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It comes down to the three “T’s”
Ok, that’s a bit of an overstatement. Anyone who has been paying attention since Carney replaced Trudeau should not be shocked by the results. I even wrote my first post-election thoughts two days before the election was finalized based on my assumption the Liberals would win. The post-election autopsies have begun, many of which label the results as the Conservative Party “blowing it.” There are also no shortage of pieces categorizing the loss as a death knell for Canada and/or calling for Alberta to separate. We seem to have adopted the US approach to elections which argues that every election is the "Flight 93 Election;” “charge the cockpit or die.”
I wouldn’t categorize the state of the country as “a tempest in a tea kettle,” – if Carney is simply Trudeau 2.0, we’re in a lot of trouble - but neither am I adopting the line from Dr. Strangelove that soon “the living will envy the dead.” Canada has problems but I wouldn’t start manning the barricades yet. But, hey, it’s a free world, run with that doomerism. I’m sure it’ll be great for your mental health.
Still, it would be nice to understand what happened in more detail rather than relying on the half-assed legacy media “analysis” that often just summarize what the polls say. Let’s start with the easy stuff…
Did the Conservatives “blow it?”
No.
Ok, that’s not a very satisfying answer so I’ll elaborate.
Hell, no.
It’s easy to look at the polls from January and the results of the election and conclude the Conservatives and Poilievre lost the unlosable election, but this isn’t Hillary in 2016 where arrogance is to blame for the lost. There are a number of factors that came into play that contributed to this loss. In retrospect some should have been predictable while others might more accurately be categorized as black swan events.
The Conservative share of the vote (41.3%) was the highest a conservative party has received since 1988 (40.3%). To give you an idea of how that compares historically:
It’s the same percentage that the Liberals received in 1993 when they won 63% of the seats in parliament.
The last time a party lost the election with that level of support was in 1957 when the Liberals received 42.3% of the votes but only won 39.6% of the seats. It is a quirk (flaw) of our system that the Conservatives only received 39% of the vote in that election but won 42.3% of the vote (minority government).
Still, there will be many who will argue that all that matters is who won the election. Fair enough.
Why did the Conservatives Lose?
I found this graph illuminating:
Source: Fools Seldom Differ
A: 25 Nov 25 – Trump first announces 25% tariffs on Canada on Truth Social
B: 6 Jan 25 – Trudeau announces his resignation
C: 16 Jan 25 – Carney announces his intention to run for the LPC leadership
D: 20 Jan 25 – Trump’s inauguration
E: 9 Mar 25 – Carney wins party leadership
F: 23 Mar 25 – Dissolution of Parliament
G: 28 Apr 25 – Election Day
Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish
The Liberals’ fortunes began to improve after Trudeau’s resignation (B) – hardly surprising – largely, if not entirely at the expense of the NDP. This is likely proof that the Trudeau “brand” was much more of a factor in the misfortunes of the Liberals to this point than anything else. Poilievre may have been a victim of his own success here. “Justinflation” and other efforts to pin the blame on Trudeau rather than the Liberal party enabled the Liberals to begin laying the blame entirely at Trudeau’s feet and spread the message that “Carney isn’t Trudeau.” We can see similar bumps in the graph which support this conjecture:
The Liberals receive a large bump - largely at the expense of the Conservatives - when Trudeau officially resigns on February 23rd.
Another jump in support beginning on or about the 16th of March, two days after Carney is sworn in as prime minister.
There is however more at play here than just ditching Trudeau. Replacing Trudeau certainly helped the Liberals (and hurt the NDP – more on that later) but it doesn’t appear to have hurt the Conservatives too much. Trudeau announced that he would resign at point B and support for the Conservatives continued to rise. At least until point D when Trump was inaugurated.
If this is how you treat your friends…
Many view Trump’s behavior in the lead up to the election with bafflement. Why would a conservative president seemingly sabotage the efforts of another conservative politician. Well, first, Trump isn’t really a conservative. He’s a populist with an authoritarian streak. If Trump were really a conservative, he wouldn’t be centralizing power and increasing taxes via tariffs (yes, tariffs are a tax on consumers). The confusion stems from Trump’s position as leader of the Republican party. However, this illusion disappears if one views the Republican party less as a vehicle that he’s invested in and more as a taxi that will get him where he want’s to be and then ignored thereafter. Second, what makes anyone think he cares about Canada or Poilievre? Trump views himself as a master negotiator so to him it’s irrelevant who is leading Canada since in his mind he’s going to out negotiate whoever ends up being prime minister.
The problem for the Conservatives is that too many Canadians were worried/offended by what Trump said. Anyone who can stir patriotism towards Canada in Quebecers has clearly hit a nerve. Poilievre was viewed, rightly or not, as a populist, as a mini-Trump, and that hurt him a lot. We can see from the graph that support for the Conservatives began to decline at point D, Trump’s inauguration, and took another large hit on 24 February when Trump reiterated his suggestion of annexing Canada and referring to Trudeau as "Governor" Justin Trudeau. As long as Trump was hogging the headlines and…well, being Trump, the Conservatives were going to suffer.
