Conservative Party

There’s a message for the Conservatives in recent polling that shows the Liberals surging ahead in public confidence.

If you don’t do conservative things, and instead do vote with the Liberals on things people expect you to vote against them on, they will shrug you off as irrelevant or worse, as idiots. And although Eastern Canada has a distinguished ten-year history of voting for idiots, you as Conservatives do not have idiot privilege: The idiot has to be a Liberal.

You know this.

So, stop it.

Matt Gurney: Let’s open with something of a confession. Or maybe a strategic repositioning of the shield I use to cover my bottom from being called out for bad predictions. In the immediate aftermath of the election, I would have said, with no reservations, that I thought Pierre Poilievre was safe as Conservative leader. I still think that, but now only on balance — I think he is very likely to remain as leader, but small doubts have entered my mind. We can talk about why in a minute, but first, what do you think of the big question — is he safe?

The Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot is roughly 3,000 kilometres away physically, and a good few light years away culturally, from the Ontario riding of Carleton, which Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held for the last 20 years – up until the recent federal election.

Yes, both are historically blue ridings, though Battle-River’s blue is that deep, rich, saturated hue that can disappear a bit of red in an instant, like a drop of blood in the ocean. Yes, both encompass rural areas, but Battle-River’s population density was 2.1 per square kilometre in 2021, compared to 111.5 per square kilometre for Carleton in the same year (notably, pre-redistribution). Roughly half the population of Battle River-Crowfoot had no education beyond high school according to 2021 census data, compared to just a third in Carleton.

Conservative Party members will vote in January on whether Pierre Poilievre should remain as leader after his party failed to win April’s election.

The vote will take place in Calgary, the party’s national council determined during a meeting Saturday, three sources told The Globe and Mail.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is reaching out to unsuccessful candidates from this year’s election to get their feedback and to gauge the level of support for him within rank-and-file party members ahead of the mandatory leadership review, say Conservatives.

“He’s doing a post-mortem himself,” said an unsuccessful candidate who only agreed to speak on a not-for-attribution basis because the conversation with their leader was private. “He wants to hear from everybody. It’s an individual check-in from him. He’s obviously trying to rally support, trying to figure who’s coming with him in the next election.”

How have Conservatives fared since making the big swerve rightward in the early 1990s?

We recall that under Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative banner they won majority governments in 1984 and 1988. Then along came the dividers, the ideologues of the Reform Party, who grabbed

52 seats in the 1993 election and then proceeded to swallow the old Tories whole.

And the rest is history – a primarily painful party history. Since the late Mr. Mulroney’s departure from the party leadership in 1993, the Liberals have won eight elections to the Conservatives’ three.

How about NO? Visible minorities in the GTA increasingly supporting Conservatives: U of T study

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.