Everybody’s Humbled

A strange federal election manages to deliver varying degrees of disappointment to pretty much everyone

On the same day that Canadians were heading to the polls, The Atlantic published details from a new interview they did with U.S. President Donald Trump. One of the topics addressed in that interview was Trump’s trade war with Canada and his continued obsession with making us the 51st state. The exchange also included this interesting admission from the president as to his awareness of the political earthquake he caused in Canada:

We’ll never know what this election might have looked like if Donald Trump had been defeated in November. Would there have been less pressure on Justin Trudeau to resign without the spectre of a tariff crisis with the U.S.? Or, what if Trudeau had been determined to stay on, hoping that he would be the one to confront the Trump threat?

It’s pretty clear that the combination of political circumstances - Trump’s election and Trudeau’s resignation - paved the way for the result we saw yesterday. It’s safe to say that had this election occurred prior to or absent those circumstances that it would have indeed been the blowout win for the Conservatives that we’d all been expecting for many months.

Instead, the Liberals have gone from potential obliteration to a most unexpected fourth term. It’s a turnaround that I’m sure will be studied closely for years to come. But as we went from an expected Conservative majority to an expected Liberal majority, in the end we got neither.

It’s fair to say the Conservatives blew a massive polling lead, but it’s not because they lost support along the way. As of this writing, the Conservatives are sitting with 41.4 per cent of the vote - that’s higher than the Conservative total when they won a majority in 2011 and the highest for any federal conservative party since Brian Mulroney’s win in 1988 (ironically, an election also dominated by issues related to trade with the U.S.). It’s just that the Liberals managed to do slightly better.

The Liberals currently sit at 43.6 per cent of the popular vote, which is a higher vote percentage than Justin Trudeau secured in 2015 and even higher than any total from the three Jean Chretier majorities. You’d have to go all the way back to 1980 to find a bigger haul of the popular vote for the Liberals (44.3 per cent for Pierre Trudeau). Yet, it appears to still be insufficient for the Mark Carney Liberals to secure a majority government (they currently sit at 168 seats, four short of the 172 needed for a majority).

So where does that leave us?

The Liberals are clearly the least disappointed of the bunch, but they weren’t spared a serving of humble pie, either. Early on in the election it certainly appeared that we were headed toward a Liberal majority government. Even as the Conservatives showed signs of momentum toward the end of the campaign, most projections were still leaning toward a Liberal majority. And in a different kind of election, 43.6 per cent of the popular vote would be more than enough to get there. But they fell short. Gains in Quebec were offset by a surprisingly strong Conservative performance in Ontario. There was some talk that the Liberals could make some major inroads in hostile territory such as Alberta, but that didn’t happen, either (appears to be two Liberal seats in Alberta, the same as the 2021 election).

Carney has promised big, bold initiatives but it’s going to be hard to deliver on much of that with a minority government. They could lean on the seven or so New Democrats in Parliament, but that’s not really the sort of change we were supposed to be getting from this new prime minister. Can the Liberals and Conservatives find some common ground here? That could be interesting.

The potential Paul Martin parallel here should frighten the Liberals. After Chretien resigned, Martin was supposed to be the sort of change that would reinvigorate the Liberals and lift them to new heights. He was billed as a more moderate, business-friendly sort of Liberal who could keep the Liberal base while still appealing to middle-of-the-road voters. Yet Martin could only muster a minority win in 2004 and subsequently lost to the Harper Conservatives in 2006 (although a major scandal did play a significant role).

As noted, the Conservative Party of Canada has their best-ever night in terms of share of the popular vote, but will once again be relegated to the opposition benches. Even worse, Pierre Poilievre has lost his seat - a seat he has held since 2004. There will be many questions facing the Conservative leader, but the first order of business will have to be figuring out a path back to the House of Commons. It’s interesting how we went from the spectre of a prime minister not holding a seat to now an opposition leader without one.

