Sabato's Crystal Ball: How Canada’s politics differs from the United States

by Louis Jacobson

TORONTO — Recently, I had the opportunity to do some reporting in Canada. In my career, I have written about U.S. politics for more than three decades, but until my visit, I knew little about the dynamics of Canadian politics. So when I crossed the border, I wanted to learn about the subject from square one.

It was an education.

I visited with political experts in Toronto, Hamilton, and Waterloo—all cities in Ontario—and I emailed with several others elsewhere. I found that even though the U.S. and Canada share much in common, the two countries’ political systems are dramatically different, and so are their electoral dynamics.

I figured the easiest way to explain this was to present six propositions and one question. Here they are:

1. Canadian politics does not map cleanly onto U.S. politics
Structurally, Canadian politics is far different from U.S. politics, and those differences filter down into electoral patterns.

Most obviously, Canada has a parliamentary system, rather than a division between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The prime minister gets their office based on their party’s parliamentary victories, rather than being elected on their own.

Unlike the U.S. and its strong two-party tradition, Canada has developed a robust multi-party system on the federal level, with—currently—a Liberal Party, a Conservative Party, a left-wing New Democratic Party, a left-wing Green Party, and the Bloc Québécois, a Quebec separatist party.

Not only does Canada have more major parties than the U.S., but their coalitions are also complicated.

The Liberal Party, which has historically been the nation’s most successful, has never had a strong ideological identity. Indeed, while there has been some ideological sorting over time, there has been less of an ideological gulf between the Conservative and Liberal parties than among the Republican and Democratic parties in the U.S.

“The parties occupied a very narrow continuum because they were both focused on the same thing: preserving the federation by making sure Quebec remained in Canada,” said Darrell Bricker, Global CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs in Toronto. “They wore different colored hockey jerseys but believed the same thing.”

Instead, each party has sought to assemble cross-cutting coalitions that take in various portions of Canada’s economic, linguistic, and geographic electorates.

Until the 2000s, the Liberals were able to balance socially liberal and socially conservative voters in their coalition. Then, social issues like same-sex marriage became more salient to voters, and the Liberals gained votes from more educated voters, while losing more socially conservative working-class voters to the Conservatives.

This mirrored what happened in the U.S., and what accelerated in the era of President Donald Trump. But other aspects of the parties’ lineups have made the two countries’ politics divergent.

“Supporters of Canada’s parties have become more divided by left and right and this has generated ‘affective polarization’—a tendency to dislike or hate political opponents,” said Eric Merkley, a University of Toronto political scientist. “We are not as far along on this process as the United States, though, and there are structural and social reasons why our politics probably won’t follow the U.S. example.”

Initially, the New Democratic Party was closely aligned with labor unions, but that has weakened, and the party has become more popular with left-wing urbanites. Meanwhile, the Green Party, now down to one member of parliament, has chased after some of the same voters.

“In the U.S., 20 to 30 percent of Americans would like to choose a party to the left of the Democrats, but they never get a chance,” said Dennis Pilon, a political scientist at York University in Toronto. “It’s easy to get on the ballot in Canada and it’s hard in the U.S.”

Then there’s Quebec. The federal separatist party, the Bloc Québécois, leads in the province’s francophone ridings (the Canadian equivalent of U.S. House districts), and that is enough to win a few dozen seats in a typical election. Because those seats can be useful for parliamentary leverage, the Bloc tends to be flexible on policy stances outside its core separatist platform.

2. Donald Trump’s second term has been an earthquake for Canadian politics
The United States often does influence Canadian politics. But in 2025, Trump’s second-term attacks on Canada focused attention north of the border like never before.

First, some history. In 2011, the Conservatives under Stephen Harper won a national majority of seats on the strength of votes from western Canada, especially rural areas, and in the Ontario suburbs. The Liberals fell so far in that election that the NDP became the official opposition in parliament.

But in 2015, the Liberals, then headed by Justin Trudeau, roared back and ousted the Conservatives. Trudeau won two more federal elections in 2019 and 2021. But as the 2025 election approached, widespread fatigue with Trudeau’s governance and his Liberal Party compelled everyone to assume that Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, would easily be voted in as the next prime minister. “Trudeau was dead, gone and buried,” Bricker said.

