Canada held a national election earlier this week. Every bit of analysis I’ve read about the results seems wrong to me.
The conventional wisdom goes something like this: Conservatives were cruising to a massive victory until Pres. Trump interfered with the election via tariffs, jokes, etc. handing the Liberals an unlikely re-election. You may have seen this graphic:
In Canadian politics, as in the rest of the world besides America, Conservatives are blue, and Liberals are red. At the very end of the election campaign, Conservatives dropped slightly, while Liberals surged.
Canada ended up with the status quo ante: a Liberal-led minority government.
A tiny bit of background. Conservatives are the only right-leaning party in Canada. All of the other parties (Liberals, New Democratic Party (NDP, shown in yellow, above), Bloc Quebecois (BC), and Green) lean left to varying degrees.
To me, it appears that the biggest factors in the 2025 elections were (1) the replacement of the deeply unpopular Liberal Prime Minister (Justin Trudeau) with a more centrist-sounding functionary (Mark Carney) and (2) the complete collapse of all of the other left-wing parties.
Trudeau announced his resignation just two weeks before the inauguration of Trump.
Of course, Conservatives should share some of the blame for their own failures, after all the Conservative leader lost his own seat.
How did the parties fare in terms of seats gained/lost since the last election in 2021?
- Conservatives +24
- Liberals +9
- NDP -18
- BQ -9
- Green -1
Five seats were added to Parliament since the previous election. On net, Conservatives gained all five. Conservatives were +24 and the four left-wing parties were collectively -19.
To recap, Conservatives gained seats and gained in share of the national vote. Collectively, the four left-wing parties lost seats and lost in share of the national vote. Had the minor left-wing parties held their own, the Conservatives would have finished first. Put yet another way, Liberal gains were entirely at the expense of their left-wing competitors.
How did Trump collapse support for minor left-wing parties in Canada?
