NARRATIVE RESET - Stop saying young Canadians are conservative
Before I have an aneurysm
This is going to be one of my ranty newsletters – I have some pent-up feelings. BUT before I get to them, my new podcast, Culture Lab, is now officially live! Our first episode was released last week. Be sure to subscribe, like, share, etc! I will also say Ep. 2 is going to be a banger 🏒. Stay tuned.
For the past few years, both in Canada and the US, we’ve been stuck in a predictable generational panic. There is always something that the youngs are doing wrong, or that signals the end of civilization as we know it. In this case, it’s the story that young voters are overwhelmingly conservative.
Narratives get settled and are stubbornly slow to be updated. Much of our understanding of young Canadians’ political attitudes was set before Justin Trudeau’s resignation, when he was down by 20+ points in the polls. On top of that, we see a constant stream of online discourse arguing that Gen Z has lost its mind – they’re all tradwives, looksmaxxers, and Andrew Tate devotees. Our awareness of these trends exists for a reason. X, TikTok, and YouTube serve creators with extreme views on a platter. But this isn’t the story of the median young Canadian.
In September of 2024, yes, the Conservatives were dominant among voters aged 18-34. They had a 24-point lead across the entire age group, a 35-point lead among young men, and a 7-point lead over the NDP among young women, while the Liberals were in 3rd place.
Today, the race among young Canadians is at a minimum competitive, if not leaning Liberal. In my January polling, the Liberals were +3 among this age cohort. The polls have widened since then, so I assume the Liberal lead among young voters has widened as well.
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it 100 times. It’s almost irrelevant to look at the political views of different age cohorts, particularly young voters, without intersecting them with gender. The way that young voters’ preferences have shifted has been striking.
As of January, the Conservatives led among young men (5%), but that advantage had declined by 16-points since September 2024. Conversely, the Liberals had an 11-point lead among young women in January. Liberal strength among young women comes much more from the NDP, which has suffered a 15-point decline, rather than the Conservatives, which were down 6 points since September 2024.
I’ll also point out that while the sample sizes for the January poll aren’t huge, I did conduct a large survey of n=2376 young Canadians in November, and these same trends hold.
This enormous shift from fall 2024 to today plays out among other pollsters as well:
Léger went from CPC +14 in September 2024 to +1 for the Liberals in January 2026
Ipsos went from CPC +15 in September 2024 to +2 in December 2025
We’ve seen greater variability in the Abacus numbers, which is why I’m showing both their January and February data. It’s not unexpected to see some degree of volatility when tracking subsets; they’re smaller sample sizes after all. Still, in September 2024, they had the Conservatives +23 among voters aged 18-29, and their latest release had the Liberals +10.
Consider the dynamic changed.
We’ve time-hopped significantly, looking from fall 2024 to now. But I want to pause on what the polls were showing leading up to the election. Despite widespread reporting that the Conservatives dominated the Liberals among young voters in the last election, polling was actually mixed.
I had the CPC +3 in the last few days of the campaign.
Ipsos and Liaison Strategies had the CPC and LPC tied in their last campaign polls.
Abacus Data had Liberals +8 among 18-29 year olds in their April 18-21 survey.
And while not included in the visual here (their crosstabs are behind a paywall), Nanos reportedly had the CPC +13 among 18-34 year olds.
This isn’t to say that conservatism doesn’t exist among young people, or that the way it’s manifesting doesn’t look different from past generations. I do a lot of qualitative research, and I certainly hear a different discourse around gender roles, immigration, and “wokeism” than what I heard 10 years ago. But I would enter a few other descriptors into your young voters’ vocabulary: fickle, jaded, and not especially partisan.
One of the most stunning pieces of data from a comprehensive poll of young Canadians I conducted in November showed how many were actually fine with both Poilievre and Carney. At that time, 44% of young Canadians said they had a favourable or neutral view of both Carney and Poilievre. Just 20% liked Carney but disliked Poilievre, and 16% had a favourable view of Poilievre and an unfavourable view of Carney. This is vastly different from older Canadians, particularly seniors.
I can point to tactics and messaging that show Poilievre’s focus on young Canadians. However, this hasn’t resulted in a significant brand advantage over Carney. In November, 44% of young Canadians agreed “Pierre Poilievre is fighting to make life better for young Canadians,” while 43% said the same of Mark Carney. There was a smidge more strong agreement that Poilievre is fighting for young people, but this difference is subtle. It’s basically a tie.
It’s always important to remember that horse race numbers (and election results for that matter) aren’t especially good indicators of values or underlying attitudes. My friend and former colleague, Stephen Clermont, wrote a great piece on this in November. In the article, he wrote:
All too often when trying to understand where American voters are, we get trapped by recency bias. The last election supposedly gives us a definitive path for where people want the country to go. Sometimes though, an election is just an election and tells us nothing about the future, just that one person beat another person.
When Poilievre was +25 among young Canadians, it didn’t mean this generation was deeply and rigidly conservative. As today’s polls show, that’s clearly not the case. It also didn’t show that they had some widespread great love for Pierre Poilievre. Rather, it reflected widespread, multi-generational fatigue with Justin Trudeau’s government. This exasperation meant something different to young voters, as most had never experienced another government as adults. The Trudeau Liberals represented a status quo that was not working for them; they wanted change. It’s just that deep.
So, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE STOP SAYING YOUNG CANADIANS ARE OVERWHELMINGLY CONSERVATIVE. You’re wrong now, and you were never really right.
Thorough work, as usual
Your data highlights the imperative for the Liberal govt to offer policies that address the needs and concerns of young Canadians, because they are clearly listening with open minds.
Of course, the idea that young Canadians are conservative is exactly the narrative the Poilievre folks are working nonstop to push out there.
A sort of big lie, if you will.
Just like the rallies, designed by purpose to manufacture a sense of momentum and popularity.
It's not hard to understand the Poilievre appeal for young men with low education, low information, and tough job prospects. He makes the insecure feel empowered at an emotional level.
But it's reassuring to hear that most Canadian young people, including men, are not buying into Conservative simplistic slogans.
Young Canadians, like all of us, are smart and expect serious ideas from their leaders.