Election Yard is back, and what brought us back now? The upcoming 2025 Canadian election.
Since we went on hiatus to focus on other areas (and you should totally see our other work on “Yard” websites, by the way), a great deal has happened in the world. That might be the understatement of the century and/or millennium.
Politics has permeated throughout many things around the world, to the point where it is inescapable. This is also a case where the recent American election has had a direct impact on the Canadian election, scheduled for Monday, April 28.
Since Donald Trump’s election in November, and then return to the White House in January, Canada has been in the crosshairs, and the 2025 election campaign we thought we would see in Canada has been turned on its head.
Upcoming 2025 Canadian Election: The Basics
Election day in Canada is Monday, April 28. The new government will be sworn in, most likely, in May, with Parliament to be recalled shortly thereafter. They will have a great deal of work to do.
There will now be 343 federal ridings in Canada, up from 338. 172 seats will be required to win a majority government. Alberta gained three seats, while Ontario and British Columbia each added one.
In 2021, the Liberals won 160 seats, 10 short of the majority marker. The Conservatives won 119, the Bloc Quebecois took 32, and the New Democrats won 25. Just two MPs were from the Green Party.
The Liberal Party has been in power since 2015, when Justin Trudeau defeated incumbent Stephen Harper and the Conservatives to claim a majority government. The two subsequent elections have resulted in minority governments.
Upcoming 2025 Canadian Election: How Did We Get Here?
The election was due by October of this year, as the prior election was held in October 2021. When news outlets say it is an early or a snap election, that is technically true. However, it will be held only six months before its legally-mandated date, and the Liberals ruled in a minority government at dissolution. As minority governments go, three and a half years is not a short period.
Trudeau Decides to Go
The Liberals had sunk in the opinion polls in 2024, but not just down: They were out. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party were historically unpopular, with some polling around the 2024 holiday season and the very start of 2025 suggesting that the opposition Conservatives were heading for a landslide win. This victory might have delivered a popular vote plurality of 20 to 25 percent, which would have sent the CPC well over 200 seats in the House of Commons, and dropped the Liberals into the dozens – a fair number of which would have probably been in Montreal. Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was all but measuring the drapes at the Prime Minister’s Office.
The writing was on the wall for Trudeau in 2024 when the Liberals lost the Toronto-St. Paul’s by-election, a devastating blow in what should have been a safe seat. However, Trudeau did not leave right away, even as he lost cabinet ministers and the support of some backbench Liberal MPs. It took the resignation of his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, on December 16, 2024 to sink his government. The fallout from this boiled over through the winter holidays, ultimately leading to Justin Trudeau resigning as leader on January 6, 2025.
American Influence Skyrockets
On the very same day Trudeau announced his resignation, Donald Trump was confirmed as president-elect by Congress in the United States. Even prior to this day, Trump had been threatening Canada with tariffs upon his return to the White House. Faced with the pressures of a crumbling cabinet and the Trump Administration starting a trade war with Canada, Trudeau exited the Liberal leadership.
Even as a lame duck prime minister, Trudeau spent his final days in the premiership defending Canadian interests and rallying the country against economic aggression. Liberal poll numbers began to improve, though the party was still well behind. Instead of being an extinction-level event for the Liberals, the threat from the United States coupled with Trudeau making a strong exit – but still an exit – made for the possibility of a respectable defeat.
Once Trump took office and the Liberal leadership race got underway, Canadian sovereignty and the economy became the primary issues of the campaign. Trump and his cabinet secretaries have frequently mentioned, brought up, and/or joked about Canada becoming part of the United States, often implying whether they want to or not. This has reverberated around Canada for months. The issues upon which the Conservatives ran before, namely wanting to get rid of Trudeau, taxes, and crime, lacked the same punch, especially the first one.
Carney Takes Over
Parliament was prorogued when Trudeau announced his intent to resign. As it turns out, it would never be recalled in this term. All the while, the opposition, including the NDP, indicated that they would bring down the government on a confidence motion as soon as possible. They no doubt realized that once Trudeau resigned and prorogued Parliament, the new prime minister would call an election shortly after taking power, especially if it was one Mark Carney, without a seat in the House of Commons. The opposition would not get the chance to vote the government out and trigger an election themselves.
Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor, got into the race, which lasted for about two months. He would be elected leader on March 9 in a landslide, taking over as Canada’s 24th prime minister on March 14.
The new prime minister has made himself known clearly that Canada would never become a part of the United States on his watch. He also won himself credit for how he handled the global economic crisis of the late 2000s as the head of the Bank of Canada, sparing the country some of the worst fallout, lending him economic points. This led to something stunning and previously unexpected: A Liberal rise in the polls.
A Shocking Reversal
Carney was in, Trudeau was out, and Donald Trump became as unpopular as ever in Canada for clear and obvious reasons. Canadians began to consider whom they wanted running the country and who would best defend Canadian interests as America continues to mount a trade war. Pierre Poilievre, believed to be the PM-in-waiting just a few months ago, was seen by some to have insufficiently responded to the American threat, and surveys have confirmed this. Add all of these things together and the Conservative polling lead collapsed almost overnight.
Opinion polling that showed the CPC ahead by more than 20 points in December were, by late March, showing the Liberals tied or ahead by a few points. Some Liberals were worried that they could be reduced to Ignatieff 2011 levels in the upcoming election, but with Carney, a hope rose that they could “save the furniture” and put up a respectable loss.
However, nobody could have foreseen the 180-degree turn that the opinion polls would take, some of which now not only would impute a Liberal government, but point to a Liberal majority government as a distinct possibility. Even as Trump threatened Canada before Christmas in 2024, nobody would have believed you if you suggested that the Liberals might not only win the most seats, but might win a majority.
NDP Collapses, Too
The Liberals’ rise in the polls has not been all off of the backs of the CPC. A lot of those prospective votes, according to recent surveys, are coming from the NDP. The sense is that some NDP voters, for this election, are willing to put party aside to elect Carney – and keep Poilievre out of the prime minister’s chair.
There have been polls in late March which have shown the NDP in single-digits in national vote share. The 338Canada polling aggregation is not too much better, having them on 11 percent. For purposes of comparison, the NDP got about 18 percent in 2021. A popular vote share this low could put the NDP under 10 seats in the next House of Commons, which would cost them their official party status.
Upcoming Canadian Election 2025: Now What?
The rest now is up to Canadian voters as they select their government for the next four years. America looming over Canada is not going to go away any time soon, so the people will decide how they want to approach the situation at the polls. Sure, there are other issues which are still important to people in the True North, but one is getting a lot more oxygen than the others.
The major parties will both make clear that they want to be elected to a majority government, because this is a time when Canada needs stability. They will always say they want a majority, but there would be some peril to having a minority government and then potentially having to do this again in a year or two while there is a trade war raging and/or threats to Canadian sovereignty.
Should Mark Carney lead the Liberals to victory on April 28, it would signal one of the most impressive turnarounds in Canadian political history. The Conservatives have seen a 20-point lead vanish, so the question is what, if anything, do they have in the tank for the campaign to get back on course. Another question related to that is if it can get back on-course for the CPC. We have just five weeks to find out Canada’s new track.
