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The 13 ridings that deprived the Liberals of winning a majority government in the last federal election are still too close to call and will be key battlegrounds in determining the outcome of the next election, say pollsters.

What stands out from the list is that the Liberals are still short of a majority, said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist for Nanos Research, in an interview with The Hill Times. And the ridings that were toss-ups in the last federal election for the Liberals, which they barely lost, most of them remain very, very tight races.

The 13 closest losses for the Liberals include seven in Ontario, three in Quebec and one each in Manitoba, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. Of these, the Conservatives won nine; the Bloc won three and the NDP one seat.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his security detail, pictured March 12, 2021, leaving the West Block for a media availability at the Sir John A. Macdonald building in Ottawa. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

If the Liberals had won 22,590 more votes in these 13 ridings depending on the margins in each, they could have won a majority. In the 338-member House, the winning party needs at least 170 seats to form a majority government.

In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus (Papineau, Que.) Liberals lost the popular vote to then Andrew Scheers (Regina-QuAppelle, Sask.) Conservatives, but still won more seats than their chief rivals.

Of the 18.1-million votes cast, according to Elections Canada, the Conservatives won 6,239,227 votes, but ended up with only 121 seats, while the Liberals won 6,018,728 votes and still carried 157 seats. The NDP won 2,903,722 votes garnering 39 seats; the Green Party won 1,189,607 votes that translated into three seats. The Bloc Qubcois, which fields candidates only in Quebec, won 1,387,030 votes and carried 32 seats.

If they [Liberals] had another, 22,000 to 23,000 votes in the right ridings in the right place [in the 13 ridings], they could have converted [their minority] into a majority in the House of Commons, even if they had lost the popular support federally on a national basis, said Mr. Nanos.

The lowest margin by which the Liberal lost one of the 13 ridings was 1.5 per cent or by 898 votes in the riding of Shefford, Que., while the highest margin was 5.2 per cent, or 2,417 votes inCharleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley, Man.

Pollster Nik Nanos of Nanos Research says that almost all 13 ridings that the Liberals lost in 2019 with closest margins are still too close to call. The Hill Times file photograph

Mr. Nanos said according to his Nanos Time Map Modelling, based on historic data and the latest polling data to make monthly projections on individual ridings, almost all ridings in the list of 13 are still too close to call.

Mr. Nanos said the ridings decided by small margins in an election mean the national campaigns were not good enough to push the candidate over the winning line. Also, he said, this means that local riding factors, including the get-out-the-vote efforts, canvassing, the quality of the candidates, and organizations fell short.

So if youre a party that wins the election, and, in a particular place, you lost by like two per cent or less, the first thing you look at is the local situation, said Mr. Nanos. Did the party have a strong candidate? Whats the state of organization at the local level to mobilize voters to get out and vote? So, a lot of times, theyre their local factors for the ridings that are on the margins.

In the next election, Mr. Nanos said the 13 ridings will be critical and a good starting point both for the winners and runners-up. The ridings could make the difference in deciding a minority or the majority government, he said.

Youre looking at these ridings as the ones that you want at the top of your priority list, as part of your strategy to win a majority mandate, because it requires the least amount of effort, said Mr. Nanos. And these ridings will also be the priorities for the candidates that won the ridings.

Based on his polling, Mr. Nanos said that there are 64 ridings 21 ridings that are within two per cent margin wins and 43 within two to seven per cent margin winsat this time that are too close to call.

Earl Washburn, a senior analyst with Ekos Research, said a characteristic that stands out in the list is that almost all 13 ridings are suburban. Going forward, he said, suburban ridings will be even more important than before in the outcome of any election because a significant number of millennials are moving to the suburbs for affordability reasons, as due to the global pandemic, they dont have to commute to work anymore.This means the residents of suburbs will be more progressive than before and he expects this trend to continue.

Itll be a continuation of the trends that weve seen in the last decade, suburbs will become more Liberal-leaning as we go along, said Mr. Washburn.Thats really what your story is going to be when the federal election comes around: which party is going to be able to win over those kinds of seats.

Mr. Washburn confirmed that his own polling confirms Mr. Nanos projections that almost all 13 ridings are still too close to call and nothing much has changed. One key factor, among others, that could tip the balance in favour of one party or the other, especially in smaller city suburban ridings, is the quality of the candidates, he said.

Suburban ridings are less candidate-based, they vote more on the party, said Mr. Washburn. But in some of these other ridings, like Trois-Rivires, or West Nova, Kenora, even Niagara Falls, theyre ridings that vote more on the candidate versus the party.

