Chambers Wins: An Analysis
By John Swartz
It’s over, sort of. While the Liberals gained seats nationally, so did the Conservatives who picked up 25 more seats then they previously held. The conservatives blew a 20 point lead in polling they enjoyed in January to trailing by 3 to 5 % in the week leading up to the election. It looked like a stunning Conservative defeat would happen, but in the end they gained more voices on parliament Hill.
The divisiveness of national political rhetoric that split the country, was reflected in the outcome, effectively creating a two-party picture of the national political landscape instead of the multi-party look of the House of Commons due to the losses of all parties not Liberal or Conservative. The close result may mean the campaign for then next election begins today.
In Simcoe North Adam Chambers will return to Ottawa. The results are this:
| 31351 | Adam Chambers Conservatives | 48.6 % |
| 28650 | Ryan Rocca Liberals | 44.4 |
| 2439 | Melissa Lloyd NDP | 3.8 |
| 1216 | Ray Little Greens | 1.9 |
| 627 | Stephen Makk PPC | 1.0 |
| 188 | Russ Emo CHP | 0.3 |
“I’m obviously happy with the result. I was happy with the campaigning in Simcoe North. We didn’t have any issues like they did in other ridings in terms of controversy. We were very friendly with each other, there wasn’t really much (of a) kind of personal animosity. I was very happy with that and I think we should be proud the democratic process was a fair election that tended to focus almost solely on the issues.”
He said there was no special strategy to overcome what looked like Liberal a triumph nationally. Even Simcoe North didn’t appear to be the lock Conservatives usually enjoy. Early on election day Chambers said it could be a long night before the result in Simcoe North was sure, and he was right, it was toward midnight before the conservative camp was sure they had won.
“We ran kind of a regular campaign, which kind of revolved around talking to as many people as possible, door knocking. We did the regular things. I don’t think we did anything out of the ordinary,” Chambers said.
Chambers led all night, marginally at first, opening up his lead with each new refreshing of the tally as more polling stations reported results. His final total is 31,351 votes.
The total number of votes cast was up slightly to 64,471 from 63,902 in the last election in a riding where 97,000 voters reside.
Liberal candidate Ryan Rocca increased the Liberal vote total from 2021 by 9.318 votes to place second with 28,650 votes. This was at the expense of the NDP candidate, Melissa Lloyd, whose take reflected the defection of voters from the NDP who previous held about 15% of total votes in Simcoe North down to less than 5%, which corresponds to a 10% gain for Liberals in most ridings.
“There’s no question the Liberals pulled a lot of votes this time and we happened to pull more,” Chambers said. He noted the Conservatives got more total votes than any previous election.”
To grow the total raw votes (nationally) meant that people wanted change. Conservatives were selling change; economy, taxes, crime, and of course housing. We were selling change on those metrics. The Liberals said, ‘hey this is a Trump election, its tariffs, or Trump,’ and I think the results are a reflection of people who found themselves in either camp. The national narrative was being played out here.”
Ontario
The stronger performance of the Conservatives in Ontario than pre-election polls showed was a surprise. On April 27 the liberals were projected to win 82 seats in Ontario. They only won 69.
The suburban ridings of the GTA (Vaughan/Woodbridge – York Centre – Thornhill – Richmond Hill South – Markham/Unionville) all flipped from Liberal seats to Conservative and would have given the Liberals a majority government. Brampton West also flipped to the conservatives.
“The thing that stopped Mark Carney from getting a majority government was some of the gains we made in the GTA,” Chambers said.
The rest of southern and central Ontario went much as last time with Conservatives holding onto all seats previously held. Urban centers remained Liberal with the notable exception of Windsor area ridings which flipped to Conservatives. Northern Ontario, above a line between Ottawa and Lake Superior, which was all Liberal and NDP in 2021, completely flipped to Conservative this time.
“The conservative coalition is the party of middle class Canadians. It’s actually the Liberals who are the party of big business/elites. Look at the age splits, location, I think there’s some positives we can take,” Chambers said.
Nationally
The nationally the Liberals gained 11 seats to 168, the most of all parties. That allows the liberals to form the next government, a minority. They needed 172 seats for a majority and will have to rely on NDP MPs (7 seats) to side with them to continue governing.
The NDP lost 18 previously held seats including party leader Jugmeet Singh’s Burnaby Central seat. He placed third in his riding and resigned as party leader. The collapse of the NDP and defections of their voters made the difference in the outcome, but they will still hold the balance of power in the House of Commons.
The question rises, did NDP voters take the threats of the U.S. president to Canadian sovereignty, more seriously, thinking a three way split of parliamentary seats would not do, and throw their support to the Liberals in order to prevent what they saw as a weak response of the Conservatives to the American administration?
The conservatives ended up with 144 seats, a gain of 25 from the last parliament. It appears the Carleton seat flipped from Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy who has a 4,000 vote lead. Poilievre said he will continue to lead the party, which may or may not last longer than the first caucus meeting.
“Our party got more votes than it ever had in history, even higher than Harper in 2011. For those individuals to say we blew a 20 point lead, we’ve never polled higher (in this election cycle), realistically, than 44% and we’re at 41. I think you can find indicators for many narratives, but I do think there’s a bunch of positives. Did the Liberals get more votes? Yes. Did they get more seats? Yes. But we increased our seat count,” Chambers said.
The Conservative Party will do an election postmortem to examine what they did right, or wrong, and what the other parties did before deciding on their leadership.
“(The party will do) a healthy dose of self-reflection to dissect and understand what happened and what are the lessons learned and then we can talk about what’s the path from here,” Chambers said.
So Pierre Poilievre will likely remain leader for some time? (This could be days, weeks, months or years as political life is unpredictable.)
“The short answer is yes. We have to do a bunch of this work. Delivering an overall vote total across the country, obviously the result is not what we wanted, but I think there’s a bunch of positives we can look at.”
“We connected with young people. I’ve been involved in the party for 20 years, we have never had young people voting for the party and I would say that’s a very positive sign we can build on. We never had unions endorsing the party. I think there’s a bunch of things there we can be happy about, or proud of.”
“I think Pierre has earned the right to come up with a plan, to do the dissection, to report back to caucus, report back to the Canadian people and report back to the party and say here’s how I thought the campaign went, here’s how I thought we did, here’s where I thought we can do better, and here’s my plan on how we can do it, and then I think we can have a conversation.”
So what is next for Chambers who had the party post of shadow minister for the Canada Revenue Agency now the campaigning is over?
“I’m ready to go back to work as soon as possible. That will be up to the new prime minister, who I congratulate and I’ve worked with before.”
“I was happy with all of the campaigns did their campaigning in Simcoe North. There’s positives for all the parties here. There’s volunteers who work on campaigns in every party and we engaged so many more people in this campaign, all of the parties together. We should be thankful to all the volunteers and all the candidates for the work they do for democracy.”
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia) Main: Adam Chambers is the next Simcoe North MP representing the Conservative Party of Canada.
