Last week, Canadians voted in yet another Liberal government—the fourth in a row since 2015. The Liberals have proven themselves to be the most politically successful left-leaning party in the Western world over the past decade. In an age of populist conservative nationalism, they defy all odds. How do they keep doing it?
Let’s begin with a look at the past few months in Canadian politics, illustrated by three useful images.
Late last year, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s approval ratings dropped to around 20 percent. The Conservative Party opposition, led by Pierre Poilievre, made withering attacks on Trudeau’s Liberal government as incompetent, too far left, and out of touch. Canadian voters across the political spectrum viewed Trudeau as having badly mismanaged the economy. Polls predicted a 2025 Conservative Party landslide. The long-term trend appeared inexorable; the Liberals were doomed.
Prominent Liberal figures then did what ruthlessly effective political parties in the parliamentary tradition have always done—they stabbed their faltering leader in the back. On December 16th, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned from the government, denouncing Trudeau as incompetent on fiscal matters. Since Freeland was the heir apparent to the Liberal Party leadership, jokingly referred to as “Minister of Everything,” this sent shock waves through the party like nothing else. But as so often happens in the Westminster system, the hand that wields the knife sometimes fails to pick up the crown.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, having won the latest US presidential election, began arguing that Canada needed to make dramatic concessions on trade and border issues—concessions it could avoid by joining America as the 51st state. Canadians initially dismissed this as the usual bluster. Prime Minister Trudeau flew down to Mar-a-Lago in the hope of heading off US tariff hikes. On being inaugurated, however, Trump showed he was serious. On February 1st, he imposed a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada, making an exception for oil and gas.
The impact of Trump’s ‘51st state’ rhetoric, along with his oscillating tariff threats, can be seen in the above chart showing popular support for various Canadian political parties. During the last week of January, support for the Liberals began to rise rapidly. For the Trudeau government, Trump’s words and behavior triggered a rally around the flag effect of epic proportions. An upsurge in Canadian nationalism—or patriotism, if you will—swept millions of voters into rethinking their partisan commitments. As unpopular as Trudeau was, he spoke for many Canadians when he concluded that the country’s very independence was on the line. Moreover, having announced that he would step down as party leader, the Liberals were free to look elsewhere.
In the equivalent of a nationwide primary, culminating on March 9th, Liberal voters decided they preferred Mark Carney—former Governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England—to take over as Liberal leader. He became Prime Minister five days later, and on March 23rd called a snap election.
As this second chart shows, despite all the talk of wild volatility, the Liberals made no significant gains against the Tories during the election campaign. Support for every political party remained remarkably stable. If anything, the Tories closed the gap toward the end, as Poilievre rallied his forces and fought back. By any reasonable standard, the Tories finished strong on election day, April 28th, gathering 41.3 percent of the popular vote nationwide. But by then, this cake was baked. Evidently, many Canadians made their minds up to vote for Mark Carney before the election was even called. In a narrow but clear win, the Liberals finished with 43.7 percent of the popular vote.
Since Canada’s electoral system allows each voter to cast a single ballot in their federal constituency for one local candidate, results often skew geographically. For example, when the Tories pile up 70 percent majorities in rural prairie ridings, as they often do, this still only wins them one seat at a time. In recent elections, the Liberal vote has been more efficiently spread around the country, allowing them to win close calls even when outpolled nationwide by the Conservatives. This time around, however, the Liberal edge in vote distribution supplemented the Liberal edge in popular vote.
There are 343 seats in Canada’s House of Commons, based on the same number of federal electoral districts. Here is how those districts voted:
In the next part of this series, I discuss the results region by region—and explore the leading explanations as to how these results came about.
The post How Canada’s Liberals Won appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.
