The Plight of the Liberal Party

For every increasing loss the Liberals suffered in every election from 2004 till 2011 there seems to be a recurring theme.

There is always an excuse that points any blame away from the fact that Liberal voters actually showed up on Election Day and voted for the Tories.

“Liberal voters just didn’t show up on election day”

In 2008, I simply had to give it to them. They just looked so sad and it was hard to argue with voter turn out being around 58.8%.

Yet when we get to 2011 the common cries I seem to hear are:

“Liberal voters didn’t show up or the NDP split our vote”

With voter turn out in 2011 higher then 2004, 2008, and even the pre-adjusted 2000 numbers its hard to argue that folks who have gone to the ballot box ever so loyally on behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada were not out on Election Day 2011.

Those Jean Chretien loyalists were out and voting, the question is who did they vote for?

The easiest answer for the Liberals to swallow is that they “loaned” their vote to the NDP, and at first glace the increase in support for the NDP in many ridings the Liberal routinely dominated in the past could hold some water.

However upon closer inspection, that appears to not be the case.

Mississauga/Brampton was perhaps the last Suburban Stronghold the Liberals had left walking into 2011 the Liberals had secured 7/8 of those ridings in 2008, and the one that they had lost they lost by a few hundred votes.

In 2011 all eight ridings went Conservative,

The trouble for the “NDP split the vote argument” is that in many of the these ridings the Conservatives won by margins higher then even the Liberals enjoyed during their routine domination of these ridings.

Mississauga-Erindale was retained with 29,793 votes;
This was the highest amount of support ever given to a winning candidate in that riding.

In 2004 Carolyn Parrish won it with 28,246 votes and that was the previous high.

Mississauga South that had been represented by Paul Szabo since 1993 was won by Stella Ambler who secured 22,991 votes and won by more then 4000 votes over Szabo .

To put this into perspective;
Ambler won the riding with more votes then Szabo had retained the riding in any of the 2008, 2006, 2000, 1997, and 1993 elections respectively (Szabo secured 24,628 votes in 2004)

Brampton West saw Kyle Seeback elected with the most votes in that ridings history, same for Brampton-Springdale.

In Bramalea-Gore-Malton the Liberals found themselves in third place behind the Tories and NDP; even though Former MP Gurbax Singh Malhi had been in power since 1993.

This doesn’t appear to be an issue of voters staying home, or the New Democrats “stealing” Liberal votes, but simply a situation where regions overwhelmingly decided to reject the Liberals.

Even looking into Toronto Proper this is a trend that seems to repeat.
Joe Volpe had been in power since 1988 this is a riding that had been Liberal since its creation in 1979 and it went Tory by more then 4000 votes.

It appears that former Liberal voters gave up on waiting for the “old” party to return.

Holding off on a leadership race till 2013 certainly doesn’t help the Liberals in their attempt to “re-brand” themselves.

Leader X will have less time, money, and incumbent MP’s then either Dion or Ignatieff did when they attempted to defeat the Conservatives.

It’s clear the Liberals need to rebuild a powerbase;
The question simply becomes given their plight? Where do they even begin?