It appears that young voters are attracted to Pierre Poilievre. Sam Routley writes:
The voting behaviour of young voters is highly volatile when it comes to both turnout and party preference. Since 2015, Trudeau’s Liberals have lost most of their support among young voters as younger Canadians either supported other parties, become undecided or stopped voting entirely.
Currently, most voters under 34 are, as with most other Canadians, likely to express a lack of confidence in the performance of Trudeau as prime minister.
Most youth support between 2015 and 2021 has instead gone to the NDP and its leader, Jagmeet Singh. By deliberately targeting the demographic through its policy and social media campaigns, the party was the clear favourite of young voters in the 2019 and 2021 elections.
Recently, however, much of this youth support for the Liberals and NDP now appears to be shifting again. For the first time since the 1980s, recent polls show that a plurality, although not a majority, of young voters now support the Conservative Party.
What's behind the shift?
Poilievre’s growing popularity among young voters is likely due to how he’s seized upon an opening by providing coherent messaging that addresses both the general state of dissatisfaction and economic anxieties that are weighing on young Canadians.
That includes continuing frustrations about the inaccessibility of home ownership, income instability and inflation.
The continuing detrimental economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have also affected this demographic the most, contributing to perceptions of a growing divide between older, economically established generations and younger adults.
This has also created a popular feeling among many young voters that the Trudeau government needs to be replaced.
In addition to a series of missteps and scandals that have eroded Trudeau’s personal popularity, the government is also perceived as being unable to deal with these growing economic concerns.
Because the NDP entered into an agreement with the Liberals allowing them to deliver on beneficial policies like dental care coverage, the party is now limited in its ability to craft and convey a coherent alternative to the Liberal government.
This is even though New Democrats have, along with Poilievre, been engaging in populist attacks about economic elites for not “paying their fair share.” The NDP’s ongoing support for the Liberals has come at the cost of credibly tapping into a growing anti-Liberal sentiment by compromising their position as a principled adversary — giving Poilievre yet another opening to electoral success.
Canadians say they want their parties to work together. But they punish them when they do. We are our own worst enemies.
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