2019: Amazing year for political observers

2019 was a great year to be a political observer. Here is my top 10 list. Let me know what I missed in the comments.

10. Two Spanish elections

Spain returned a massive plurality for the socialists at the April elections, making a clear winner for the first time in a country that has had several inclusive elections over the past several years... or not.

The socialists had been governing very tenuously since a mid-parliament take over last year. The election saw them increase their share of seats in parliament from 85 to 123 in a considerable sign of personal redemption for Pedro Sánchez, the on-again, off-again leader of the socialists who has been controversial and was previously sacked for refusing to back the formation of a right-of-centre government following the previous elections.  With nearly double the seats of the runner up conservative party, only the socialists could realistically form a government.

However, Sánchez stubbornly refused to form a coalition with a more radical socialist party, and instead insisted on facing parliament alone, assuming left-wing parties would back him.  He was wrong and new elections were required in November.  The two socialist parties lost 10 seats between them, with a far-right populist party benefiting most leaping from fifth place to third and doubling its seats.  Sánchez will now agree to form a coalition with his more radical fellow socialists but has a less clear path to forming a government.  Abstentions from regional parties on confidence matters may be the only way to avoid a third trip to the polls.

9. Minority governments in NL and PEI for the first time

Minority governments are definitely on the rise in Canada, with four provinces now having them, including three (NB, NL and PE) who for all intents and purposes have them for the first time. This proved to be a harbinger for the federal election as well (see below).

8. Three-peat Israeli election

Israel had an election this spring in which the conservative coalition led by Bibi Netanyahu won 60 out of 120 seats. So close, yet so far. Unable to secure the support of the secular-yet-far-right-and-xenophobic party of Avigdor Lieberman, a former close ally of Netanyahu, a government could not be formed and for the first time Israel held its second election in one calendar year in September. Ironically, this indecision has allowed Netanyahu by default to become the country's longest serving prime minister during the inter-election caretaker period.

At the September election, Netanyahu's opponents gained ground, but Lieberman remained the kingmaker.  A grand coalition seemed possible for a time, but the main opposition Blue and White party refused to serve in a government in which the soon-to-be-indicted Netanyahu was prime minister, and Netanyahu and his Likud party refused to form a government with out him in the driver's seat.

The third election in 11 months is set for March 2.

7. EU election

EU parliamentary elections this spring were historic in that for the first time ever, the two largest groups in parliament - the conservatives and socialists - do not have a combined majority and will have to expand their power sharing agreement with smaller parties. This has already resulted in the preferred choices of both groups for EU commission president being rejected in favour of compromise candidate Ursula von der Leyen, a conservative and close ally of Angela Merkel. The election was a setback for the too big parties but a victory for moderates and the left, rather than for the far-right as had been predicted.

6. Greek snap election

Alex Tsipras' Syriza party had a meteoric rise in Greek politics. The beginning of the end of that meteoric rise began with a poor showing in the EU elections earlier this year.  Though this had no direct impact on Tsipras' standing, he called a snap election banking on recreating the magic of left-wing populist patriotism vs. the big, bad corporatists of Europe who hold Greece's large debt. Instead, the right-of-centre New Democracy party won an outright majority and returned to power.

5. Italian change of government

The 2018 Italian election had a peculiar outcome.  A right-wing populist party came first and a left-wing populist party came second.  These parties had little in common with each other, except that they hated the establishment.  They formed a grand coalition government anyway.  After a year in office, the EU elections triggered political change here as well, but of a very different sort than we saw in Greece.  The right-wing populist League party quit the government in which they represented the majority of seats hoping to trigger an election after doing very, very well in European elections.  Instead, their former coalition partners formed a new government with their much more ideological simpatico former rivals, the socialist Democratic Party.

4. Australian election

Australia has had six prime ministers since 2010 and was all set to add their seventh. Bill Shorten's Labor Party led in literally every single opinion poll for 17 months leading into the May election. In the end, he came up short (pardon the pun) and Scott Morrison (known in the press as ScoMo) won a third majority government for the conservative Liberal-National coalition. Things may get tougher for Morrison now that he has an opponent with an even better nickname: the new Labour leader is Anthony Albanese, better known as Albo.

3. Canadian federal election

Over the course of a few months we went from a sure Trudeau majority, to a sure Scheer majority, to a who-knows toss up. In my opinion, a second Liberal majority was always a tall order when you consider despite the "Trudeaumania" of 2015, the Liberal majority was only 12 and there were unprecedentedly large Liberal victories in the Atlantic and Manitoba where loss of seats was almost always guaranteed. (Not to mention the four seats in Alberta.)

