I love the free advice Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are getting as they prepare for tonight’s debate in Philadelphia. Trump is being told to show restraint, be presidential, graciously offer to shake Harris’s hand, stick to policies, don’t mention conspiracies or vote-rigging — in other words, give up the habits of a lifetime and for 90 minutes adopt an entirely new personality, not an easy ask of anybody, let alone a 78-year-old. And Harris is being told to come up with a better explanation for moderating several key policy positions since her own standard-lefty presidential campaign flamed out in 2019, even before getting to the Iowa caucuses. Her Delphic assertion in her interview with Dana Bash that “My values haven’t changed” is being read as secret code to the loonier precincts of her party that once safely elected, she’ll come back home to them.
Commentators who regularly accuse Trump of lying shamelessly seem not to understand their debate advice is for him to … lie shamelessly — by pretending to be someone he isn’t — for as long as he can sustain it. And if that miracle did come to pass, who exactly would be fooled? Even when he was president, Trump wasn’t presidential. He’s unlikely to start now. As for Harris, she has sailed with the political wind throughout her career, selling herself first as a tough prosecutor, then as a progressive prosecutor. Reagan led. The Roosevelts led. Most other presidents ride the winds. A president who clung to the centre wherever it wandered wouldn’t be such a bad thing, though the rhetoric of presidential politics forbids admissions of followership.
Pennsylvania isn’t just the focus of tonight’s debate. It’s also the key “battleground state,” with the latest CBS-YouGov poll showing exactly a 50-50 split. Pity poor Pennsylvanians, who are being bombarded with TV ads. According to the Wall Street Journal last month, more than 1,000 political ads were playing every suppertime news hour in the state’s TV market. That was mid-August and the election isn’t until November.
The problem, of course, is the Electoral College, and its winner-take-all apportioning of votes for president (in 48 of the 50 states, that is). The constitution doesn’t require winner-take-all. But pretty soon after the country’s founding, states realized that was how to maximize their impact. Some of the founding fathers — Madison and Hamilton, yes, that Hamilton — realized what was happening and favoured constitutional amendments to force county-by-county choice of electors. But that didn’t happen. Ironically, the result of every state trying to maximize its influence with winner-take-all is that every four years only three or four states really matter.
It makes you wonder what politics would be like here if we had an electoral college. At the website 338Canada, they use national polls to estimate what the vote would be in every one of the country’s 338 ridings, given the local vote’s historical relationship to the national vote and a number of other variables. Right now, there are only 39 toss-up ridings, defined as one where no candidate has a 70 per cent or higher chance of being elected. The website gets this probability by running 1,000 simulations on the current vote split, assuming in each that the error breaks this or that way.
At the moment, there are just two such toss-up ridings in Atlantic Canada (out of 32 ridings in total). Ten ridings in Quebec are toss-ups (out of 78). In “vote-rich” Ontario, 20 out of 122 ridings are too close to call (of which three have “Brampton” in their name, e.g., Brampton-Centre, Brampton North-Caledon; two have “Hamilton” — no, not that Hamilton; and two have “Mississauga”). In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, which have 28 seats in total, just one, Winnipeg West, is currently a toss-up. Alberta has 37 seats but only one toss-up (Edmonton Griesbach). British Columbia, with 43 seats in total, has but three toss-ups. The country’s most contested region is the North, where two of the three ridings (Yukon and NWT) are toss-ups. (Nunavut is a safe NDP seat.)
In addition to regional tables, 338Canada has a handy interactive map that allows you to see which parties are leading were. Toss-up ridings are coloured pale. But except for the two toss-up territories and two toss-ups in northern Ontario, the map has hardly any visible pale parts. Which means the toss-ups are mainly in the big cities, where ridings are populous but geographically tiny. You have to zoom in close to see them.
Being a toss-up is key to becoming the focus of an electoral-college campaign. But the action is at the state level. If we had an electoral college, the focus would be on the toss-up provinces. At the moment there is only one: Quebec. 338Canada’s estimate of the popular vote here is Bloc Québécois 32 per cent, Liberals 27 per cent, Conservatives 24 per cent and NDP 11 per cent. Everywhere else in the country the Conservatives have a decisive lead.
The good news if Quebec were indeed our swing province is that we would get all the political advertising. You in the rest of the country would be spared it. The bad news is that Quebec’s concerns would dominate the election.
I realize some of you may be thinking: so what else is new?
Financial Post
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