Brown’s disqualification a boon for Poilievre, makes winning ‘very difficult’ for Charest: experts
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‘Unless the vast majority of Patrick Brown’s supporters vote, and then vote for Charest, then I think Poilievre is even in a stronger position than he was before’
Jean Charest, left, and Pierre Poilievre, middle, spar during a Conservative leadership candidates debate in Ottawa, May 5, 2022. Photo by Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press Article content
OTTAWA – With Patrick Brown’s disqualification from the Conservative leadership race but a “big chunk” of ballots bearing his name already sent to members, party officials spelled out on Wednesday how votes for Brown would be counted.
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According to Conservative Party of Canada Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) spokesperson Yaroslav Baran, the up to 675,000 party members set to vote on the new leader by Sept. 10 should not be surprised to see Brown’s name on a ballot in the coming weeks.
That’s because the party has already sent a ballot to upwards of 100,000 members already, and for the “sake of consistency”, every other ballot in the race (most of which have already been printed, but not yet sent to members) will also contain Brown’s name despite his disqualification Tuesday night.
“I can tell you that a big chunk of ballots have already been sent out,” Baran said. “Can you yank something from the mail after it’s been sent? Or do you want to send those people two ballots, and then they get confused, they fill out one, they don’t fill out the other, and then it creates more mess.”
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And to the members who have already received their ballot and voted for the Brampton mayor, he says that votes from Brown will not be counted and instead be attributed to the next person in the voter’s ranking.
For example, a voter who ranked Patrick Brown first and Jean Charest second will count as a first-rank vote for Charest, and so on and so forth for the following candidates on the ballot.
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Brampton councillors urge Brown not to seek another term as mayor LEOC member and CPC president Rob Batherson said that reprinting every single ballot to remove Patrick Brown’s name would be “extraordinarily expensive” and would prevent the party from completing the voting process by Sept. 10.
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“If we want to hit our deadline of a new leader elected by September 10, we have to use the ballots that have already been printed,” he said in an interview.
But that argument doesn’t convince some, including former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s director of communication Melanie Paradis.
“It costs a hell of a lot less to reprint ballots than it will to regain the trust of members who receive a ballot a month from now with the name of a (disqualified) candidate on it,” Paradis wrote on social media.
Patrick Brown’s ouster from the Conservative leadership race is almost certainly a boon for opponent Pierre Poilievre and makes winning “very difficult” for Jean Charest, experts say.
“I think it was already difficult for Jean Charest’s campaign, but now it’s become even harder,” said Daniel Béland, Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
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“Unless the vast majority of Patrick Brown’s supporters vote, and then vote for Charest, then I that that Poilievre is even in a stronger position than he was before Brown was ejected from the campaign.”
Tuesday night, LEOC sent a shockwave through the country by disqualifying major race contender Patrick Brown because of new and “serious allegations of wrongdoing” that may violate Canadian election law.
The disqualification could have serious impacts on who is now most likely to win the leadership race.
Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre remains the perceived frontrunner thanks to his claim of signing on over 300,000 party members to his campaign on a total of 675,000 party members contained in the party’s preliminary lists as of late June.
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But Brown claimed that he’d signed on roughly 150,000 members who will now likely have to choose a new leadership favourite… if they even vote at all.
Jean Charest, Scott Aitchison, Roman Baber and Leslyn Lewis’ campaign did not publish membership numbers by sign-up deadline last month.
Throughout the campaign and debates, Charest and Brown almost entirely avoided criticizing each other, instead focusing their fire on Poilievre.
According to Eric Grenier, a political analyst and founder of polling analysis website The Writ, it isn’t unprecedented for a leadership candidate to leave the race at the dawn of the vote, such as when Kevin O’Leary dropped out in 2017 and endorsed Maxime Bernier.
At the time, he says data showed that O’Leary supporters did in fact shift their vote over to Bernier (who still lost to Andrew Scheer).
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But unlike that case, this time Patrick Brown did not drop out of the race willingly, nor has he endorsed another candidate (though Grenier says there is essentially no chance that Brown’s supports shift over to Poilievre after the former spent the entire campaign attacking him).
That means it isn’t guaranteed that Brown’s supporters still go out to vote for Charest, which would be the end of his run for leader.
“We don’t really know if Patrick Brown supporters will be disillusioned by this decision and decide not to vote at all,” Grenier said. “Now that Charest doesn’t have a second, strong candidate to get support from, it’s hard to imagine how he wins.”
Charest’s camp insists that they still have a “path to victory” come Sept. 10.
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