Pollster Greg Lyle of Innovative Research says that considering the setbacks Liberals had in 2019, hes not surprised the Liberals lost the 13 ridings with close margins. Photograph courtesy of Greg Lyle

Greg Lyle, president of Innovative Research, said that the list does not include any downtown ridings in any of the major urban centres and consists of suburban, rural and smaller cities. He said this shows that there are as many swing ridings inside the 905-region, well-known for swing ridings and having a major influence on election results, as there are outside of the 905. Considering the fact that the Liberals suffered a number of setbacks right before and during the last election campaign, he said, its not surprising that the Liberals lost these 13 ridings with close margins that could have pushed them into the majority territory.

That was not a great election for the Liberals, said Mr. Lyle. I mean, they came out of the SNC-Lavalin controversy and walked intothe blackface controversy. A lot of things did go wrong. So its not hard to see why they fell short.

For the next election, he said, both of the main parties will be targeting these 13 ridings as the incumbents would like to keep those ridings in their column while the Liberals would try to win them thinking they came very close to winning in the last election.

Former Liberal MP John Aldag represented the riding of Cloverdale-Langley City, B.C., from 2015 to 2019, but lost to Conservative Tamara Jansen by a margin of 2.5 per cent of the votes in 2019. Mr. Aldag said there were a number of factors that contributed to his loss, including the political controversies, negative campaign tactics by opposition parties, and bad weather on election day. He said he was recently nominated to run for the Liberals in the next election and will be redoubling his efforts to win the riding back.

Mr. Aldag said that the current projection for the riding, which is too close to call, does not worry him as polling numbers go up and down depending on the day. He pointed out that the Liberal Partys numbers went down in the last few weeks because of the interruption in the vaccine rollout but now that the rollout is returning back on track, the numbers are improving, he said.

Polls change from time to time, and Ive been watching it, said Mr. Aldag.

When we go into a campaign, whenever that is, [constituents] will be looking at the record of myself and the record of the person who defeated me and just letting voters choose who they would want to be the representative in Ottawa.

Former Liberal MP and cabinet minister Bob Nault who lost his riding in 2019 says he will not run in the next election. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Former Liberal MP Bob Nault, who represented the riding of Kenora, Ont., for six terms and lost the riding to Conservative MP Eric Melillo by a margin of four per cent in 2019, said hes not planning on running in the next election. As of last week, the Liberals had not nominated a candidate in the riding, which is the largest in landmass in the province but the smallest in population, and is home to 42 First Nations. The Liberals lost this riding byonly 1,110 votes and Mr. Nault said that one key factor that led to losing in 2019 was that it was a three-way race in which the division of the progressive vote led to the Conservatives winning this riding. Mr. Melillo won 34 per cent of the votes, the Liberals 30 per cent, the NDP 28.5, and the Greens 5.5 per cent. Mr. Nault said that if theres one thing that he could have done more in the last election was to put in more resources into his GOTV efforts, which is always a major challenge in a rural riding like Kenora where some regions are not accessible by road.

I door-knocked as much as I possibly could in the communities that you can door-knock, said Mr. Nault. But now, remember, the only way somebody can get to 24 communities out of those 42 First Nations, is you have to fly. Theres no road, right. Its a little bit more complicated.

The 13 Ridings That Denied Liberals A Majority in the 2019 Federal Election

Riding Name MP Name Vote Margin Percentage Margin

Shefford, Que. Bloc MP Andranne Larouche 898 1.5%

Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill, Ont. Conservative MP Leona Alleslev 1,060 2%

Kenora, Ont. Conservative MP Eric Melillo 1,110 4%

West Nova, N.S. Conservative MP Chris dEntremont 1,365 2.9%

Cloverdale-Langley City, B.C. Conservative MP Tamara Jansen 1,94 2.5%

Trois-Rivires, Que. Bloc MP Louise Charbonneau 1,466 2.4%

Flamborough-Glanbrook, Ont. Conservative MP David Sweet 1,652 2.6%

Windsor West, Ont. NDP MP Brian Masse 1,922 3.7%

Niagara Falls, Ont. Conservative MP Tony Baldinelli 2,061 3%

*Hastings-Lennox and Addington, Ont. Ind. MP Derek Sloan 2,247 4.3%

Northumberland-Peterborough South, Ont. Conservative MP Philip Lawrence 2,408 3.5%

Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley, Man. Conservative MP Marty Morantz 2,417 5.2%

Longueuil-Saint Hurbert, Que. Bloc MP Denis Trudel 2,590 4.3%

*Derek Sloan was elected as a Conservative MP in the 2019 election but now is sitting as an Independent MP.

Data compiled by The Hill Times deputy digital editor Samantha Wright Allen

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The 13 ridings that denied Liberals majority in 2019 still too close to call, say pollsters - The Hill Times