As we enter another precarious year, Canadian politics is a tangle of contradictions

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The pollsters are trying to tell us something.

For much of the past year, the dominant strain of Canadian political coverage has focused on the struggles of Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, especially as contrasted with the brilliant successes of his opponent, Mark Carney.

How could it not? Mr. Poilievre saw a 25-point lead evaporate in the space of two months. Much of this could be attributed to the rapid-fire sequence of events with which the year began: Donald Trump’s return to office, Justin Trudeau’s resignation, and Mr. Carney’s election as Liberal Leader.

But it was his own inability to react to these events – and, worse, what they revealed about his own weaknesses as a leader – that really sealed the deal. Voters, it turned out, were not so much enamoured of Mr. Poilievre’s leadership as they were heartily sick of Mr. Trudeau’s.

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The minute they were given an acceptable alternative to both, many voters took it; many more followed, as the true dimensions of the Trump threat emerged – a threat the unflappable Mr. Carney was judged better able to handle than the querulous Mr. Poilievre. Notably, it was the latter’s occasional Trumpiness of tone that appeared to grate on voters, a reminder not only of his own failings but of the leanings of a section of his base, to which he appeared obliged to pay homage.

Yet it was a near thing, in the end. The Liberals won the popular vote by fewer than 2.5 percentage points. And while that margin widened to nearly 10 points over the summer, recent polls have the two parties within a point or two of each other. Mr. Carney may continue to enjoy an advantage of 20 points or more over Mr. Poilievre on the leadership questions – best prime minister, job approval, etc. But it hasn’t translated into an equivalent level of support for the party he leads.

That’s unusual, in an age of weakened party loyalties and leadership-centred politics. Party leaders sometimes lead or trail their parties in the polls, but not by 20 points. So the pollsters have been working overtime to try to figure out what’s going on. A number have weighed in as the year closed with their assessments.

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I was struck, first, by a piece by André Turcotte, senior adviser at Pollara Strategic Insights, that appeared on The Hub, a conservative website. Noting the contradiction between an electorate that appears, on the surface, remarkably calm, even complacent – “no sweeping electoral realignments, no mass populist insurgencies, and no wholesale rejection of democratic institutions” – and repeated signals of discontent (leaders toppled, caucuses in revolt, parties adrift), Mr. Turcotte points to a deeper contradiction in the polling data: “Canadians strongly endorse many of the core grievances that animate populist politics – namely, distrust of elites, frustration with institutions, and a belief that politics is insufficiently responsive – while simultaneously rejecting populism as an identity, a label, or a leadership style.”

For example, he notes, 80 per cent of Canadians agree that “Politicians should follow the will of the people.” Smaller supermajorities can be found in support of the idea that “Politicians are overly influenced by the top 1 per cent,” that “Politicians listen too much to experts and not enough to ordinary citizens,” that “Politicians do not genuinely care about the public,” or even that “The people – and not politicians – should make the most important policy decisions.”

And yet this populist mood has not translated into support for populism itself – the word elicits mostly blank stares in Mr. Turcotte’s poll – or populist politics. The labels that got the strongest responses from Pollara’s respondents were things like “common sense,” “moderate,” and “pragmatic.” As Mr. Turcotte summarizes it, “Canadians articulate strong grievances about elite unresponsiveness and systemic unfairness, and yet resist leaders who adopt the rhetorical and stylistic markers of populism seen elsewhere. The appetite is for accountability and renewal, not for theatrical confrontation or institutional disruption.”

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Similar trends have been identified by Greg Lyle at Innovative Research. A recent poll by the firm finds 71 per cent in agreement that “Canadian elites don’t care about ordinary Canadians,” while 54 per cent say the system is rigged “to benefit Canada’s elites at the expense of average Canadians.” But while anti-elite populists form one substantial segment of the population, the firm also finds a large group it calls the “culturally alienated”: those who not only believe that “institutions are broken” and “elites are disconnected,” but that “our shared identity is lost, and the country is headed toward crisis.” Notably, a sizable proportion of these latter voters are to be found among voters on the left.

If Conservative politicians continue to rail against “elites” while pressing cultural hot buttons, Mr. Lyle argues, it’s because it works, at least among some sections of the electorate; not only does it rally their own supporters, but it allows them to make inroads among left-of-centre voters. Up to a point: as with Mr. Turcotte’s research, Mr. Lyle finds a hesitancy to embrace populist-style disruption. “The challenge for Poilievre is a tall order: crafting a Trump-like coalition of voters on the Left and on the Right, and doing it without sounding too much like Trump.”

But if Canadians are in such an anti-elite mood, why did so many of them turn to Mr. Carney, of all people, whose resumé is a catalogue of memberships in one elite institution after another and whose appeal is in large part based on the argument that “I’ve run things, I know people, and I can get the job done.” It would appear that Canadians are against elites in the abstract and the general sense, but in favour of them in the concrete and the specific.

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Or perhaps it’s just the times. Where Mr. Lyle’s work emphasizes cultural alienation and elite resentment, surveys by Abacus Data find the best word to describe the public mood is precarity – “a growing sense that life in Canada [is] becoming more fragile, more volatile, and harder to navigate.” Fully 43 per cent of Canadians, according to Abacus, describe themselves as living in a state of “high” or “extreme” precarity, versus 21 per cent whose precarity was “low” or “mild.”

This is only partly connected to the economy and cost-of-living concerns, though these are significant. It is also fed by worries about global instability, the environment, and technological change. As Abacus CEO David Coletto describes it, “Precarity is not about prices. It is about stability. It is the fear that the systems you rely on might not hold. Trade access. Jobs. Economic sovereignty. National security. Canada’s ability to control its own fate in a harsher, less predictable world.”

And who or what is the most direct threat to that stability? Why, Mr. Trump, of course. The year that is about to begin promises to be among the most threat-filled in our history, and nearly every one of those threats is tied directly to Mr. Trump: the threat of abrogation of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement, at the very least; the threat of Russian conquest in Ukraine, opening the prospect of further aggression in Europe, the Far East, and the Arctic; the threat that the November midterm elections might mark the collapse of American democracy, and with it the collapse of civic order in the United States; the threat of not one, but two referendums on secession in Canada, one or both of which could have Mr. Trump’s active encouragement; and so on.

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Whatever their disaffections, Canadians are not, for the most part, so far gone as to want to bring the foundations down around them. Faced with these unprecedented dangers, mostly external, a critical mass of public opinion still sees the value of experience, judgment and leadership.

As Mr. Coletto explains, “the electorate is not one customer base. It is a set of segments with different motivations and emotional drivers. Some voters are driven by scarcity and want immediate relief. Others live in a state of precarity and want stability because everything feels fragile. Some are exhausted and want politics to be less consuming. Others believe nothing changes without confrontation. …Poilievre has made a clear bet on the high-frustration, high-change segment. His language, tone, and framing are designed to convert anger into action. Carney is targeting a broader coalition that includes people who want change, but want it delivered with seriousness, restraint, and predictability.”

Indeed, I would suspect many voters feel themselves tugged in both directions. They may see their values and emotions more accurately reflected by the Conservatives. But they may identify their interests as being better safeguarded under Mr. Carney. For some the latter is enough to overcome the former; for others, it is the reverse.

It may be that the anti-elite sentiment turning up in the polls is less a wholesale rejection of expertise or experience, as such, than a desire for greater responsiveness and accountability on the part of those who lead us – for elites that listen more and lecture less, and that are answerable for the results of their decisions. We may still hire elites in a crisis, but we very much want them to know who the boss is.

Or to take up a favourite subject in these columns: Perhaps what the polls are really signalling the people want is democratic reform.