Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
2) while vote splitting is a concern, the social conservatives are concentrated in a relatively small number of ridings - particularly rural and western. They would only be a threat to win a limited number of seats, and wouldn't pose any significant drain in any of the urban ridings, which are the tightly contested ones anyway.
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Agree with that post 100% - any hint of social conservatism is going to bury the party nationally.
And your point on vote splitting is the the big thing I think, vote splitting probably shouldn't be a concern.
The PPC won what... 1% of the vote overall, and I don't think they finished higher than 4th in any of the ridings in Alberta or Saskatchewan. CPC had 69% of the popular vote in Alberta, and 64% in Saskatchewan, they can afford to lose the true "Social Right Wing" voters and still be okay.
So even if they were to lose say 10% of their base of true social conservatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. They probably still have more than enough of a base to win the same seats they won this time but would have a much better chance to win seats in BC, Ontario, and the east coast.
And in Ontario where it's likely their biggest opportunity they aren't that far behind, they lost the popular vote 33.2% to 41.4%. Issue was Scheer left enough of a question mark around the social rights that there was enough fear that the CPC would go full Trump post election.