Then, lightning struck. In early January 2025, Trudeau announced that he would step down as prime minister. In March 2025, Mark Carney, a former central banker, won the contest to succeed him as Liberal Party leader. And as Trump ramped up his rhetoric against Canada, calling it the 51st state and imposing stiff tariffs, Carney—as an experienced, levelheaded voice—proved perfectly suited to become a Trump foil.

“We had a leader of the Conservative Party who was a wonderful attack dog against Trudeau, but when Carney came in, he didn’t know what to do,” Bricker said. “The issues Poilievre was defining weren’t the ones that decided the election.”

Instead, the election “was all about Trump,” said Simon Kiss, a political scientist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. Put simply, he said, “the Liberal Party was rescued by Donald J. Trump.” While Canadians have long struggled to attain national unity, Trump’s remarks “forced a basic reckoning.”

“Carney and his people recognized the gravity of the moment,” Kiss said. “He captured the sentiment of where people were and channeled it.”

Poilievre’s party managed to win 41%—a stronger showing than his party had managed even in their previous victories. But “the Conservatives depend on a fragmented left to win,” Merkley said—and that didn’t happen in 2025. Instead, many previous backers of other parties shifted to Carney’s Liberals, creating a more united front. The NDP sank from 24 seats to seven. The Bloc Québécois fell from 33 to 22. And the Green Party went from two to one. Overall, the Liberal Party got 44% of the vote to the Conservative Party’s 41%, together combining for 85% of the vote. Back in 2021, the two parties combined for only about two-thirds of the votes cast.

“There was a complete collapse of the NDP into the Liberal Party,” said Peter Graefe, a political scientist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “The Liberals also sucked up the Green Party vote. In the short term, Trump effectively polarized the Canadian system into a two-party system. This time, people didn’t think they had the luxury of further options” when casting their ballot.

3. Canada has more swingy voters than the U.S. does
The Liberals’ turnaround in the 2025 election was made possible by swing voters, a group of voters that experts here say are more common than they are in the U.S.

“There is less social and political pressure pushing Canadians into two polarized camps,” Merkley said. “Our partisans act very much like American partisans, but we have fewer of them.”

In Canada, unlike in many parts of the United States, “voters don’t register to vote by party, so they don’t consider themselves Liberal, Conservative, NDP or otherwise in between elections,” said Quito Maggi, president and CEO of Mainstreet Research, a consulting firm. While some voters do maintain consistent partisanship, there are fewer of them than in the U.S., experts said.

Meanwhile, the vote share for smaller parties “is often quite volatile,” Merkley said. With a larger base of non-partisans, he said, “there’s a lot more electoral volatility.”

In some regions, Merkley said, the fight boils down to Conservatives vs. Liberals; elsewhere it’s Liberals vs the NDP; and in other areas it’s Liberals vs. the Bloc. To win voters, the parties may have to articulate different messages in different areas, making it harder for the parties to sort themselves ideologically.

Moreover, in Canada, the national parties are distinct from the provincial ones, with different personnel and operations. They may not even have the same names. In Ontario, for instance, the provincial party calls itself the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, using a name the national Conservative Party of Canada dropped more than two decades ago.

All of this means that it’s not unusual for voters to choose different parties in races for different offices.

This swinginess aided the Liberals’ win, Pilon said. “The Liberals are an incredibly nimble party,” he said. “They can dance all over the ideological stage.”

4. Immigration politics is different in Canada
About 23% of Canadians are immigrants, many of them Asian. This is a higher percentage than the roughly 14% in the U.S. (and the highest of any country in the G7 group of wealthy nations). This makes immigrants a significant electoral constituency, particularly in certain highly competitive ridings.

For the Conservatives, this means the party must balance the needs of supporters unhappy with immigration with the needs of immigrants whose votes they need. For instance, the strength of the Bloc Québécois in Quebec “makes it hard for the Conservatives to be competitive nationally without winning diverse, largely secular suburban areas in Toronto and Vancouver,” Merkley said.

