Heading into the final week of the 2025 Canadian federal election, national polls predict the Mark Carney Liberals have a slight lead over the Pierre Poilievre Conservatives. That means the two federal ridings that include portions of the Comox Valley could make a difference in which party forms our next government.

The fear among progressive-minded voters has always been that one or both of the Courtenay-Alberni and North Island-Powell River ridings will swing Conservative, which would help Poilievre.

But despite this shared goal of keeping Poilievre and his cadre of right-wing Freedom Convoy MAGA-style candidates out of office, progressives are once again so embroiled in fighting each other over small-picture differences that the Conservative candidates don’t even bother to show up for public forums.

Progressive voters have been dealt a difficult and divisive hand. Should you vote for the NDP again or the Liberals? Who has the best chance of overcoming the odds and defeating the Conservatives in our two ridings? I’ve already made my choice known.

Some progressive voters in our ridings are waiting to see which party, Liberal or NDP, is ahead in the polls before casting their vote. The problem is that polling at the riding level is often unreliable.

So now, progressives have found something new to squabble about: which poll of the North Island-Powell River (NIPR) riding is the accurate one? Some polls show the Liberals ahead of the NDP. Others show the NDP with an edge. Who to believe?

The realist (pessimist?) in me says it doesn’t matter. All of the polls show the Conservatives well ahead in NIPR. So, in reality, unless all of the polls are wrong, the outcome was already written from the start when the Greens, Liberals and NDP all fielded candidates.

Three candidates to split progressive voters and a single candidate to get 100 percent of the Conservative voters. Those are bad odds.

That shared goal, that common purpose of defeating the Conservatives on the North Island immediately turned into Mutually Assured Destruction. Flat out MADness, in my view.

WHEN THE BC LIBERAL and BC Conservative parties merged during last year’s provincial election, I contacted Green Party candidate Arzeena Hamir. I asked if she was concerned about splitting the vote with the NDP now that the small-c conservative vote would no longer be split. She was not concerned, Hamir told me, because the Greens had the dominant campaign. She genuinely believed she would win.

It was magical thinking then and it’s at play again in this federal election. With two strong progressive candidates in NDP Tanille Johnston and Liberal Jennifer Lash, there’s no way on God’s green earth that either one of them will win the riding.

Lash knew this back in 2021 when she wrote a post on the blog “Malcolm Island Post whatever you want” about that year’s federal election. Disclaimer: Mark Worthing reposted a screenshot of Lash’s blog post. It’s a private group, so I have not seen the post first-hand.

In that post, Lash promotes voting for NDP Rachel Blaney for three reasons. First, because the NIPR riding “historically votes NDP or Conservative with the Liberals and other parties not garnering many votes.” Second, Blaney has “done a great job as an MP.” Third, because the NDP “did a good job pushing the Liberals to do more and go further on climate and other important issues.”

Those were good reasons for voting strategically in 2021 and they are still valid today.

So, why did she spin 180 on this issue? One can only conclude that Lash, like Hamir in the provincial election, has succumbed to magical thinking that she can actually win, despite two other progressive candidates and a single Conservative.

I hope I’m totally wrong and that Lash or Johnston wins, but the Conservative vote looks too unified.

All progressive voters, despite their party affiliations, want a Liberal government, majority or minority. But battling each other isn’t a realistic path to achieving it.

MY ELECTION PREDICTION for NIPR is that the Greens, Liberals and NDP together will get more votes than the Conservatives and lose the riding. And, like new Conservative MLA Brennan Day, Aaron Gunn – the podcaster parachuted into the riding – will go to Ottawa knowing that a majority of voters didn’t want him. But he won’t care.

In the Courtenay-Alberni riding, I think it’s a different story. NDP Gord Johns has earned enough respect from voters to squeak by for another term.