A strategy focused on winning, not pleasing political pundits

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/03/2025 (208 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the past several weeks, many of the nation’s top political pundits have struggled to make sense of the response by Pierre Polievre’s Conservatives to the resignation of former prime minister Justin Trudeau, the landslide election of Mark Carney as Liberal leader, and the massive shift in the polls that occurred in the time between those two events.

Last December, the Tories held a 25-point lead over the Liberals and were headed toward a record-setting majority in the next federal election. Just three months later, however, that lead has evaporated. The Carney-led Liberals now enjoy a small advantage in most national polls and are widely favoured to win the next election — potentially with a comfortable majority.

The inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S. president and, in particular, his threats against Canada of tariffs and annexation, has obviously had a critical impact on the Canadian polls, but many observers have been perplexed by the Tories’ failure — “refusal” may be a better word — to adjust their messaging to reflect the dramatically changed political and economic reality now facing the nation.

While Canadians grew increasingly anxious about the impact of Trump’s tariffs on their jobs, and whether Canada would be forced to become America’s 51st state, Poilievre and his team has largely stuck to the same angry rhetoric and demeanour that they had been using prior to Trudeau’s resignation.

In the view of many pundits, the political ground has shifted, the Tories have failed to adjust to the new reality facing Canadians, and that explains why they no longer lead in the polls.

That’s a tidy theory, but it’s not that simple. The reason the Liberals are leading in most national polls isn’t because of a massive decline in support for the Tories. Rather, it’s almost entirely due to a collapse in support for the New Democratic Party.

Support for Polievre’s Conservatives has dropped by a few points since December — likely former Liberal voters who had had enough of Trudeau, but refused to vote for NDP candidates — but support for the NDP has cratered to its lowest level in a generation. As Canadians have grown increasingly concerned about Trump’s threats, erstwhile NDP voters have shifted their support to Carney’s Liberals, who they believe are more likely and better equipped than Poilievre’s Tories to defend the nation’s interests against Trump.

In other words, the threat posed by Trump has united the left in Canadian politics, paralleling the “unite the right” movement roughly two decades ago that resulted in the creation of the Conservative Party.

That may be the reality today, but the big question is whether the current strategic coalition among Liberal and NDP voters will endure through the coming federal election campaign. Polievre and his team are determined to ensure that it doesn’t, and that largely explains the Tory strategy that is puzzling so many pundits.

From the Tories’ perspective, they are in good shape as they prepare for an election campaign that is expected to be called tomorrow. They have a large base of rock-solid support in the national polls — roughly 36 per cent — that would normally guarantee an election victory. On top of that, they have much more money in the bank than the other parties and much stronger organizational strength all the way from the riding level up to the national campaign team.

They aren’t trying to win every vote in the country, but rather are focused on locking down the voters who were with them prior to Trudeau’s resignation. They are largely accomplishing that goal via a highly sophisticated voter identification program, combined with a messaging strategy that is designed to attract and retain a specific group of supporters.

That explains why many polls have shown that there is a large percentage of voters who intend to vote for Conservative candidates “no matter what.”

Support for the Liberals, on the other hand, is far softer. A growing number of Canadians are telling pollsters they would likely vote for a Liberal candidate if an election were held today, but that they may change their mind and vote for a different party’s candidate.

It’s that soft support for the Liberals that the Tories are focused on, and intend to exploit by attempting to cause the collapse of the nascent Liberal-NDP voter coalition that has propelled the Liberals to the top of the polls.

The Tories’ “collapse the coalition” strategy will include attacks against Carney that emphasize his wealth, jet-set connections and silver-spoon background in order to convince former NDP (now Liberal) supporters that he isn’t one of them, and neither cares about them nor understands their problems.

In particular, the Tories (and/or their proxies in the media) will emphasize that Carney’s economic background will inevitably translate into policies — perhaps including some new form of carbon tax — that will hurt ordinary Canadians who are already struggling with affordability issues that, they will claim, the millionaire Liberal leader isn’t experiencing and couldn’t care less about.

Beyond that, don’t expect the Tories to openly target the NDP on the national stage. They want to the NDP vote share to go back up, at the Liberals’ expense, not down.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Tories aren’t going to soften their messaging in order to attract a small portion of Liberal supporters if doing so risks losing an even greater number of supporters to Max Bernier’s Peoples’ Party. In their view, the electoral math doesn’t make sense, and it’s not worth the risk.

Many Canadians may disagree with the Tory strategy, but the party is trying to win an election. In their view, the current approach gives them their best chance of accomplishing that goal. Time will tell if they are right.