Poilievre’s byelection win offered no lessons in democracy
By Lethbridge Herald on September 5, 2025.
Editor,
What can we learn from Pierre Poilievre’s win in the Battle River-Crowfoot by-election? Not too much, despite all the speculation and verbiage by numerous media talking heads. Party members and all the major media have told us this is one of the safest seats in Canada. Voters would have voted the same for anyone running; the priority is to keep the seat conservative.
One cannot say that this was a confidence vote for Poilievre since any conservative candidate would have won. Was spending a large amount of taxpayer’s money worth it? Apparently fiscal conservatives thought fiducial responsibility was not as important an issue as winning as there was no dip in the vote percentage if some of these folks abstained from voting as a protest.
So now what happens? Well, more useless speculation filling the airwaves, chats, forums, blogs, and various social media sites until his literature review occurs. Will he be a good constituency representative? Time will tell as the level of support for local issues is dependent on the local staff who run the office and respond to citizens’ concerns.
Related to the election itself, we also had folks interested in electoral reform. Despite the efforts to raise awareness it did not go well. Not much interest in examining ways to make voting more equitable from the two parties that dominate and benefit from the current process. Seems to have ticked off more people than spark interest in them to examine alternatives.
There are several different ways to approach democratic voting issues (real and perceived) that are used in various places around the world. At the moment not much appetite to do so provincially or federally in Canada.
The long ballot in Battle River-Crowfoot (and previous attempts) to raise the issue probably had the reverse effect to the intended one.
Henry Komadowski
Lethbridge
10-9
Pierre Poilivre would have won his seat in Carleton riding if the Longest Ballot Committee would not have ran over 80 candidates.
This was a mockery of the electoral process and showed reform is needed, even more so, after they ran over 200 candidates in the Battle River-Crowfoot riding. It was clearly an effort to manipulate elections, no matter the reason and takes away from the electorate fair process.
The costs were because of this manipulation and any other party would and have done the same for their party leaders.
Nenshi also found a safe riding in which to run, winning the Edmonton-Strathcona riding.
When organizations are allowed to run candidates in an effort to change the electoral process and not to place a candidate in that riding to be the best respresentative for that riding, that is where the issue is.
The Longest Ballot Committee impacted the vote in Carleton and made every attempt to do the same in the Battle River-Crowfoot riding and should be where the concern should be!
The concept of “free and fair elections” is at the heart of every healthy democracy.
Sorry, but you’re wrong thinking that Mr. Poilievre would have won the race in Carleton but for the Long Ballet Committee. Poilievre lost to Fanjoy by 4,513 votes. Even if every vote cast for some other candidate (3,233) had gone to Pollievre, he still would have lost the election.
Thanks for clarifying that. Always good to get everyone on the same page with the facts at least.
Praising criminal convoy truckers and proud of buying them coffee and donuts along with praising Donald Trump was a huge mistake. Then proving that there is nothing conservative about him by not caring that they had created a $7 million debt and a $6 billion dollar economy disaster was his downfall and you certainly can’t blame the Conservatives in Ottawa for kicking him out, can you?
i see, so if fanjoy had lost and poilievre had won carleton, then fanjoy would have won if not for the long ballot?
truly, you present a poor argument here.
So are you going to ignore the fact that Poilievre has proven time and time again that there is nothing Conservative about him and us True Conservatives have never forgiven him and Stephen Harper for lying to us about the Income Trust Investments that cost many of our Conservative friends and relatives thousands of dollars.
Nor will we forget the fact that they tried to take $36 billion off the provinces health care transfer payments to help destroy our Public Healthcare System just like Reformers have always want to do. It got Trudeau elected and we aren’t surprised and it certainly didn’t help Poilievre get elected in Ottawa did it? Apparently we aren’t the only ones who wanted this fool kicked out, so why don’t you?
Completely uniformed and a completely inaccurate inference.
Fact is , despite the number of names on the ballot, 96% of those voting cast their vote for either Fanjoy or Poilievre. The number of names had zero effect on the outcome.
Kindly get the facts – the REAL facts before writing . As others have stated here, Poilievre lost because the majority saw through his bellyaching, verbal abuse and nasty vitriol.
