Right message, wrong messenger?The 2025 ballot question that backfired/Pierre Poilievre X

By Geoff Norquay

May 10, 2025

The unprecedented events leading to Canada’s 45th federal election defined two different ballot questions for the principal parties. In the first three months of 2025, the political landscape of the country transformed in ways no one could have predicted. The resignation of Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister and the subsequent election of Mark Carney as Liberal leader were the first changes.

Even before he was sworn in as President on January 20, Donald Trump began trolling Canada as America’s 51st state, which touched off a groundswell of anger, fear, and national pride among Canadians. As Carney called the election on March 23, he bluntly outlined the challenge: “President Trump claims that Canada isn’t a real country. He wants to break us so America can own us. We will not let that happen.”  This established his ballot question: “Which leader is best equipped to protect Canada from Donald Trump?”

And Carney was making a credible claim to be that leader — amid an economic crisis driven by a trade war — based on his expertise as an economist and his experience governing two G7 central banks, Canada’s and Britain’s.

In his two-and-a-half years as leader of the Conservatives, Pierre Poilievre had developed his own ballot question — “Time for a change” — by relentlessly picking apart and ridiculing the Liberal record on the cost of living, including housing; on immigration and crime; and on the pace of economic development. Poilievre had also built and successfully prosecuted a case against the Liberals’ consumer price on carbon using the tagline “Axe the Tax” that ultimately destroyed its credibility as a public policy. He and the Conservatives rode that critique, plus widespread voter antipathy towards Justin Trudeau, to a 25% lead in the polls by the start of 2025.

By mid-February, Poilievre was facing calls to pivot his approach to acknowledge Trump’s questioning of Canadian sovereignty more directly and more substantively. In a February 15 Ottawa speech, he called Trump’s tariff threats unjustified, laid out a compelling case directly to Americans about why a Canada-U.S. trade war should be avoided, and strongly rejected Trump’s suggestion that Canada should become part of the U.S.: “We will never be the 51st state. We will bear any burden and pay any price to protect the sovereignty and independence of our country,” he said. But he then blamed the governing Liberals for allowing Canada to become vulnerable to Trump and doubled down on his existing “Canada is broken” mantra.

It was a start at a pivot, but it wasn’t enough. The departure of Trudeau combined with Carney’s ability to cast himself as an agent of change by axing the carbon tax, plus his management of the Trump threats as the serving prime minister, weakened Poilievre’s narrative. As Canadians got to see more of Carney and absorb the value of his experience in action, he increasingly came to be seen as the “adult in the room” and Poilievre’s experience and demeanor suffered in comparison. They wanted change, but they preferred the change Carney was offering.

Having lost his two principal targets, Trudeau and the carbon tax, Poilievre was never able to shake Carney’s more existential ballot question, a problem made worse by Poilievre’s embrace of the style of right-wing populism associated with Trump before Trump had become Public Enemy Number One to many of the same Canadians whose votes he was now courting. As Abacus CEO David Coletto wrote in The Hub recently, the Trump tariff and sovereignty threats caused a seismic shift in the mindset of Canadian voters, changing their concerns from “scarcity to precarity”. As a result, “Canadians were no longer only asking, ‘Can I afford rent and groceries today?’ They were asking, “Will Canada still be Canada tomorrow?”

At a certain point, the critical mass in Carney’s favour among the country’s political and policy professionals seemed to hop the partisan fence based on the existential nature of this election. It was as if many of the people who had defended Poilievre for two years based on reflexive party loyalty suddenly felt their bigger loyalty was to Canada, and they knew Carney was the better choice on that front for reasons that Poilievre simply couldn’t compete with.

By mid-February, Poilievre was facing calls to pivot his approach to acknowledge Trump’s questioning of Canadian sovereignty more directly and more substantively.

So, did Pierre Poilievre “blow” a 25% lead in the polls to snatch defeat from victory? It’s not quite that simple. The Conservatives lost the 2025 election at least partly because the Canadian political system suddenly changed. For generations, that system was predictably multi-party, with two dominant parties and one or two third parties that could be counted to impact the ultimate results by taking votes and winning seats. Election after election, the NDP split the progressive vote with the Liberals, enabling the Conservatives to come up the middle and win seats.

In recent elections, with the Bloc weakening the Liberals’ natural advantage in Quebec and the NDP using its average of 17% support in general elections, combined with pockets of voter efficiency in the rest of Canada, the threshold for the number of seats the Liberals or Conservatives needed to form government steadily lowered. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won a majority with 39.5% of the votes in 2015, but their pluralities lowered in 2019 and 2021 respectively, to 33.1% and 32.6%.