The post-election conventional wisdom is one of the best examples of how expectations are how politics are measured, rather than actual results.  Trudeau was the big "winner" despite losing a majority many said was impossible to lose not that long ago.  Pre-election expectations were 130-145 Liberals seats, which they beat and therefore "won".  Andrew Scheer, despite winning more seats than any previous opposition leader, winning the popular vote and robbing Trudeau of his majority, was the "loser" because he foolishly predicted victory for himself and raised expectations.  The NDP had their worst showing since the year 2000, but because Singh did well in the debates and saved the furniture he "won" too.  The only real winner was probably the Bloc Quebecois which has likely restored itself as a major force in national politics for the next few cycles at least.

2. Democratic primary

My man Joe Biden seems to be surviving despite many expectations to the contrary.  However, he faces troubled waters ahead.  Both Iowa and New Hampshire are shaky for Biden.  The current polling averages have Biden third in a tight four-way race with Pete Buttigieg at 22%, Bernie Sanders at 20%, Biden at 18%, and Elizabeth Warren at 16%.  Over in New Hamphire, the polling average reads: Sanders 19%, Buttigieg 18%, Biden 14%, Warren 13%.

If Joe Biden loses both Iowa and New Hampshire, it is difficult to see how he recovers.  Previous frontrunners have thought they could do so, but I must have missed the inaugurations of presidents Rudy Giuliani and Jeb Bush.

Biden's hope rests in a repeat of the John Kerry playbook in 2004.  Kerry was running third-to-forth in Iowa and pulled an upset victory, that catapulted to a runaway victory in New Hampshire and an easy skate to the nomination.

I say there are three potential paths to the Democratic nomination in the USA:

a) the establishment front runner, who wins all or most states: see Mondale 1984, Gore 2000, and to some extent Clinton 2016;
b) the acceptable moderate: see Dukakis 1988, Clinton 1992;
c) the outsider who wins Iowa: see Carter 1976, Obama 2008.

Buttigieg and Sanders clearly fit into the Carter/Obama mold.  Warren, in relative contrast to Sanders, may fit into the Dukasis/Clinton mold.   Biden is of course the typical Mondale/Gore type frontrunner.

If Biden wins Iowa, he wins the nomination.  If Biden loses both Iowa and New Hampshire, he is done.  If any of the above wins both Iowa and New Hamphire, they will be very difficult to stop.  If there is a split decision between Iowa and New Hampshire, we may not know the nominee for many months.

1. Brexit

What a shit show. After years of negotiation and several waves of cabinet resignations along the way, Theresa May presented her deal to leave the EU. Parliament rejected it and May was widely criticized. But then parliament voted on eight (yes 8!) alternatives and parliament rejected all of them also. When May proposed something that might pass parliament - her deal with the option to consider whether to vote on whether to have a second referendum (yes it was that tenuous) - she faced a full-on cabinet revolt and resigned.

The UK has its third prime minister in four years. I wrote more about May's demise on Facebook some months ago. Boris' rise was controversial and he is a divisive figure described by some as Britain's Trump. He won the leadership in part, allegedly, by shenanigans when he apparently lent support to a less palatable rival who won a place in the runoff by two votes. Boris would probably have won anyway, but this move made it a sure thing.

Boris went on to govern awkwardly in a minority situation, proroguing parliament and being overrulled by the courts.

However, the Remainers in parliament could not get out of their own way and stop or replace Johnson and instead aided him and circumventing fixed-date election law to call a snap poll.  The moderate Lib Dems who campaigned as a die-hard remain option felt they had the most to gain and instead were crushed horribly, as was Labour.  Now Johnson leads the largest Conservative majority since 1987 and probably the most conservative government in the modern history of the UK.  All thanks to the strong help of parties of the left and centre.  Great job, guys!

Federal election prediction

After pouring over polls, past election results and my gut instincts, I have predicted the results of Monday's election as follows:

Liberal 136
Conservative 134
NDP 33
BQ 32
Green 2
PPC 1

This was a surprise to me when I ran up the national tally, though it compares closely to what some of the poll aggretor / seat model types are finding.  In particular, I was surprised with the Greens.  With an uneducated guess, I would have put them in the high single digits, however the NDP surge in BC is likely very detrimental to the Greens and indeed the only sub-provincial polling breakdown I could find has the Greens running third on Vancouver Island which is where they would have been likely to win the most seats.