Given that your claim that Poilievre lost in Carleton because of the Long Ballet Committee can be so easily fact checked, and that you have not retracted your post, this is pure disinformation. This behaviour is a threat to civil society and democracy.
The 80 candidates have nothing to do with Poilivre losing the Carlton seat. Those folks were not running against him. Their point was to find a high profile riding to get their message out. The vote outcome would not have changed if another riding had been chosen to make their point (i.e. they did tag along behind Poilivre to Alberta; apparently not having learned from the previous attempt.). The consensus seems to be they did more damage to their cause of electoral change than good. Another example of emotions running and the need to do something was stronger than looking for a pragmatic approach that actually gets people thing about an issue.
perhaps in carleton the people had had enough of of the one-dimensional pierre and his smarmy, negative, vitriol and exaggerations. i suspect democracy was as fairly served there as it was in other ridings. however, democracy is ever the more poorly served in this country for sundry reasons. most glaring is that we maintain a first past the post system despite generations worth of elections where we are a multiparty system; 1st past the post is for 2 party systems. as such, the principle of one vote for one person no longer exists. our vote is hardly represented in the manner it should be: representation by the popular vote. provincially and federally, “majority” govts arise – whereby legislation can be rammed through without opposition – not only with less than 50% of popular support, but with less than 40%.
if that seems like democracy to anyone, then one has redefined what democracy is.
Pierre Poilievre was easy to spot on the ballot in Carleton. He lost, and for two reasons. He supported the convoy movement in Ottawa. Danielle Smith was pursuing very unpopular things, such as the Alberta Provincial Pension Plan and meddling with public healthcare. That had an affect on voters and the CPC were defeated. Bonnie Critchley would have been an ideal MP, as she shows she is a true Conservative. Anything painted blue can run as a Conservative candidate in rural Alberta and get elected.
To add to all his stupid actions people from Ottawa told us about their young grandchildren being terrified by the horns blowing all night and their parents were forced to go to work without any sleep and when they confronted Poilievre his only reaction was these Truckers were his heroes and he was proud to have brought them coffee and donuts. He didn’t give a damn that they had created a $7 million debt and a $6 billion economy disaster, proving there was nothing conservative about him.
Instead of bowing out gracefully like he should have he got elected by fools who don’t care that their farmland has been polluted by Abandoned Oil Wells and they’ve been given one the highest costs of living in Canada by these Reformers, that’s how stupid they are isn’t it?
That is correct. Even Danielle Smith was in an interview and was praising the Coutts border blockade, which was very costly. Those abandoned oil wells in Alberta were from Ralph Klein, and we will have to pay $260 billion for his negligence. Now, Alberta has the second highest rate of unemployment in Canada, outside of Newfoundland. What has Danielle Smith and the UCP done for Albertans? Nothing good, or right.
Whoops “literature review” should read “leadership review”. Don’t you just love it when word self-edits and you don’t notice until later? Technology works great until it sometimes doesn’t. Sigh!
Well, well, well the status quo and their socialist comments never fail to show up with their regular rambling to this forum! Their narrow mindedness only focused on smearing our wonderful province and our duly elected government doesn’t resonate to the actual and factual position as of late. The most credible gauge to date is the “Lege Poll” in particular the recently released poll on the Government of Alberta in particular the status of our Premier, Danielle Smith. Here is the results of the poll:
Danielle Smith is rated 7% higher than August of 2024 while good ol’ Naheed Nenshi continues to slide downward!
Hopefully yuall will some day wake up and smell the coffee and realize that apart from this jaded forum, you are sadly alone in your views and opinions.
I assume you are referencing the polling firm called Leger. I couldn’t find the data you cite on their website, but I did see the summary of a poll done in May. Since January 2025, Smith’s rating dropped 2% points, but Nenshi’s rating increased “slightly” – no percentage figure given.
As for credibility, participants were selected randomly, but from a web-based source where people sign up. So the sample pool contains people who have self selected. That needs to be taken into account when interpreting the results.
Well said. Clearly, that research methods course you took in university has served you well.