Canada elections: How Liberals turned the tide and ‘Trumped’ the right

One crucial factor in Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo was his decision to delay the assault until midday due to muddy ground from the previous night’s rain, which hindered artillery movement. This delay gave the Prussians time to regroup and join forces with the British, allowing his enemies to inflict a crushing defeat on an emperor once shrouded in the myth of invincibility. Elections are not so different from war—while war requires men and weapons, elections rely on cadres and narratives to achieve victory. Both are still a means to achieve political power, and timing reigns supreme in both.

Canada went to the polls on Monday, where the Liberal Party, led by Mark Carney, secured a narrow victory, winning 169 seats—retaining power despite falling short of a majority. The Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, won 144 seats, even farther from the ‘magic number’ of 172 in the 343-member House of Commons. The Liberals will form a minority government and will have to rely on other political parties to pass legislation, while Canada appears to be moving towards greater bipolarity.

The smaller parties, including the Bloc Québécois and New Democratic Party, have suffered significant losses, while the major parties—the Liberals and Conservatives—have increased their seat tally. The New Democratic Party, often criticised for its perceived pro-Khalistani sentiments, was reduced to just 7 seats, a loss of 17 seats compared to before, and lost its official party status. Moreover, its leader Jagmeet Singh lost his Burnaby Central constituency. Meanwhile, the Bloc Québécois won 22 seats, 11 fewer than the previous count.

But yet the most shocking part of the 2024 elections is how fast the conservatives lost ground. Acknowledgedly, the party won 24 more seats than the last count; despite this gain, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre lost his own seat in Carleton, a notable upset given his long tenure in parliament and the dream of being Canada’s prime minister. He was the most popular contender for the post just a few months before. It cannot be missed that Poilievre lost the seat he held since 2004 in the same elections he was expected to emerge as prime minister. Who knows if he will get this opportunity again in the near future? He will certainly have to face questions on his leadership.

In January 2025, when Justin Trudeau announced that he would resign as both the prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party, it appeared that Poilievre was the prime minister-in-waiting, and elections were just the formality. But just as with wars, elections are not won or lost till the last second. Last year, Poilievre-led Conservatives sustained a 20-point lead over Liberals for months, but that vanished like sand in wind. According to the rolling three-day Nanos poll released just a week before the elections, the Liberals led with 43.7 per cent public support, while the Conservatives trailed with 36.3 per cent. It was March when Liberals appeared to be gaining an edge over the Conservatives, and by the end of April, Liberals ended up just a few seats short of an absolute majority in the House.

Of course, sitting prime minister Mark Carney certainly deserves credit for rescuing the Liberal Party from a potentially crushing defeat. Despite being a relative newcomer to politics, he was much more able to convince the Canadian electorate to put trust in him. The banker oversaw the Liberals overcoming a significant trust deficit, which was caused by rising living costs, which impacted Trudeau’s popularity and the Liberal Party’s electoral prospects. Carney’s ability to connect with Canadians and articulate a vision for the country’s future helped secure a remarkable comeback. Carney was the man that brought difference, ensuring a fourth consecutive Liberal victory.

Trudeau’s sermons on human rights and virtue mongering won’t have helped Canadians trust Liberals, but Carney’s background in banking and finance and his narrative surrounding liberal nationalism have had a lasting impact on people’s minds, which saved the day for his party.

Carney’s tough stance against the United States’ onerous trade policies—and President Donald Trump’s provocative suggestion that Canada become the 51st state—had a decisive impact. This may well have been the moment where Poilievre began to lose ground.

Sometimes, nationalism is much more than what we are; it is what we are not.

Also, Canada is a post-industrial developed economy, where liberal narratives already hold firm ground; all Carney had to do was to water them well; he did, and he harvested.

Poilievre’s centre-right ideas might have been alluring against Trudeau’s holier-than-thou idealist leanings but were no counter to the balanced and pro-Canada approach that Carney offered. Somehow, Poiliever waited for the ‘muddy ground to dry up’; little did he expect what would come afterwards. The way Liberals regained their support within months, there remains no excuse for the callousness of Conservatives.

The Carney-led Liberals portrayed Poilievre as a Trump-in-the-making, and the opposition leader failed to do enough to convince the public otherwise. Although Poilievre distanced himself from Donald Trump’s stance on Canada during the election campaign, his policies, which revolved around anti-elitism, inflation, and freedom, echoed much like Trump’s —an association that likely lingered in the minds of Canadian voters.

Carney’s early statement after the electoral victory was: Canada should ’never forget’ lessons of US ‘betrayal’. The sentence shows what ensured Liberal’s comeback.

Further, the Conservatives struggled to gain traction in urban areas, which are traditionally strongholds for the Liberals. Even Conservatives’ opposition to radical wokeism could not appeal to the masses but ensured counter-support to the Liberals.

Liberals were much able to consolidate their strongholds, meanwhile wooing swing voters under a maverick PM; the Conservatives could not generate the mass appeal required to sabotage the greater liberal ecosystem. Conservatives appear to have remained much in their shells. They failed to diversify their support among non-rural, non-white people.

Other than these, Conservatives’ apathy towards climate change issues and growing wealth inequalities ruined their appeal for moderate voters. With some publications, perhaps rightly noticing that the party focused more on ‘divisive issues’ rather than ‘inclusive’ ones.

However, Pierre Poilievre is just 45, though Mark Carney is also only 60; it would be unjust to analogise his defeat to that of Napoleon at Waterloo, but his wait for the muddy ground to dry up appears to have stolen the day for him. He has an uphill task now to regain the trust of his party in his leadership and to rework where he lost ground. Life is a game of second chances; he might surely get one too.

Meanwhile, Carney has a tough task ahead; he has promises to keep and challenges to counter. Trump is very much there in Washington; transatlantic ties are crumbling, and the economic aspirations of the people have to be fulfilled along with other ideological commitments that his party holds. 2025 Canadian elections have a lesson for Poilievre and a chance for Carney. There is no guarantee that Liberals could re-convince the people this fast next time.

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.