Ultimately, Bricker said, “any political leader who wants to follow Trump on immigration policy is attacking people he needs votes from.”

5. There’s a distinction in Canada between a minority and a majority government
After his victory, Carney has managed to maintain his popularity. In recent polls by the Canadian firm Leger, the Liberal Party has amassed its largest edge since the summer of 2020, with 49% support, compared to 35% for the Conservatives, 5% for the NDP, 5% for the Bloc Québécois, 3% for the Greens, and 3% for other parties.

And a March poll by Leger found the approval rating for Carney’s government at 61%, well ahead of disapproval at 31%.

Carney has successfully portrayed himself as “a steady hand at the wheel during a severe crisis with a lot of experience,” Merkley said.

Poilievre, meanwhile, remains the leader of the Conservatives, but he has a challenging task. Given the depths of public concern about Trump and the United States, Poilievre has to argue not that Carney is wrong, but that he would be doing a better job at countering Trump than the prime minister is.

Meanwhile, other Conservative politicians—notably Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford—have a less tricky balancing act in countering U.S. actions, because they have less to worry about losing support from a Trump-aligned faction of their national party, as Poilievre does.

“Poilievre has a major disadvantage, because between 20% and 30% of his voters like and/or approve of Trump, so he has to be more careful in his public positions,” Maggi said. Ford, by contrast, has gone after the U.S. with gusto.

Despite riding high, Carney heads a minority government, meaning he doesn’t control an outright majority of seats in parliament. This weakens the prime minister’s authority, because he’s dependent on votes from outside his party on legislation, and because he’s at risk of having to face confidence votes. By contrast, majority governments don’t need help from other parties to pass legislation and are likelier to finish their four-year term in office.

Currently, Carney has 170 Liberal seats, just shy of the 172 he would need for a majority government. Given his popularity, he hasn’t had too much trouble in getting legislation passed (particularly when members of other parties can sit out a vote without having to vote affirmatively for legislation, thus lowering the denominator and allowing the Liberals to prevail).

A narrow majority government is now likely because there are three scheduled byelections (what Americans call special elections), two of which are in Liberal strongholds, Merkley said.

But if Carney eventually finds that he can’t lure MPs from other parties, he might call an election in a bid to secure an outright majority.

6. Trump matters a lot in Canadian politics, but he’s not the only driver of public opinion
Political experts say Trump casts a shadow over Canadian politics. But they warn that he’s not the only factor for voters.

At the top of the list is something American voters also care a lot about: affordability. “People are worried about rents and mortgages and the cost acceleration in groceries,” Bricker said.

At the same time, Trump’s imposition of tariffs—and his launching of a war against Iran, which postdated my visit to Canada—has made his presidency an integral aspect of the affordability question, experts said.

“The Trump threat is still very much present, and it increases in importance when his attacks on our country escalate,” Merkley said.

Kiss agreed. “The U.S. is always a fundamental fact of Canadian life,” he said. “We are a small country in the shadow of an empire, so we can’t not pay attention to it.”

7. How permanent is the U.S.-Canada rift?
Whether the U.S. and Canada can repair their relationship in the coming years will depend on what happens under Trump—and whoever follows him as president.

A September 2025 Ipsos poll found that 60% of Canadians believe they can never trust the U.S. the same way again.

“I think geopolitically and trade-wise, the damage is done,” Kiss said. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

Historically, Graefe said, Canadians have believed that Americans are their friends even if a particular administration is not. That was the case when some Canadians were angry with Ronald Reagan over environmental issues or with George W. Bush for launching the Iraq War.

“But the idea of an administration that was directly malevolent towards Canada—that’s new, and that is likely to have some enduring impact on our relationship to the United States,” he said.

Louis Jacobson is a Senior Columnist for Sabato’s Crystal Ball. He is also the chief correspondent at the fact-checking website PolitiFact and is chief author of the Almanac of American Politics 2026. He was senior author of the Almanac’s 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 editions and a contributing writer for the 2000 and 2004 editions. Republished from Sabato’s Crystal Ball.