The Boomer/Millennial divide defining the Canadian election

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First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter that throughout the 2025 election will be a daily digest of campaign goings-on, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

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TOP STORY

In a near-unprecedented phenomenon for any Western democracy, the Canadian election is shaping up into a battle between young people who want a conservative government, and seniors who want to retain a progressive status quo.

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This is the exact reverse of how these things usually go, and is indicative of a Canada in which younger cohorts have been disproportionately impacted by wage stagnation and rising unaffordability.

A Leger poll released Tuesday found that a recent surge in support for Liberal Leader Mark Carney is being driven largely by seniors — and that if the election was decided solely by younger voters it would be an easy Conservative victory.

Poll respondents over the age of 55 were the single strongest cohort for the Liberals, polling higher than any other demographic except for Atlantic Canadians. Among seniors, 52 per cent indicated their intention to vote Liberal, against just 34 per cent leaning Conservative.

In the younger age cohorts, the Conservatives were the clear favourite. Among voters aged 18 to 34, it was 39 per cent Conservative to 37 per cent Liberal. Among those aged 35 to 54 set, it was 42 per cent Conservative to 38 per cent Liberal.

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An Abacus Data poll also released on Tuesday found a massive generation gap in what voters thought this election was about.

Among over-60 voters, the answer was easy: 50 per cent of them defined their top ballot issue as “dealing with Donald Trump.”

For voters under 30, the U.S. president didn’t even rank in their top four. They saw the election chiefly as a contest about “reducing cost of living” (47 per cent), “making housing more affordable” (28 per cent), “growing the economy” (23 per cent) and “making Canada a better place to live” (23 per cent).

There have been prior Canadian elections in which younger cohorts have swung to the conservative option. The most dramatic being 1984, when Progressive Conservative leader Brian Mulroney won a historic landslide by dominating in basically every voter category, including by age.

But the 2025 election is the first time on record that young Canadians are leaning conservative at a higher rate than their elders. Put another way, the average Canadian 25 year old is more likely to vote Conservative than the average Canadian 65 year old.

It’s a trend that’s been showing up in polls ever since 2022, when Pierre Poilievre first won the leadership of the Conservative Party.

Poilievre’s leadership campaign focused heavily on the issue of housing unaffordability, and kicked off with a viral video that blamed the crisis on “big city gatekeepers” exacerbating the housing shortage with red tape.

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In a preview of trends to come, the pollster Abacus Data asked a cross-section of voters what they thought of the “gatekeepers” video. While it didn’t go over well among viewers aged 65 and older, an incredible 60 per cent of viewers aged 30 to 44 gave it a thumbs up — including many who usually counted themselves as NDP supporters.

In Poilievre’s first stump speeches as Conservative leader, he often made reference to the “30-something year old who is stuck in their parents’ basement” due to skyrocketing home prices.

Under Poilievre’s leadership, the Conservatives would soon come to dominate younger cohorts. By late 2024, polls consistently showed that under-34 voters made up the strongest base of support for the Tories.

It’s a trend that has placed Canada wildly out of step with its usual peer countries, all of whom are still adhering to the traditional metric of progressive young people and conservative old people.

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In last year’s U.K. general election, age-stratified poll data showed a close correlation between old age and the likelihood of voting Conservative. In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, young voters broke for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, while older voters broke for Republican Donald Trump.

As to why Canada might be an outlier, its economic performance has been lagging behind virtually every other developed country, with Canada falling in last place or near-last place in everything from housing affordability to per-capita GDP growth.

On affordability in particular, the issue has largely been to the benefit of Canadians who owned homes prior to 2005 and have seen them surge precipitously in value over the past two decades. Whereas among younger Canadians, skyrocketing prices have shut out whole income categories from ownership.

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In one Ipsos polls from April 2024, 90 per cent of Gen Z respondents and 82 per cent of Millennials said they thought Canadian homeownership was now solely the domain of the rich.

GAFFETERIA

Liberal Leader Mark Carney has no real experience in the political art of making multiple off-the-cuff speeches in both official languages, and it’s starting to show in the form of a higher-than-average track record for gaffes.

At an appearance in Nova Scotia on Tuesday, Carney flubbed the name of one of his Montreal-area candidates, Nathalie Provost (he called her Pronovost) and then mixed up two notorious mass-shooting tragedies. He was intending to reference the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre (where Provost was shot), but he instead cited the 1992 Concordia University massacre. He also began his comment in French, before switching to English after encountering difficulty.

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It’s also not the only time he’s attempted to answer a question in French, and appeared to give up and answer in English. On Wednesday, a Francophone reporter asked him about Conservative attacks that he was “compromised” due to his prior work with China as a financier. Here was his answer:

“Compromis, pas du tout. Je travaille pour les Canadiens et les Canadiennes. C’est … M. Poilievre est … il devient de plus en plus … fâche, desperer … il invente tous les chose, you know, il est un homme de … he’s a conspiracy theorist.”

TRANSLATION: “Compromised, not at all. I work for Canadians. It’s … Mr. Poilievre is … he’s becoming more and more … angry, desperate … he’s inventing all these things, you know, he’s a man of … he’s a conspiracy theorist.”

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