Campaign Dynamics in the 2000 Canadian Election: How the Leader Debates Salvaged the Conservative Party

Abstract

Canada's Progressive Conservative Party faced the prospects of electoral annihilation going into the 2000 election. In the 1993 election, the party suffered what must surely be the most humiliating defeat ever visited upon an incumbent party; its share of the popular vote plummeted from 43% to 16% and it was reduced to a mere two seats (1%, down from 57%). So complete was the collapse that the party—one of the two parties that had alternated in power since Confederation in 1867—lost its official status in the House of Commons.A political party must have at least 12 seats to be recognized officially as a political party. This status confers significant benefits, such as being able to obtain funding and to ask questions at the highly visible question period. Meanwhile, the new party of the Right—the Reform Party—managed to get 19% of the vote and, thanks to the concentration of its support in western Canada, this translated into 52 seats.For an analysis of that spectacular change, see Johnston et al. 1996.