(Bloomberg) – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015 with the help of younger Canadians who were captivated by his positive messages and socially progressive views. The same group of voters could ultimately be his downfall.
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Trudeau’s main rival, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, has made huge gains among younger voters since he began fiercely attacking the prime minister over housing costs. In opinion polls, the Conservatives now lead Trudeau’s Liberal Party by a margin of 2 to 1 among voters 18 to 29.
It was a dramatic fall from grace for a prime minister who was the second youngest minister ever to take office, who pledged to address youth issues and even appointed himself youth minister. While he fulfilled promises to legalize recreational cannabis and implement tougher climate policies, these issues have fallen back on young people’s priority lists.
One number illustrates his problem with voters in their 20s: 60%. That’s the increase in national real estate prices since he took office.
“If you can’t get into the housing market and you’re still living with mom and dad, that probably affects your quality of life on a daily basis more than X, Y, Z progressive social policies,” said Andrew Perez, a 37-year-old longtime Liberal volunteer, strategist and Director at Perez Strategies.
According to weekly polls from Nanos Research, support for Trudeau’s Liberal Party among 18- to 29-year-olds has averaged just 20% over the past three months, trailing the Conservatives at 40% and the left-leaning New Democratic Party at 25%. Group. The Liberals also do poorly among 30 to 39 year olds.
Responsibility for where and how housing is built in Canada lies largely with provincial and local governments, not the federal government. Still, Trudeau is well aware of his vulnerability on this issue and has defended himself.
The government made a number of announcements ahead of the Finance Minister’s April 16 budget, most of which focused on improving housing affordability for Generation Z and Millennials. The prime minister kicked things off in March in Vancouver – a key campaign location – when he stood behind a podium marked “Fairness for Every Generation.” He will unveil a new element of his housing strategy on Friday.
The Nanos data shows an eight-point increase for the Liberals among the youngest group of voters in the week after the announcements began, although that period is too short to detect a trend. Overall, it’s a significant downturn from Trudeau’s election in October 2015, when his party dominated 39% of that voter bloc.
Jaide Kassam, 22, said she voted for the Liberals in the past primarily because her parents did. Now, after an internship with Ontario’s conservative-leaning provincial government, she found she identified more with conservative values and now supports Poilievre. He is doing more to appeal to young workers and students, she said.
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While Kassam hopes to one day own a home, many members of Generation Z are less optimistic – and there is considerable doom and gloom among millennials in their 30s. Perez said most of his colleagues in white-collar jobs are not homeowners, largely because their parents can’t help with a down payment – a generational wealth transfer that is increasingly seen as necessary to break into the Canadian real estate market.
Urban, socially progressive Canadians who previously voted Liberal are now ready to “roll the dice against a right-wing, populist government,” Perez noted in an opinion piece published in the Toronto Star. Their values don’t really align with Poilievre’s brand of “aggressive conservatism,” he argued, but they don’t see a path to economic mobility under the current administration.
Abacus Data’s David Coletto, whose polls have also shown the Liberals have enormous support among young people, pointed out that Poilievre is doing so well across all age groups that he doesn’t necessarily need to mobilize the youth vote to win – if it is his own support will remain in place until an election in 2025.
But winning among young people would be “a blessing for him,” Coletto said.
A separate Nanos poll for Bloomberg found that cost of living and housing affordability were the top issues for voters under 35. The poll of 1,069 Canadians between March 31 and April 1 has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. There are also margins of error in narrowing polls to specific populations.
Chief data scientist Nik Nanos said the results were worrying for the prime minister. “Given that the Trudeau Liberals built their coalition on younger voters in 2015, lagging behind on these issues is a serious political disadvantage.”
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