The 51st State – CN4 Partners

Friends-

Donald Trump has achieved something once thought impossible – his actions successfully changed the electoral histories of not one, not two, but three of our closest allies this spring. Given Tuesday’s somewhat successful visit of the Canadian PM to Washington (as well as our founder’s Canadian citizenship) we decided to take a closer look at Canada’s April elections.

Donald Trump’s trade war plus his declared intention to make our northern neighbor “the 51^st State” is widely – and correctly – interpreted as determining Canada’s federal general election. Yet other factors predating DJT’s re-inauguration played a major role in re-shaping Canadian politics for this election . . . and for the foreseeable future.

Here are results of the previous election in September 2021 with vote shares and MPs elected by party:

The Liberal Party of Canada under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau won a 3rd consecutive term in office, albeit with a reduced minority; they garnered fewer votes than the Conservatives, but captured more MPs because their votes were more evenly distributed, whereas Conservative support was heavily concentrated in rural areas and parts of western Canada, especially Alberta.

Similarly backing for the separatist Bloc Québécois was confined to one province, which gained the BQ more seats for fewer votes than the labor-progressive New Democratic Party. And including votes for the eco-progressive Green Party plus the rightwing Peoples Party of Canada boosted the combined minor-party totals to an all-time record 59 MPs and 32.6% vote share, and dividing the Great White North into one-third Liberal, one-third Conservative and one-third None of the Above.

After the 2021 election, Trudeau and the Liberals remained in power thanks to an agreement with the NDP, which remained outside government but with policy guarantees. Over time, various issues and events – especially the rising cost of living – sapped support for Trudeau, the Liberals AND also the NDP. Which in turn boosted the Conservatives, led by populist firebrand Pierre Poilievre who benefited by targeting the NDP’s blue-collar labor base with Trumpian style and messages, including anti-woke and the politics of grievance also appealing to former PPC and other rightwing voters.

Thus when Trudeau resigned early January 2025, opening the way for a new Liberal Prime Minister and a snap general election, Poilievre’s Conservatives held polling leads of +20% or better versus their hapless opponents, who appeared on the cusp of a virtual wipeout at the next general election, similar to what befell the Progressive Conservatives in 1993, when they went from ruling majority to wretched rump of 2 MPs.

HOWEVER, the return of Trump changed the trajectory and outcome of the 2025 Canadian election, as public opinion moved suddenly and voting intentions shifted dramatically. The Conservative polling advantage narrowed, then vanished, with Liberals soon surging to upwards of +10%. The Liberal lead plateaued for weeks, then narrowed in the final days of the campaign.

Liberal recovery was facilitated by Mark Carney, Trudeau’s replacement as Prime Minister and Liberal leader, a non-elected business politico NOT a former minister in Justin’s cabinet, who proved himself on the campaign trail and provided the same old Liberals with a safer pair of hands as well as a fresh face.

In contrast, Pierre Poilievre failed to pivot effectively from a Trump-adjacent populist to a tough defender/negotiator for Canadian jobs AND sovereignty (a transition made in Ontario’s February 2025 provincial election by Progressive Conservative premier Doug Ford, also a right-populist BUT who campaigned by taking Trump to the woodshed).

The above table gives vote share and MP breakdowns for the April 2025 Canadian general election.

Mark Carney’s Liberal won the most votes and also the most MPs, just -3 short of a majority in the new Canadian House of Commons, with victories in every province, enabled by taking votes from minor parties, in particular the BQ, Greens and especially NDP.
Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative’s trailed the Liberals, but not by much, and also won defectors from the PPC and also from NDP, the later most notably in southwest Ontario and parts of British Columbia.
Minor parties were severely squeezed between the hard rocks of anti-Trump backlash and Poilievre’s right-wing populism, in particular the NDP but also the BQ, Greens and PPC; yet minority parties retain 31 seats in the new Canadian House of Commons.

The change in vote share and MPs from Sept 2021 to April 2025 is shown above, and documents the epic +28.7% increase in combined major-party vote share, with corresponding decrease in combined minor-party share. These shifts in turn are reflected in the +33 rise in MPs elected by top-two parties, and the -28 drop in minor-party MPs (the +5 new seats created by reapportionment from 338 to 343 total MPs were won by Conservatives).

