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Jay's avatar

Since the Liberals won a 4th term in Canada, is the era of anti-incumbent backlash coming to an end? Or was Canada just an exception to what will continue to be a politcally volitile period around the world? From my perspective, Canada was in a unique situation which helped the incumbent party - probably not a harbinger of anything. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Australian election this weekend though.

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slothlax's avatar

Except Carney wasn't the incumbent. In fact, the longest serving leader on the debate stage saw his party utterly collapse.

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axlee's avatar

Huh, an interesting take. Since Trudeau was out of the picture, Singh got the anti incumbent treats!

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slothlax's avatar

It was an election based on "change" and "strength". Singh was running in his third election after two disappointing previous results and spent the last few years propping up Trudeau's unpopular government only to let Trudeau leave on his own accord. Not a great look.

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dragonfire5004's avatar

I get what you’re saying here, but Carney was acting Prime Minister after Trudeau stepped down and the Liberals chose him to lead the party, which was elected into power at the time (and still is). His first day in office he repealed the carbon tax, so technically he was the incumbent (just for a very short time period).

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slothlax's avatar

Right. Carney was the best possible candidate the Liberals could put forward, technically he was the incumbent, but he wasn't actually an MP and carried no personal baggage for Trudeau's decade in office (unlike Singh or potentially Freeland if she had been interim PM).

Even with that, the Liberals only won by eating the NDP vote while the Conservatives actually gained seats. Not exactly a resounding victory for the incumbent party.

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dragonfire5004's avatar

I agree he was the best possible candidate and I’m kind of confused how you interpreted me arguing against any of that with what I wrote. You said Carney wasn’t the incumbent, he was and that’s what I took issue with as well as explaining the background of why he was the incumbent. You never specified MP in the post I responded to.

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slothlax's avatar

I didn't feel the need to put all of the caveats and context into my comment because the people who read these threads are already well aware of them.

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Marcus Graly's avatar

Trump's threats to Greenland didn't stop the two longstanding main parties from falling to 3rd and 4th in their parliament. So the rally round the flag doesn't always help the incumbents.

I think part of it was that Canadians saw Carney as more credible than Poilievre, but they also have a trend for incumbent parties to improve their standing once writs drop. This has been true in both federal and provincial elections there for some time.

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