A fleeting at-war-with-Trump bump or stunning political recovery? Carney, Liberals about to find out

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/03/2025 (205 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If history is any indication, the next two weeks will tell us whether the surge in support for the Liberal Party of Canada was a mirage or whether it’s political history in the making.

As it stands today, most opinion polls show soon-to-be-sworn-in prime minister Mark Carney’s Liberals in a statistical tie with Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. It’s a remarkable turnaround from two months ago, when the Liberals, under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership, were running more than 20 points behind the Tories.

However, the poll results to date are based on several purely hypothetical assumptions. Now that Carney is at the Liberal helm, we will move very quickly into the realm of reality when he calls an election, and it’s rumoured he will do so next week.

In other words, once the writ is dropped, we’ll get to see whether Liberal support is real or whether it’s only a mirage built on inflamed emotions triggered by the trade war with the United States.

As we await Carney’s next move, it’s important to remember election campaigns are the great equalizers of electoral politics. Pre-election leads shrink, parties poised to challenge for government collapse, parties that seemed to be afterthoughts dramatically outperform.

How will support for the Grits and Tories break once Carney triggers an election? There aren’t many precedents that can be used to forecast the upcoming campaign. The one that you will hear mentioned the most often is 1993.

When then-prime minister Kim Campbell called an election that fall, she was riding an enormous wave of support sparked by her ascension to the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party and the departure of former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Support for the PC party peaked in June, when Campbell was elected leader and the Tories tied Jean Chrétien’s Liberals in poll support.

Support for Campbell began to crater across the country almost immediately. On election day, Oct. 25, Campbell’s Tories received only 16 per cent of the votes cast and won only two seats, down from 156 at the dissolution of Parliament.

Are there lessons to be taken from 1993 for the Liberals or Conservatives? Yes, but with an enormous caveat.

The first lesson, without a doubt, is that pre-election support is not the same as election-day support. That might sound like an exceedingly elementary point to make, but there is a psychological dynamic at work as voters move from “likely to vote for” to making a final decision on election day. It’s not unusual for the anxiety around casting a vote to trigger last-minute shifts in support.

That dovetails quite well with the second lesson: campaigns matter.

One of the contributing factors to the PC collapse of 1993 was the fact the Tories stumbled out of the gate when it came to campaign logistics.

The central PC campaign failed to get campaign literature printed in time, so individual candidates were forced to print their own materials for canvassing. This caused confusion and panic among candidates.

The Tories also struggled with messaging, trying to focus on what they thought were their strengths: job creation, deficit reduction and general improvements in the quality of life. Unfortunately for Campbell, the Mulroney government had not performed well on the first two issues, and that legacy undermined her efforts to connect with voters.

As we await Carney’s next move, it’s important to remember that election campaigns are the great equalizers of electoral politics.

In that regard, Campbell struggled. There were damaging comments she made in the earliest days of the campaign, including an assertion that unemployment and the budget deficit would not see meaningful improvement until the end of the century. Later, she made her infamous remark about how campaigns were “no time to discuss serious issues.” She was quickly cast as a rigid and uncaring leader.

Which brings us to the caveat in this election: the suffocating presence of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Every election has catalytic issues that drive the tone and substance of the campaign. In 1993, the biggest issue of the campaign was the need to eliminate budget deficits and attack the public debt. Although important, fiscal concerns like that do not capture the imagination of voters in the same way a trade war and a loss of sovereignty has in the current pre-election period.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Dan Lett | Not for Attribution

Tuesdays

A weekly look at politics close to home and around the world.

Sign up for Dan Lett | Not for Attribution

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

As Trump ramps up tariffs and continues his musings about the possible annexation of Canada, the Carney Liberals have quickly adopted the posture and language of a war-time government. That’s a powerful image for the electorate.

If the electorate is under siege, it is less likely to turn its back on an incumbent government. Even though the Liberal government has been distracted by a leadership campaign, it has done a commendable job of standing up to Trump’s maddening rhetoric. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have been relegated to the sidelines of the battle with the U.S.

The final lesson of 1993 for all parties and leaders is to make sure that in the immediate prelude to an election, and in the early days of that campaign, there can be no mistakes.

Otherwise, they will find out just how close the edge of the political abyss is lurking.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.