrest and violence across the US in the lead-up to and, depending on the outcome, after the election.
The name Thomas Matthew Crooks will now go down in the annals of US history alongside John Hinckley Jr. and Lee Harvey Oswald. While very little is currently known about what motivated Crooks’ attempt, lone-offender terrorism has become all too common. It speaks to a broader thread of radicalization that has emerged from US polarization – as political parties no longer speak to the same set of facts and individuals find themselves moving towards the extremes.
“Lone actors are difficult to detect and disrupt because of their lack of affiliation,” according to the2024 US Intelligence Community’s Annual Threat Assessment. “While these violent extremists tend to leverage simple attack methods, they can have devastating, outsized consequences.”
Yet it would be a mistake to focus too narrowly on Crooks’ character or political affiliation in attempting to make sense of the current US political climate. The polarization, the movement to the poles, the rising radicalization – are not just left (including ecological or animal-rights extremism, anarchists) or right (including racially or ethnically motivated extremism) problems. They are brewing on both sides of the aisle, especially as the center has become hollowed out.
When Trump was reported to have shouted “Fight” after being pierced by a bullet on Saturday, he was being heard. His message resonated with those who want to see him be returned to the White House in November, and those who just as desperately want to see him lose.
Security will be stepped up at rallies, this week’s Republican National Convention, August’s Democratic National Convention, and across all campaign stops. But as grievances grow, as fight talk and candidate fitness persist, so too will the shadow of political violence.
Lindsay Newman is the practice head of Global Macro, Geopolitics for Eurasia Group and is based in London. She writes the Views on America column for GZERO.
Former President Donald Trump, with his face bloodied by a shot that hit his right ear, raises his fist as he's rushed from a rally stage in Butler, PA.
Donald Trump survives assassination attempt. What happens next?
What happened: Shots rang out at a rally for Donald Trump on Saturday in Butler, PA. The former president – who was speaking at the podium – dropped to the ground and was surrounded by the Secret Service before standing with what appeared to be blood dripping from the right side of his face. He then pumped his fist into the air and was whisked away by his guards.
The Secret Service issued a statement Saturday evening indicating that the shooter aimed from atop a nearby rooftop and was “neutralized,” and that one spectator was killed while another two were critically injured. The FBI has identified the suspected shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old registered Republican from Bethel Park, PA.
A few hours after being rushed from the scene, Trump took to Truth Social to thank the Secret Service. His upper right ear was hit by a bullet, he explained. “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he wrote. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
The United States has not seen this level of political violence since the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981 in Washington, DC.
President Joe Biden was quick to respond to the violence, saying that he is “grateful to hear that [Trump is] safe and doing well” and that he’s “praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally, as we await further information.”
“There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it,” Biden emphasized.
The Biden campaign has reportedly suspended its campaign ads, and elected officials on both sides of the aisle have condemned the shooting, denouncing political violence and hoping for Trump’s recovery.
Eurasia Group and GZERO President Ian Bremmer says it’s essential that everyone across the American political spectrum denounce the violence. “Ideally, that is done in a bipartisan manner, that is done in Congress, in the House, and in the Senate. Not with individual posts, and comments, and tweets, but from the entirety of a joint session condemning it and working for peace,” he says. “That’s what the country needs.”
What to expect: Trump’s quick reaction and defiant fist pump will likely cement his image as a political martyr – and benefit his campaign in the runup to the November election. “That response, and being caught on tape,” says Bremmer, “is going to be a rally for his people for a long time.” All eyes will be on Trump’s appearance at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which gets underway on Monday.
It may also lead to a slew of conspiracy theories that the Democratic Party was responsible, while Democrats are likely to wonder whether it was staged by the Trump campaign to boost him in the polls.
While the motivation of the shooter remains unknown, political tensions have been rising in the United States in recent years. Nearly 25% of Americans agree that “patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” and 75% believe that American democracy is at risk in the 2024 presidential election.
