WI Brian Mulroney led the Tories into the 1993 Canadian Election?

[hangfan91]

How would the vote have turned out with the Tories being led by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney instead of Kim Campbell in the 1993 Canadian Election?

IMO the election wouldn't have been such a disaster for the PCs because Mulroney was a much better campaigner than Campbell and he would probably have matched or even bettered Chretien in the debates.

Polls showed the Tories in the low-mid 20s before Mulroney stepped down and I think given the economic condition of 1993 and a long election campaign he could possibly have pulled his party's support into the 30s and win a minority government.

[KingSweden]

Historic debacles like 1993 don't just happen in a vacuum - there was a lot more to the Tory collapse than Campbell being PM. However, I don't think Reform would have had the success it did and Liberals probably would have had to form a minority government with the Bloc's sweep in Quebec, which I think would still have happened at the levels it did.

[RogueBeaver]

Tories may or may not have been in the fight for Opposition, but Mulroney's approval bottomed out at 11% in 1992. No way in hell he wins or comes remotely close.

[Vosem]

There's a chasm between "form the official opposition" and "same disaster". Probably in there somewhere, since Mulroney was a much more talented campaigner than Campbell but, as RB points out, he was hated by 1993. He probably keeps a few percentage points in Quebec and Maritimes that went to the Bloc and Liberals respectively, so Reform forms the official opposition, the Bloc is significantly weaker, and the PCs keep official party status. If he can prevent leakage to Reform and Liberals in the west, the NDs might keep official party status as well. Basically, it looks a lot like 1997.

[andrew_c]

Mulroney could have saved a handful of seats, but the PCs would be nowhere near Official Opposition.  The end result would still have been a Liberal majority, and the PCs would still have been swallowed up by Reform/Alliance a decade later.

[Hatman 🍁]

At the same time, I wonder how much support there was for Campbell due to the novelty of her being a woman? I know as a 7 year old, I wanted her to win for that reason. But then again, I was 7

[DC Al Fine]

Let's say he wins the Tories all their easily saveable seats. Say, everything where the Tory lost by <10%. That's another 8 seats. I'll expand my definition to include a few seats lost by 11-12% and handwave Mulroney's seat giving the Tories 14 seats total and official opposition status*. The problem is that the Tories vote distribution was terrible that election so you'd have to create huge swings to make the caucus much larger than that.

Also the NDP would probably win a few more seats in Saskatchewan and the Liberals would have won a few more in Quebec assuming the Tories took a decent chunk of votes from their primary opponents.

*FTR the Tory caucus would be:
Ross Reid
Bill Casey
Ken Streatch
Greg Thompson
Bernard Valcourt
Elsie Wayne
Guy St. Julien
Pierre Blais
Brian Mulroney
Perrin Beatty
Patrick Boyer
Garth Turner
Kim Campbell

It might have made the next leadership convention interesting at least.