Every political party has its “hard” partisans, the voters they can count on through thick and thin, but many other voters remain “gettable” between elections. The parties create their policy platforms to target different demographic groups by age, region, income and other categories, attempting to build an electoral coalition that will put them into office. Over the past 20 years, in response to the smaller pluralities needed to win seats and governments, all parties adjusted their electoral strategies to narrow the pool of target voters they needed to attract.

Tom Flanagan, the University of Calgary political scientist who advised Stephen Harper in his early Reform-Alliance days on the national scene and managed the Conservative Party’s national election campaign in 2004, argued for the party to target fewer potential voters but more precisely. Essentially his question was, “Why are you knocking yourselves out trying to gain 50% of the vote, when you actually need much less to form a government?”

Following that advice in 2025 earned Poilievre and the Conservatives the following reasonably positive results:

• 3 million additional votes nationally and 41.3% of the popular vote, the highest they have won since the 1988 election.
• A million more votes in Ontario than Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives won in their February election.
• Much-needed breakthroughs in cities and suburban areas such as Windsor, London, the Toronto 905 region and Vancouver.
• Solid gains in support among ethno-diverse cultural groups, among young men and in areas dominated by trades and working class people.
• Overall, a net gain of 23 seats to the Liberals’ 17 seats.

All that said, the collapse of the NDP vote to 6% nationally on April 28, combined with the Carney/Trump nexus, created a hurdle that Poilievre and the Conservatives were ill-equipped to clear.

But the Conservatives also left an awful lot on the table with their approach and style in the election campaign. For example, at times, it appeared that they were spending more time and energy fighting with provincial Progressive Conservatives and scoring “own goals” than taking the battle to Carney and the Liberals.

First up was Doug Ford’s campaign manager, Kory Teneycke, who early in the campaign accused the Conservatives of “campaign malpractice” for giving off Trump-like vibes: “One of the things that is clearly holding (voters) back with Poilievre, is all the Trumpy stuff,” Teneycke said. “He’s looking and sounding a lot like Trump, arguing with a reporter about the size of the crowd at a rally, a campaign slogan that’s ‘Canada First’ when Trump’s was ‘America First.’ So, I think there’s a disconnect there.”

Towards the end of the campaign, Ford himself weighed in through a Politico interview, saying he and Poilievre had never really met in person. Asked how this was possible, Ford replied, “You’re going to have to ask him. I think seven years ago; I met him once in Ottawa. A breakfast right after one of my events. But we never really talked there.”

Friendly fire: Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston/Doug Ford X

Similar blasts came from Nova Scotia. After Premier Tim Houston said last fall that he didn’t want federal Conservative involvement in his provincial election, Poilievre’s senior advisor and, later, Jenni Byrne told Houston’s team that if Poilievre went on to become prime minister, they would remember the slight and not lift a finger to help the provincial party. With the relationship soured, Houston did not appear at the single rally Poilievre held in Nova Scotia during the federal campaign. After Poilievre lost two key Nova Scoria MPs on April 28, Houston observed, “I think the Conservative Party of Canada was very good at pushing people away, not so good at pulling people in, and I think they probably saw that in some of the results they had across the country.”

That both Ford and Houston are potential contenders for Poilievre’s job cannot be discounted as an element in this dynamic, but “keeping your enemies closer” as the shorthand for managing relationships with potential rivals has been an ironclad priority of the most successful politicians from Abraham Lincoln to Brian Mulroney. Anyone who fails to grasp that raises a more serious doubt about political competence and leadership.

Since the election, Poilievre has reached out to Ford, and they are expected to meet soon. That’s good, because this edgy and self-defeating bickering between the federal and provincial wings of the party must stop. Voters perceive these outbursts as an indication of how the Official Opposition will govern the country if given the chance, and they are not impressed.

Other party management issues emerged during the recent election, centering on campaign readiness and candidate selection. Despite having called loudly and repeatedly for an early election for the previous 18 months, the Conservatives inexplicably entered the writ period with vacant candidacies in scores of ridings. In addition, reports poured in about lack of transparency in the nomination processes and nominations stalled until the writ period when the party could appoint candidates.

While it is not uncommon for parties to handpick the candidates they want, the Conservatives’ approach of waiting until the writ period to appoint candidates deprived those candidates of the lead time they needed to prepare campaigns and become known to voters in their local communities. The result was that many putative candidates gave up in frustration and some ran for the Liberals or contested seats as independents.

The tight central control exerted by the national campaign was reflected in the decision to bar Conservative candidates’ participation in riding-level public meetings and debates, and from speaking to the media. This is a risk-management technique that has been repeatedly used by the Conservatives in recent campaigns. It’s designed to prevent uninformed or untoward comments made by local candidates that embarrass the leader and the national campaign.