Against that backdrop, and with political extremism and disinformation having been weaponized through the media landscape, especially social media, Bremmer says today’s attempt on Trump’s life means “we should be prepared for more violence.”
Who are the biggest losers from Biden’s collapsing candidacy?
Joe Biden thinks he’s digging in, but in reality, he’s only digging down. And as usual, the longer this goes on the worse it gets.
It’s now been two weeks since his cadaverous, confused performance at the presidential debate, and the crisis surrounding his candidacy isn’t just getting graver, it’s getting weirder.
After all, we are used to the other guy being the luminously spray-tanned leader who listens only to his family, attacks “elites,” distrusts the polls, and calls up cable news shows to rant about how he is the only person who can save America.
Biden and his staff are trying everything they can to shape the narrative that he’s still vigorous and viable – more interviews, another speech, another memo. At last night’s NATO press conference, he may have managed, for the time being, to dispel some of the biggest concerns about his neurological health.
But the polls are still clear. He is trailing even a deeply unpopular and criminally convicted Trump. A majority of Democrats now want Biden to step aside. The leaks about Democrat concern are turning into small floods. Some of those are from within the House, others from within the White House. Major donors and celebrity backers have begun pulling the plug.
Slowly, and then all at once, is how dams break. In this case, the sooner the better because there are some important people who have work to do to restore their credibility after all of this.
Chief among them, of course, is Biden himself. He may really believe he’s still that scrappy ol’ kid from Scranton, dusting himself off for one last comeback – but the game is up: If this is a film, it’s not “Rocky II,” it’s “Weekend at Bernie’s.”
I don’t pretend to know if another ticket – probably Kamala Harris with a well-chosen Veep – would be a lock to beat Donald Trump. But it seems clear that Biden’s already weak poll numbers have little room to grow.
Every gaffe, leak, or stumble is only downside, particularly now that doubts have been clearly planted. What seems clear, at a minimum, is that Biden is at his ceiling, while anyone else is probably not. A big difference in an election that is likely to be very tight.
A wise Biden can take the next few days to arrange a graceful – and gracious – exit from his candidacy that preserves his ability to help, rather than hinder, whoever succeeds him.
In a way, his unexpectedly strong showing at the NATO presser sets him up to exit with more dignity – on his terms, as an aging leader, judiciously stepping aside for the good of the country, rather than as a humiliated grandparent forced to hand over his keys. There is certainly a good speech to be written that enables him to do this. And we know he performs well with teleprompters.
The second big loser in all of this is the Democratic Party itself. For three years, we’ve been told two things: That if Trump wins, American democracy is over, and that Biden is vigorous, coherent, and ready to do the job of defending our republic.
But now we know the second thing is untrue – or at least appears untrue to enough voters that it’s a political fact. And that leaves us questioning whether the party really believes the first thing either.
In other words, you want me to believe that this could be the final fight for democracy, and you’re sending in a man visibly tired by the job. If he can’t do fundraisers later than 8 p.m., how’s he gonna work later than 2027?
Ushering Biden aside now would give Democrats a fresh surge of enthusiasm and interest – upstaging the RNC next week would be a media coup of Trumpian proportions.
But it would also be a chance to reset their narrative and credibility. Instead of trying to persuade unenthusiastic voters to simply shove an ailing man across the line in four months for the sake of “democracy,” they can lay out a vision of governing for the next four years. Above all, they could suddenly be the party that is not running one of the two men who most Americans now find “embarrassing.”
Lastly, “the media.” I use that term in quotations because the various print, cable, and social media sources do not constitute “a media.” But this episode has nevertheless damaged people’s already low trust in mainstream outlets.
On the one hand, Biden critics say mainstreamers have displayed at best an unseemly lack of curiosity about the president’s health, and at worst an inclination to actively protect him from scrutiny on this subject. It’s true that the Biden White House has been unusually opaque, but in principle that should have invited more scrutiny, not less. And clips of mainstream press shooting down questions about Biden’s gaffes as “right-wing” propaganda or “fake news” have not aged well.
