Grade school students swing to Poilievre, even as he falls short in federal election
OTTAWA — While Conservatives weren't quite able to beat the Liberals in Monday's federal election, they can take some solace in the fact that grade school students brought it home for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in the 2025 Student Vote.
Article content
Article content
The students' votes led to a Conservative minority government, with Pierre Poilievre's party earning a hypothetical 165 seats from 36.4 per cent of the vote. This is a major jump from the 2021 Student Vote results, where the Conservatives placed third. The Liberals earned the second most seats among students this time around, securing 145. Essentially, the results between the main two parties were flipped from the current real-world projections.
Article content
Article content
While the NDP had a disappointing election, they performed better in terms of seat count among student voters. The NDP won 13 seats, with 14.5 per cent of the vote to barely hold onto official party status in the student vote scenario.
Article content
Article content
This is far from a positive for the NDP's future though, as they lost hypothetical 95 seats from the 2021 Student Vote. They previously earned 108 hypothetical seats, which was only ten fewer seats than the governing Liberals.
Article content
The Bloc Quebecois did slightly worse than their projected seat total, earning 17 seats from 2.19 per cent of the vote. The Green Party earned 7.5 per cent of the students' votes, giving them two seats, with longtime party leader Elizabeth May and Kitchener Centre incumbent Mike Morrice maintaining their spots in the hypothetical Parliament.
Article content
Article content
The Student Vote is an initiative run by CIVIX, an organization dedicated to 'strengthening democracy through civics and citizenship education for school-aged youth.' For the vote, they polled over 900,000 students across the country, with representation in each riding.
Article content
Article content
CIVIX, in collaboration with Abacus Data, also ran the Student Budget Consultation between December 2024 and March 2025. This consultation surveyed students about what the government's financial priorities should be. The most important issues per surveyed students were the cost of living, housing and health care.
Article content
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Toronto Star
12 hours ago
- Toronto Star
Mark Carney prepares for G7 summit littered with potential landmines
Carney's decision to invite India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 amid an ongoing RCMP investigation into Modi's government's alleged role in the assassination of a Canadian citizen has stirred sharp criticism at home, with the NDP demanding it be withdrawn.
CTV News
16 hours ago
- CTV News
Support numbers for Poilievre plummet after federal election loss: Nanos
Watch Pollster Nik Nanos says its 'quite significant' how Pierre Poilievre's support numbers plummeted in the past month.
National Post
19 hours ago
- National Post
Kelly McParland: Poilievre needs to earn an extension as leader
Canada's federal Conservatives are stuck with a dilemma as they consider whether to do anything different in the next two years than they did in the last two. Article content At the centre of the dilemma are a host of riddles. As in, did they actually lose the last election? Sure, they didn't win, but did they lose lose? Like, did Canadians actually reject them, or did something else happen that got in the way of the victory they anticipated? Article content Article content Article content If they did lose, what do they do about it? And if they didn't lose lose, what do they do about that? Article content Article content Depending on the answers to those questions is another of equal weight: do they head into the future with the same team of decision-makers who didn't quite win if they maybe didn't lose? And how do you answer that question when you don't know what the future holds, given that one complaint against the current leader is that he didn't respond effectively enough when the playing field changed? Article content As far as Pierre Poilievre is concerned, there's nothing to decide. 'We had the biggest vote count in our party's history, the biggest increase in our party's history, the biggest vote share since 1988 and we're going to continue to work to get over the finish line,' he replied when asked. That same argument is on offer from other Conservatives keen on moving past the vote that left them once again in second place. Article content The 'nothing to see here' case goes like this: In any previous election dating back 40 years the Tory results would have put them in power, likely with a majority. The fact this one didn't was the result of unprecedented exterior factors, specifically, the timing of Justin Trudeau's departure and the coinciding emergence of a U.S. president even his most fervent detractors didn't foresee as being quite this nuts. Alarmed and unnerved, voters opted for continuity and incumbency over the very real practical policies they'd been firmly embracing until then. Article content It's not a bad argument, but also not entirely convincing. In the Liberal bastion of greater Toronto, it sounds a lot like the local NHL team's annual excuses for once again failing to deliver the goods. 'Hey, at least we did better than our last collapse,' doesn't quite cut it. Article content Article content To its credit, the conservative universe isn't ready to simply roll over and accept the excuses. In this the party shows itself once again to be more independent-minded than the rival Liberals, who — after refusing to give themselves the power to oust Justin Trudeau, and living to regret the fact — made the same decision over his replacement. A majority of the caucus voted not to accept the rules of the Reform Act, meaning Prime Minister Mark Carney knows he can rule as he sees fit, safe in the knowledge the minions can't get rid of him. Would any other party in the democratic world vote to remain minions? Article content Conservatives not only adopted the Reform rules, but are discussing whether Poilievre should face a leadership review. A decision could be made as early as this month, with a review to take place next spring. It's possible they'll reject the option, but it would be a mistake. The world a year from now may look a lot different than it does today. Given the level of international uncertainty and the daily madhouse in Washington, it would be a shock if it didn't. Locking themselves into a recently-defeated leader when circumstances could easily demand an entirely different set of calculations would not be a show of confidence but an act of denial.
