“I have been arguing for most of this campaign that it wasn’t one ballot question. It wasn’t just Trump defining this,” said Abacus Data CEO David Coletto.
He pointed to the cost of living and housing prices as major concerns for voters in the Greater Toronto Area and York region, where the Liberals lost seats.
The party’s struggles in Ontario, where they dropped to 69 seats from 78 in 2021, prevented them from achieving a comfortable majority.
“The Liberals ran up the score in downtown Toronto this time. NDP voters there flocked their way en masse,” noted former Liberal pollster Dan Arnold. “They obviously had a phenomenal night in Ottawa, winning Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s riding, and they actually picked up a few more seats in Eastern Ontario too — Peterborough, Bay of Quinte.”However, Arnold highlighted significant losses in the 905 area and the Golden Horseshoe, regions that had consistently supported the Liberals under Justin Trudeau.
Prominent incumbents like Ya’ara Saks, Francesco Sorbara, Majid Jowhari, and Bryan May all fell to Conservative challengers.
The defeat of Kamal Khera in Brampton—West, a riding the Liberals won by a large margin in 2021, suggests potential challenges with multicultural electorates.
“If you look at ridings nationally, where there’s large South Asian populations, the Liberal vote went down a lot compared to the last election, and the same thing would be true with ridings with large Chinese populations,” Arnold observed.
The Liberals’ hopes of expanding their presence in Alberta also fell short, securing only two seats despite significant campaigning efforts.
Meanwhile, strategic wins in British Columbia, particularly in senior-heavy ridings, demonstrated the demographic appeal of Carney’s leadership.
Coletto noted the Conservatives’ success in appealing to private sector and unionized workers, allowing them to pick up seats in northern and southwestern Ontario and the B.C. interior.
“That was going to be part of their road to victory but that obviously fell short because they couldn’t convert in Toronto and the Lower Mainland,” he said.
Lawrence LeDuc, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, suggested the short campaign benefited the Liberals as their initial momentum began to wane.
“They were probably pretty smart to opt for the shortest possible campaign because they might not have been able to sustain that momentum for another week,” he said.
Despite the electoral win, the Liberals now face the challenge of governing with a minority, navigating regional disparities and addressing persistent voter concerns beyond the threat posed by the United States.
As Carney himself acknowledged, “the coming days and weeks will not be easy.”
Despite a Trump-fueled surge, the Liberals’ failure to secure a majority reveals regional weaknesses, particularly in Ontario’s 905 region and multicultural areas.
While downtown progressives flocked to the Liberals, cost of living concerns and Conservative gains in blue-collar ridings played a significant role. The short campaign may have saved the Liberals from further losses.
