Portillo Moments in your country

[mileslunn]

In British politics, the loss of Michael Portillo in Enfield Southgate in the 1997 Labour landslide is often called a Portillo moment as this was a very safe Tory seat then and was not one many expected them to lose.  As such Portillo moment has become a term used for major upsets.  Below are some I can think of here in Canada for the elections I have followed.

Canada 2004

-  Tories win Essex which was normally a Liberal-NDP swing with the Tories haven't winning here since 1958
-  Tories win Regina-Qu'Appelle which ironically was by the current Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and this was a very safe NDP riding
-  Liberals win North Vancouver which was seen as a strong small c conservative riding at the time.

Canada 2006

- Tories win Jonquiere-Alma which is in the heart of separatist territory
-  Tories win Winnipeg South which was a long shot although the Liberal candidate Reg Alcock spent most of his time stumping for other candidates

Canada 2008

-  NDP 2007 by-election in Outremont by Thomas Mulcair in a very safe Liberal riding
- Tories pick up both Kitchener Centre and Kitchener-Waterloo which Liberals had won easily in previous elections
-  NDP wins Sudbury which unlike Northern Ontario ridings had been fairly safe Liberal one.
-  NDP wins Edmonton-Strathcona thus winning in a seat in Alberta which is Canada's most conservative province

Canada 2011

-  Conservatives win Labrador which had only gone Conservative once before and normally they finished in a distant third.
-  Several Portillo moments with NDP wins across Quebec in areas one wouldn't expect
-  Tories win Scarborough Centre, Don Valley East, and Mississauga East-Cooksville which were all safe Liberal ridings
-  NDP wins Scarborough-Rouge River which was seen as one of the safest Liberal ridings in the country

Canada 2015

-  Liberals win Fundy-Royal, Tobique-Mactaquac, and New Brunswick Southwest which were all seen as very safe Tory ridings
-  Liberals win Hastings-Lennox and Addington which is a rural Ontario riding and with few exceptions Liberals have largely been shut out of rural Ontario especially in ridings with similar profiles to this.
-  Liberals win Toronto-Danforth which is a very safe NDP riding and the former riding of the late NDP leader, Jack Layton
-  Liberals win Kelowna-Lake Country and Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon which were both seen as solidly conservative ridings in a fairly religious area.
-  Liberal 2017 by-election win in Lac Saint Jean which is a solid nationalist area of Quebec and Liberals are the most staunchly federalist party.

Provincial ones

-  BC Liberal wins of Surrey-Fleetwood and Fraser-Nicola in 2013 as both went NDP by almost ten points in 2009 and most polls showed the NDP was expected to win in 2013. 
-  There were a few near Portillo moments in the 2017 election in the Lower Mainland like Vancouver-False Creek and Richmond-Queensborough but the NDP fell just short of winning those normally safe BC Liberal ridings
-  Several and too many to count in 2015 in Alberta where NDP win in many areas few expected they ever would.
-  Ontario Liberal win in Durham in 2014 which is a very safe PC riding normally and wasn't even close in the previous two elections
-  Ontario PC by-election win in Sault Ste. Marie and Scarborough-Rouge River which are both ridings they tend to not fare to well in.
-  CAQ by-election win in Louis-Hebert by a landslide which is normally a safe Quebec Liberal riding.

Abroad

-  Obama winning Indiana in 2008 which Bush won by over 20 points four years earlier
-  Doug Jones win in Alabama special election which is one of the reddest states.
-  Labour winning Kensington and Canterbury in the 2017 election which are both constituencies that have voted consistently Tory as long as the constituencies have existed.

So interested to hear on Portillo moments from various countries where contributors live.  These should be actual constituencies/congressional districts not overall results and ones that were truly surprises and against history.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

do those count as Portillo Moments? Surely the big thing is about ousting a very prominent member?

[Phony Moderate]

do those count as Portillo Moments? Surely the big thing is about ousting a very prominent member?

Yes, and Canada has had plenty of them of course. My favourite (for its hilarity as much as anything) was Mac King losing even as his party won nationwide. Such moments can only really happen under constituency systems o/c.

[Phony Moderate]

Some from the U.S.:

1980 - George McGovern, Frank Church and Birch Bayh, all liberal heroes, all losing their Senate seats. Amusingly enough, Barry Goldwater almost lost his too.

1994 - Speaker Tom Foley was ousted from his seat in the Republican Revolution. Mario Cuomo and Ann Richards (two would-be presidents) both lost their re-election attempts for Governor. Although, of course, the Republicans missed out on the ultimate scalp in Massachusetts despite having hopes of making it. I guess Jeb Bush failing to win the Florida governorship might also count.

2004 - Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle losing re-election in South Dakota.

