Live Commentary
4:36pm Crawford wins by 55.1-44.9 in the Wisconsin state supreme court election with nearly all votes counted. That’s an 11-point swing to the left from the Trump margin in Wisconsin in 2024. The left retains its 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin state supreme court.
12:29pm With 13% reporting in Wisconsin, the left-wing Crawford leads the right-wing Schimel by 51-49 for the supreme court election. I’ll be going out shortly.
11:52am Near-final results are 56.7-42.7 to the Rep in Fl-6, a 14.0-pt margin, and 57.0-42.2 to the Rep in Fl-1, a 14.8-pt margin.
11:28am With 89% counted in Fl-1, the Rep leads by 55.4-43.8. The Reps will win both Fl-1 and Fl-6 by about 13 points, down from Trump’s 37-point margin in 2024 in Fl-1 and 30 points in Fl-6. So big swings to the Dems, but not enough to seriously threaten the Rep holds of these seats. Reps extend their House seat lead to 220-213.
11:13am With all counties in Fl-1 reporting their early votes, the Rep leads by 49.8-49.4, and this lead will grow when election day votes come in.
11:07am The Dem takes a likely very brief 51-48 lead after a populous county’s early vote reported.
11:03am In Florida’s first, the Rep starts out with a 53-46 lead with 10% in. These are early votes, and the Reps did much better on election day.
10:47am Trump will announce new tariffs at 7am AEDT Thursday, so they won’t be imposed today.
10:30am With 72% counted including votes from all counties in this district, the Rep leads by 53.7-45.6, and will win by at least a double digit margin.
10:14am With 49% counted, the Rep takes the lead by 50.6-48.6, and is very likely to win once all votes are counted.
10:03am With 24% reporting in Fl 6, the Dem leads by 53-45. But these are just early votes, and don’t yet account for the Rep election day surge.
9:53am New York Times results are here. While Reps performed weaker than expected in early voting, they’ve had a massive surge on election day in the Florida specials that should get their candidates home easily. This is just party registration data, not votes for candidates.
9:45am Wednesday The addition of polls released Monday has pushed the Liberals up to a 43.2-37.4 vote lead over the Conservatives in the CBC Poll Tracker and a 203-116 seat lead.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.
The Canadian federal election will be held on April 28, with first past the post used to elect the 343 MPs; 172 seats are required for a majority. The CBC Poll Tracker was updated Monday, and it gives the governing centre-left Liberals 42.0% of the vote (up 4.5 since my previous Canadian article on March 24), the Conservatives 37.5% (up 0.4), the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) 9.1% (down 2.5), the separatist left-wing Quebec Bloc (BQ) 5.5% (down 0.9) (24.6% in Quebec), the Greens 2.8% (down 1.0) and the far-right People’s 2.2% (steady).
Seat point estimates are 197 Liberals (up 23 since my March 24 article), 123 Conservatives (down 11), 19 BQ (down seven), three NDP (down four) and one Green (down one). The Tracker now gives the Liberals an 80% chance of a majority if the election were held now, up from 50% previously. The consolidation of the left-wing vote behind the Liberals is hurting the smaller left-wing parties. The NDP won 25 of the then 338 seats at the 2021 election, but could be wiped out at this election.
This has been a stunning comeback for the Liberals, who were 24 points behind the Conservatives in the Tracker in early January, with the Conservatives winning well over 200 seats. Mark Carney’s replacement of Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and PM has lifted the Liberals, but I believe Donald Trump is most responsible for the Liberals’ revival. There are still four weeks until the election, so the polls could still turn back in the Conservatives’ favour. But the Liberals are currently ahead.
Trump is set to impose more tariffs at 3pm AEDT Wednesday, and these tariffs could further assist the Liberals in Canada and Labor in Australia. In Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Trump’s net approval is -2.5, slightly down from -2.1 in my previous article.
US federal special elections
Polls close for US federal House special elections (by-elections in Australia) at 10am AEDT Wednesday in Florida’s sixth and 11am in Florida’s first. Florida counts its votes fast. Both seats are safe Republican, with Trump beating Kamala Harris by 30 points in the sixth and 37 in the first according to this spreadsheet of 2024 presidential results by Congressional District. Two polls in the sixth average out to a near-tie between the Democratic and Republican candidates; these polls are difficult to believe.
Republicans hold a 218-213 House majority, so winning these two seats will make it 220-213. Two Democratic members have died recently; they held Arizona’s seventh (Harris by 22) and Texas’ 18th (Harris by 40). The special in Arizona won’t occur until September, while the Texan special has not yet been scheduled. Trump had nominated Elise Stefanik, Republican member for New York’s 21st (Trump by 21), to be his UN ambassador, but he withdrew this nomination on Thursday as Republicans were worried about this seat.
G. Elliott Morris, who used to run FiveThirtyEight before it was axed, said that 14 state special elections have been held so far this year. On average, Democrats are performing ten points better than the Trump vs Harris presidential margin in those same districts.
The swing to Democrats in in line with what occurred in state special elections in 2017, the first year of Trump’s first term. Morris said this does not necessarily reflect a swing in the general electorate towards Democrats, but just that Democrats do well with high-engagement voters, who are most likely to vote in low-turnout specials.
As well as the specials, there will be a Wisconsin state supreme court election, with polls closing at 12pm AEDT Wednesday. While court elections in Wisconsin are officially nonpartisan, Schimel is the right-wing candidate, and is being heavily backed by Elon Musk. Crawford is the left-wing candidate, and the left currently has a 4-3 court majority, with this seat a left defence. Republican-aligned polls have Crawford ahead. Wisconsin voted for Trump by 0.9 points. I will be out on Wednesday afternoon.
