Conservative Party

Elections are messy, emotional, and complex, and the 2025 Canadian federal election was no exception. In the weeks since the results came in, I’ve consumed a lot of commentary, analysis, and hot takes from journalists, pundits, campaign operatives, and academics. Some of it matches what I saw in the data. But a lot of it doesn’t.

Since early March, Abacus Data has conducted eight national surveys, interviewing over 20,000 Canadians. We also fielded a comprehensive post-election survey with 1,500 eligible voters in the days immediately following election day. These polls give us a uniquely detailed picture of what happened. And not just how people voted, but why.

Canada’s federal Conservatives are stuck with a dilemma as they consider whether to do anything different in the next two years than they did in the last two.

At the centre of the dilemma are a host of riddles. As in, did they actually lose the last election? Sure, they didn’t win, but did they lose lose? Like, did Canadians actually reject them, or did something else happen that got in the way of the victory they anticipated?

Carney = Trudeau. Wait.

A caller raising money for the Conservative Party cast doubt on the validity of the recount process in the recent federal election, according to a recording obtained by CBC News.

In the fundraising call, which happened on Saturday, an official identifying herself as being from the Conservative Party’s supporter services claimed that Liberals and media seek to “attack” Conservatives and “scrutinize” the results of two judicial recounts won by Conservatives.

Later in the call, she suggested to a potential donor that the results of the recounts were not final.

Election night can be a glorious occasion for some political parties and governments, and a dismal outcome for others. It’s not unusual for the long knives to come out after a poor result. That’s what some people are suggesting is happening right now within the Conservative Party’s inner sanctum — and the main target is Jenni Byrne.

“Pressure is mounting on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to fire Jenni Byrne, his national campaign manager,” according to a May 22 CBC News piece, “whom critics hold responsible for the party’s election defeat last month.” Twelve Conservative sources reportedly spoke with Radio-Canada reporter Christian Noel and were “granted confidentiality to discuss internal party matters.”

The Conservative party’s national council is expected to meet mid-June to determine when leader Pierre Poilievre will face a leadership review, but there’s still no sign of an overarching review of the party’s failure to defeat the Liberals on April 28.

The election returned a Liberal minority government, and while some Conservatives privately say Prime Minister Mark Carney could govern for as long as four years, others say work on fixing their failure to defeat him must start now.

Replace him with what?

When the Conservative party adopted the slogan “Bring it Home,” it was a catchy phrase reportedly inspired by Leader Pierre Poilievre’s wife. It signalled a return to fundamentals, to a familiar place of security and prosperity. It’s now clear that the promise of bringing it home has not fully materialized.

Despite the slogan’s apparent simplicity, it was so diluted by multiple meanings that it took a four-minute video from Pierre Poilievre to explain what it actually meant. One of those meanings has become even more relevant now that the party has failed to form the government and its leader has lost his seat: “You know, when a sportscaster is broadcasting a game and the home team is up two points and there’s five minutes left, they might say ‘they’re up two but can they bring it home?’ So it really means getting it done.”

Always take Star advice to conservatives with a truck load of salt.

Here’s Ben Woodfinden, who had a senior role in the extraordinarily successful Conservative campaign. Wait a minute — successful? Sure, depending on how you count it. The Conservatives increased their seat count by 24, more than any other party (easy enough since only the Liberals also increased their seat count.) They won their largest share of the popular vote since Brian Mulroney’s 1988 Progressive Conservatives, the largest vote share since the founding of the current, post-2003 Conservative Party of Canada, and a larger popular-vote share than Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau ever won in three election victories each, including their majority governments.

Pressure is mounting on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to fire Jenni Byrne, his national campaign manager, whom critics hold responsible for the party’s election defeat last month, sources told Radio-Canada.

“After a loss, heads have to roll,” said one Conservative.

“If Jenni Byrne stays, we won’t be able to support Pierre,” a second added.

Sounds like Doug Ford again.

To limit the time Pierre Poilievre’s critics have to organize ahead of his leadership review by party rank-and-file members and to eliminate uncertainty, some senior Conservatives are considering moving the party’s convention to this fall instead of the spring 2026. And former two-term Calgary MP Devinder Shory says Poilievre should resign as party leader, call a leadership race, and seek a fresh mandate if he wants to lead the party in the next election.

“I know we’re going to be advancing the convention because we have to have that [leadership] vote,” said one senior Conservative. “It’s a matter of practicalities how soon can it be organized. I believe it would be September or October. Without that vote it’s hard, it’s going to distract everything.”

Ben Woodfinden, the 31-year-old former director of communications for Pierre Poilievre, understands the challenges faced by younger Canadians. Ten years of a Liberal-led, no-growth government, Ben laments, “means they live in a country that doesn’t work for them anymore.” They want change.

And there’s a flip side, he cynically suggests: Some Canadians are content with the status quo, because it benefits them. They bought houses decades ago that are worth 20 times what they paid for them. It’s in their interest, he argues, to encourage unsustainable levels of immigrants to support existing social programs and to constrain investment in the infrastructure needed to re-energize the Canadian economy.

As the dust settled on election night, things immediately got off on the wrong foot for the defeated Conservative Party.

Older voters had instructed Tory candidates that they wanted to see a “more conciliatory tone,” according to Calgary Centre MP Greg McLean, yet Bowmanville–Oshawa North MP Jamil Jivani weaponized what should have been a perfunctory election-night interview to settle personal scores with Ontario Premier Doug Ford. It’s true that certain provincial leadership teams haven’t had a constructive past couple of years with their federal cousins, but no future votes will be gained airing that dirty laundry in public.

In addition to selecting an interim Opposition leader in the House on May 6 while Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre remains without a seat in the House of Commons, Tory MPs also voted to invoke the federal Reform Act, which allows for a secret-ballot vote to review party leadership at any time.

While many Conservative MPs have expressed their support for Poilievre, the legislation could haunt him as he gets ready for the next federal election.

Susan Delacourt: One word leapt out at me in a piece you wrote for this paper last week, Matt, and it was this one: “killed.” As in, the Conservatives got killed in the election. I agree that their hopes got killed — especially the hopes they had when they were 20 points ahead of the Liberals. But here’s the thing: I’m not convinced Conservatives are staring down that reality. The early indications, in fact, point to more of the same from Pierre Poilievre and his team.

Matt Gurney: I was using that word more as a play on the phase “election post-mortem” than I was to describe what I think happened to them. I’ll confess something. I don’t know what to make of that election. It’s different from any other I’ve covered. Something wild I discovered when writing my column is that Poilievre got a bigger share of the vote this time than did the last five PMs to win a majority. So I can get why Tories might want to stay the course and write this one off as a fluke. They could be right. They could go wrong, though. Someone needs to be that guy in the room and get them thinking about that.