Unfortunately, this policy sent the clear message that the party didn’t care about local voters, and it prevented those voters from learning about their candidates’ views though public events and mainstream media. Given that electoral politics is all about human interaction, selling policy alternatives and persuasion, it’s long past the time for the party to give local Conservative candidates back their voices. If they aren’t allowed to speak in public to voters and the media, how the hell can they get themselves elected?

Many of these lapses in campaign direction and management have already been laid at the door of Jenni Byrne, Poilievre’s senior advisor and chair of the 2025 campaign.

Next, why was the Conservative campaign so unremittingly leader-centric? At the beginning of the campaign’s final week, IPSOS reported:

“Carney consistently outpaces Poilievre across crucial areas, such as managing tough economic times (+15 points vs Poilievre), having the right temperament and maturity for leadership (+14 points), representing Canada on the world stage (+13 points), and standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump (+12 points). Furthermore, Carney is seen as someone who can help make us proud to be Canadians, with a 7-point lead over Poilievre in this domain.”

These numbers cried out for a campaign that featured experienced and recognized spokespersons conducting secondary regional tours to take the pressure off Poilievre and demonstrate the party’s depth. Other than a campaign appearance and an endorsement ad by Stephen Harper, they were nowhere to be seen. Where were the respected party elders and former colleagues to endorse Poilievre and the party, people such as James Moore, John Baird, Rona Ambrose and Candice Bergen? Obviously, they were not invited to participate in the campaign. Why not?

Many of these lapses in campaign direction and management have already been laid at the door of Jenni Byrne, Poilievre’s senior advisor and chair of the 2025 campaign. Byrne has many superior organizational skills and was the principal architect of the strategy and tactics pursued by Poilievre and the Conservatives since he became leader. She is also the hardest of partisans, and a practitioner of take-no-prisoners, tactical politics.

In January this year, when Liberal MP and cabinet minister Anita Anand announced that she would not run in the next federal election, former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole paid tribute to her. On X he wrote: “I saw the dedication [Anand] brought to National Defence at a time it was desperately needed. She cared deeply about the CAF, their families and the need for Canada to do more. I wish her fair winds and following seas.” Two hours later, Byrne responded to O’Toole: “For anyone unsure why Erin is no longer leader of the Conservative Party…. [Anand] supported DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] policies like name, rank and pronouns. Tampons in men’s rooms, etc.” Many Conservatives across Canada could simply shake their heads at the graceless and unnecessary vitriol of these comments.

Despite the many Conservative successes of election night, Poilievre was defeated in his long-held riding of Carleton, and later this year he will contest a byelection in the safe Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot. There are early signs that he is learning lessons from this stinging electoral rebuke; in his first post-campaign video, he said, “I need to learn and grow, and our team needs to expand.” That’s a great start, but more will be needed.

Pierre Poilievre has a fascinating life story and a politically sophisticated and inspirational life partner. He is also a multi-talented political racehorse and an intuitive communicator. But his aggressive personal style has served as a barrier to Canadians warming to him and turned off many voters. He needs to present a more multi-dimensional, friendlier, and approachable personality to voters.

At this point, no one knows whether the shift of Canada’s electoral system towards its new two-party configuration on April 28 is permanent or transitory, and whether the NDP will soon be back to splitting the progressive vote with the Liberals and steering votes and seats to the Conservatives. It would likely be best for the Conservatives to prepare for either eventuality, because the call of the next election will be too late to prepare for a new political environment.

So, as Conservative MPs survey the accomplishments and failures of the recent campaign, they should start with a rigorous and fact-based review of what worked and what didn’t in terms of strategy, tactics, communications, candidate recruitment and appointment. This review needs to include the following kinds of questions:

• Why did they lose the support of many older Canadians who traditionally skewed Conservative, and why are so many female voters simply unprepared to support them? What steps are needed to address these challenges?
• Given that the existential nature of the Trump threats signals the need for a “Team Canada” approach to Canada-U.S. relations in the House of Commons, are they prepared to dial back the toxic partisanship while holding the Carney government to account?
• What changes in style, approach and policy do they contemplate to build bridges to new supporters and make more voters accessible? Now that Justin Trudeau is gone, are they prepared to leave fighting the culture wars to Donald Trump, because their current approach scares many Canadian voters away.

How both the Conservative Party’s leader and its MPs answer these questions will determine their collective future.

Geoff Norquay is a principal with Earnscliffe Strategies in Ottawa. He was a senior social policy adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office from 1984 to 1988 and director of communications to Stephen Harper when he was leader of the Official Opposition.