I arrived at my prediction with the following assumptions:

• near sweep of the BC Interior by the Conservatives
• three way (Lib-Con-NDP) split of the BC lower mainland
• three way (NDP-Con-Grn) split of Vancouver Island
• Conservative sweep of Alberta
• status quo (10 Con - 3 NDP - 1 Lib) in Saskatchewan
• Liberals lose 4 of their 7 seats in Manitoba with 2 each going to the Conservatives and NDP
• Liberal sweep of 416 area
• Liberal / Conservative split of 8 seats each in Eastern Ontario (including Ottawa)
• Conservative sweep of central Ontario
• rough split of 905 area with slight advantage to Liberals and NDP holding 3 seats
• more or less the status quo in both southwestern and northern Ontario
• Quebec results appear similar in ways to 2015 and to 2000.  In 2000, the Liberals and BQ both got similar popular votes in the range of 40% and split the seats about evenly; Conservatives are polling consistently at the same level they were in Quebec in 2015.  So I assume the Conservatives again win 12 seats, the NDP and the PPC each take 1 seat and the remaining 64 seats are split evenly at 32 each for the Liberals and BQ
• in the Atlantic, I have the Liberals holding onto 20 seats, with 9 going Conservative and 3 to the NDP
• in the North, I really just took a shot in the dark based on past trends and said Liberals 2, NDP 1.

In this scenario a Liberal+NDP+Green combination would be 171 seats to 167 for all others; a plausible arrangement which would avoid the Liberal nightmare of needing the NDP, Greens and the BQ to clinch the magic number.  But there is virtually no margin for error here.  I suspect we will not know the form of our government for several days or perhaps weeks after the election as some negotiations will likely be required, and indeed whether or not a certain grouping of parties has 170 seats may only be determined by a recount.  This could be somewhat moot if the Liberals try to govern on a issue-by-issue basis.

Who Am I?

I have been interested in politics for as long as I can remember. 

Growing up in rural western New Brunswick, we had three television channels; two of which were American. I watched the CBS evening news with Dan Rather almost every night, with its much more youth-friendly time slot than CBC's The National. One of my earliest memories was bragging to my father that I knew the identity of both the president and vice-president of the United States. His response was to ask me who was the prime minister of Canada. I was embarrassed that I had no idea and soon remedied that!

Other early political memories include watching the 1990 Liberal leadership convention on rabbit ears with my grandfather; on New Year's Eve, 1990-91, celebrating the privilege of being allowed to stay up as late as I wanted by choosing to watch the Edmonton news at 1 a.m. (by then we had 12 channels, including Edmonton's CITV) to see the reaction to the GST taking effect in sales-tax-free Alberta, my mother hounding her boyfriend to vote in the 1992 Charlottetown referendum, and so forth. Another memory was flying from Montreal to St-Leonard as an unaccompanied minor and sitting next to my local MP and federal cabinet minister Bernard Valcourt and chatting about federal politics the whole time. 

My interest in politics transcends borders and I closely follow politics all over the world. I find it as interesting and enjoyable as sports are to many. It is a source of great pride for me that many who know me rely on me as a virtual encyclopedia of political trivia, and I enjoying sharing random facts with others to encourage discussion and awareness of politics and public policy. 

My first direct involvement in politics was during the 1995 provincial election at the age of 14, when I put up signs for a close friend's father who was the local CoR candidate. (In hindsight, I don't care much for their politics, but in fairness, Kevin was running for them mostly because he had been unsuccessful in seeking the PC nomination.) In 1998, Wes McLean, my classmate, future MLA and current deputy chief of staff to Blaine Higgs, recruited me to join the PC Party of Canada to support Joe Clark for leader, a man I still admire. That same year, I helped my stepmother get elected to village council with the most votes entitling her to the position of deputy mayor. 

At my ideological core I am likely a "Red Tory", but as Red Toryism is mostly dead in Canada federally and in New Brunswick, I gradually drifted to the Liberals. A key turning point for me was Bernard Lord's decision to accept shadow tolls (where all New Brunswick share the toll costs equally, including for non-New Brunswick motorists) as an alternative to consumer tolls (where the user pays). I remained a federal Tory however, and volunteered on a local campaign in 2000, casting my first ever vote for the PC Party of Canada. By coincidence, a hall mate in university was the son of Liberal MLA Eric Allaby, and my regular anti-Bernard Lord rants resulted in an introduction to provincial Liberal politics where I soon became active and was elected to the Young Liberal executive. 

