The Right Honourable Devil-You-Know

Can you stand one more election post? Well, this one isn't about this election, but about a pattern I've noticed. It occurred to me that the result of this election was actually pretty unusual, at least among elections in my lifetime.

American pundits have commented that Presidents rarely lose the election for their second term, despite the public's supposed hatred of politicians. During my life, the only Presidents to fail to win re-election were Carter and Bush Sr. (and Ford, though he wasn't elected in the first place.)

But Canada is much the same, if not more so.  This election, where a government ran for re-election, but lost, was pretty unusual, even though that seems like a pretty ordinary result for an election. In my forty-two years, there have been only four sitting Prime Ministers that have lost elections, and they generally haven't been like this one.

• John Turner and Kim Campbell got to be PM by the quirk of parliamentary system: they replaced long-time Prime Ministers, called an election, and lost, leaving office in just a few months.
• Paul Martin did slightly better. He replaced a long-time PM, then won an election with a minority. It fell after two years, and he lost the subsequent election.
• The only time a Prime Minister who served more than a longer than a Presidential term, then lost an election, was 1979 when Joe Clark defeated Pierre Trudeau, albeit with a minority. Clark's government collapsed after nine months, at which point Trudeau defeated him in the election, winning a majority.

So this election is the first time in my life that a Prime Minister with a majority lost an election to another party that won a majority. That says something about how we like to go with the flow in Canada.