From Anxiety to Reassurance
How the Precarity Mindset Reshaped Canada’s 2025 Election
In my latest piece published yesterday at The Hub, I explore the seismic shift in Canadian politics that I’ve written about before—the transformation from a scarcity mindset to a precarity mindset—and its decisive impact on the 2025 federal election.
Pierre Poilievre initially gained traction by addressing Canadians’ immediate concerns: housing costs, healthcare, and affordability. But when global events, especially Donald Trump’s provocative rhetoric and tariffs, triggered deeper anxieties about Canada’s stability and future, voters shifted their focus dramatically.
This new precarity mindset prioritized steadiness, reassurance, and competence, benefiting Mark Carney and the Liberals, who unexpectedly turned a projected defeat into a victory. Abacus Data’s polling clearly illustrates how voters’ fears about systemic collapse and geopolitical threats redefined the electoral landscape.
For Conservatives, this election underscores a critical lesson: anger and disruption no longer resonate as strongly as calm leadership, credible protection, and practical solutions. Adapting to this new era will be essential for future success.
Read the full analysis to better understand this pivotal shift and what it means for Canadian politics: https://thehub.ca/2025/05/07/david-coletto-from-scarcity-to-precarity-the-mindset-shift-that-rewrote-canadas-2025-election/
I doubt this shift is anything like permanent. It may have happened in Canada and Australia but apparently not in the UK or Romania. (Or, as far as I can tell, in France or Germany, where populist parties of the right continue to poll well.) Darrell Bricker (?) recently argued that the whiplash-inducing shift in Canadian voter sentiment is the product of a “luxury belief” among older, more comfortably settled voters—namely, that getting one’s “elbows” up vis-a-vis the United States is more critically important than reducing the cost of living. I’m not sure that’s right, but if it is, it doesn’t sound like the stuff of enduring, tectonic change. (Prediction—and aside: Carney will be proved entirely wrong in his pronouncement that the era of close entanglement with the U.S. is over.)