The Conservatives Are Not Winning the Election, Justin Trudeau is Just Losing It

As if Canadians all could feel the fact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by calling the election on September 20 was basically holding out his hand and demanding a majority in the midst of a public health situation he had previously claimed to be too dangerous to hold an election during, Canadians immediately starting pushing back hard on Trudeau.

Although it is true that the Conservative Party is pushing up above the Liberals in the polls, the improvement has nothing to do with what the CPC or its leader Erin O’Toole has been doing. This is because the entire 2021 snap election has turned into a referendum on Trudeau and his arrogant personality.

The majority of the negative coverage of the Liberal campaign, outside of Liberal MP Maryam Monsef’s warm words for the Taliban, has involved Trudeau’s inability to admit to making a mistake, or taking his job seriously. Trudeau has continuously supported the manipulated video Chrystia Freeland put out about O’Toole, Trudeau said he doesn’t care about monetary policy, and he has continuously had to flee protests on the campaign trail having no response to their complaints, whether it be anti-lockdown protesters or Indigenous Canadians. That is just a small sampling of recent optic failures for Trudeau, a man who in 2015 campaigned almost purely on his slick and positive image.

The Conservatives are now able to pull off 37 percent in polls while the Liberals are scraping along at 31 percent. Remember it was not too long ago the CPC could only pull off 27 percent, and O’Toole was by far the most disliked leader in the country, and there is no definite moment that the Conservatives earned those numbers.

The vast majority of Canadians just want Trudeau out of the prime minister’s office, and do not really care who replaces him, at least for now. 

Referendums on a political figure’s personality can make or break their chances at reelection. Justin Trudeau is definitely at this moment failing to make a case for why he should continue being prime minister, but the Conservatives need to watch out because if Trudeau can rally, with a lot of help from the bought-off legacy media, he can mount a comeback because the election is all about him.

Erin O’Toole is not setting the world on fire with his personality, although he is not well-liked, that is more of a reflection of half of Canadians have an irrational dislike of all Conservatives, and in part a lot of O’Toole’s base rejecting him for being too much to the left. 

The Conservative Party platform also does not actually have much to get excited about, and the slogan “Secure the Future” sounds more like something a life insurance company would roll out in a very safe ad campaign.

This is all to say that the Conservatives may be ahead in the polls these days but they still don’t have the initiative in the federal election, so they are not really winning right now, as much as Justin Trudeau is merely losing. 

If Trudeau can stop stumbling multiple times a day on the campaign trail, he can regain the lead, and also have the media-created comeback narrative with him going towards election day.

Conservative Canadians clearly do not want this to happen, and the best way of preventing it, although it may be too late, is for the CPC to roll out some polarizing and visionary ideas before election day, so while they are ahead they can actually solidifying their support, and not just have a fluctuating support based entirely on what Trudeau does.