Trailing in the polls, Team Trudeau relying on the fear card
It’s retreat week for two of Canada’s top three political parties. The Liberal cabinet is hunkered down in Montreal, talking housing, cost of living, and Donald Trump. The NDP caucus is assembled in Edmonton, strategizing on how to squeeze their priorities into the Liberals’ upcoming spring budget.
And the Conservatives? They’re just sitting pretty at the top of the polls, to the consternation of their rivals, who are staring down the barrel of a 2025 election with very few options for turning the tide.
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The latest Angus Reid poll tells a tale of two electorates. It found that 62 per cent of Conservative supporters said they are more likely to vote Tory because they support leader Pierre Poilievre and the party’s vision, rather than wanting to prevent another Justin Trudeau government. In contrast, 63 per cent of Liberal supporters said they would vote Liberal to block the Conservatives from winning, rather than because they endorse Trudeau and his government’s policies.
It’s shaping up to be contest of hope vs. fear — and that means very different strategies for the three parties.
Until recently it was the Conservatives who played the fear factor — or more precisely, the fear-and-loathing factor — against Trudeau. Now they’ve flipped into the hope-and-likeability column. Leader Pierre Poilievre ditched his glasses and his wife Anaida went on a charm offensive in Quebec. The Tories are making every effort to present as “people like you,” pointedly contrasting themselves with a Prime Minister who is seen as out of touch.
They’re also putting a lot of ideas in the window, even if most of them are still in the sound bite stage — Axe the Tax, Bring Home Powerful Paycheques, and the like. And they’re recruiting star candidates, like BC MLA Ellis Ross, former Minister of Natural Gas Development and Housing, and the former Chief of the Haisla Nation.
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The Liberals, however, have very few cards to play. Their stars aren’t exactly twinkling, with ten MPs not running again and more expected to bow out this year. As we speak, the Quebec Liberals are courting federal Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, and he’s reportedly not saying no.
But the biggest concern, as Abacus CEO David Coletto points out in a recent Substack post, is that most Canadians think the country is heading in the wrong direction and want a change. A majority of voters think Trudeau is focused on the wrong priorities and “doesn’t understand what life is like for people like you.”
Enter the fear factor, aka likely U.S. Republican nominee Donald Trump. It’s no accident that the Liberal cabinet is devoting a full day to discussing the next American presidential election, scheduled for this November. After talking for five minutes about Joe Biden, they’ll likely pivot to painting Poilievre as Trump North. That strategy may not work, but another argument might have more traction: the liberal Trudeau as a foil for Trump, vs. the populist Poilievre who might be less likely to challenge him and stand up for Canada.
All of this spells trouble for the NDP. The fear factor better fade, because if it doesn’t, the party could lose its lunch. The Angus Reid poll cited earlier found that 36 per cent of NDP supporters would likely switch their vote to Liberals and an additional 30 per cent would consider doing so if the CPC were on track to victory. In Quebec, 26 per cent of Bloc voters say the switch is likely, and another 19 per cent say it is possible.
In that scenario, the Liberal vote share rises to 34 per cent, still trailing the Tories by seven points. It would take another one-in-three non-Conservative, non-Liberal voters who say it’s “possible” they would switch to put the two parties in a tie — the only possible scenario where the Liberals have a shot of staying in power.
Is fear enough to make it happen? It’s a long shot, but coupled with any missteps on the Conservative side, it’s pretty much the only shot the Liberals have. So brace yourself for images of Trump morphing into Poilievre on a social media post near you — and a nasty political year.
Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.
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