In Canadian politics, Pierre Poilievre should be – but actually isn’t – the biggest loser of the year.

And, yes, 2025 saw the Conservative leader blow a massive lead in the polls, lose an election that had been in the bag, and fritter away his own Ottawa-area seat. By any objective standard, that should qualify Poilievre as the political loser of the year.

But the biggest losers – the ones who will continue to be losers after Poilievre is gone, which is a foregone conclusion – are those who make up the Conservative Party of Canada. They are the real losers.

The Conservatives’ 2025 election loss – to a man who had never held elected office before, to a party that had been mired in misconduct and misfires – was not entirely Pierre Poilievre’s fault. Because Poilievre is the current Conservative Party of Canada in human form: too angry, a bit paranoid, often Trumpian. They are him, and he is them.

Consider the available evidence. For months – and long before Justin Trudeau’s departure, and Mark Carney’s debut – polls had been consistently showing that voters were decidedly unenthusiastic about Poilievre. His petulance, his arrogance, his bumper-sticker policy-making was hurting him with key constituencies – women, seniors, Quebeckers.

A year ago, as 2024 was coming to a close, multiple polls showed the Conservative Party had a huge lead over Trudeau’s Liberals. But, in every one of those polls, Poilievre was lagging behind his party. In December 2024, the Reid Institute found that every party leader was more unpopular than popular – with Poilievre being seen favourably by 37 per cent of respondents, and unfavourably by 55 per cent. That is a huge gap in an era where people vote for leaders as much as parties.

Leger, one of the most reliable federal pollsters, found the same sort of trend. In December 2024, only 22 per cent of Québec respondents thought Poilievre would make the best Prime Minister. Likewise for women and urban voters – only 24 and 27 per cent, respectively, saw the Tory leader as the best choice. Those are constituencies, as everyone knows, make up the vast majority of voters. Ignore them at your peril.

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