If a federal election were to happen today, there’s a chance Guelph would be voting primarily Conservative – a first since 1993.
Guelph elected Bill Winegard as the Conservative MP in 1988 and then again in 1993. But Liberals have reigned since 1997 when Brenda Chamberlain became Guelph’s MP, followed by Frank Valeriote and current MP Lloyd Longfield.
According to independent media and polling website 338canada.com, if an election were to happen today, the Conservative’s have a 52 per cent chance of winning the Guelph riding, and are tied with the liberals for the popular vote.
It’s a trend that can be seen across the country, largely due to dwindling popularity of the in-power Liberal Party and the current Conservative strategy, said Julie Simmons, a political science professor at the University of Guelph.
We're seeing a rise in the popularity overall for the conservatives,” she said.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is embracing a populist strategy that’s striking a chord with voters in Guelph and beyond who might traditionally be on the left side of the spectrum, she said.
“He doesn't want to come across as necessarily an intellectual or somebody who's there for big business, in the same way that Doug Ford doesn't. For example, she pointed to his YouTube channel, where he posts “basic” videos of himself “in everyday mode, or at least that’s what he wants to portray.”
These types of messages might be resonating with working class Canadians, she said.
The other compounding factor is that the Liberals have been in power while we’re experiencing mass inflation, which has lowered its popularity.
“We haven’t had an experience with inflation to this degree in our lifetimes,” she said. “This is a kind of fiscal tightening that we have not experienced as a generation before," she said.
“It's natural to point to the person who's in government as having mismanaged something to get us to that period, even if the inflation is something that's not specific to Canada, and it's something that we're experiencing in other industrialized countries as well."
Still, Simmons said she was “surprised” by the poll, especially for Guelph, where the Liberal Party consistently scores considerably ahead of the Conservative Party.
In 2021, the Liberals received 42.1 per cent of the Guelph vote, while Conservatives received only 24.07 per cent.
“But (the poll) does suggest that people are grappling with rising interest rates and their personal finances, and that feeling of lack of control over what their future is going to look like is affecting voters and their perceptions of the government in power.”
There are still two years until the next federal election though, and anything can happen.
“Two years is a long time in politics,” she said.
