A year ago, the Liberal plan to fight the 2025 election was based on making Canadians fear Pierre Poilievre. Now, they can’t even get a large portion of the population to think about the Conservative Leader – because their feelings about Justin Trudeau get in the way.
The Liberals want to tell people that Mr. Poilievre is too right-wing, or bent on launching an era of austerity, or uninterested in climate change. They want to make people question whether a prime minister Poilievre is really what they want.
But there are whole swaths of the electorate that can’t hear that over the pounding din of their irritation with Mr. Trudeau. They aren’t open to comparison shopping. They’re just frustrated with how things are.
It’s pretty clear who isn’t listening. When Mr. Trudeau called the last general election in August, 2021, his Liberals were roughly level among male voters with then-Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s party in Nanos Research polls. Now, they are 30 percentage points behind among men.
Young male voters, in particular, are upsetting incumbents in a lot of places.
In Britain, voters in all demographics turned on the Conservatives in the July 4 election, but young men notably boosted support for the right-wing populist Reform UK party. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally has surged with the votes of young men. In the U.S., young voters gave President Joe Biden victory in 2020, but young men are leaving him now.
The Liberals could content themselves with the notion that there are angry voters all around the world right now, squeezed by inflation and still feeling postpandemic angst – and that, maybe, as Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said recently, there will come a time when the anger will subside and Liberals can have a different conversation.
But Canada’s young men aren’t coming back to listen to Mr. Trudeau. The PM has been the focal point of Canadian politics for nearly a decade, and the personification of frustration with the status quo.
There has been a lot of theorizing about the political alienation of young men in the U.S., where several authors have noted that young men are less likely to earn a university degree than women, and surveys now find that many feel like the deck is stacked against them.
Certainly, the discontent with Western government since inflation and interest rates started rising sharply in 2022 has often been driven by male voters in their 20s and 30s. In Canada, the Liberals are running neck and neck with the Conservatives among women, but are far behind among men.
The sharp decline in real incomes of those who don’t own assets and the feeling that buying a home might be permanently out of reach has apparently created more frustration among men. Conservatives might credit Mr. Poilievre with pinning all those things on Mr. Trudeau, but many voters were more than willing to blame the Prime Minister.
Anyone who can read a poll knows that Mr. Trudeau isn’t very popular at the moment. The Liberals June 24 by-election loss in the stronghold of Toronto-St. Paul’s shocked many inside the party into doubting that the Mr. Trudeau’s popularity can ever bounce back.
With Mr. Trudeau, they can’t even get young male voters to listen to the argument they want to use: that their challenger, Mr. Poilievre, is too risky or wrongheaded to be allowed the reins of power. Many Canadians won’t spend time thinking about Mr. Poilievre as long as Mr. Trudeau is in the frame.
After the loss in Toronto-St. Paul’s, the Liberal strategy has been to soften the anger and promise to do more to make life better.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters last week that the message from voters is that life is hard right now, and the government has to do more to help. Liberal cabinet ministers keep citing programs such as child care and dental care as examples of what the government can do to help.
That might be first step to cooling anger and alienation of voters. Their real goal is to get voters to start thinking, negatively, about Mr. Poilievre – but Mr. Trudeau is in the way.