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The 2025 Canadian federal election will be remembered as one of the most unpredictable and transformative in modern history.
The Liberal Party of Canada, teetering on the brink of collapse under Justin Trudeau, staged a stunning comeback under Mark Carney, while the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre and seemingly destined for victory, lost their footing at the worst possible time. And NDP voters, terrified by Poilievre’s polarizing rhetoric that echoed Donald Trump’s, abandoned their own party to support the Liberals.
The result was a Liberal government just shy of a majority, with 43.5% of the popular vote (the best Liberal showing since 1980), a Conservative opposition that, despite securing 41% of the vote (doing far better than Stephen Harper), couldn’t get it past the finish line, plus a decimated NDP.
This election was shaped by two seismic events: Trudeau’s resignation and Donald Trump’s return as U.S. President.
Together, these events reframed the ballot question, turning a contest about Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax into a referendum on how to deal with Donald Trump’s attack on Canadian sovereignty.
Here are the five key takeaways from this historic vote.
1. Trump’s return and Trudeau’s exit changed the ballot question for the campaign.
Heading into 2025, the Conservatives were poised to define the ballot question for the next election around Justin Trudeau and the consumer carbon tax.
Pierre Poilievre and his team spent millions of dollars and criss-crossed the country with a well-organized, disciplined campaign repeating short, memorable slogans like “Axe the Tax,” “Build the Homes,” “Fix the Budget,” and “Stop the Crime.”
Poilievre created a formidable grassroots fundraising machine, with well-attended rallies in every corner of the country. He had 500,000 Youtube subscribers while the Prime Minister had 35,000.
His main theme was “Canada is Broken!” and, according to all the public opinion polls, it appeared that many Canadians wholeheartedly agreed.
People were tired of the Liberal government that ruled during COVID and were very worried about the housing affordability crisis as well as the post-COVID rise in inflation and crime.
But two events upended this narrative.
First, Chrystia Freeland resigned as his Finance Minister on December 16, 2024 before she was about to deliver the fall economic statement. It was a direct, fatal shot against Justin Trudeau that made his Prime Ministership untenable. Over the Christmas holidays, the Liberal Party of Canada looked like it was imploding into oblivion. Angus Reid’s year-end poll had the Poilievre’s Conservatives with 45% support, followed by 21% for the NDP, 16% for the Liberal Party, 11% for the Bloc Québécois, 3% for the Greens and 1% for the Peoples’ Party of Canada.
Trudeau resigned January 6, 2025. A snap leadership campaign began to choose the new leader for the Liberal Party, and, by extension, a new Prime Minister.
Second, Donald Trump returned to the White House. It wasn’t long before Trump launched a trade war against Canada, with on-again, off-again tariffs, traumatizing and enraging Canadians in the process. But the even bigger issue was his insistence that Canada should be the 51st state of America, directly attacking and mocking Canadian sovereignty like a menacing schoolyard bully.
A wave of nationalism swept the country, with Canadians boycotting U.S. products, cancelling cross-border travel and booing the American anthem at hockey games.
On March 9, 2025, Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada, was elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and was sworn in as Prime Minister five days later.
Carney’s first act was to scrap the consumer carbon tax. He also reversed Trudeau’s capital gains tax hike, signalling a pro-business shift.
Carney described Trump’s push to annex Canada as “crazy” in his maiden speech.
He then brought together all of the Premiers to say that “everything is on the table” in retaliatory measures in the trade war. The only hold-outs were Poilievre allies Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and, shortly thereafter, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe who did not want to place export tariffs on oil and gas.
Canadians overwhelmingly supported full retaliation. On January 20th, an Ipsos poll found that 82% of respondents supported it.
Carney then went to visit the leaders of England, France and the European Union instead of Donald Trump. The message was clear: Mark Carney was determined to make sure we were less dependent on the whims of a hostile President of the United States of America.
Carney called an election for April 28th shortly thereafter.
Suddenly, the federal election Poilievre was demanding for months was no longer about carbon taxes, Justin Trudeau or the rest of Poilievre’s slogans. It was about who was on “Team Canada” to protect Canada in a time of global uncertainty.
Carney warned, over and over again, that Trump “wants to break us so America can own us.”
This new political reality put Poilievre in a near-impossible position.
