By Aly Kamadia, Editor-In-Chief, iDose
Note: The following commentary was written the day before Trump’s “Liberation Day”.
Is the Liberal Party smoothly sailing to a victory on April 28th, 2025 – election day in Canada?
Among other comments in last week’s newsletter, I noted that the election was a coin toss between the Liberals and Conservatives, insofar as polling captured the moment.
Since then, the popular vote remains a virtual tie in the polling. The Liberal “lead” here is within the margin of error.
In terms of seat projections (the majority of seats determine which party claims the crown), the Liberals have increased their relative advantage since a week and a half ago. If the polling paints an accurate picture of how Canadians will cast their vote, the Liberals are in for a victory.
But that’s a big IF.
While I look at ‘the numbers’ on a daily basis, the degree to which people place unfettered confidence in them never ceases to amaze me.
If the reader is not equally as bewildered, allow me to remind them about the 2016 American Presidential election.
The historical race involved a brainless orange blob up against the all powerful “Clinton Machine”. And it was indeed all powerful; nothing or nobody could defeat it.
The polls agreed without flinching.
Thus on the eve of election night, they unequivocally concluded that Trump had a zero chance of winning.
Despite America’s extraordinary amount of high-quality polling data and its sheer volume (e.g., much more than Canada can dream of pumping out), can the reader forget how that particular election turned out?
Fast forward to the US 2024 Presidential election, and the polls were in the mood to tell us that the race was a virtual coin toss between then Presidential candidate Trump, and then Vice President Harris.
What happened?
Trump ended up humiliating Harris by not merely winning every swing state (‘swing states’ in the US typically decide contemporary American elections), but by also seizing the popular vote.
Given this dose of recent history, the reader is cautioned about how much confidence polling should elicit at this stage.
When we move beyond polling, a glaring reality staring us in the face is that the election is still almost a full four weeks away. This provides ample opportunity for all sorts of surprises to unfold (including from Trump and Musk), and is far enough into the future to soothe some of the anxieties Pierre Poilievre is suffering from.
Finally, it may constitute heresy to say what I am about to, but the reader is free to label me a heretic if they please: Mark Carney remains a political amateur when it comes to campaigning.
Apparently, attaining Harvard and Oxford degrees, in addition to working at Brookfield and Goldman Sachs, along with being the former head of two powerful central banks, does not translate into acquiring some basic political skills.
For instance, last week, journalists had the audacity to ask Carney standard potential conflict of interest questions. His responses wreaked of elitism, with even liberal-supporting journalists and pundits labelling him as ‘arrogant’.
Moving on to as recently as yesterday (Monday, week two), Carney was being blasted from every direction for exercising utter incompetence in not immediately firing Liberal MP Paul Chiang for his controversial remarks. Leaving aside the question of whether Chiang should have been fired on the merits, from a federal campaign’s perspective, the question of whether to throw him out of the Liberal party had an exceedingly obvious answer.
But Carney’s failure to know certain elements of campaigning 101 and the obvious answer to the Chiang question predictably ignited questions about his judgement. (Despite Carney not firing Chiang immediately, the MP announced his resignation on Monday night, which was ultimately inevitable.)
To wrap things up, despite the advantages that come with being a sitting Prime Minister during an election, readers should be mindful that Carney lacks some basic political campaigning skills. They should be mindful that with almost a full four weeks until election day, there is ample time for the political winds to change.
As far as the polling goes, Liberal supporters would do well to smile when admiring ‘the numbers’.
But they needn’t get too excited.
What’s required is a deep breath and keeping calm. Because this Canadian race is still on.
Aly Kamadia is Editor-In-Chief of iDose Magazine. Kamadia holds an Honors BA & MA in Political Science, both from the University of Waterloo, Canada. He currently serves as Director of Kamadia & Associates. To read selected articles by Kamadia, click here.
