2 federal party leaders fight for votes in Hamilton with seats up for grabs ahead of next election

As polling shows ridings up for grabs in the Hamilton region, politicians from three federal parties visited the city within the last eight days to promote policies and gain support from locals. 

But two experts tell CBC Hamilton it's the Conservatives who seem to have the upper hand, despite the fact that Hamilton elected just one Tory MP in 2021. 

On Friday morning, Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre was at steelmaker Stelco to promote an economic plan including tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles and parts. 

At the same time, over at downtown event space Mills Hardware, local Liberal members of parliament Filomena Tassi, Chad Collins and Lisa Hepfner highlighted federal investment into festivals and events such as Hamilton's Supercrawl and Theatre Aquarius. 

And last week, federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was in Hamilton to meet local politicians and make the case to end federal funding for bad corporate landlords. 

Although he cautions not to make too much of summer tours, Peter Graefe, an associate professor of political science at McMaster University, says it's likely that a number of Hamilton ridings will be competitive.

For example, polling research from 338Canada shows four local Liberal seats leaning Conservative: 

The 338Canada model shows the currently Liberal Hamilton Mountain riding represented by Lisa Hepfner, as a Conservative-NDP toss-up. 

Overall, Graefe said, there has been a "significant weakening of the Liberal vote and a strengthening of the Conservative one," especially in suburban areas. 

Lydia Miljan, a professor of political science at the University of Windsor said after the Liberals lost a supposedly safe seat in a June byelection, "it really does seem like all seats are in play." 

"It seems to me that whatever the Liberals are doing, it's not working."

At Stelco on Friday, Poilievre called workers there "the greatest workers in the world" and said that housing has become unaffordable to those with average manufacturing jobs. 

The Conservative leader added that while he thinks the traditionally working-class-focused NDP would have once been outraged by this, now they've "signed on." He also called Singh a "sell-out," for working with the Liberals via a confidence and supply agreement. 

The NDP made that deal with the Liberals in 2022, supporting the government on confidence and budget votes in exchange for NDP priorities including pharmacare and the anti-replacement worker legislation, Bill C-58, that bans federally regulated workplaces from bringing in replacement workers during a legal strike.