Seeing Red

By Hubie and Bertie

Have you gotten over your motion sickness yet? Benedict Donald backed down and put most of his ridiculous tariffs on "pause" for 90 days. So, will we all endure more whiplash then, or sooner? Who knows with this sociopath? It's enough to make people crave steady, sensible leadership.

Which is what seems to be happening in Canada, in the run-up to the April 28 federal election.

Check out this map. We're not big fans of Polymarket — it's a crypto-based prediction market that exists simply to separate vulnerable people from their hard-earned money by allowing them to bet on everything from the chance of a US recession this year to the winner of the 2025 Masters. But this particular prediction got our attention because to make it, Polymarket has simply followed Canadian polling and the trajectory of the race — and well, as they say, here we are.

Handy reminder that in Canada, the "color-coding" for the parties are the opposite of ours here: The Liberals are red, and the Conservatives are blue. And the last time we saw this much red was in 2015.

Currently, Polymarket predicts that the Liberals will end up with 174 seats, the Tories with 137, the Bloc Quebecois with 20, and the NDP with 11. It takes 172 to form a majority government, so to avoid a razor-thin margin like Speaker Mike "Mike" Johnson's in the House of Representatives, the Liberals must keep pushing.

Meanwhile, if this scenario holds, the Conservatives and their unappealing leader, Pierre Poilievre, will have some hard decisions to make. Where do they throw in the towel? Where will they stop spending money and other precious campaign resources? Do they try to pivot again? Poilievre has already tried to be quite stern about Benedict Donald's shenanigans, even though he was an enthusiastic Trump admirer before. So, what does he do? Somehow, mocking PM Mark Carney's "banker's haircut" seems like just more political malpractice.

And time is running out. We cats have our paws crossed, and we PURR.