The post-Trump surge across Canada flipped the polls and kept Mark Carney’s Liberals, thanks in particular to gains from opposition parties in southern Quebec (BQ, CON), eastern Ontario (CON) and British Columbia (NDP).
Carney’s Liberals gained the most in vote share with +11.1% boost over 2021, however Poilievre’s Conservatives increased their vote-share by +7.6% AND their MPs by +24, compared with +7 for Liberals.
Fully 59% of the vote share collectively lost by minor parties since September 2021, ended up in the Liberal column in April 2025. However, this transfer level varied, and was just 53% in Ontario as a whole.
Indeed, it was Liberal underperformance in suburban Toronto and southwest Ontario where slight majority of votes lost by NDP & etc. went to the Conservatives, that narrowly denied Carney a majority government.
Hence the seemingly counterintuitive fact: that voters in the parts of Ontario most dependent on cross-border trade, gave the local advantage to the Conservatives. On the other hand, in Quebec defectors from the BQ and the Conservatives were concentrated in the region south of the St Lawrence River and north of the US border, a mix of rural and suburban turf that is also heavily impacted by US-Canada trade.

Looking forward into the Great White North’s post-election future:

How long Mark Carney and his Liberal Party retain power, depends on their ability to deal Donald Trump, his international trade war and other shocks and threats, including annexation and other hot buttons. Which is hard to foresee . . . even with a crystal ball . . .
Related and equally important is the new numbers game at Ottawa, where Liberal dominance also depends on preventing the combined CON-BQ-NDP-GRN opposition from uniting in a vote of no confidence against the new minority government.
This is especially critical now, because while Liberals are closer to a majority, their previous NDP survival blanket that kept Justine Trudeau in power for two-and-a-half years has evaporated, with the remaining wretched NDP rump likely being gun-shy of being seen keeping Mark Carney in the driver’s seat.
The BQ re-elected most of its MPs thus in theory providing a new possible cushion for Carney’s Liberals in Parliament, but agreement between Liberals and the pro-Quebec independence BQ is an inherently tricky proposition.
Interesting, the remaining Green MP, their veteran leader Elizabeth May of BC, has floated the possibility of becoming the next Speaker of the Canadian House; which would help Carney with the numbers game provided she and he came to agreement, for example her supporting the government (mostly) which is traditional, in return (say) for pro-enviro policy considerations.

One very interesting aspect of Canada’s 2025 general election, was the defeat of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in his own Ontario constituency of Carleton in suburban Ottawa, where he was elected seven times previously starting in 2004.

The table below gives results for Carleton from September 2021 and April 2025 elections (numbers for 2021 are extrapolated due to boundary changes):

This upset was NOT anticipated, at least outside Carleton, until it happened. While never overwhelming Conservative, Poilievre had won election and re-election with better than 45% of the vote against a crowded field, with NDP and other minor candidates taking sizeable chunk of votes away from Liberals.

On key reason why Carleton turned against Poilievre this time around, is anti-Trump backlash, which was strong in Ottawa and eastern Ontario; this in turn was reflected in the serious -10% drop in NDP votes along with much smaller Green decline, from a smaller 2021 base.
But why didn’t Poilievre also benefit, or benefit much more, from the fall of the NDP? One factor (perhaps) was similarity between his style, message, personality, etc. and that of America’s 45/47th President; note that the possibility of his becoming Prime Minister led the Long Ballot election reform group, to organize scores of protesters to file for MP in Carleton, leading to a national record long ballot with 91 candidates.
Yet another factor was the strong grass-roots campaign waged by Carleton’s new Liberal MP Bruch Fanjoy, which enabled the Liberals to tap into the prevailing mode to topple Poilievre and give him a double bite of the bitter weenie of defeat.
Note that Marc Carney waged his very first, and quite successful campaign for elective office in the neighboring constituency of Nepean (parts of which were once represented by Poilievre) winning with 63.8% of the vote, and increase of +18% over what the Liberal got in 2021.

Another interesting fact, is that Pierre Poilievre’s loss of his own seat, does NOT appear to be the end of his leadership of the Conservative Party. Just days after Election Day 2025, a newly re-elected Conservative MP from a very safe Alberta seat (82.8% in April 2025) announced he would resign his seat to that Poilievre could run in the subsequent by-election (expected in June) and return to Parliament.

So Pierre Poilievre should be back in Ottawa by this summer, as leader of the defeated but not-totally beaten, and certainly not unbowed, Conservative Party of Canada. In a country with a minority government embarking on its fourth consecutive term, with a new Prime Minister facing a very interesting and challenging future, we will have to wait to see what happens.