Liberals pushed Trump as key election issue, but lost seats on front lines of the trade war
As Mark Carney closed out his victory speech on election night, he reminded Canadians — as he did through much of the campaign — of the challenges posed by the ongoing tensions with the U.S. administration.
"We will build an independent future for our great country," he said to the crowd. "Vive le Canada."
But after touting himself as the best candidate to handle U.S. President Donald Trump, Carney's Liberals lost key seats on the front lines of the trade war — seats that, had they won, could have pushed the party into majority territory.
Conservative Fred Davies, who won the riding of Niagara South over Liberal incumbent Vance Badawey, said his party's message about addressing affordability issues ultimately won out.
"Tariffs were threatened. That sort of stole the narrative for a while. But near the end of the campaign, it got back to those same issues of affordability and the cost of living," Davies told CBC News.
"We lost an entire generation of young people who couldn't afford the down payment on a house. So those key issues resonated with young people who are struggling."
Niagara South, formerly called Niagara Centre before ridings were redistributed, has largely been a three-way race in the past few decades. Niagara Centre had always been a blue-collar, manufacturing area — and with the redrawn lines it is now right on the U.S. border. The riding has flipped back and forth between the Liberals and NDP, but Conservatives had been competitive with close second- and third-place finishes.
"I was always running as though I was sort of five points behind in the polls," Davies said.
Dan Arnold — who worked on Justin Trudeau's election campaigns and is now with the market research firm Pollara Strategic Insights — said it would make sense that ridings like Niagara South, which border the U.S. and have a heavy manufacturing presence, would go red in an election where the Liberals pushed Trump as the main issue.
"Intuitively these are the types of ridings you would expect the Liberals to do well in," he said. But he also said cost-of-living issues, particularly in housing, are still a big worry.
"For a lot of voters in those ridings, housing prices have really shot up in the last couple years. Affordability is a big concern," he said.
Just down the Queen Elizabeth Way highway from Niagara in Hamilton — a steel-manufacturing hub that is exposed to Trump's tariffs — a similar story played out.
In the riding of Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, incumbent Liberal Chad Collins lost to Conservative Ned Kuruc.
Former deputy prime minister Sheila Copps, who represented the riding when it was called Hamilton East, said redistribution had a large part in Collins's unseating.
"The setup of the whole riding is just much different than what it was. It used to be an urban riding. It's no longer an urban riding, it's a partial urban riding," she said.
Davies said he also likely benefited from his riding expanding into more rural areas of the Niagara region. But he suggested that some of his support also came from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre courting blue-collar voters.
"[Poilievre] and I spent a lot of time meeting with private-sector unions here in Niagara," Davies said.
Like the riding formerly known as Niagara Centre, Hamilton East had largely been a three-way fight in the past few decades. But in this election, in both ridings — and across the country — the NDP vote collapsed and shifted to the other parties. While Collins and Badawey lost their seats, they finished with a much higher vote tally and share than they had in the previous election.
Arnold said that many NDP voters went to the Liberals this election, but in areas like Niagara and Hamilton, more went to the Conservatives.
"There are orange-blue switchers. They tend to be a bit more blue collar, a bit more union. And this campaign, the NDP kind of disappeared, so those blue-orange switchers kind of had to choose where to go and they would be more inclined to obviously go to the blue team," he said.
Copps said she isn't surprised that some NDP supporters would park their vote with the Conservatives.
"Some of them are very anti-Liberal and would never vote Liberal," she said.
But Copps argued that some blue-collar workers also likely went to the Liberals this election, at least in Hamilton. She noted that some of the urban areas of her former riding — including the location of the Dofasco Steel Mill — were absorbed into the neighbouring district of Hamilton Centre, where the Liberals just unseated an NDP incumbent.
Historic blue sweep in WindsorWindsor, the heart of Canada's auto sector, saw a similar result to Hamilton and Niagara. Carney twice visited Windsor during the campaign, once at the start and once near the end.
But when the votes were tallied, the Conservatives had swept the Windsor area for the first time in 95 years.
In Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore, where Liberal incumbent Irek Kusmierczyk lost a close race to Conservative Kathy Borrelli, the CBC Decision Desk didn't make a call until Tuesday afternoon. In the neighbouring riding of Windsor-West, Conservative Harb Gill knocked off 20-year NDP incumbent Brian Masse.
Lydia Miljan, the head of the political science department at the University of Windsor, said she was "completely shocked" by the Conservative sweep of the city. She attributed their pick-ups to the NDP vote collapse.
"Clearly the Conservatives were very effective at both getting out for their vote and having that ground game, but also they're really effective in courting the labour vote and pulling that away from the NDP," said Miljan.
Had Kusmierczyk, Collins and Badaway all retained their seats, it would have given the Liberals a majority, albeit a slim one. But Arnold said despite these three losses, the Trump issue clearly resonated with voters. All three lost close races while increasing their vote share from the past election — it just wasn't enough to top the surge in Conservative support.
"Obviously some people were directly impacted by … tariffs, but probably more people were impacted by rising house prices," he said.
cbc.ca
