Source: The Conversation – Canada
When the Conservatives did unusually well among young voters in Canada’s 2025 federal election, even winning the national student mock vote for the first time in over a decade, one explanation making the rounds was that Canada was following what happened south of the border.
In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, young voters, especially young men, moved toward Donald Trump and the Republicans, a shift many credited to Trump’s strategy of going on podcasts and YouTube to reach younger audiences.
In Canada, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre would later do the same, appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast. Some read that as Canada’s Conservatives picking up the same playbook, even though that particular appearance actually came after the 2025 election.
We reviewed results from nine elections in the Canadian Election Study between 2000 and 2025. We wanted to know whether the same youth shift was indeed happening in Canada. What we found was different.
Seniors moved the most
The bigger shift over the past 25 years is at the other end of the age spectrum: a reliable base of older Conservative Party voters is largely gone. For the most of the 2000s, age was one of the strongest predictors of how people voted in Canada. In 2000 and 2004, the gap was modest. The percentage of seniors voting Conservative sat in the high 30s, while every other age group clustered in the high 20s to mid-30s.
Then, in the Stephen Harper-era elections of 2008 and 2011, the gap blew open. Conservative support among Canadians 65 and older surged to nearly half — 48 per cent in 2008, close to 50 per cent in 2011 — while every other age group barely moved.
Seniors were the party’s base, often ten points or more ahead of every other age group, and as much as 25 points ahead of the youngest voters.
That gap persisted throughout the Justin Trudeau years. Support fell across every age group in 2015. Support for the Conservatives among 18-to-24-year olds dropped to 18 per cent and to 20 per cent among 25-to-29-year olds.
But seniors held up comparatively well, staying around 37 per cent, so the gap between them and younger voters actually widened. Through 2019 and 2021, seniors remained the Conservatives’ strongest age group, consistently five to ten points ahead of everyone under 45.
Then came 2025, and the gap essentially disappeared. Conservative support among voters 65 and older dropped to 27 per cent, the lowest point for that demographic anywhere in the 25 years we studied — a fall of nine points in a single election. For the first time, seniors were no longer the party’s strongest age group.
Support among those 25 to 29 did rise, particularly between 2021 and 2025. But even after that increase, this group landed roughly where Canadians in their 30s, 40s and 50s already were, and nowhere near where seniors used to be.
Support among the youngest voters, 18 to 24, was essentially unchanged from 2000, and if anything slightly lower. Even after accounting for province, gender, race and other factors, the decline in Conservative support among seniors between 2000 and 2025 is bigger than the increase we saw among any younger group over the same period.
What the issues tell us
The Canadian Election Study also asked voters to describe, in their own words, what mattered most to them in an election, and the 2025 answers point to something specific.
Among seniors, mentions of U.S. President Donald Trump and tariffs jumped to 21 per cent, more than double the nine per cent among everyone under 65. No other issue in 2025 split the generations like that.
Seniors were far more worried about the Canada-U.S. relationship than everyone else, just as the election was taking place, when Conservative support among them collapsed. That suggests older voters moved toward whichever party looked like the safer choice on that issue, rather than a broader change in their politics.
Housing tells the opposite story. Seniors were far less likely than everyone else to name housing as their top concern, three per cent versus seven per cent in 2025, a gap that shows up in 2019 and 2021 too.
That lines up with the earlier finding that younger Conservative voters are motivated mainly by affordability.
The story getting attention is about young voters supposedly abandoning progressive politics. However, if you’re only looking at young voters to explain what’s changing in Canadian politics, you’re missing where most of the movement actually happened.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/25/young-canadians-arent-drifting-toward-conservative-and-far-right-parties/