Editors at National Review Online analyze the American president’s impact on elections north of the border.
Even if Canadians haven’t been taking Donald Trump literally when he promises to make their country the “cherished 51st state,” they have been taking him seriously.
Trump personally played an enormous role in returning an incompetent and ideologically bankrupt Liberal Party to power, after a campaign where Prime Minister Mark Carney made himself the anti-Trump and Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre couldn’t adjust to Trump’s truly bizarre late intervention.
The deceiving part of Canadian politics is that a majority-left country can look more competitive than it is because of the existence of minor parties. In the last election in 2021, the Liberals won 160 seats, a plurality, short of the 170 seats required that year for a majority. But the New Democratic Party (NDP), a progressive alternative to the Liberals, won 25 seats. If Canada had a true two-party system as in the U.S., those voters would probably vote Liberal, which would have likely given Justin Trudeau a comfortable majority in 2021.
Then there’s the Bloc Quebecois (BQ), which runs candidates only in Quebec. …
… When the Conservatives won three consecutive federal elections in 2006, 2008, and 2011 under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, they never earned more than 40 percent of the national popular vote. They were able to win in part because the NDP and the BQ performed very well, taking many seats the Liberals would have probably won otherwise, especially in 2011 when the NDP was the second-largest party.
Splitting an opposing electorate is a political skill, one at which Harper excelled. But that’s the only way Conservatives have to win elections in Canada. The major non-Liberal party has not won a majority of the popular vote in a federal election since 1984, and even then only barely. The last non-Liberal popular majority before that was 1958.
