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Down to the wire
Party leaders spent the last week of the campaign criss-crossing the country, making their closing arguments to the voters, focusing on ridings they were attempting to flip, and shoring up support where their incumbent MPs were in trouble. Front-runner Mark Carney’s objective was to consolidate his lead by keeping attention on the Trump ballot question.
He got some help from Mr. Trump on Wednesday when he mused about possibly raising his 25% tariffs on Canadian autos even higher. As Carney said many times this week, “President Trump’s tariffs are the biggest crisis of our lifetime”. Pierre Poilievre continued to push the twin themes of “time for a change” and affordability: “After the lost Liberal decade, everything costs more. Canada can’t afford a fourth Liberal term.” On Thursday, the Globe and Mail wrote that Mr. Poilievre may be in trouble in his Ottawa-area riding of Carleton.
Faced with a sharp decline in support for the NDP nationally, Jagmeet Singh spent most of his time this week in ridings his party currently holds, including his own riding of Burnaby South, attempting to “save the furniture”. Speaking in British Columbia on Monday and desperate to retain official party status in the House (12 seats), he all but conceded the election to the Liberals and told supporters, “You can make the difference between Mark Carney getting a super majority or sending enough New Democrats to Ottawa so we can fight to defend the things you care about.”
At the start of the final week, both the Conservatives and NDP changed the direction of their public outreach with new ads. One of the Conservative ads featured two older male golfers, focusing on the Liberal record and the risks of giving them another term. There is no mention of Poilievre who doesn’t appear in the ad, a tacit acknowledgement of his lower approval rating among older voters. Polling suggests that the majority of voters over the age of 50 – who traditionally have skewed Conservative – have migrated to supporting Carney and the Liberals.
The NDP released four new ads that seek to steer the ballot question away from Trump and the desire for change. They also echo the arguments Jagmeet Singh has been making over the final week: that NDP MPs get good things done “even when we’re not in power”, and also highlighting families, health care and how a Carney-led government could result in cuts to services.
Courtesy of the Hill Times, for an analysis of the best ads of the campaign from three partisan digital experts, click here.
Where the leaders campaigned this week…and why
Mark Carney, Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh spent their time in the areas of the country where the races are closest:
- Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland, where the NDP has many of its seats. Province-wide, 338Canada shows the Liberals and Conservatives in a tie at 40% each, with the NDP at 14%.
- In Alberta where the polls suggest the Liberals may make a breakthrough in what has been unfriendly territory for many years. 338Canada has the Liberals competitive in five seats.
- In the 905 area surrounding Toronto, where the resurgent Liberals are threatening some current Conservative seats. Across Ontario, 338Canada shows the Liberals at 48%, a nine-point lead over the Conservatives at 39%, with the NDP at 8%.
In Quebec, Bloc Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, buoyed by a 4% to 5% surge in his polls in the final days, focused on the Bloc-held seats immediately south of Montreal that are under threat from the Liberals.
Get Out the Vote
As voting day draws closer, there has been a lot of talk this week about the “ground game” of each party. This is political insider-speak for “Get Out the Vote” (GOTV), the efforts each party makes on election day to get their identified supporters to the polls and their votes in the ballot box. Voter identification is key to this effort capturing the names of supporters in various forms, whether through riding association membership lists, national and local party financial contributors, and the results of door to door canvassing by the candidate and campaign officials. On the digital media side, the Conservatives have an advantage over other parties, having invested in the creation of significant online communities – an added important source of the names and data points of additional supporters.
The advance polls
The polls were open for advance voting over the long weekend from Friday, April 18 through Monday, April 21. After long line-ups and delays of up to two hours at some polling stations, Elections Canada reported that 7.3 million Canadians voted at the advance polls, both an all-time record and a 25% increase from the 5.8 million who voted early in the 2021 election. In that election, voter turnout was an 62.6%.
Advance polls have historically been considered a measure of voter motivation. Awareness of advance polls has been increasing, and more Canadians have taken advantage of it in each recent election, but questions remain as to the motivation that drives voters and whether these are simply people who always vote and are just voting sooner. While fear, anger and demand for change are traditional determinants of voter intent, this election feels different: clearly Canadians view it as more consequential. The fact remains, however, that for each of the parties, getting their solidified vote in earlier allows for more capacity for them to engage in GOTV activities on e-day.
