2025 Canadian Election

The 2025 Canadian federal election delivered a historic Liberal majority for Mark Carney and a stunning night for Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives. But two months on, the data tells a different story than the one we've all been telling ourselves.

This week on Craft Politics: Hunter Knifton, founder of the Charting Canada substack, joins Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy to challenge two dominant narratives about the 2025 election. The blue collar NDP voter who switched to Conservative? The collapse of the left into one big Liberal coalition? Hunter has the riding level data, and it complicates both stories.

We discuss:

The myth of the NDP to Conservative switcher. Ten ridings flipped from orange to blue. Conventional wisdom says NDP voters went Conservative. Hunter's numbers say something else: the NDP vote held up better in those ridings than the national average, the PPC vote collapsed by 3,000 votes per riding, and the Liberals gained almost as many votes as the Conservatives did. Unless you think PPC voters went Liberal, the math doesn't work.

Where Carney's 1.5 million extra votes actually came from. He won more votes than any victorious party in Canadian history. If it wasn't NDP switchers, and it wasn't older Conservatives going Liberal, where did they come from? Hunter walks through the turnout surge, the PPC collapse, and the age split that explains most of it.

The coalition nobody expected. Hunter clustered Carney's 169 ridings by demographics. The surprise wasn't the downtown progressives, it was the rural Atlantic Canada seats, the 401 commuter belt, and the immigrant heavy suburbs that now make up the Liberal caucus. This isn't a left wing coalition. It's a centrist one with a progressive flank.

Which coalition is more fragile? The NDP is a stronger brand than the PPC ever was. If Singh's party recovers, does it hurt Carney or Poilievre more? Hunter's answer surprised us, and it has implications for what the Conservatives do next.

Should the Conservatives rethink their strategy? If the blue collar union vote didn't actually switch, and the path to majority runs through moderate suburban voters who were turned off by Poilievre, does the Conservative Party have the right leader for the next election?

Also discussed: why education level may be the new dividing line in Canadian politics, whether the two party system will hold, and why Andrew is deleting everything we said during the campaign.

Find Hunter's work at Charting Canada: https://chartingcanada.substack.com

00:00 Welcome and introducing Hunter's election analysis challenge
01:22 The myth of the NDP-Conservative switcher
02:28 The PPC collapse explains Conservative gains in NDP ridings
05:24 New voters and turnout drove Conservative growth
07:47 Were they really NDP voters or just non-voters who identified as NDP?
10:02 Conservative-Liberal switchers and the two-party consolidation
16:28 Mark Carney's surprising rural and suburban coalition
18:45 Which coalition is more fragile—Conservative or Liberal?
22:36 The NDP recovery threat—who loses more votes?
24:52 Should Conservatives rethink their union strategy?
30:05 The Trump factor and the ballot question that changed everything
31:06 Education divide and the future of Canada's two-party system