The electoral earthquakes have come fast and heavy over the past few years, whether Brexit in the United Kingdom, the Trump presidency in the United States, or the anti-establishment coalition in Italy. With key elections slated to be held on every continent, will the trend continue in 2019?

Forecast

Canada General Election (Before October 21)

Canadians will be heading to the polls to select a new federal government at some point before October. The contest will pit Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal Party against Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives as the two parties most likely to form the next government. The New Democratic Party, led by Jagmeet Singh, is not expected to compete for a top spot. However, the left-wing party’s electoral fortunes could well be decisive since a good result for the NDP tends to skim support from the governing Liberal Party, benefiting the Conservatives.

The latest polling from Nanos Research (January 11) puts the Liberals in the lead with 38.1%, followed by the Conservatives with 33.9%, the NDP with 15.4%, the Green Party with 6.9%, and the Bloq Quebecois (a regional party) with 3.3%.

Here are a few key issues that could decide the election:

Pipelines. The Trudeau government has come under fire for the economic impact of its environmental policies. Pipelines in particular have long been a controversial subject in Canadian politics. The country’s bitumen crude deposits are climate unfriendly to extract and are not well serviced by pipelines or export terminals, forcing Canadian producers to sell them at a discount. There’s a stark regional divide on the issue as well. The energy sector is far more important to the economies of the western provinces than it is to central and Atlantic Canada, which feeds a disparity in popular support for pipeline construction (although one recent poll by Angus Reid found that a majority of Canadians country-wide, with the exception of Quebec, believe that pipeline under-capacity represents “a crisis”).

The fate of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has come to symbolize the issue. The pipeline, originally proposed by Kinder Morgan Canada, seeks to expand a preexisting pipeline linking Edmonton, Alberta with Pacific export terminals in Burnaby, B.C. The government of Canada bought the pipeline from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion in May 2018; however, the project was subsequently put on hold in August after the Federal Court of Appeals revoked approval of the project citing a lack of consultations with local First Nations groups. The future of the project is once again in doubt as these consultations are held.