Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is projected to lose his longtime rural Ottawa seat to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy.
What happens when a party leader doesn’t get elected in their riding but their party wins the majority?
He still gets to be party leader, but he cannot sit in Parliament. There are two remedies for this. First, the party can choose a new leader from their elected MPs. Second, they can have an MP in a “safe” riding step down and then ask the government for a special by-election in that riding.
Yeah, they’ll probably just parachute him into an Alberta riding. We’re not rid of him yet.
I’m not sure that I can remember that being done for any leader at the federal level in the past 50 years or so. We’ll have to wait and see.
It’s a weird situation. Like it or not, Polievre just achieved the highest Conservative vote share since the 1980s.
That he still lost is astonishing, and it’ll be a while before anyone can sort out the path forward.
But I suspect they’ll keep him around.