I see the Canadian Liberals appear to have peaked. Looking at Wikipedia, an average of the last 5 online polls, adjusted 3 points to the Conservatives, for honeymoon effects, gives the Canadian Liberals a lead of 2 points, without including any “fundamentals”
Unfortunately for the Canadian Liberals, the fundamentals are heavily against the government, as I count at least 6 keys against them, and likely more.
Best hope for them is that they win without the popular vote, like the last election in Canada.
Arange @ #51 Friday, April 4th, 2025 – 6:17 pm
Meanwhile in my crystal ball I see the cargo bay of a plane full of pianos suffering a critical failure over Pierre Pollievre’s Conservative Party campaign launch, taking out dozens of senior members and candidates where it would be too late to put up new ones.
Kirsdarkesays:
Friday, April 4, 2025 at 6:25 pm
‘Meanwhile in my crystal ball I see the cargo bay of a plane full of pianos suffering a critical failure over Pierre Pollievre’s Conservative Party campaign launch, taking out dozens of senior members and candidates where it would be too late to put up new ones.”
Unfortunately for the Canadian Liberals, the Conservative leader was already unappealing to traditional Liberal voters, so the Uncharismatic Challenger key was already false.
Unless the list of “keys” includes “is a neighbouring country currently threatening to annex your country?” I would suggest that they are of limited relevance to the current situation in Canada.
“Unless the list of “keys” includes “is a neighbouring country currently threatening to annex your country?” I would suggest that they are of limited relevance to the current situation in Canada.”
LOL. I kind of agree. Or perhaps the more reasonably worded “Is the USA (or ‘a neighbouring country’ if you like but USA is unique in its strength) making things very difficult economically for this country?”
Probably the ‘keys’ still have some, as you say, limited relevance as fundamentals but greatly diminished.
Also does ‘win’ based on the prediction of the keys mean ‘win the highest number of votes’ or ‘win the highest number of seats’?
After all, the Conservatives won the highest vote share in the last 2 Canadian general elections but the Liberals by far won the most seats and formed government.
BTsays:
Friday, April 4, 2025 at 8:15 pm
“Unless the list of “keys” includes “is a neighbouring country currently threatening to annex your country?” I would suggest that they are of limited relevance to the current situation in Canada.”
Key 1: Midterm Gains
Key 2: No close primary contest
Key 3: Incumbent Seeking Re-election
Key 4: No major third party
Key 5: The economy is not in resession/people don’t feel like they are in a resession
Key 6: Real per capita gdp growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms
Key 7: Major Policy Change
Key 8: No major, violent, widespread social unrest
Key 9: No major scandal recognised by both sides of politics
Key 10: No foreign or military failure
Key 11: Major foreign or military success, like winning a war
Key 12: The incumbent party leader is appealing to moderate voters of the challenging party
Key 13: The leader of the challenging party is appealing to moderate voters of the Incumbent party.
Key 11 exists. I personally consider it to be True, since the voters of Canada generally treat the Governments response to the tariffs as if they won a war.
Arange
You addressed BT’s post but used my name. We are different people.
BTSays at 8:57 pm:
“does ‘win’ based on the prediction of the keys mean ‘win the highest number of votes’ or ‘win the highest number of seats’? ”
Highest vote share.
“Highest vote share.”
Aha.
Canadian blogger Steve Boots on Canada’s Conservative Party:
https://youtu.be/0JBppYnRrEk?si=M_CtoUK1wGRws_8H
They want the voters angry and afraid.
They sound a lot like our “Liberals”.
INNOVATIVE RESEARCH
Con 35% (-3%)
Lib 41% (+4%)
NDP 12% (-)
BQ 6% (-)
So Innovative now moved in line with most other posters, although still a smaller combined share for the Big 2 and a higher number for the NDP.
Conversely, Nanos has moved from 11% lead to 5% in 2 days (they do a daily tracker), interestingly not to NDP benefit who have also fallen whilst BQ are also up a bit. Latest one I can find:
Con 37.7%
Lib 42.8%
NDP 7.9%
BQ 6.7%
MAINSTREET RESEARCH (do daily trackers)
Con 40%
Lib 45%
NDP 8%
BQ 2% (!!)
ABACUS moved from an 8% to 10% lead, only Cons have moved, down 2:
Con 36%
Lib 46%
NDP 7%
BQ 7%
Sorry, above should have read “ANGUS REID moved from an 8% to a 10% lead. . .”
(Abacus latest poll still shows a tie 39-39%)
Stephen Harper endorsement is actually quite a big deal for Pierre Poilievre.
The rally in Edmonton where Harper introduced him was huge, and it was both a full-throated endorsement of Poilievre and a subtle dig at Carney.
All this sounds par for the course – one ex-leader endorsing his would-be successor PM of the same party, so what?
Until you consider the following points:
1. Harper may have been a bit of a marmite PM but he was the PM for 9 years and was credited with strong economic management through multiple crises. He lost to a fresh-faced, more fun Trudeau in 2015 due to the strong desire for ‘change’, not because of his stewardship of the economy.
2. Harper has not been on ANY campaign trail since 2015, he made endorsements of future Cons leaders when they became leaders and nothing during campaigns.
3. Carney’s economic claims also partly stem from his time working with the Harper government. Harper has now firmly put to rest any idea that he might secretly credit Carney as a good economic manager, and made it plain Poilievre is ‘head and shoulders above’ his choice for PM.
4. Harper will help the base turnout, and help Poilievre’s credibility as a serious politician/leader.
This could get Cons a couple more % in polls, all things being equal.
With regard to 3. above. . .
““I am the only person who can say that both of the men running to be prime minister once worked for me,” Harper told the crowd. “And in that regard, my choice, without hesitation, without equivocation, without a shadow of a doubt, is Pierre Poilievre.””