KINSELLA: Until the Liberals get a new leader, the Conservatives will be riding high

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Nothing can be predicted in politics.

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This advice is O'Neill's realism. That there was a lot of it. Thomas P. O'Neill was a Democrat and was Speaker of the House of Representatives for ten years during the Reagan and Bush years. He was also the guy who invented the line “all politics is local”. You've heard it.

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From my current remote perch, I decided to conduct an unscientific survey. No random sampling, no weighting of results. None of it.

I started with a safe guess: Pierre Poilevre's Conservative Party is poised to win the next federal general election. Big time. For most of this year, he has been ahead in the polls by double digits, sometimes by as much as 20 points. This is not just a victory. This is the Grit dammerung massacre.

So I polled conservatives who follow me on X, where conservatives are active. I asked them what would drive them to vote Conservative and gave them four options.

Two days later, 3,000 people responded. More voices are still coming. But for now, they're talking about why they're voting Conservative:

— Against Trudeau: 20%.
— Pro-Polyeur: 11%.
— Both versions, but the first is more: 42%.
— Both versions, but the second is more: 27%.

I've given people a week to respond, so things may move a bit. But since the “survey's” debut, the numbers have been pretty consistent. The overwhelming majority of the Conservative vote depends on Justin Trudeau still being there.

You don't need to be a political scientist to see the danger here. A large portion of Conservative support is not support for Pierre Poilevre, but opposition to Trudeau.

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I did a little X poll because that's what my gut told me to do, and my political opinion is always more accurate than any poll, 20 times out of 20. He rarely steers me astray.

So, if the “poll” and my thinking are correct, a very important question arises: What happens assuming Justin Trudeau makes it to the next election?

For Tory, it might be a little more dynamic. It could even be worse.

Here's why. In elections, most people are what we call low-information voters. They don't have much political time to spare. They might know something about the party's platform, and they might actually remember the local candidate's name (unlikely, but possible). But often the leader is the most important thing. Who the leader is – how he is – influences vote choice more than anything else.

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So wild things happen when parties change leaders. Check out our new story.

In 1993, I became a special assistant to Jean Chrétien and ran his election war room. When Kim Campbell became Tory leader that summer, she instantly became the most popular prime minister in Canadian history.

It's hard to believe considering we've reduced his party to two seats. But after the Tory leadership race was over, Campbell was ahead of us in all the Grits polls – by double digits in July 1993.

His mistake was that he called the election immediately before people knew him. This, ironically, was also John Turner's mistake (I helped run his youth campaign and I know).

Turner became Liberal leader in the hot summer of 1984. He was immediately ahead in the polls—again in several polls, by as much as ten points. He wanted to call the election immediately – my future boss Chrétien advised him to wait, let the Canadians get to know him. He didn't wait. Brian Mulroney killed him.

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Another example: Michael Ignatiev. For a short time, I also counseled him. I quit when he brutally fired all my friends, the people who made him a leader. A real leader does not behave like this.

But before that, when he won the Liberal leadership in Vancouver with 97% of the vote, Ignatiev was also consistently ahead. Every poll in the late spring and early summer of 2009 showed Ignatieff ahead of Stephen Harper. Not by double digits, but enough to win over a potential crowd. He and his new team had a terrific campaign, finishing third.

Same with Justin Trudeau (sorry Tory). After he became Liberal leader in 2013, the polls went his way. And so on. and so on.

Moral of the story: All bets are off when you get a new leader. It's not called the honeymoon for nothing, folks.

If Trudeau goes (and he will) and there is (and will be) a new Liberal leader, things will change.

Trust me (and Tip O'Neill): Predictions are really dangerous in politics.

Don't think it's in the bag, Team Tory. It is not.

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