Much ink has been spilled offering explanations for how the Liberals have replaced a 25 point deficit with a 4 or 5 point advantage – all in a matter of a few months.
The dramatic collapse in the once insurmountable lead Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held over the Liberals is the most astonishing reversal of political fortunes I have ever seen. For one thing, it happened in a matter of a few weeks. For the two years before that, the Liberals could barely see Poilievre’s tail lights. He was on cruise control to...
That was a very short-lived pivot by Pierre Poilievre.Yes, after internal party dissent and at the urging of various Conservative worthies, he now weaves more criticism of Donald Trump into his stump speeches. It doesn’t seem terribly heart-felt, but, to be fair, the opposition leader betrays no hint of admiration for the rampaging U.S. president.
I spend a lot of time digging into our Abacus Data polling data, looking at trends, understanding the relationship between variables. Imagine a chef in a kitchen testing out new recipes. That’s me in a dataset, and I love it!
This week’s leaders’ debates began in Quebec — albeit unofficially. The much-anticipated French-language debate is set for Wednesday night — scheduled at the same time as the Montreal Canadiens’ final regular-season game. Unlike in 2011, when the debate was moved up a day to avoid a similar clash, this time the Leaders’ Debates Commission either didn’t have a choice —...
One of the more searing images of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign came during the debate when Donald Trump kept lurking behind Hillary Clinton on stage.Clinton, who lost that election, would recall later in her book that she found it “incredibly uncomfortable,” and considered telling Trump: “Back up, you creep.”
Mark Carney must know, from his hockey-playing days, the uncomfortable feeling of nursing a lead while the clock winds down. It always goes slower than you’d like. But instead of watching the minutes and seconds tick by on an arena scoreboard, Carney has two-plus weeks to steer the Liberals toward what, three months ago, would’ve seemed like an unthinkable victory...
Shortly after being sworn in as Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney presented his new cabinet consisting of ministers who kept their jobs, others who were shuffled to a new portfolio and some new faces. Conspicuously absent was the role of minister for women and gender equality and youth.Cutting this ministry is a mistake.
It’s been a strange Canadian election campaign, dominated by a politician who isn’t on the ballot, or even a citizen of our country: US President Donald Trump. While initially the Conservatives thought Trump’s win might help them – who would have better relations with Washington, ultra-progressive PM Justin Trudeau or Elon Musk-approved Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre? – that theory quickly...
It’s hard to pin a simple description on Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has devoted much of his career to public service without holding public office, and is now running his first election campaign. One word that seems to be sticking is “technocrat.” With respect to my media colleagues, we should un-stick it. Admittedly, it’s usually a compliment. In the...
Matt Gurney: Something the small but mighty team at The Line is doing during the campaign is a fun little feature with a profane name we publish on Fridays. It’s an accountability/fact-check feature. Last week, we noted in it that the parties were more or less behaving and keeping relatively honest. As late as the middle of this week, that...
As Donald Trump continues waging his dizzying trade war against Canada and sends global markets spiraling, ordinary Canadians could be forgiven if they missed an extraordinary milestone in our ongoing federal election.Just recently, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre set what is perhaps a new Canadian election record by dropping not one, not two, but three candidates all on one day.
“In many ways,” Jonathan Pedneault says, “the Greens have been at the forefront of identifying threats.” Risk-detection may not be the first attribute that comes to mind when thinking about the Green Party. But Pedneault, the party’s co-leader along with stalwart Elizabeth May, is hoping to convince Canadians that, in dark, weird, and uncertain times, the Greens are up to...
Liberal government misspending has left us ill-equipped to fight a tariff war with the U.S. – and one of the only alternatives the government has will be to increase taxes to do so.
Betting markets for political outcomes are relatively new - and fair to say - not really proven. Polymarket, the highest profile of these, found fame because bettors on the platform favoured Donald Trump, who obviously went on to win the 2024 election. But there is some controversy around the fact that such platforms are vulnerable to manipulation.
There’s no such thing as a perfect candidate. Anyone who’s worked a federal campaign knows that. But there are candidates who work hard, who organize, who understand that this is a team sport—and who don’t get in the way of the campaign’s core message. In fact, the best ones help amplify it. That’s who you’re looking for when you build...
Carney, Japan And The EU proved America's Idiot Emperor Has No Clothes. Let’s talk about the moment Donald Trump blinked. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a tweetstorm or a rally rant. When the tariff threats that had the world on edge—125% on China, 25% on Canada’s autos, a global trade war in the making—suddenly softened. A “pause,” he called it...
At least he still has his rallies. While public polling shows a large and durable Liberal lead, and global betting markets putting overwhelming odds on a Mark Carney victory on April 28, Pierre Poilievre can still comfort himself with the fact that thousands of people are willing to line up to hear him talk. In Edmonton, somewhere between 9,000 and...
I went to Pierre Poilievre’s “Stop the Crime” night in Brampton on Wednesday. I wanted to figure out how the Conservative leader could be taking luxuriant crowd baths across the country while languishing in the polls. More to the point, I wanted to find out how the people who turn out for him are dealing with that. I learned, no...
