Conservative influencers have gone silent on Pierre Poilievre

National Observer

5 hours ago

A month after losing the election, Pierre Poilievre made personal phone calls to a number of right-wing influencers who'd helped fuel his campaign. He wanted to thank them for their work — and, presumably, get them to start talking about him again.
These are the political content creators with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers on Youtube, X, TikTok and Instagram. Many are products of the Freedom Convoy; they have handles like Unacceptable Fringe, Clyde Do Something, Pleb Reporter, and Right Blend. Though unknown to millions of Canadians who get their news from more traditional sources, they were highly visible celebrities at the rallies Poilievre held across the country in April. And as Poilievre's calls in June made clear, the Conservative leadership knows exactly who they are.
Unfortunately for Poilievre, they've all gone silent on the Conservative leader. After months, even years, of full-throated daily support, these most important of fans have moved on. Scour their feeds, and you'll see plenty of Prime Minister Mark Carney-bashing, support for Alberta separatism, anger at pro-Palestine protests, Convoy nostalgia, outrage at immigration levels and housing costs and crime. You'll see support for Conservative MPs, whose speeches in the House of Commons are approvingly shared and dissected. What you won't see is any mention of the party's leader.
Seemingly all at once, in mid-June, conservative influencers began posting that Poilievre had recently called them. I reached out to several influencers for comment on this story; only one agreed to speak with me, and that was off the record. This person confirmed that Poilievre called them in early June. The unannounced call caught them by surprise – it was the first time Poilievre had ever spoken to this person, who has no formal relationship with the Conservative Party and was never paid for their extensive work promoting Poilievre's campaign.
This person said Poilievre simply called to say thank you and ask how they were doing. It was a brief, friendly chat they described to me as a mutual 'checking in,' after an election that left Poilievre's followers feeling almost as bruised as the Conservative leader himself. According to this person, Poilievre didn't ask for their future support.
Whether he asked for it or not, Poilievre needs that support more now than ever. Locked out of the House of Commons, the Conservative leader is struggling for attention and relevance, further from the spotlight than he's been in years. He's got a new election campaign on his hands in Alberta — thousands of kilometres away from the action in Ottawa — to be followed by a leadership review in January. So far, there's little sign of dissent among Conservative MPs, many of whom owe their seats to Poilievre's support. But in the two months since Poilievre's defeat, things have only gotten worse for the party and its leader.
Poilievre's doldrums are the precise inversion of the prime minister's summer of exuberance. A Nanos poll released June 10 found that national support for Poilievre is lower now than at any point since he won the party's leadership race in 2022. Less than 25 per cent of respondents wanted Poilievre to be prime minister, whereas half were happy with Carney – a 25-point margin for the Liberals that matches the lead Poilievre squandered. If an election were held today, the poll found, Carney's Liberals would win a commanding majority with something in the range of 190 seats (they currently hold 169).
Movements rely on momentum, and there's no doubt that Pierre Poilievre has lost his. He rode the same wave of anger that fuelled the influencers who supported him; now that anger has dissipated, and so has Poilievre's fire.
These are honeymoon numbers, no doubt. As the last few months have made clear, and as Poilievre knows perhaps better than any living politician in Canada, political fortunes can turn on a dime, and predicting future electoral outcomes based on current polling is a recipe for embarrassment.
But movements rely on momentum, and there's no doubt that Poilievre has lost his. He rode the same wave of anger that fuelled the influencers who supported him; now that anger has dissipated, and so has Poilievre's fire. His own party joined forces with the Liberals he once described as a ' clown show ' causing ' death and destruction,' to pass their first signature piece of legislation; gone are the days when the Conservative Party was the bulwark against the dangerous Liberal Party.
You can see it in his face. Watch Poilievre's interview with Sean Speer, editor of The Hub, on June 23: at one point Speer asks Poilievre if he would describe Donald Trump as a conservative, but Poilievre declines to put any labels on the American president, pointing out that Trump has four years to go in office 'and you never know, I might be prime minister before that time is up.' His tone is utterly unconvincing, almost wistful. It's the voice of a man watching his dream recede further out of reach by the minute, delivering a line that circumstance has forced him to recite.
Another notable aspect of that interview was Poilievre's refusal to take any responsibility for losing the election. When Speer gave him a chance to do so, Poilievre simply pointed out the familiar factors — Trudeau's resignation and Trump's aggression — in the sighing tone of a man recalling a tornado. Could Poilievre be blamed for such acts of God? 'You know, if you look at our numbers, we didn't actually come down that much,' he insisted. 'We made great gains, a couple million more votes — two and a half million more to be precise, and 25 more seats … now we have to build on the coalition that we've established.'
One of that coalition's biggest threads — the cohort that pushed Poilievre to the top of his party and, for a brittle moment, to the top of national polls — was the Freedom Convoy. And there's no better barometer for how that cohort is feeling than the influencers it gave birth to. To go by their social media feeds, along with those of far-right outlets like Rebel News and Canada Proud, support for the federal Conservative Party does remain strong. They're still fighting the culture war that Poilievre championed on their behalf. It's Poilievre they've given up on.