2006 - Senator Rick Santorum, idol of the Religious Right, losing although not unexpectedly. Would-be 2008 Republican nominee for president, George Allen, losing his Senate re-election bid in Virginia. Oh yes, and the much-hyped Harold Ford Jr.'s political career coming to a premature end when he failed to win the Senate seat in Tennessee.

And then there's 2010, which had a number of flopped Portillo Moments. Reid holding on in Nevada, Boxer winning again in California, Barney Frank being returned. Possibly John Dingell being re-elected too, but he's perhaps not quite prominent enough.

[mileslunn]

I would add a few big ones.

- David Peterson loses his seat in the 1990 Ontario election when he began the election with a massive lead, but lost unexpectedly to the NDP.

- Don Getty loses his seat in the 1989 Alberta election despite his party winning.

- Christy Clark losing her seat in 2013 while her party win the election. Her losing her seat was not a shock, but winning provincially was as polls said differently. Though it was generally assumed if she lost her riding her party would lose.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I guess some Irish ones would be:

The 2011 wipeout of Fianna Fail - Mammy of the Dail Mary O'Rourke getting like 5% in her constituency (the second time she had lost her seat actually, but the other time was hilariously in the 2002 election that FF did quite well in), as well as the defeat of her fellow Marys Coughlan and Hanafin (along with a few ambitious scions of political dynasties like Charles Hauhgey and the entire Green Party).

Conversely, the 2002 wipeout of Fine Gael. And I'm pretty sure Labour has lost prominent members quite frequently.

[Kamala]

Some from the U.S.:

2004 - Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle losing re-election in South Dakota.

I think "Portillo moments" have an element of surprise or unexpectedness. Daschle was never really safe in 2004, especially after the close call in 2002. Daschle losing wasn't surprising.

[Dr. MB]

Eric Cantor in 2014.

[Former President tack50]

Because of the electoral system, it's almost impossible to get a "Portillo moment". The closest you can get is the 1982 election.

The ruling party, UCD, torn apart by infighting went from 34.8% of the vote and 168 seats to 6.8% and 12 (a loss of 156 seats!). This meant that PM Calvo Sotelo (not running for reelection as PM but still wanting to be an MP), lost his seat in Madrid (got only 1 seat there, he was number 2).

In fact the party leader Landelino Lavilla came really close to losing his seat as well. The party got 3.3% of the vote in Madrid. If they had dropped below the 3% threshold the party leader would have lost his seat.

Not sure if it even qualifies as everyone expected UCD to get decimated but still, the PM not getting back his seat I guess qualifies.

The only other I can think of is the 2004 general election: Everyone expected PP to lose some seats compared to their great result in 2000 but still win the election comfortably. However good campaigning by the opposition plus the terrible government reacction to the 2004 Madrid bombings meant that they ended up losing the election by 4.5 points. (polls before the attacks predicted a 4 point PP win, after the attack illegal Andorran polls only had it at a tie)

[Phony Moderate]

Some from the U.S.:

2004 - Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle losing re-election in South Dakota.

I think "Portillo moments" have an element of surprise or unexpectedness. Daschle was never really safe in 2004, especially after the close call in 2002. Daschle losing wasn't surprising.

Well the Tories spent the 2010 campaign here hyping up their chances of taking Morley and Outwood from Ed Balls in what they (and their media allies) said would be their own 'Portillo Moment', to the extent that many wouldn't have been surprised if it had happened.

Most were surprised when it did actually happen...in 2015.

[Mike88]

Surprising moments on general election nights we had very few, or basically none. But in local elections, we had some cases:

In the 2001 local elections, polls predicted an easy win for the PS in Lisbon and Porto. Lisbon was governed by the son of Mário Soares, João Soares, and Porto by Fernando Gomes, a former minister and important member in the PS. As ballots were counted, the PSD took an early lead in Porto and was able to win by 4% points. Rui Rio was elected mayor of Porto.

In Lisbon, the race was too close to call all night long, but Santana Lopes, PSD candidate, was able to win by 856 votes, out of more than 310,000, over João Soares. These results, plus an overall negative result across the country for the PS, prompted António Guterres, PM at that time, to announce his resignation.

[Hnv1]

1996 direct PM elections after the murder of Rabin. Peres who started off with a +30 lead was neck in neck. projections on the night saw him narrowly win, when I woke up in the morning Netanyahu was the PM by 30K votes. I think my family went mute for a good 48 hours.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The Minnesota GOP taking the State Senate but their leader David Hann losing in 2016.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

I don't think Trump winning counts. if people had actually been paying attention to the polls, they would have known that he had a very real chance of winning going into Election Day.

