Why a successful Harper kill of the Liberal Party would be bad for the Conservatives

Now Nicholls states that the way Harper (and presumably his supporters) see it, once the Liberal Party is eliminated, there will be nothing but endless Conservative governments in Ottawa. The reason is that Harper believes that Canada is basically a conservative country and that given a choice between him and his Conservatives and the socialist NDP, naturally everyone will vote for him and the Conservatives. There is a massive flaw with this argument.

The flaw that is obvious to anyone except an Alberta based Conservative is that people do vote for non-conservative parties all the time. The NDP routinely form governments in Saskatchewan, BC and Manitoba (ironically some of the heartland for the Harper Conservatives). So it would be uncertain that with the destruction of the Liberal party those votes would automatically move to the Harper Conservatives. In fact a poll taken by Nanos during the last election provided information on voter second choices. In that poll only about 20% of the Liberal vote would head to the Tories which works out to about 5% of the popular vote. Not necessarily enough to push the Tories into permanent majority status since that 5% would be very volatile. Further, when people tired of the Conservatives, they would vote for another party. The same Nanos poll does show why Harper and his supporters didn't think of this though, given that nearly half of them would never vote for another party. They forget that everyone else would. So from this flawed premise, Harper and his supporters push forward with their attempt to destroy the Liberal Party. How would this actually pan out for the Harper Conservatives?

First lets look at the influx of ex-Liberals to the Conservative party. This would tend to force the Conservatives to the left, an action I'm sure the "kill the Liberals" crowd wouldn't want. If you take the 29-30% low water of Conservative support to be the party's core support amongst Canadians, a 5% shift in the popular vote would translate into a nearly 16% increase in the more "progressive" elements of the Conservative party. This means that the hard core Harper supporters would drop from 45% of the party to around 38% of the party. This would dilute the hard right at any convention and in any riding association outside of Alberta and hence cause a shift to the left. I'm certain this is not a consequence that Harper and his supporters are looking for.

Further to this, 23% or so of the Liberal support will move to the NDP, pulling that party to the right. With the NDP now occupying a centre-left position as opposed to a more left than centre position, it will become more attractive to the voter as well. This will destroy the capitalism-socialism schism that Harper is trying so hard to create. This in turn nullifies most of the political reason for the destruction of the Liberals in the first place. It also means that this destruction won't give Harper the permanent Conservative majority that Alberta has and that he and his supporters want. At best it will give them a 50:50 chance of taking government at any given election.

Since Harper and his supporters liken him to a master political chess player, let me use that analogy. With Harper's stated goal of the destruction of the Liberal Party, he's basically a chess player who's thought ahead one or two moves using the basic strategy of capturing his opponent's queen. In this case he has forgotten that his opponent has seven other pieces and might be thinking ahead several moves and with different strategies in mind that can change when necessary. Harper has only looked like a chess master because for the most part his current opponents are playing checkers. If the Liberals or someone else were to elect someone with the skills of a political chess expert, Harper would crumble, let alone if they elected a Garry Kasparov.