A forecast win for the 2021 Canada federal election… two years in advance

In late September Canada held a snap federal poll. For most commentators, the announcement in August that an election would soon take place was a surprise: few expected that Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau would take such a risky gamble and try to regain a parliamentary majority he did not need to govern. The result of the election also surprised many Canada watchers: until the last days of campaigning, polls showed that a Conservative victory was the likeliest outcome (or that the election was too close to make predictions). In the end, Canadians gave the Liberals the most seats in parliament, without a majority. For EIU, there were no surprises: we had long seen things coming.

We first forecast that Canada would hold a snap election in late 2021 almost two years ago, shortly after Mr Trudeau lost his parliamentary majority in the previous federal poll. At the time, our call was a bold, out-of-consensus view. That minority governments do not tend to last long in Canada informed our forecast. We assumed that Mr Trudeau would want, at some point, to regain a parliamentary majority. Fast-forward to 2021: by the start of the Summer, it was clear to us that Mr Trudeau would try to leverage the success of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign to call an election. In July we made our call more precise, saying a snap poll was imminent. Only a few weeks later, we were proved right.

For our teams of analysts, the hardest part of the work lay ahead: forecasting the outcome of the election was no picnic. Early polls showed that Mr Trudeau had a lead. However, after a few weeks, it was clear that the Conservative candidate had made significant gains, threatening to topple Mr Trudeau as prime minister. Our team of Canada experts, however, disagreed with pollsters.

AGATHE DEMARAIS, GLOBAL FORECASTING DIRECTOR

Early on, we forecast that Mr Trudeau’s party would remain the largest in parliament, but that it would fail to regain a majority. When poll after poll appeared to show their call was wrong, our analysts held their ground, backing their view with a granular analysis of political trends in each constituency across the country. In the end, our experts were right and bagged yet another of many forecast wins for EIU.