The costed platforms
The Liberal platform promises close to $130 billion in new measures over the next four years. When combined with existing spending, their plan projects deficits of $62.3 billion this fiscal year and $59.9-billion next year and will add $225 billion to the federal debt by 2028-29. The Liberals aim to increase federal revenues over the four years by $51 billion, with $20 billion of that coming from tariffs in 2025-26. The balance of the savings will come from increasing tax penalties and fines through CRA and $28 billion in savings from “increased government productivity” in the 2026-27 to 2028-29 period. These are extremely ambitious savings targets.
The Conservative platform pledges $34 billion in new spending and $75 billion in tax cuts over the next four years. The party is also betting that their economic growth policies will generate added tax revenue which by 2028-29 would total more than $21 billion annually. They forecast net reductions in program spending of $3.046 billion in 2025-26, rising to $9.767 billion in 2028-29. The cumulative impacts of their program will yield annual deficits of $31.342 billion, lowering to $14.153 billion by 2028-29. The Conservatives claim that by 2029, federal debt will be $125 billion lower under a Poilievre government than under a Carney government.
The NDP platform proposes new program spending of $227 billion, which would add $48 billion to the deficit over the next four years. The increased spending would be partially offset by a series of revenue-raising measures – a wealth tax, keeping the Liberals’ proposed capital gains increases and promising to bring in a 15% minimum tax on corporate profits – all of which would generate $184.5 billion.
Foreign interference yet again
The Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force announced this week that a campaign targeting Joe Tay, the Conservative Party candidate for the federal riding of Don Valley North, is taking place on multiple social-media platforms where Chinese-speaking Canadians are active. A senior Privy Council Office official described this effort as “a transnational repression operation … where authoritarian governments reach beyond their borders to harass, threaten and intimidate people overseas who are critical of these regimes.” Earlier in the campaign, Liberal MP and candidate Paul Chiang was forced to resign his nomination after suggesting that Mr. Tay, who has been targeted by Hong Kong police for allegedly breaking the city’s national security law, could be turned over to Chinese officials for a bounty.
The polls
As the final week of the campaign began, the Liberals led the Conservatives by a margin of 43% to 38% in the popular vote, according to 338Canada, which averages all the polls. The NDP stood at 9% nationally and the Bloc Quebecois trailed the Liberals in Quebec 43% to 25%, with the Conservatives at 23% and the NDP at 5%. Over the closing week of the campaign, there has been a modest tightening in the polls with the Liberals now leading the Conservatives by an average of four percentage points, 42% to 38%, with the NDP remaining steady at 9%. That said, there is not much solace for the Conservatives in these changes, as the Liberal margins in Ontario and Quebec have not diminished notably.
In Quebec, 338Canada puts the Liberals out in front over the Bloc at 40% to 26%, with the Conservatives stable at 24%.
Behind the polls: who’s supporting whom?
With less than a week until Election Day, the latest polling results from various firms still show a two-way race with the Liberals leading, but there is a bit a wobble in the horse race numbers. Whether the gap is tightening or widening depends on who you ask.
Punditry and prognostication: Earnscliffe’s Stephanie Coulter looks at how the different population cohorts are breaking in their support for the parties.
Focus on Ontario
Ontario is nearly always the key to winning federal campaigns. Since 1965, there have been 18 federal elections in Canada, with the party winning the most seats in Ontario going on to form government in all but two of them (1972 and 2006). Of these 18 elections, 10 have resulted in majority governments with the winning party securing an outright majority of seats in Ontario on all but one occasion (1988).
There are now 122 ridings at stake in Ontario in the current campaign, more than a third of total seats in the House of Commons (noting that redistribution has increased Ontario’s seat count over the 2021 federal election by one seat). At dissolution, the Liberals held 74 seats, the Conservatives 38, the NDP five and the Green Party one, with another three independents and vacancies rounding out the numbers.
Polls currently show the Liberals holding a commanding lead in Ontario going into the Monday’s election, largely made possible by the seeming collapse of the NDP vote. While strong by historical standards, the Conservative vote in Ontario trails that of the Liberals by as much as ten or more percentage points. If these numbers hold, they will likely prove decisive to the outcome of the election.
