I had thought Pierre Poilievre had it in the bag with regard to Canadian elections. And in interviews, he seemed like a stand-up guy. But he just lost to the liberals. Why?
CANADIAN ELECTION CALLED: Liberal Mark Carney Who Promises to Crush Free Speech Defeats Conservative Poilievre Who Lost 30 Pt Lead in 3 Months After He Started Bashing Trump
Liberal Mark Carney defeated conservative Pierre Poilievevre and New Democrat Jagmeet Singh in the national elections on Monday.
The race was called by 10:15 Eastern Time Zone.
Poilievre was up by 50 points in the Polymarket polling back in February.
Then he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Trump. What a dummy.
The GREATEST comeback of all time? In Jan: Polymarket odds of the Liberals winning were 3%
CTV just projected Mark Carney's Liberals to win—thanks to Trump's attacks on Canada's economy, sovereignty & suggestions it should become 51st state which spurred a surge in nationalism pic.twitter.com/Ver8c796ir
— Joumanna Nasr Bercetche (@JoumannaTV) April 29, 2025
Canada called the election within hours of the first polls closing.
Canada used paper ballots and one day voting.
For the record, in the closing days of the campaign, Carney promised to crack down on free speech.
Apparently, the people loved it.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to crack down on free speech in his latest campaign stop in Hamilton, Canada.
He's actually running on banning speech in his country in the final weeks of the election. The 2025 Canadian federal election is scheduled for April 28.
Mark Carney is taking over where Marxist Justin Trudeau left off.
Mark Carney: "There are many serious issues that we’re dealing with. One of them is the sea of misogyny, antisemitism, hatred, and conspiracy theories — this sort of pollution online that washes over our virtual borders from the United States... The more serious thing is when it affects how people behave in our society. When Canadians are threatened going to their community centers or their places of worship or their school or, God forbid, when it affects our children. My government, if elected will be taking action."
Interesting remarks about antisemitism. I wonder what the Canadian Muslim contingent has to say about that.
The article, if this can be called an article ("What a dummy"?), doesn't say anything substantive about how Poilievre's anti-Trump rhetoric may have tanked him. More important, it says nothing about what, specifically, Poilievre had said about Trump. If anything, the first blockquote seems to blame Trump himself for Poilievre's loss. Where does that leave us Americans? Are we supposed to blame Poilievre for flapping his yap, or should we be relieved that an unworthy conservative like him got beaten? No matter who would have won, it appears the US will continue to have an antagonistic relationship with its northern neighbor. Was Trump's "51st state" rhetoric intemperate? Sure, but no more than any of his other rhetoric. Could it have incited a groundswell of nationalism in Canada? It's certainly within the realm of possibility. What's more telling, for me, is that the conservative ardor for Poilievre apparently did cool down; if you click over to the article, you'll see a graph of where Poilievre started in electability—around 90% in January; this steadily tracked down in a nearly linear slope until Poilievre was at around 20% by the time of the election. Well, I guess he got his wish: he's at 0% now. Was Poilievre's Trump talk really what got him iced? I'd like to see a survey of regular Canadian conservative voters—a survey with questions like
- Carney's arguments and plans have more merit.
- Trump's antagonistic 51st-state rhetoric created a swell of nationalism and anticonservatism.
- Conservatives simply stopped loving Poilievre.
- Some other factor or factors (enter your thoughts in the blank).
A survey of liberal opinions would be good to see, too.
It's hard to view this as a Canadian version of the 2020 Steal—victory in hand, then a sudden, suspicious defeat. Poilievre's decline was steady from January on, and as the article mentions, the Canadian election was via paper ballots, with a count that happened immediately, not over the course of weeks like in the States, where there'd been constant litigation in the US courts tripping up the process. The US could learn something from Canada on that score. Did Canada stress voter ID? I bet they did—and without controversy, at a guess.
"Imagine blaming Trump for the stupidity of Canadians." I saw that on another site and couldn't agree more. It seems they voted for their own destruction. We dodged that bullet with Kamala, but I wonder if my fellow Americans have truly learned to vote in their own self-interest. Time will tell.
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