Much of his base—including many of his MPs—openly admired Trump.
Attempts to distance himself from Trump could alienate many of his core supporters, while embracing the American president would push away everyone else. .
And he couldn’t stop relentlessly talking about Justin Trudeau even though he was gone.
Compared to Poilievre’s aggressive, combative style, voters also now saw Carney as the new “adult in the room.”
No matter how much Poilievre tried to shoe-horn Carney into his well-established anti-Justin Trudeau narrative, nobody other than Conservative partisans thought Mark Carney was Justin Trudeau. They couldn’t be more different personalities.
2. Poilievre’s inability to pivot cost him
For two years, Poilievre’s Conservatives invested heavily in their anti-carbon tax, anti-Justin Trudeau crusade.
His rhetoric often echoed, word-for-word, Trump’s populist slogans. .
Poilievre also wanted to make sure that he would not lose votes to Maxime Bernier’s Peoples Party, so he very visibly supported the anti-vaccine mandates Truckers Convoy, railed against the World Economic Forum in all of his campaign speeches (insisting that none of his ministers will ever attend) and became a populist culture warrior on issues like gender identity and drug policy.
Poilievre was building a Trump-style coalition — of young men alienated from “woke” culture and exploding housing costs, as well as striving immigrants and working class families concerned about the rising cost of everything. Poilievre’s coalition was going to be different from the Conservative coalitions of the past. One that appeared to ignore the traditional older, more cautious Conservative voters the party relied on in the past.
It’s no wonder that when Trump’s threats against Canada’s sovereignty dominated headlines, Poilievre struggled to adapt.
Suddenly all of his Trump-like soundbites were toxic to the voters he needed to win. Liberals swiftly began taking advantage of this in their advertising.
Poilievre tried to regain a footing with a “Canada First” message. But even that slogan echoed Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign.
For much of the campaign, he appeared to be blaming Trudeau’s government record for Donald Trump’s aggression.
His reminders about the cost of living, high taxes and crime didn’t break through until the last week of the campaign when Poilievre appeared to be regaining momentum.
But it was too late.
3. Pierre Poilievre has created a new, larger Conservative coalition, but, in the process, he pushed most NDP voters into the arms of Mark Carney.
Mr. Poilievre’s polarizing rhetoric may have energized his base and built the largest Conservative voter coalition since Brian Mulroney, but it also had an unintended effect: it pushed most New Democrat voters into the welcoming arms of the Liberal Party.
He collapsed the race into a two-party contest — one the Conservatives needed even more support to win.
For the entire time Poilievre led the Conservative Party, he ridiculed Jagmeet Singh almost as much as he went after Justin Trudeau. He treated them as interchangeable.
Canada’s last Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn’t want to annihilate the NDP. He wanted to prop them up. He even gave Jack Layton a state funeral. Harper got a majority in 2011 with a lower voter share than Poilievre’s because of a divided left. He needed both the Liberals and NDP to be viable to secure victory.
Jagmeet Singh says he has no regrets about backing Justin Trudeau’s minority government, despite the New Democratic Party’s near-total collapse in the 2025 election.
Singh defended his choice not to trigger an early vote last fall, insisting that blocking a Pierre Poilievre majority was worth the political cost.
The NDP lost ground across Ontario and B.C., including in strongholds like New Westminster-Burnaby-Maillardville and Toronto–Danforth, as progressive voters rallied behind the Liberals.
This didn’t help the Liberals everywhere, however. It also allowed Conservatives to grab a few seats in suburban and blue-collar ridings with three-way vote splits.
Some of those disillusioned supporters also shifted to the Conservatives, especially young, working-class and suburban immigrants frustrated by affordability issues and crime.
This was particularly true in suburban Ontario and British Columbia. His economic message resonated in ridings like Richmond Hill and Brampton, and he flipped several Liberal and NDP-held seats, especially among South Asian and Chinese Canadians. Conservative votes also went way up in ridings like Surrey Newton and Richmond Centre. Liberals also lost Jewish voters to the Conservatives.
Like John Rustad’s Conservatives in last October’s election, it appears that there is a fundamental realignment with thousands of multicultural voters now deciding to support the Conservative Party.
This wasn’t enough.