My preference would be to be a non-partisan political strategist for hire, but given that trust and loyalty are the main currencies in our politics “partying-hopping” is not a legitimate option for someone who wants to work in politics. So it was that I gradually drifted to involvement with the federal Liberals as well, more of necessity than desire. With the eventual folding of the PCs into the Canadian Alliance, however, I likely would have ended up there anyway. 

I admire and tend to root for for underdogs, and as such have a long history of backing worthy but losing candidates in leadership races, including Allan Rock and Sheila Copps, Paul Duffie, and Gerard Kennedy. 

This blog got its start in 2006 while I was living in Ottawa. Unable to work on the snap election in New Brunswick that fall, I decided to become involved by writing about it. I wrote anonymously largely because many political bloggers popping up at that time were anonymous and it seemed a good way to be able to comment completely honestly on the campaigns of friends and acquaintances without feeling the need to temper my comments to protect the feelings of others. 

In 2008, I moved back to New Brunswick to take a non-partisan position in the civil service, with plans to leave the practice politics behind so as to provide a secure income and start a family. Instead I became the youngest communications director (28) and youngest chief of staff (33) to a New Brunswick premier. Whoops!

When I was asked to join Shawn Graham's office in 2009, the Liberals were ahead in the polls, the NB Power sale had not yet been announced publicly (nor privately to me), and New Brunswick had not had a one-term government in modern times. Nonetheless, I entered the office on secondment until prior to the set election date, with a plan to return to the civil service, which I did. 

My political activity lapsed out of necessity as my return to the civil service under a new PC government was decidedly unpleasant. After being shuffled around to less and less meaningful roles, I was finally given the option to "voluntarily" accept a demotion and pay cut, or lose my job. With financial security for my family firmly in mind, I chose the former and did my best to keep my nose clean. I blogged (and tweeted) often to satisfy my interest in politics, but that became risky, as some of those who had figured out my identity threatened to "out" me if they didn't like my writings. This included a well-known journalist who took offense to me saying he was being unfair to PC cabinet ministers!

The blog never really recovered from that period, and I largely took a pass on the 2012 provincial and 2013 federal leaderships. I did vote, of course, and keeping with my stellar record, supported losing candidates (rather than Gallant or Trudeau) in both contests. 

I have remained semi-active on Twitter, but in keeping with my long-standing practice of not commenting anonymously on political jurisdictions in which I'm on the payroll of a politician, I focused my attention mostly on international politics from 2009-10 and 2015-18. 

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, or so goes the idiom. Having opposed both Shawn Graham and Brian Gallant for Liberal leader, both gave me the biggest jobs I have ever had in politics (although not right away)!

In the case of Gallant, there were a series of "right place at the right time" events. My wife and I had our second child in May 2014, and I had long planned to take parental leave. The timing of this leave aligned with the upcoming provincial election campaign. Although, I had no political relationship with Gallant, two former political associates asked me to help with the Liberal platform; this led to my authorship thereof. I also convinced one of Gallant's inner circle of the merit of a transition plan, and was mandated to quietly write one after completing the platform. This led to a staff position supporting the transition team, then to one leading the strategic program review which I had conceived as part of the platform process and laid the groundwork for in the transition process. Despite this, Gallant and I had not grown close, and I was far from the inner circle. 

However, by summer 2015, the government had been in power for eight months and still did not have a permanent chief of staff. I was consulted and offered numerous names. My name was floated once and I retorted "I don't think the 32-year-old premier needs a 33-year-old chief of staff!" However, with many other more seasoned names having been passed over or having declined the job, I was asked if my name could be put forward. I agreed, though with little expectation of success. I was cruising the Mactaquac head pond for a friend's bachelor party when I got a call to come in to meet the premier, and had to be taken ashore to do so!

Thereafter, Gallant and I became close political associates out of necessity and similar work styles. I have always believed that the number one quality in a chief of staff is to have good chemistry with the political principal, and worked hard to ensure that was so. I told him in order to be effective, I would need the privilege to enter his office, close the door and offer my frank opinion on any matter at any time. In return, I would leave his office and implement his decision whether or not I agreed, and no one would ever know my view, as my job was to implement his. He agreed with this arrangement, and I accepted the job. The three years that followed were some of the toughest and most rewarding of my career. 

Now having been closest to the centre of provincial politics as possible, I am back on the outside, still with lots of interest and opinions and little outlet for them. So here I am, resurrecting this blog. I have no political agenda, but am pulling back the curtain for others to judge for themselves. My name is Jordan O'Brien, and I am nbpolitico.