We don’t really understand it.
But since the governing federal Liberal Party is in the midst of a leadership race, and since the winner will be sworn in as Canada’s next prime minister, it’s probably something worth understanding!
Politics, as we’ve discussed before, is in our nature. Literally. And so too is political leadership.
The point of the flying V? The direction it moves? That’s geese leadership – decided by the gaggle before take-off.
The bull that wins the fight to choose a mate? He’s the winner of the moose leadership race for territorial dominance!
The bear that gets to choose where and when she gets to fish on a stream? That’s not luck. The bear had to beat other members of her species – her party – to win this leadership role.
And though we live in an era where everyone loves to hate the concept of leadership – at work, in politics, in life – it’s still a reality of life.
Even if most of us would just prefer to ignore this reality.
Which is probably why fewer than 3% of Canadians are members of a Canadian political party and fewer than 1.5% of Canadians voted to elect our current crop of federal leaders.
But here’s the thing: leadership matters.
In nature, of course, to the winner go the spoils: the best habitat, the best food, the best chance of reproducing.
In Canadian politics, the winner of a leadership race has enormous power to shape the policies of the party. These decisions, in turn, can shape an election race – in terms of what’s being offered to citizens and what debates get profiled. Oh! And the winner also might get to govern the country.
And while the prime minister might not be the Canadian head of state, the PM is pretty powerful in our system of governance. And seeing as we don’t directly vote for the prime minister in Canada, just the local representative of a political party, a leadership race is the one true chance Canadians have to vote directly for someone who might become prime minister.
So, how exactly does a leadership race work?
For Canada’s two major political parties – the Conservatives and the Liberals – it’s not a straight up one-person, one-vote process to determine a winner.
These parties aren’t a flock of pigeons after all.
Our major political parties use preferential ballots and a point system that awards equal value to all 343 ridings in Canada. And no matter if a riding is big or small – has thousands of party members or just a couple dozen – every leadership candidate needs to win enough points in enough ridings to receive more than 50% of all points up for grab nationally.
Wow, that sounds confusing. Let’s hit that one more time.
You’re a party member. You go to vote in the riding where you live. The ballot before you is similar to the one you get in a general election, but instead of marking an X, you rank each candidate by your preference – 1 for favourite, 2, for kinda like, 3 for…okay, you know how to count.
In each riding, those 100 points up for grabs? They’re handed out to each leadership candidate based on the percentage of how many 1st preference votes they receive.
If one candidate receives 160 out of 200 1st choice votes, they will receive 80% of that riding’s 100 available points. And getting 80 points is great! But just as in football, getting 2 or 3 points once in a while isn’t terrible either. Because if a candidate scores a bunch of touchdowns in other ridings, those smaller points – the field goals and safeties, if you will – can be the extra points needed to get to 50%+1 of all points nationally.
When we’re talking elk, moose or caribou leadership races, points also matter. But it’s mostly because the more points that exist in an antler set, the bigger the antlers actually are. And the more damage the antlers can inflict!
For Canadian political parties, the point system exists to avoid inflicting damage. At least in theory!
We have rural ridings, and urban ones. We have Anglophone and Francophone ridings. We have ridings where a party does well, and ridings where they don’t do as well. To ensure party members – and the issues that matter to them – have an equal voice in a leadership race, Liberals and Conservatives have implemented this point system.
Make sense? Good!
Moving on to the party convention:
You see, as fun a winning a leadership fight might be, it’s even more fun to do so with a little je-ne-sais-quoi.
With lights, cameras, and the prerequisite thunder sticks, the boring cast-the-ballot, count-the-points system gets a little jazzed up when representatives from the party in each riding, and the various leadership teams, gather to hear the results.
Is that altogether different than an otter leadership race? Actually, yes. Totally.
Anyway, the political party convention is where the preferential part of the ballot comes into play.
You see, for Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre, the conventions weren’t that suspenseful. In both cases, the leaders received more than 50% of all points available. They won on the first ballot, beating their competition decisively.
Nice for them.
But conventions aren’t always so straightforward.
If a leadership candidate doesn’t receive 50% of all points available, the race moves to a second ballot, with the candidate who received the fewest votes on the first ballot being eliminated.