Meanwhile, on the other side, some big Biden defenders now feel – in an odd, through-the-looking-glass moment – that “the media” is unfairly attacking their candidate, cynically turning public opinion against him without focusing enough on the other guy’s weaknesses. I find it odd to suggest that somehow the mainstream media hasn’t done enough to highlight Trump’s shortcomings, but these are strange times.
The good news, again, is that Biden, the Democrats, and the media all have a chance to reset, reflect, and refocus.
But with just a few months before the election, there isn’t much time. They have to stop digging down and start digging out. Over to you, Mr. President.
And now, over to you, readers! Should Biden step aside? Has the press done a bad job? Are Democrats in trouble? Let us know what you think here. Include your name and where you’re writing from, and we may run your response in an upcoming edition of our popular newsletter, GZERO Daily.U.S. President Joe Biden holds a press conference during NATO's 75th anniversary summit, in Washington, U.S., July 11, 2024.
Biden’s NATO presser moves things ... sideways
Joe Biden’s “big boy” press conference at the end of Thursday’s NATO summit was a high-stakes mixed bag.
The president, facing growing calls to drop his reelection bid over concerns about his age and poor polling, made a few social media-friendly gaffes (he called Kamala Harris his “Vice President Trump” after earlier introducing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “Putin”) but otherwise gave reasonably coherent answers to a range of domestic and foreign policy questions.
Crucially, he insisted repeatedly he would stay in the race, beat Donald Trump, and “finish the job” — but also left open a very thin sliver of possibility that he could step down if his staff showed him that winning was impossible. But “no poll shows that,” he said, contradicting several recent studies.
In all, the performance may dispel some of the gravest concerns about his neurological condition but will likely do little to assuage broader doubts about whether Biden can in fact defeat Trump in November or serve as president until 2028.
Expect further prominent Democrats to call for Biden to step down in the coming days. But the earliest moment at which he would signal any change in his thinking would probably be next week, when an announcement would perfectly upstage Trump’s coronation at the Republican National Convention.
What’s better than a poll? A projection. What’s that?
Between now and the fall of 2025, both the United States and Canada will hold general elections with the incumbents up against the odds. President Joe Biden is in a tough reelection campaign against former President Donald Trump. It doesn’t help that calls for Biden to step aside are mounting, casting doubt on his capacity to run and serve another four-year term.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is also facing calls to stand down — a former cabinet minister has said it’s time for him to go, as has a member of his caucus and at least three former Liberal MPs. Meanwhile, there are rumblings that some incumbents might bail on the next election, and there’s a significant chance that MPs, current or former, are keeping their true feelings to themselves, at least for now.
Trudeau’s Liberals trail their Conservative opponents by double digits, with some polls putting them 20 or more points behind.
With the drama of electoral uncertainty and breathless media coverage, these contests can sometimes look more like reality television than high-stakes democratic exercises. The horse race coverage of polls doesn’t help. Individual polls get reported as final words, definitive predictions of what will happen. But single polls are snapshots in time, subject to margins of error and the risk of being an outlier or of not telling the whole story.
But there’s a better way to predict election outcomes: projections. Made up of an aggregate of polls and complementary data, such as electoral history, current trends, and even economic data, projections give observers a broader sense of what’s going on in a race and what’s likely to happen. Of course, projections aren’t crystal balls — things can change, and campaigns can and do make a difference. But good data interpreted properly can give us a good sense of the likely result.
Canada and the US have various election projection resources, with 338 Canada, run by poll analyst Philippe Fournier, the mainstay up north, while Nate Silver’s 538 is a go-to in the US.
