I’ve spent much of the last week in Canada, where I have two college-aged daughters finishing their academic years. (My older daughter is a senior at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia; my younger daughter is finishing her sophomore year at the University of Ottawa.) My daughters and I are all dual citizens of Canada and the United States. We were all born in the U.S., but my parents were born in the Sherbrooke, Quebec area, and were still Canadian citizens when I was born in New Hampshire. (They have long since become naturalized Americans.)
I’ve recorded a 12-minute video with graphs and some explanations for what has been an unprecedented election season, during an unprecedented time, in the history of Canada. Early this year, the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, appeared on a glide path to one of its biggest national election victories in history - up by 25 points over a Liberal Party whose leader, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, had become deeply unpopular from a decade in office, punishing inflation, an accumulating number of personal controversies and administration mini-scandals, and a painful national carbon tax.
Meanwhile, after running underwhelming Conservative leaders who would be Prime Minister in Trudeau’s three victorious prior national elections, the party appeared to have nailed both a message (“Axe The Tax!”) and a charismatic leader (Poilievre). I’d written a piece in early January about the savvy political work the Conservatives had done.
Then, the walls came in for Conservatives: Trudeau announced his resignation, then President Trump put Canada into an existential crisis with his threats about tariffs and “51st state” talk. In the meantime, Liberals had to elect an interim leader (who would become Prime Minister until tomorrow’s election), which involves a several-week national process where registered Liberal voters can vote for who’d they like to have as leader of the party. There were four main candidates, and the chance of a divisive process buoyed Conservatives, even as the tariff threat brought Trudeau some “rally around the flag” approval.
Instead, though, Mark Carney (a Harvard-trained economist who was the former sort-of-equivalent to the Chair of the Federal Reserve for Canada, but had never run for elected office) dominated the election, and became Prime Minister on March 9th.
Days later, with polling showing the Liberals in a strong position to win a national election, Carney called a national election (which was required to take place by late this year, anyway), instead selecting a date that was the soonest an election could occur: Monday, April 28th.
There are 343 seats in parliament. Each district is called a “riding”. If a party wins at least 172 seats, they have a majority, and their leader becomes Prime Minister. If, as has been the case the last several years, no party wins a majority of the seats, then a coalition government must be formed to build a majority of parliament. The last several years, the Liberals combined with the New Democratic Party (or NDP) which is generally more progressive than the Liberal Party. Together, they formed a majority under Liberal Prime Minister Trudeau.
It now appears that the Liberals may win enough seats to get a majority without needing a coalition partner. There are several reasons for this, but the main is…Donald Trump. The threat of tariffs (as you’ll see in the video) has brought Canadians together in a way that would make Wayne Gretzky jealous: Many voters who would be inclined to support the NDP have instead moved towards the Liberal Party in a pragmatic streak, seeking to communicate that Canada is united against the threat of Trump.
This has meant that in urban and suburban locations where the NDP has been enjoying electoral success over the past decade (in and around parts of Toronto and Vancouver, for example), Liberals are now poised to gain seats - perhaps enough to get a clean majority.
Meanwhile, the Conservative message of Poilievre has suddenly seemed…irrelevant. Carney immediately repealed the national carbon tax (making “Axe The Tax” a relic), and the idea of saying that after 10+ years of Liberal governance, it is time for “change” seems antithetical to the widely-held sense that Canadians need to stick together against the big, bad American threat.
Despite all this, it is not certain that the Liberals will win a majority tomorrow. Turnout is expected to very high - in fact, in the week or so that early voting has been active, record numbers have already been reported. But it is also clear that a trend we’ve been seeing in the U.S. is occurring here in Canada, as well: younger voters, particularly younger men, are breaking strongly for Conservatives. Like in the U.S., it is possible that higher turnout will benefit Conservatives more than Liberals.
But after being down by 25 points less than four months ago, most polls have Liberals up by four-to-five points entering early voting, even after the English and French debates of the last few weeks. It’s not clear how much of a mandate the voters will be giving Liberals, given that much of this success would be in response to Donald Trump’s roller-coaster tariff threats, but it will likely give Carney and his Liberal Party firm control of national politics for now.
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