[cp]

In British politics, the loss of Michael Portillo in Enfield Southgate in the 1997 Labour landslide is often called a Portillo moment as this was a very safe Tory seat then and was not one many expected them to lose.  As such Portillo moment has become a term used for major upsets.

Not quite.

Surely the big thing is about ousting a very prominent member?

Closer.

A 'Portillo Moment' is not just an upset win, as the OP suggests. It denotes an unexpected loss by a member of a party who was expected to become/remain a prominent political figure in the aftermath of the election in question. Furthermore, their loss must serve to underline the magnitude of the loss by the member's party, and the degree to which there has been a 'clean sweep', with one political era ending and another beginning.

A bit of context on the '97 election can help illustrate this.

Within two years of the 1992 election it was widely understood that the Tories would lose the next time the country went to the polls. The party was split over Europe, mired in innumerable sex scandals, and John Major's grip on power waning; they technically lost their majority in late 1996 after yet another resignation, only clinging on by doing a deal with the DUP (sound familiar?). So, long before 1997 it was clear there was going to be a Tory leadership contest that would set the direction for the party henceforth, presumably returning it to power fairly quickly - not an unreasonable assumption given Labour's poor win record in the preceding two decades.

Enter Michael Portillo. Portillo had been a rising star in the Tories since he was first elected in the 80s. He was a true blue conservative, a skeptic on Europe, but had held his fire during the 1995 leadership challenge to John Major. Put another way, he was exactly where 80% of the Tories were, ideologically and temperamentally. (He was also gay, or at least had had relationships with men when he was younger, the revelations of which sunk his leadership bid in 2001). Portillo's seat, Enfield Southgate, was traditionally Tory, though not as much by the 90s as it had been before. There were also local polls showing him barely in the lead a week before election day.

It was clear almost instantly on election night that Labour would win a majority; the only question was 'how big?', and for the Tories, 'what next?'. By the time Enfield Southgate was ready to call, it was clear Labour had won a massive majority, so for commentators looking to fill up air time (and there is a LOT of air time on British general election nights) the announcement provided an opportunity to shift the conversation to what the future of the Tories would be. Portillo was expected to run for leader and seemed to be in a perfect position to win it. He was young and articulate, popular in his party, and respected for his time as Defense Secretary - just the man to rebuild the Tories after this rout ... and then he lost.

Portillo Moments aren't just an unexpected defeat, or the adding of insult to injury for a losing party. They're a crossing of the Rubicon - a point of no return - for the outgoing regime. Though difficult to detect from our vantage point, knowing how closely Blair hewed to the Thatcherite line and how the Tories eventually made it back to power, the 1997 election prompted serious commentators to wonder if the Conservative Party could ever recover. They hadn't just lost, and they hadn't just lost big. They'd lost so big that their only bright prospect for recovery had been extinguished, portending a long and painful passage in opposition instead of a quick recuperation and return to the status quo ante. That's what the Portillo Moment meant.

With this in mind, there are relatively few examples that rise to this level. Kim Campbell in 1993 and Ed Balls in 2015 come close. Daschle's loss in 2004 is closer, though a better example from that year would be if Barack Obama had somehow lost his Senate race instead. George McGovern's loss in 1980 is an excellent choice, as it was part of a wave that saw the Dems put out of the White House for 12 years AND lose the Senate they had held for 25 years. Gabriel Loubrier from Quebec in 1973 might do, as his loss signaled the end of the Union Nationale.

And, of course, Boris Johnson in 2018.

[Phony Moderate]

Very good post. On the basis of your definition of the term, I would add the following examples:

1. Tony Benn losing Bristol East in 1983.

Benn, who came from a political dynasty, had been a prominent figure in the Labour Party since the 1950s. He perhaps first became something of a household name when he renounced his peerage in the early 1960s, marking a significant constitutional change.

By the 1970s he was regarded as a heavyweight and something of a standard bearer of the Labour Left. This became even more apparent after Labour's loss in 1979, when he battled with the Right in attempting to democratize the Labour Party.

The very peak of his career and the height of his national fame, even though he had previously served in the cabinet, perhaps came in 1981 when he challenged incumbent Denis Healey for the Deputy Leadership. After a bruising campaign (perhaps the nastiest in the party's history) he lost by just about the narrowest possible margin.

But he limped on, and was seen as a likely leadership frontrunner after the 1983 general election (Labour's chances in which were bleak after the Falklands War)....if he could keep his seat.

He could not.

Labour went down to the biggest Tory landslide since the 1930s. Benn's golden opportunity was gone, and so the focus shifted to the next generation of the Left. And bitterly for the Bennites, it was Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Soft Left (a term coined in 1981 in reference to those left-wingers who abstained in the deputy contest) who took the party's leadership. The Bennite choice of Eric Heffer performed dismally.