In the case of 338, Fournier is projecting bad news for Trudeau and Biden. As of this week, the site gives the Conservatives a greater than 99% chance of winning the most seats in the next Canadian election and a 99% chance of winning a majority government with a range of between 179 and 234 seats.
It also gives Trump a 69% chance of winning, taking 312 electoral college votes to Biden’s 226. That stands in stark contrast to 538, which, as of writing, features a simulation projecting Trump edging out Biden 271 to 267.
For his work on elections in Canada, Fournier’s methodology relies on weighted polls and draws on demographic data that includes age distribution, education level, population density, and immigration level riding-by-riding. Fournier notes that the data he draws on is available through the census and from Statistics Canada. His model for the US presidential race, however, is comparatively pared down, going state by state, drawing on polls and past results, and relying far less on demographic data.
The 2024 presidential election model at 538 uses polls, but it also adjusts its predictions by “correcting” poll bumps around convention time, connecting and correlating poll movements across states. “If President Joe Biden improves his standing in Nevada,” as 538’s G. Elliott Morris explains, “our forecast will also expect him to be polling better in states such as Arizona and New Mexico, which have similar demographics and are part of the same political region.”
Fournier and 338 have a solid record of correct predictions. In 13 general elections in Canada, federal and provincial, covering over 1,600 individual districts, 338 has managed to pick the winner 90% of the time, while 6% of their misses were within the margin of error. In an enterprise marked by the uncertainty of human behavior, and with countless data available, being accurate 9 out of 10 times is impressive. In the 2020 US election, Fournier correctly projected 48 of the 50 states.
Projections are powerful, but they aren’t oracles. In the context of the US presidential race, Noah Daponte-Smith, an analyst at Eurasia Group, says, “No forecast should be taken as definitive, especially five months out from the election.”
Daponte-Smith also points out that since different projection models rely on different methodologies and data — how they weight individual polls, which (if any) economic indicators they use, or how they manage polling error — their results may diverge from one another.
“These differing sets of assumptions mean that it is possible the forecasts move in opposite directions at some point in the race, potentially if polls are pointing in one direction while economic fundamentals are pointing in another,” he says.
The data, on aggregate, doesn’t tend to lie. But it has to be chosen, collected, and interpreted, and not all collection and interpretation is created equally. Fournier says that social media, right now, is “flooded with amateurs with spreadsheets.” Often, he says, election watchers will model a simple poll and draw conclusions, which he doesn’t do since there’s so much uncertainty from poll to poll.
“Using only one poll at the time, and projecting one poll at a time,” he says, “would be like rolling in the streets of Montreal or Ottawa without shock absorbers. You need shock absorbers. If a poll says, let's say, the Liberals are at 25 and the others say they’re at 20 a day later, they haven't lost five points in a day; they're somewhere between 22 and 23.”
By the time you aggregate polls — add the shock absorbers — you start to get a good picture of what’s likely to happen. The trick to understanding projections is to keep in mind that they’re probabilistic, which means they deal in probabilities, not certainties. As Fournier points out, “When you say that a candidate has a 90% chance to win, it sounds overwhelming. It sounds like, ‘Oh, it’s in the bag.’ But it also means that there’s a 10% chance that he doesn’t win, and 10% is 1 out of 10.”
A 1-in-10 chance might not sound like a lot, but imagine if you were told there’s a 10% chance that you’ll suddenly lose your life savings one day. Or drop dead. You’d quickly appreciate how significant small chances can be. Indeed, much of the US was reminded of that lesson in 2016 by watching the New York Times’ probability needle, which pointed to a probable Hillary Clinton win, until it didn’t.
While the Canadian election race isn’t close, the US contest is much closer. Fournier says that the large electoral vote lead he has projected for Trump is built on Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania historically voting as a bloc, stretching back to the 1988 presidential election, and currently sitting as a toss-up that Biden must win to have a chance.
“It’s still a very close race,” he says. Nonetheless, “The favorite right now, undoubtedly, is Trump with the numbers that we have.”