There may be an MP in a safe Conservative seat (rural southern Alberta seems obvious, given Poilievre’s Calgary connections) willing to step aside and let the leader run in a byelection. But that could be months down the road, thus dragging out this rather humbling episode for Poilievre for some time still.

And in the meantime, there will be other questions for Poilievre and the Conservatives to grapple with. Why were the Liberals the sole political beneficiary of Trump’s attacks? Why didn’t Canadians see Poilievre as the leader to deal with the crisis? Did the Conservatives run the wrong sort of campaign early on, hoping that their 2024 playbook could still deliver in 2025? A desire for change was still there as it was clear that Mark Carney didn’t really want to run on the dreadful Liberal record - could a different leader or a different strategy have found a better balance in delivering that messaging?

On the other hand, though, Poilievre has been quite successful as Conservative leader in uniting the party and broadening and energizing its base. He fended off any sort of threat from the right that Maxime Bernier and the People’s Party might have posed (the PPC won 0.7 per cent of the vote yesterday). Poilievre’s rallies have been unlike anything we’ve seen in recent political history and he’s shaped much of the debate in Canada around inflation, affordability, housing, and the carbon tax.

In a weird way, Poilievre is a victim of his own success. He arguably played a huge role in driving down Trudeau’s popularity to the point where the Liberals forced their leader to quit and also forced the Liberals into abandoning their own carbon tax (As Carney said to Poilievre during the leaders’ debate: “You spent years running against Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax and now they're both gone”).

It seems highly unlikely that the Conservatives would consider ditching Poilievre for a new leader, but he’s got some work to do. I’m sure he fully expected to be the prime minister once Canadians got a chance to go to the polls, and must be deeply disappointed with what he got instead. Still, I wouldn’t rule out Poilievre becoming prime minister at some point down the road.

It was clearly a terrible night for the NDP and the Bloc Québécois (BQ) - much more so for the former, arguably. The BQ lost a number of seats to the LIberals, but still managed to hold onto a caucus of 23. The NDP, on the other hand, have lost official party status and have lost their leader, too. Jagmeet Singh was defeated in his own riding and announced last night that he would be stepping down as leader.

In hindsight, propping up Trudeau and saving him from an electoral trouncing was the worst thing that could have happened to the NDP. Mind you, it also prevented a Conservative government, which might matter more to those progressive voters. If that’s the case, though, then what is the point of the NDP in the first place?

The collapse of the NDP vote clearly benefited the Liberals, but it also was beneficial for Conservatives in some parts of the country (Windsor, for example). In ridings where the NDP had previously been strong, their drop in support created enough of a progressive vote split to help elect Conservatives. But there’s also the phenomenon that we saw in the recent Ontario election and again here in this federal election where blue collar voters who might have previously supported the NDP have been drawn to conservative parties. If that trend continues, it’s hard to see a way back for the NDP.

This was also a humbling night for the polling industry, although some pollsters did better than others. This is what the final polls were showing, as per 338Canada:

In terms of projected share of the popular vote, it appears Liason’s numbers came closest to the actual result. Some were not too far off. Others, though, again underestimated Conservative support (or at least Conservative momentum), especially in Ontario.

But even though the popular vote numbers weren’t too far off, most of the models projected that support to translate into a majority government. It’s one thing to gauge how many people are going to vote for each party, but there’s clearly a bigger challenge in terms of projecting what that will mean in terms of seats. Remember, the Liberals lost the popular vote in 2019 and 2021 but still won more seats than the Conservatives. This was an unusual election, to be sure, but it’s something for pollsters to consider.

Some interesting days lie ahead for us as a country. We face some major challenges and we should all hope that this government is prepared and equipped to deal with them.

There’s also the question of how unified this country can and will be moving forward, a matter of particular relevance here in Alberta (as discussed here). Premier Danielle Smith had some interesting comments to that end this morning, and says she will have more to say later this week. Stay tuned.