If we had been writing this article four months ago, we would have said this election was going to be a big nothingburger. The prime minister at the time, Justin Trudeau, was deeply unpopular. National polls had consistently indicated the Conservative Party of Canada would win the next election in a landslide.
Instead, we are reminded yet again of why we don’t like making predictions.
So far, the story of Canada’s April 28, 2025, election is about how a foregone conclusion became a competitive race. Spoiler alert: Yes, as with so much in politics these days, Donald Trump has a lot to do with it.
Anatomy of a nothingburger
While Trudeau has long been well-liked by fans around the world, he was never really that popular as a leader within Canada. The Liberal Party came back into power in 2015 with less than 40% of the popular vote. But Trudeau’s vote share became smaller and smaller with each subsequent election.
Then, the pandemic hit. Trudeau’s popularity surged in the early months of the pandemic, but that soon changed. Over time, the reaction to regulations concerning mask-wearing and vaccinations ultimately led to what some have called “Maple MAGA” (you can even buy merch!). The culmination of this pushback was Canada’s “trucker convoy.” Initially formed to protest vaccine mandates in the trucking sector, the convoy would blockade the streets of Canada’s capital, Ottawa, for three weeks in early 2022. The protests resonated with many voters, especially on the right of the political spectrum. In the convoy’s wake, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre appeared to hitch his political wagon to the movement and to increasingly adopt Trump-style rhetoric.
At the same time, as in the U.S. and elsewhere, the “post-pandemic normal” brought challenging economic times to Canada. Voters grew unhappy about high inflation, soaring grocery prices, food insecurity, and increased housing costs and homelessness. And, with that backdrop of fear and frustration, and after ten bruising years in office, Trudeau’s Liberals became steadily less popular. Average Canadians began to see Liberal policies around climate change – particularly the “carbon tax” – as an expense they could no longer afford. Seizing on this dynamic, Poilievre increasingly targeted Trudeau himself, slamming what he called the prime minister’s “toxic woke identity politics.” Promising to “axe the (carbon) tax,” Poilievre and his party ended 2024 with a commanding lead in the polls.
Trump, tariffs, and a toss up
On the day of Trump’s inauguration, Canada’s national polls had the Conservatives 23 points ahead of the Liberals. Two weeks earlier, Trudeau had announced his intention to resign as prime minister, but the polls hardly budged. Inauguration Day would mark the real turning point: A month later, the Conservatives’ lead had shrunk by a third. A month after that, it was gone completely.
The most obvious causal suspect is the fallout from Trump’s Feb. 1, 2025, announcement of steep new tariffs on Canadian goods, initially set at 10% on energy exports and 25% on everything else. Although Trump would soon suspend the tariffs and then exclude large categories of Canadian exports altogether from tariffs, the striking disruption of economic ties with the country’s largest trading partner has upended Canadian politics for months.
Canadians’ reaction to Trump’s tariffs is typical of responses to external threats: They’ve rallied around the flag. The conventional account is that such rallies reflect the intense and one-sidedly positive media coverage governments enjoy when confronting outside adversaries. And indeed, prior to the official start of the election campaign on March 23, Canadian news was filled with breathless coverage of the Liberal government’s efforts to persuade Trump to rethink the tariffs.
The strength of the rally also likely reflected the sustained attack on Canadian identity that has accompanied Trump’s tariff politics. Repeated references to Canada as the “51st state,” initially dismissed as jokes, would later seem all too serious. Many Canadians are experiencing a sense of existential threat and anxiety that has likely strengthened national attachments and identification with political leaders.
The leading contenders to become Canada’s next prime minister, Poilievre and Mark Carney, Trudeau’s successor as leader of the Liberal Party, are not equally well placed to capitalize on the surge of national feeling. Carney, of course, is now Canada’s prime minister: If Canadians are rallying around their leaders, then it is he, not Poilievre, who benefits. Many see Carney as having sterling economic credentials. He previously led central banks in two countries, and battle scars from the Great Recession in Canada and Brexit in the U.K. help establish his ability to manage a crisis.
For his part, Poilievre has struggled to adapt to the new political environment. He has spent much of the past two years focused on a message with some decidedly Trumpy elements. The Liberal Party has long tried to tie Poilievre to Trump, an association inadvertently reinforced recently by Alberta’s prominent, ideologically conservative premier, Danielle Smith. These associations with Trump were always of dubious value for Poilievre. And now they seem downright toxic.
It ain’t over ‘til it’s over
With the election days away, the outcome is still too soon – and too close – to call. The Conservatives seem to have staunched the bleeding in the latest polls. The race may even have tightened in recent weeks.
If the rally for the Liberals was mostly about the one-sided media narrative, then a tightening would be a predictable outcome of the official start of the campaign: Election campaigns tend to tighten margins by increasing the focus on the leading alternatives. But Trump’s unfolding – and unpredictable – tariff agenda has continued to shock the campaign. Bringing the focus back to trade politics again and again is likely to the Liberals’ continuing advantage.
When Canadians go to the polls on April 28, the central question is likely to be who can best manage the country’s critically important relationship with the United States. While it’s not the first time that question has been on the ballot in a Canadian election, the answer this time may be more important than ever.
Amanda Bittner (@bittner.bsky.social) is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She studies elections and voting, and is best known for her work on the role of party leaders in elections as well as the role of gender in voting and public opinion. She has edited four books on elections and voting, and is the author of Platform or Personality? The Role of Party Leaders in Elections (Oxford University Press, 2011).
J. Scott Matthews (@jsmatthews99.bsky.social) is head of the Department of Political Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the co-author of Quality Control Experiments on the Microfoundations of Retrospective Voting (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He studies elections, voting, and public opinion in established democracies, with a current focus on the mass politics of economic inequality.
