Canada’s Knife-Edge Election

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Yesterday, Canada’s new PM Mark Carney announced a widely anticipated general election for 28th April. Only a few months ago, the result would have been a foregone conclusion. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives had a 29 point poll lead. Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party was facing a landslide defeat, weighed down by a flagging economy, popular discontent over immigration and the cost of living and a Prime Minister perceived as a virtue signalling nepo-baby who was disconnected from the concerns of ordinary Canadians. 

Two people have changed all of that. The first is Donald Trump, whose tariffs on Canadian exports and pledges to annex it into the 51st state of America have united Canadians in a wave of economic nationalism. The second is Mark Carney, the technocratic central-banker-turned-politician who has successfully led an insurgent campaign to take over the reins of the Liberal party after Trudeau. Carney now has a 5 point poll lead, and a 48% chance of scoring a Liberal majority on betting website Kalshi, upending a once almost certain Conservative victory. 

Source: Kalshi

The Trump Effect:

Canada’s polling numbers trace the decline of American soft power under Trump. Canadian public goodwill toward their southern neighbour has fallen sharply since he returned to the White House, with the percentage of surveyed Canadians who had a ‘positive or somewhat positive’ view of the US sliding from 52% in June 2024 to 33% in March 2025, according to a Leger poll. 

Source: Association for Canada Studies

Strikingly, Canadians in several age groups felt more positive toward China than they did to the USA. 

Source: Centre for Canada Studies

Trump 2.0 has impacted the Canadian race in two ways. First, his trade war has taken a sledgehammer to Washington’s traditional alliances on both sides of the Atlantic, and hardened public opinion against the US on the economy. He has put 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada, and threatened specific levies of up to 50% on Canadian iron and steel. Ottawa has responded by announcing countermeasures including a “dollar-for-dollar” 25% duty on all imports from the US, covering C$30bn (c. US$20bn) in traded goods, and surcharges on electricity exports to the US. While Trump believes that protectionism will force America’s trade partners to bend the knee, it has instead led to a surge in economic nationalism that has rallied voters to the responding Liberal government. Carney has capitalised on this effectively, pitching himself as a veteran economist and financier who can take the fight to Trump. 

Source: Ipsos

The shift in focus to tariffs and trade has created a two-horse race that has marginalized other parties. This has allowed the Liberals to peel support away from Jagmeet Singh’s centre-left New Democratic Party, which had previously worked with the Trudeau government under a supply and confidence arrangement until pulling out in September last year. Abacus Data polling shows voting intention for the NDP has fallen from 19% in mid-January to 12% in late March. 

Second, the undisguised chauvinism - and at times absurdity - of Trump’s rhetoric has tarred other populist figures such as Poilievre by association. While Trump's chest thumping nativism and conspiratorial worldview has been highly effective with the GOP base in the US, it is politically toxic abroad. Poilievre has often adopted Trumpian talking points and language, raging against “radical leftists” and “fake news”, and saying that “everything is broken”. Liberal strategists have now adeptly played this against him, running mashups of Trump and Poilievre campaign speeches in video ads titled “Made in America”. This has put Poilievre on the backfoot, and forced him to start to talk tougher on Trump. 

Carney’s emergence on the Canadian political scene has also reshaped the race independently of Trump. Carney’s outsider status (he has never been an elected politician) has allowed him to present himself as a clean break from the unpopular Trudeau administration, while his experience as governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England has made him highly credible on the economic issues that remain front and centre of public debate. He has used this opportunity to reset the party, most notably ending the unpopular consumer carbon tax that had formed a centrepiece of Conservative attacks. 

An Uncertain Outlook

But while the political winds have shifted sharply against the Conservatives, Canadian electoral history teaches us that Carney’s good fortune could be short-lived. In the past, new figures who replaced an unpopular party leader - such as John Turner in 1984, Kim Campbell in 1993 and Michael Ignatieff in 2011 - enjoyed an early poll bump, which dissipated quickly once the campaign got going. Carney is also an untested campaigner, who will have to fight to see off the threat from Poilievre and simultaneously prove that he is a true departure from Trudeau. 

With 35 days until Canada goes to the polls, Carney will have to fight hard to ensure he is not the shortest lived prime minister in Canadian history. 

Click here to read more about Carney’s challenges in differentiating himself from Trudeau.