FIRST READING: Mark Carney is pleasing old people and basically nobody else

National Post

2 hours ago

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Three months after the federal election, Prime Minister Mark Carney remains smack dab in the middle of his honeymoon period.
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An approval rating of 61 per cent. Satisfaction with the government is at highs not seen since the first term of Justin Trudeau. Some polls have Carney's Liberals enjoying a 10-point lead over the Conservatives.
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In that cohort, 56 per cent of respondents favoured the Liberals against just 28 per cent prepared to vote Conservative.
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This continues to make Canada the only Western democracy in which the usual demographics of political leanings have been flipped on their head.
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Everywhere from the U.K. to Germany to the United States, young people continue to favour left-wing parties while old people favour right-wing parties.
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In the recent Australian general elections, held just a week after Canada's, the left-wing Labor Party won a surprise victory by sweeping constituencies disproportionately populated by younger voters.
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Some of Canada's peer countries may have conservative parties that are gaining support among young people, or are doing better than usual among younger cohorts. But Canada remains the outlier as a place in which the average 25-year-old is more likely to vote conservative than the average 65-year-old.
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During the April federal election, in fact, voters in their 20s consistently emerged as one of the strongest single cohorts showing support for the Conservatives.
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In one of the most surprising manifestations of the trend, a straw poll held among Canadian high school students ended up delivering a result that was more conservative than the general electorate. If it had been up to teenagers, Canada would have had a Conservative minority government.
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The final days of the election also featured the equally bizarre spectacle of Conservative ads specifically targeting old white men in an attempt to arrest that cohort's stampede to the Carney Liberals.