It’s official: Mark Carney has won the prize of prime minister. Now, he must figure out how to keep it. Carney comes to the job with a lot of pluses, chiefly his steady demeanour and economic experience, but also a pile of vulnerabilities. Already the Conservatives are gleefully exploiting them, branding him a liar, sellout, and globalist. They are saturating social media with memes and clever ads, trying to define him before he calls an election, which is likely imminent, considering the latest Nanos poll puts them a mere percentage point ahead of the Liberals.
But who are they reaching? Everyone on X has a prebaked set of opinions: it’s the people who aren’t there that they should worry about. Those include Liberal switch voters, who would have opted for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre because they couldn’t stomach outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau but are ready to give Carney a chance.
Carney needs to solidify those voters, but he can’t do it alone. Elections are won on more than leaders: campaigns need money, strategy, organization and volunteers. The Liberals have the cash, but the real issue for Carney are the other three elements. And that’s where an analysis of the leadership results offers some important insights.
First, Liberal numbers don’t bode well for volunteers. Of roughly 400,000 “registered Liberals” (with free memberships), 152,000 cast their votes, a turnout of 38 per cent, and Carney won with 131,674 votes. In contrast, 65 per cent of the 400,000 paid members cast a ballot in the Conservatives’ 2022 leadership election, which Poilievre won with 295,000 votes. Ahead of the vote, Liberal party members tried to dampen expectations by blaming technology, and it’s true that many believed the race was a slam dunk for Carney, but I suspect there are reasons for the low turnout, one of which is that supporting the Liberals doesn’t cost you a dime, which makes for less committed members.
The second key point is organization. The results show the party is very weak in Quebec, a province that is key to any majority government. Twenty-four of the bottom twenty-five ridings were Quebec ridings; in almost all, fewer than 50 people voted. Turnout was higher in Montreal-area ridings, but if the party wants to make gains in the province, it needs to shore up support off island.
The third point is strategic, and stems from the weakness of Carney’s opponents. Chrystia Freeland got only eight per cent of the vote, which wasn’t great, but the real surprise was Karina Gould, who polled an anemic 3.2 per cent, barely 0.2 per cent ahead of Frank Baylis, who most people had never heard of. Pundits were pumping Gould as a possible second-place finisher, extolling her strong debate performances and youthful energy. But she flamed out — and that does not bode well for the Liberals.
The future of any party are young voters: they were the reason Trudeau stormed to victory in 2015. But ever since, the Conservatives have been eating their lunch on the youth vote, appealing to their disillusionment and inability to buy a house, save money, and achieve the milestones their parents took for granted at their age.
Carney’s big numbers, in contrast, were in ridings that are older and more affluent: not coincidentally, perhaps, those who have the most to lose faced with the chaotic, threatening rule of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Carney has a choice. He can try to bridge from Trump to the economy at large, to woo younger voters by telling them that their issues are tied to confronting Trump. He can build a team that features prominent younger and Quebec candidates to court those markets. Or he can double down on the accessible voter pool of anxious Boomers and Xers in the rest of Canada and get those people out to the polls. And through it all, he should pay attention to resources: you can’t fight all battles if you want to win the war.
Postmedia News
Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.