FIRST READING: David Eby’s snap election could blow up in his face

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When Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa called a snap election in 1976, the official reason was that he needed a new mandate to address “a number of very important events (that) will affect the future of Quebec.”

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Bourassa already had a majority government. He also had two years left in his mandate; Quebecers weren’t scheduled to go to the polls until the fall of 1978.

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But optimism was riding high in the wake of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and Bourassa pegged it as a good time to cash in that goodwill for a mandate that could at least last into the 1980s.

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The result was one of the most catastrophic backfires imaginable. Instead of renewing his majority, Bourassa was steamrolled by the first election win by the newly founded Parti Quebecois – a party that Bourassa had spent the campaign mocking. The Quebec Liberal even lost his own seat to a separatist poet.

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On Tuesday, B.C. Premier David Eby called a snap election, also with a majority, and also with two years left in his mandate. The stated reason was that U.S. President Donald Trump is an “existential” threat to B.C., and the NDP premier needs his mandate renewed immediately to deal with it.

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The more likely reason is that, after an entire summer of polling behind the B.C. Conservatives, the opposition’s sudden collapse under leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay suddenly turned the tide, yielding two weeks’ worth of polls with an NDP lead.

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It’s a gamble, and a gamble that has often paid off for premiers in recent years. Ontario Premier Doug Ford secured his third consecutive majority with a snap election in 2025. Eby’s own predecessor, John Horgan, used a snap election in the opening months of the COVID-19 pandemic to secure not only a majority, but the most decisive result in B.C. NDP history.

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But such gambles have also precipitated some of the most catastrophic reversals in Canadian political history.

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The textbook example of snap election backfire is Ontario Premier David Peterson. In 1990, after just three years of his four-year mandate, he called an early election to capitalize on polls showing his Liberal party with a commanding 50 per cent of the vote.

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In an instant, Ontarians who had been telling pollsters they liked Peterson changed their tune once it meant they had to mark it on a ballot.

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The first poll issued after Peterson’s election call showed that his lead had instantly evaporated, and that he probably wasn’t going to retain his majority.

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“I’m getting a lot of questions about the early election. Maybe we didn’t do a good job explaining why we called this early election,” one Liberal candidate, Bernard Grandmaître, told the Ottawa Citizen at the time.

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The Liberals not only lost their majority, but they lost the election entirely to a majority win by the Ontario NDP.

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A similar turnaround occurred in Alberta in 2015. There again, a comfortably established incumbent, the Progressive Conservatives under Premier Jim Prentice, called an early election to consolidate what they assumed was going to be an easy win.

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Instead, Prentice walked into a defeat that even the opposition didn’t see coming: An NDP majority, and his own party devastated beyond repair.

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Quebec political history even yields a second example of Liberals calling a snap election, only to be punished with a surprise victory from the Parti Quebecois.

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That’s what happened to Quebec Liberal Premier Jean Charest in 2012. He called an early summer election in an apparent attempt to catch the electorate in a good mood, and wound up guaranteeing a defeat bad enough to cost him his own seat.