Former prime minister Stephen Harper, right, and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre during a campaign stop in Edmonton in April, 2025.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
As Conservatives celebrate the 20th anniversary of Stephen Harper’s first election victory this week, there’s a lot of chatter about what Pierre Poilievre can learn from his success.
In 2006, Mr. Harper captured 36 per cent of the popular vote, and won. In 2025, Mr. Poilievre was a far better vote-getter, earning 41 per cent of the popular vote – and lost. Those totals would appear to indicate there’s not much to gain in the way of lessons.
Actually, there was something, but it’s not learnable. The difference between the two campaigns was a matter of luck – how the wheel of fortune turned.
We analyze the entrails of elections ad infinitum, but all too often we overlook the mundane but most important factor. Who got the breaks? Over the last century, it’s most often been the Liberals.
Starting with R.B. Bennett’s government having to serve through the Great Depression, up to the phenomenal turn of events that saw Mark Carney’s Liberals upend Mr. Poilievre’s Conservatives last year, fortune’s tides have long gone the Liberals’ way.
At portrait unveiling, Harper says Canadians must make sacrifices to preserve independence
In last year’s election, developments beyond Mr. Poilievre’s control – all manna from heaven for the Liberal Party – took him down. Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada changed the ballot box question overnight from the Liberals’ record under Justin Trudeau. In the campaign, the New Democrats’ vote collapsed like never before, with the Liberals the great beneficiaries.
Contrast this with Mr. Harper’s 2006 election, which is one of the few times in Canada’s history when the Conservatives did get lucky. Midway through that campaign, they were trailing. They had benefitted greatly from the Liberals’ sponsorship scandal and prime minister Paul Martin’s decision to investigate his own party, but Mr. Harper needed another gift. That came in the form of a startling announcement by the RCMP during the campaign that it was investigating the Liberals in respect to leaks regarding income trusts. There was hardly anything to it, but it revived suspicions of Liberal corruption. Overnight the polls turned against them, and Mr. Harper went on to victory.
It was similar to how then-FBI director James Comey would critically turn momentum to Donald Trump late in the 2016 U.S. election with his announcement of a renewed investigation – baseless as it turned out to be – into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server.
Contrary to the image he is trying to fashion today, Mr. Harper was one of the most partisan of prime ministers. He detested Liberals. But he was exceptionally smart, disciplined and crafty, and was able to broaden his party’s tent – something Mr. Poilievre, also a hyper partisan, needs to do.
Mr. Harper did have to contend with the global financial crisis. But all through those years, he had something else going for him. So much in politics depends on the luck of the draw, whether you get a strong or a feeble opponent. Before being embarrassed in the 2015 election by Justin Trudeau, Mr. Harper faced two of the weakest leaders in Liberal history, in Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff.
Harper, Chrétien call for national unity to confront Trump
But that kind of good break has been very rare for Canadian conservatives. The Bennett experience in the Depression years set the party back for more than two decades. In 1963, outside forces hit the Tories again, this time with John F. Kennedy’s government interfering to help bring Lester Pearson’s Liberals to power.
Then came the extraordinary luck of Pierre Trudeau. He was defeated in 1979 and set to retire from politics, until a non-confidence vote toppled Joe Clark‘s Tory government after only six months in power, enabling Mr. Trudeau’s resurrection. He also got the break of drawing an uninspiring rival over three straight elections in underwear salesman Robert Stanfield, a wonderful man who might have made a great PM but whose lugubrious image couldn’t cut it in the image-is-everything era.
For breaks coming your way, it’s hard to top Jean Chrétien. For the 1993 election, he faced a conservative party, given the rise of Reform, divided in two halves. Progressive Conservative leader Kim Campbell proceeded to run one of the worst campaigns ever. The right-siders remained divided for another decade, paving the way for subsequent victories for the little guy from Shawinigan.
But the run of Liberal luck in the last election perhaps surpasses all the others. There’s no chance they would have won without the Trump intervention.
They say you make your own luck. There may be some truth in that. As we see with Mr. Carney, the Liberals have been able to take advantage of the fortuitous circumstances that came their way. But in most cases, the luck was made for them. The fates smiled on their party, not the other.