Benn's political career continued for some time afterwards. He returned to Parliament the following year in a by-election, and made a (very ill-fated) challenge to Kinnock a few years later. But his 1983 defeat marked the end of an era, and probably the start of the party's drift to the centre that would culminate in the election of Tony Blair as leader.


2. Roy Jenkins losing in Glasgow Hillhead in 1987.

The SDP. Remember that?

Following the Labour Party's leftwards drift in the aftermath of the 1979 loss, many on the parliamentary right of the party decided that the party was no longer for them. They would form their own party, giving it the oh-so-creative name of the Social Democratic Party.

The new party (in Alliance with the Liberals) began well. Very well. By the end of 1981 the Alliance had surged to the top of the national opinion polls after a run of impressive by-election victories, most notably Shirley Williams' victory in Crosby. Its momentum was stalled by the Falklands conflict, but it was still a major player going in the 1983 election (helped by the ugly Bermondsey by-election just a few weeks prior). However, the good old electoral system would work against it. The Alliance secured a quarter of the national popular vote (only a couple of percent behind Labour) but had only 23 seats to show for it. Two of the 'Gang of Four' (the most prominent figures who defected) lost their seats - Shirley Williams in Crosby and Bill Rodgers in Stockton South. Roy Jenkins narrowly held on to his by-election gained seat of Giasgow Hillhead, and David Owen more easily won in Plymouth Devonport.

It was a disappointing result, but the Alliance wasn't finished. It remained a major player (in by-elections, local elections and opinion polls) during the next Parliament. Maybe 1987 would be its breakthrough year? No sir. It actually declined on its 1983 performance (both in seats and in vote share). Roy Jenkins (the most significant individual of all those who defected, having been an important Home Secretary in the 1960s as well as Chancellor) lost in Glasgow Hillhead to some Labour candidate by the name of George Galloway. In my view, this result signaled more than any the end of the centre's dream. The people of Hillhead decided the Labour was the main anti-Tory party of choice, and (with Labour opening up a clear popular vote gap between itself and the Alliance) so did the country as a whole. There was a complete sh**tfest in the Alliance not long afterwards, one that eventually would lead to the formation of the Liberal Democrats.


I have a couple more in mind actually. Maybe later.

[Silent Hunter]

It was clear almost instantly on election night that Labour would win a majority; the only question was 'how big?', and for the Tories, 'what next?'. By the time Enfield Southgate was ready to call, it was clear Labour had won a massive majority, so for commentators looking to fill up air time (and there is a LOT of air time on British general election nights) the announcement provided an opportunity to shift the conversation to what the future of the Tories would be. Portillo was expected to run for leader and seemed to be in a perfect position to win it. He was young and articulate, popular in his party, and respected for his time as Defense Secretary - just the man to rebuild the Tories after this rout ... and then he lost.

Portillo did later return to Parliament in 1999 via a by-election in Kensington and Chelsea and ran for the Tory leadership in 2001, but didn't get through to the final ballot of members. He retired from the Commons at the 2005 election, let his party membership lapse and is now best known for presenting TV documentaries on railways.

[SATW]

Eric Cantor in 2014, for sure, is one.
Mark Udall in 2014 and George Allen in 2006 also qualify, imo

[mileslunn]

In terms of high profile one could argue in Canada in 2015 you could have had three Portillo moments with Peter MacKay, John Baird, and James Moore who were all high profile cabinet members and all potential successors and the Liberals picked up all three of their ridings.  However all three retired from politics thus avoiding the embarrassment of losing their seats.  To be fair John Baird's riding was fairly marginal although he could switched to Nepean from Ottawa West-Nepean which was more Tory friendly, but both MacKay and Moore were in normally safe Tory ridings so the Liberal pickups of those two was a sign of how big a win was coming.  Especially MacKay's as unlike the UK we don't count all the ballots before presenting them, rather numbers are released after each ballot box is counted so MacKay's would have come early due to the time zone and by the time Moore's riding was called it was clear the Liberals were on their way to a majority whereas it wasn't when MacKay's was called.

[mileslunn]

Another one I can think of is the Tory pick up of Gordon as that involved defeating the SNP former leader Alex Salmond and also was a sign of strong Tory gains in Scotland despite their losses in England and Wales as often Scotland doesn't follow the national trend.

[Pericles]

Ha ha ha no. Milk that though if you want because from there it's been downhill for the GOP and America.

[Lachi]

The seat of Cowan, WA. Anne Aly got lucky with the preferences
Greens preferences alone would not have been enough, and the other parties who were running in that seat will almost always benefit the Liberals/Nationals.