The working class gains were offset by Poilievre’s aggressive, populist style that alienated key allies within the conservative movement.
He dismissed former Progressive Conservative leader Jean Charest as a “Liberal” when he ran for the Conservative leadership, got former Ontario Conservative leader Patrick Brown thrown out of the leadership, and drew sharp criticism from Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston for treating them with arrogance when he thought he couldn’t lose. His campaign chief, Jenni Byrne even publicly attacked former Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole for saying something nice about a Liberal.
The rift between Poilievre’s federal team and provincial conservatives came to a head during the campaign. Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke, who helped Doug Ford win a provincial majority, slammed the federal Conservative campaign for neglecting the trade war with the U.S. Premier Ford backed him, saying, “Sometimes the truth hurts.”
After the election, Ontario MP Jamil Jivani — a university friend of US Vice President J.D. Vance — blasted Ford as a hollow opportunist, prompting cheers at CPC HQ.
If Canada is now going to have a two-party system, Poilievre will need to heal these relationships to succeed.
4. The media was the message.
In the 2025 Canadian federal election, new and legacy media played divergent but pivotal roles.
Pierre Poilievre leaned heavily on new media—especially X, Facebook, and YouTube—using viral videos and slogans like “Axe the Tax” to energize younger voters on affordability and housing.
Meta’s news blackout in Canada, prompted by the Online News Act, deprived voters of credible journalism on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, pushing many younger people toward meme-driven or influencer content.
Some people said that Poilievre would be the first YouTuber to become Prime Minister.
His campaign not only bypassed traditional press (notably barring media from his plane) but essentially declared war with them since the beginning.
He relentlessly talked about defunding the CBC, and even attacked the private-sector CTV in the lead up to the election. He also severely limited access during the writ period, treating all of them like the enemy.
Meanwhile, Mark Carney took a more traditional approach, building strong relationships with legacy outlets, particularly CBC. Older voters still get their news from legacy media, and this was a factor in them turning away from the Conservatives.
Framed as a calm and competent economic leader amid growing global uncertainty, Carney’s media image benefited from legacy media’s consistent coverage, which highlighted his experience and stability in contrast to Poilievre’s confrontational style.
In the end, Poilievre’s digital-first strategy energized his base but failed to convert swing voters concerned about Trump.
Carney’s dominance in legacy media helped frame the election as a choice between chaos and competence—tilting the scales in the Liberals’ favour.
The 2025 election reaffirmed the importance of a hybrid media strategy that bridges digital reach with traditional credibility.
5. Carney Was the Right Leader at the Right Time.
The Liberals’ turnaround hinged on Mark Carney, who seemed tailor-made for the moment. He had never been elected to public office, but his resume—steering the Bank of Canada through the 2008 financial crisis and the Bank of England during Brexit—projected competence in a time of crisis.
The last time Liberals did something like this was when they recruited Nobel-prize winning diplomat Lester Pearson as leader in 1958. But this was only after Conservative populist John Diefenbaker had already been elected Prime Minister.
Unlike Trudeau’s charisma or Poilievre’s fiery populism, Carney offered a deliberate, almost bland professionalism that reassured a rattled electorate.
Carney’s global stature, underscored by pre-election meetings with leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron and the UK’s Keir Starmer, bolstered his image as a statesman.
Poilievre’s Conservatives attacking Carney as a “globalist” backfired when Canadians were looking for someone to diversify our trading relationships away from the United States.
Carney got more popular as the campaign went on, peaking about a week or two before the vote.
Abacus Data reported Carney’s favorable rating at 48% by April 10, with only 28% unfavorable—a rare feat for a mid-campaign incumbent.
Poilievre, by contrast, had a 40% favourable rating at that point, but 45% unfavourable, reflecting his polarizing style.
Conclusion
The 2025 election wasn’t just a contest of parties or policies—it was a contest of narratives, tone, and leadership styles in a world turned upside down.
When Canadians were forced to choose between a combative populist who couldn’t pivot and a calm technocrat ready for crisis, they chose stability and rallied to a renewed nationalism.
The result was a realignment in Canadian politics: the emergence of a two-party system, (at least for now) a humbled, but stronger Conservative movement, and a Liberal Party reborn.
History will mark this election as one of the most remarkable since Confederation.