So that’s it, right? The Liberals ditch Trudeau, Trump shoots off his mouth and the Liberals win. Still, I can’t help but wonder…
What happened to the NDP?
On January 6th (point B) Trudeau announces he will resign and support for the NDP starts to fall. Jagmeet Singh and the NDP spent the last 4 years propping up the Liberals to the point where it was very difficult to see much daylight between the two parties. What little support the party had prior to 2025 was likely due to Canadians deep dislike of Trudeau. With Trudeau gone that quickly changed. Why vote for a third party when dividing the vote is just going to hurt your cause? We can see the proof of this by revisiting the 16th of March. Two days after Carney is sworn in as prime minister support for NDP plummets and suddenly the Liberals are tied with the Conservatives.
@gordedwards did a good job with this graph but he mislabeled one item on the graph. He correctly identified point F as the day parliament was dissolved, but why would that cause a spike in Liberal support at the expense of the NDP? Parliament hadn’t met since December 15th, 2024, the dissolution was little more than administrative action. No, the important event didn’t happen on the 23rd of March, but on the 24th when Tom Mulcair, the highly respected and former leader of the NDP, wrote an opinion piece arguing that “Trump’s threat to Canada means this election must be a choice between the Liberals and Conservatives.” Mulcair gave “permission” to NDP voters to abandon their party. He likely persuaded many Bloc and Green voters to abandon their parties in favor of the Liberals as well.
The Devil is in the Details
I like my theory (who doesn’t like their own theory?) but there are still a few quirks that it doesn’t completely explain. This table complicates the matter by showing that more NDP seats went to the Conservatives than to the Liberals, a result I find baffling since it seems to imply that far-left voters moved so far right that they skipped the Liberal party entirely.
Some of this is likely due to an increase on voter participation which saw turnout rise from 62.3% in 2021 to 68.7% this year. Put simply, the Conservative wins in previously NDP ridings may be due to an increase in conservative voter turnout rather than NDP voters turning blue.
Note: I did a quick spot check of three of these ridings (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, London—Fanshawe, and Edmonton Griesbach) which seems to support this theory. It also shows fewer people voting for third parties implying that Mulcair’s op-ed was successful.
The table highlights another point I did not address, the failure of the Bloc. A spot check of Bloc ridings shows that once again Mulcair made a big difference as, numerically at least, support for the Bloc remained flat but third-party support collapsed largely to the benefit of the Liberals.
In the end short of interviewing every individual voter, it is impossible to say with certainty why someone voted one way or the other. That said, the data strongly suggests that the Liberal victory was driven by the three “T’s,” Trudeau, Trump, and Tom (Mulcair – with a giant assist from the historically incompetent Jagmeet Singh). A sad irony of this election is that after screwing the country for a decade, Trudeau, by stepping down when he did, managed to screw Canadians one last time.
Phil (Hoisttheblackflag) is a writer and classical liberal who, when not complaining about the Ottawa Senators, writes about politics, individual rights, government corruption/abuse and free speech. He resides in Vancouver, British Columbia.
You can read more of his work at
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Thanks for the shout out.
I’ll take a moment to explain/”defend” point F.
On reflection I probably should have labeled it as “Federal Election Commences” which was the point in time I meant to mark.
Two things I saw around that point. And to clarify I was more focused on the Liberals’ significant recovery (which I saw as the action) vice the CPC modest decline (which I interpreted as the consequence).
First was that the election allowed all the other parties to get some attention. With Parliament prorogued since December the CPC etc didn’t have a platform. Also the media was fully engaged in watching the Liberal leadership race. The Liberals were still governing and getting some attention talking about Trump, but the other parties were squeezed out. The election call changed the playing field.
Second is that before an election people can say anything in a poll. But around when the election is called things get real and poll support is presumably more reflective of who they really will vote for.
My interpretation of this was that NDP and BQ support declined pre-election while Trump was being scary and they were out of the spotlight. Then dropped further when it became time to make an election decision. CPC support declined pre-election for the same reasons but started to recover during the election period.
It takes time for public sentiment to shift. What I see in the Liberal line is that the momentum they gathered starting when Trudeau announced his plan to resign carried them a couple of weeks into the election period. Someone commented in the late days that the CPC was on track to win a majority government if the election was held on 30 May. But unfortunately for them it was scheduled for 28 April.
So I agree on the Trudeau and Trump effects. My own post-election analysis (shameless plug!) has focused on Trump and people rallying behind the Liberals to protect them. I disagree with Mulcair on a lot of issues no doubt, but I find him a good commentator. However I’m not convinced he has that sort of influence.
Great article. I’m glad you found my graph informative and useful for your piece.
I think looking at the swing of working class/union voters to the populist Right is a better explanation than voter turnout. It’s the same phenomenon that happened in the US.