A Hand in Their Victory, A Fist in Their Future: Liberals Win Fourth Consecutive Electoral Victory in the Shadow of Trump

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

On April 28, Canada’s incumbent Liberal Party won a fourth consecutive election, just months after polls predicted they would face a historic landslide defeat after a decade in office.

The election, like much else in global politics these days, inevitably became about Donald Trump.

The American President’s repeated attacks on Canadian sovereignty, including imposing economically damaging tariffs, threats to make the country the “51st state”, and mockingly referring to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau”, inflamed Canadian nationalism and anti-American sentiment, which typically go hand-in-hand in the Great White North. This ensured that the narrative of the 2025 federal election would be less about the shaky record of a decade of Liberal governance, and more a national plebiscite about Trump and U.S.-Canadian relations.

Trump drove Canadian voters into the arms of the Liberal Party for a variety of reasons. 

Firstly, Mark Carney’s experience as former Governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, combined with a globe-spanning career in finance, resonated more with Canadians worried about Trump’s economic attacks. A consensus formed that he was better equipped to deal with Trump and the inevitable negotiations on trade, tariffs, and the future of Ottawa-Washington diplomacy. 

Carney certainly used this to his advantage and amplified anti-American sentiment by making “opposing Trump” the defining feature of his campaign: he positioned Trump, not Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, as his political adversary, and the strategy paid off.

Furthermore, Poilievre, running on a populist platform, was branded as being “too similar” to Trump, too much of the same ilk, to credibly stand up to him, even if his brand of conservative populism is, in reality, more measured and rooted in Canadian political tradition. Poilievre’s populism was contrasted to Carney, a lifelong establishment globalist, and the Trump comparisons inflicted damage. Evidently, many Canadians incensed by Trump simply wanted someone who represented his opposite as their head of government.

Poilievre did himself no favours. While he was a strong opposition during the Trudeau era - certainly the strongest and most eloquent Conservative leader since they were thrown out of office in 2015 - and his campaign was brutally efficient in punishing Trudeau’s error-strewn final years, his campaign never seemed to recover from Trudeau’s January 2025 resignation.

His signature “Axe the Tax” slogan, aimed at the former Prime Minister’s divisive carbon tax, persisted front and centre of the campaign even after Carney did indeed “axe the tax” immediately after coming into office. What had once been an effective rallying cry became a neutered symbol of the Conservatives’ inability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Perhaps Poilievre was too successful too soon. His aggressive campaign against the Liberal government and relentless assault against Trudeau’s record worked, propelling the Conservatives to a commanding 25-point lead. But the early momentum came at a cost: the prophesied future electoral destruction of the Liberal Party certainly contributed to the implosion of the Trudeau premiership, which had won three elections in a row. When the Liberals decisively selected Carney as party leader instead of Trudeau’s longtime deputy, Chrystia Freeland, the election dynamics shifted fundamentally.

Poilievre and the Conservatives continued to attack the Liberals’ unquestionably mediocre record and decried that Carney would be no different to Trudeau. However, given that Carney had never served in Parliament and carried none of Trudeau’s political baggage, the attacks landed flat.

Carney, meanwhile, projected a far more “professional” demeanour than his predecessor, presenting himself as a serious technocrat in sharp contrast to Trudeau’s reputation as the “Prince of Woke”. He signalled an intent to move the party further to the political centre, making it increasingly difficult to differentiate the Liberal and Conservative platforms, which helped the incumbent and further amplified the Trump factor. 

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

The election exposed deep divisions within Canadian society. The baby boomer generation overwhelmingly prioritised “dealing with Donald Trump” over domestic issues such as “housing affordability”, “growing the economy”, or “making Canada a better place to live”, all areas that have suffered over the past decade. Young voters, including the millions who have come of age during the Trudeau era, swayed to the Conservatives, blaming the incumbent party for their exclusion from the housing market and the rising cost of living. 

The Conservatives did increase their vote share, but regardless, this is a bitter election result for them and their supporters. Just months ago, they were predicted to win an unprecedented landslide. Many assumed it was a foregone conclusion that Poilievre would be sworn in as Canada’s next Prime Minister. Instead, the party finds itself consigned to opposition for a fourth consecutive election, and Pierre Poilievre has lost his own seat in Carleton. 

Carney’s reversal of these fortunes is extremely impressive, even if much of the historic swing was due to outside pressures.

Elsewhere, as the left rallied behind the Liberals to avoid a Conservative government, and the right rallied behind the Conservatives to oust the Liberals, the head-to-head election left smaller players squeezed out: the left-wing New Democratic Party completely collapsed after years of Canadians wondering what their purpose was, and their ineffective leader, Jagmeet Singh, also lost his seat, declaring his intention, finally, to step down as party leader. The Greens also saw their share of the vote decline, as did Maxime Bernier’s right-wing People’s Party.

With a minority government expected, Carney faces a tough, uncertain future ahead. He has emerged victorious in a Trump-dominated election, only to inherit the unenviable task of dealing with Trump himself.