In Ontario and across Canada, the re-emergence of Donald Trump and the resulting challenge to our economic and political sovereignty is the defining issue of this campaign. Of the 41 cities across Canada identified by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce as being most impacted by the imposition of tariffs on Canadian exports into the United States, 15 are in Ontario, spread over nearly every region of the province.
Just two months ago, Ontario Premier Doug Ford secured a third consecutive majority government in his own election, running on a platform which promised to recognize and confront the seeming existential threat posed to both our provincial and national economy. From the outset of that campaign, voters opted for stability and the relative security of a sitting Premier. It is telling that the polls saw little to no movement over the course of the provincial election, remaining remarkably stable from the outset of the writ period.
Premier Ford’s campaign slogan was succinct and blunt — “Protect Ontario” – and it appears that the federal Liberals under newly minted Prime Minister Mark Carney have taken the lesson to heart, making Trump and tariffs the centrepiece of the Liberal campaign. By contrast, the federal Conservatives have been slow to embrace the issue, prompting senior members of Ford’s campaign team to express their concerns publicly and loudly.
Anything but a monolith, Ontario is made up of multiple diverse regions, covering a vast geographic expanse. These regions differ economically and culturally in many instances but constitute more than 16 million people and nearly 40% of Canada’s total population. The Greater Toronto Area alone makes up 59 federal ridings which can be broken down as follows: Toronto (24 seats), Peel Region (13 seats), York Region (9 seats), Durham Region (7 seats), and Halton Region (6 seats). Over the last three federal election, the Liberals have been dominant in terms of seats, widely considered key to electoral success
Current polling suggests that the Liberals are on track to win many of these ridings again, and that that their apparent level of popular support has them contesting Conservative and NDP held ridings in a wide number of regions, including Hamilton Niagara, Southwestern Ontario, Central Ontario, and Eastern Ontario. Among the closer riding contests are as follows:
- Aurora Oak Ridges – Richmond Hill – Liberal incumbent Leah Taylor Roy faces a serious challenge from Conservative candidate and former MP Costa Menegakis, in a riding that produced narrow Conservative and Liberal victories in 2019 and 2021 respectively.
- Hamilton Centre – A traditional NDP strong hold presently held by incumbent Matthew Green who faces a serious challenge from Liberal candidate Aslam Rana, a professional engineer, in what could prove a test of NDP incumbents facing dire polling numbers.
- London Fanshawe – Another Liberal – NDP showdown pitting NDP incumbent Lindsay Mathyssen against Liberal candidate Najam Naqvi, a London area lawyer, in a riding that has been held by the NDP since 2006.
- Niagara Falls – Niagara-on-the-Lake – Held by the Conservatives since 2004, incumbent MP Tony Baldinelli faces previous federal Liberal candidate Andrea Kaiser in a key Niagara region riding that has traditionally seen close election results.
- Peterborough – A traditional swing riding held by both Liberal and Conservative MPs dating back to the early 1960s, Conservative incumbent Michelle Ferreri faces a stiff challenge from Liberal candidate Emma Harrison, a local farmer and small business owner.
- Windsor West – First elected in 2002, longtime NDP incumbent Brian Masse is being contested by Liberal candidate Richard Pollock, a longtime Federal Crown Prosecutor and longtime civil litigator in a city that is among the hardest hit by tariffs.
While Liberal fortunes in Ontario appear promising, the Conservatives maintain much of their traditional strength in rural ridings across the province and may yet hold a good number of their current seats. They are also considered to be well positioned on key issues such as affordability and the cost of living. What concerns Conservatives is the relative collapse of NDP support in Ontario, suggesting that they cannot rely on traditional vote-splitting to win ridings that have been traditionally close. This could put several incumbent Conservative MPs at risk. By contrast, the Liberals must ensure that they hold key ridings across the 905 as they seek to make further gains.
For the NDP, holding its five incumbents would be considered something of a victory at this juncture. The NDP suffered a marked decline in popular vote in the recent Ontario provincial election but managed to re-elect many of its incumbents through a campaign dedicated to holding its own. It remains to be seen whether a similar strategy will prove as successful in a federal campaign so sharply divided between the Liberals and Conservatives on an issue of national significance.
Insights in this piece contributed by Geoff Norquay.