Instead of party members re-voting, the eliminated candidate’s votes are re-assessed. The leadership candidate who was ranked as the second preference on each ballot gets the eliminated candidates votes. That, in turn, shifts the vote percentages in each riding. And that, of course, changes the overall point totals for each remaining candidate.
Now, is that how otters settle disputes when one otter can’t get big enough to win a key fishing spot outright?
Still no!
If there is no winner on the second ballot, another candidate drops off and then their ballots get reassessed and their votes reallocated to the remaining contestants.
And on and on, and sometimes on and on, it goes until someone finally gets to 50%+1 of all available points and wins the leadership race.
Well done!
Because leadership races, like elections, aren’t easy. Not only do candidates need to convince party members to vote for them, they need to convince ordinary Canadians to sign-up to become party members so they can vote for them. And that’s a hard sell, since most of us don’t want to be involved in party politics.
And then there’s the money!
Elections aren’t cheap. It costs money to run for leader – and you can’t just borrow endless amounts. There are rules about that, after all!
Oh, and did I mention leadership candidates also have to pay an entrance fee to join the race? That’s steep, and – in theory – helps keep out candidates who aren’t seriously in contention.
Sort of.
You see, most leadership races have a couple of serious candidates – contestants with solid bios and decent name recognition across the country. We all get why they’re running. It’s the heavyweight fight.
But leadership races also have a dark horse candidate – someone with decent bona fides, but lacking a household name.
Why might they run?
Well, a dark horse candidate isn’t a no-hope candidate. The dark horse still has a chance. That’s, in part, because the candidate, while not a household name to everyday Canadians, might be a household name for party members. And they’re the ones who vote!
Still, a dark horse is a dark horse for a reason and they know their odds are long. And it’s why they usually have other motives for tossing their hat in the ring.
Like they can help crown the winner!
How so?
Well, if neither of the heavyweight candidates receives 50%+1 on the first ballot, they’re going to need to get the additional points to win from another candidate’s ballot. And while no-hope candidates might only offer a couple of extra points, the dark horse candidate might offer the big points needed to cross the finish line.
That means a dark horse candidate – while still trying to win – might cut a deal with one of the heavyweight favourites. Like, ‘I’ll ask my supporters to list you as their second preference if you ask your supporters to list me. Oh! And maybe you can also adopt a couple of policies I like as part of your platform, because I’m more likely to be doing you the favour. Oh! And maybe you can give me a nice job in cabinet if you win too!’
See? Quid pro quo.
Now that’s a deal a coyote and badger could get behind. And a dark horse candidate!
So, that’s why they run. But what about those no-hopers? Who are these people? Do party members even care who they are?
Well, okay, sure, some people care. Every candidate has to have friends – friends who’ll help pay that leadership fee at least!
But these candidates aren’t dark horses: they’ve got no shot of winning. So why do they do it?
A few reasons!
They might be working to advance an issue or region or demographic. That’s valid. By the virtue of being in the race, they can force other candidates to discuss what they want to talk about. After all, everyone wants those sweet, sweet second place votes.
But there’s other reasons too.
If you’ve ever watched an elk or moose rut fight, you may have noticed satellite bulls hovering around the main event. They aren’t there to win a heavyweight match, but they hang around the edges to gain experience for a later date when they might stand a real chance of winning.
That’s one reason a no-hope candidate enters a political leadership race: experience. There’s another reason too: personal advantage.
No one wants to wander the landscape by themselves. Everyone wants to be with the in-crowd. One way of doing that? Build a better resume by running for leader. That extra bit of juice might help take a candidate from the backbenches to a junior cabinet role. Or maybe it will help them land a better job outside of politics.
In other words, no-hope candidates use leadership races to move on up in the world!
So, that’s why candidates run for the leadership of a party. And that’s how a candidate wins it.
And if the leadership race is taking place within a party that is already in government? The winner automatically becomes prime minister, at least for a short while, even if no one in Canada voted for a party with that leader at the helm.
A quirk of the system that bees and mountain goats well understand.
But if you don’t like who a party elected, fret not.
So long as we’re a democracy, no one can lead forever. A new party leader who inherits the prime ministership will always have to face the electorate eventually. And that means every Canadian gets to have a say in which party, and their leader, governs the nation.
Which, when you think about it, is a pretty decent set-up.
So, yeah, we might not always love our politics or leaders, but our system does beat the alternative.