Do leaders’ debates matter? Will these coming debates matter? Yes, but no. First, Canadians should watch the debates with an open mind and keen eye for sincerity of presentation, signs of depth and credibility, and try to decide which of these candidates has the strength and substance to sit across from Donald Trump in the chair occupied not long ago...
Half way through this federal election campaign and one word has yet to be uttered: abortion. Maybe it’s because U.S. President Donald Trump continues to threaten our economy. Maybe it’s because Liberal Leader Mark Carney appears to be heading toward a win. Maybe it’s because Pierre Poilievre declared himself to be pro-choice. But so far the Conservative leader has escaped...
The polls look good for the Liberals now, but the Conservatives have been winning over young men. OVER THE COURSE of a 101-minute-long podcast interview released in January, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and his host, Jordan Peterson, lamented the erosion of “traditional values” and the loss of “masculinity” in Canada.
Halfway through the federal election campaign, it’s safe to say that things have not unfolded as many predicted they would back in January, when then-prime minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation. At the time, there was widespread talk that the Liberals were bound to falter and that the Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, were well-positioned to make significant gains. Yet...
It is an East versus West show down in popular support with the Liberals leading in Eastern Canada, the Conservatives leading in the Prairies and British Columbia being a toss-up. The Liberal advantage in national ballot support continues with the party six points ahead of their Conservative competitors (LPC 44, CPC 38, NDP 9).
'It's like saying you'll win an Olympic swimming medal with an anvil tied around your foot,' says Alberta Premier Smith, on how Canada will never be an energy superpower with anti-oilpatch laws
'We need to get serious about the hard work of nation-building if we want to compete and win in the next generation'
It should come as no surprise that the Conservative Party of Canada is struggling to overcome the sizeable lead the Liberals have held in public opinion polls over the past two weeks. Pierre Poilievre, the Conservatives’ sharp-tongued leader, seems incapable of pivoting away from the Trump-like tactics he’s been using for the past few years. That messaging worked well for...
As the campaign for the April 28th federal election passes the halfway mark, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is surely getting frustrated, and worried. The evidence of that concern came this week when he brought former Prime Minister Stephen Harper to his mammoth Edmonton rally. Usually, big-name party patriarchs are brought out near the end of a campaign to either give...
I’m reading my six-year-old son Lewis Carroll’s classic Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, with all its delightful nonsense talk about shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.
It was Monday morning and Jagmeet Singh, once the most electric prospect in Canadian politics, was standing on a balcony in downtown Toronto trying to be heard over the roaring whoosh of a gardener’s leaf blower across the road. “You’re trailing far behind the Liberals and the Conservatives in the polls,” a reporter asked the NDP leader. WAAAHHH, went the...
Canadians didn’t get an “axe the tax” election in 2025, as Pierre Poilievre hoped, but that may be just as well for the Conservatives.New polling from Abacus Data shows that Liberal Leader Mark Carney, not Poilievre, is getting credit for axing the carbon levy — by a margin of nearly two to one.
There is an incredible outpouring of nationalist sentiment in Canada resulting from the phenomenon of a capricious American president running roughshod over the traditional Canadian-American relationship. As Canadians puzzle over the astonishing turn, they might well reflect back on the key developments that launched us deeply into the embrace of the hegemonic power with which we share a border and...
On a personal level, Preston Manning is a good and decent person. He is friendly, insightful, and kind. While I came from the Progressive Conservative wing of the conservative movement, I did not view him as the great destroyer of that once-great party. If anything, I saw him as provocative and an idea disruptor. All the ideas weren’t my cup...
SEASONED POLITICAL OBSERVERS will tell you that their circles—relatives, friends, colleagues—can often double as informal focus groups. By talking politics with real people, and not just those with their noses pressed against the glass, you can sometimes detect early signs of trends, however noisy they may be in a world where media cycles constantly overlap.
On to Plan C.Pierre Poilievre made a belated campaign pivot last Wednesday to focus more heavily on U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war. Now the Conservative Leader has pivoted again.He’s taking big swings to try to knock down Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s reputation as an economic manager. Before it’s too late.
In Mark Carney’s first month as Liberal leader and prime minister, a picture has emerged of who he is: a technocratic version of Justin Trudeau, without the charisma, great hair or ability to communicate comfortably in French, but with many of his banished predecessor’s other personality characteristics and policy propensities.
The 2020s have been the most volatile decade of my life so far. Once Jan. 1, 2020 hit, everything went haywire. We’ve lived through multiple, serious life-changing world events: the COVID-19 and its after-effects, climate disasters, rising partisan political and now the ripple effects of international economic uncertainty (hello, tariffs and trade wars).
United States President Donald Trump is mashing up the global order. I have a theory.Last week, Trump imposed so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on American trading partners. His actions sent markets plunging, investment funds devaluing, and panic rising. There are no rules for the new global economic regime.
