ADAMS: What the CPC Must Learn from Its Popular Vote Collapse

If the Conservatives want to be taken seriously, they’ll have to stop catering to the fringe and start acting like a party ready to govern.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was defeated by his Liberal opponent Bruce Fanjoy in Carleton, a riding he had represented since 2004. Photo credit: Reuters / Patrick Doyle

When the dust settled on the 2025 federal election, Canada didn’t just vote — it roared. Early turnout smashed records. The Green Party? Vaporized. Former co-leader Jonathan Pedneault couldn’t even snag a seat, and the few greens left over from 2021 got rinsed out like bad dye. Over in NDP territory, the dynasty crumbled. Jagmeet Singh, once the face of the orange wave, came in third in his own riding and walked offstage with a resignation letter in hand. But the bleeding didn’t stop there. The Conservatives took heavy fire. Michelle Ferreri and Don Stewart finally got bounced out of Peterborough and Toronto–St. Paul’s. Kevin Vuong, resident grifter and perpetual scandal magnet, “resigned” before voters could do it for him. And the cherry on top? Pierre Poilievre—the big boss himself—lost his seat. Game over.

Poilievre just made history… for all the wrong reasons. He’s now the first-ever leader of the Conservative Party of Canada to lose his own seat in a general election. Harper didn’t. O’Toole didn’t. Not even Scheer. But Poilievre? He absolutely did. Remember Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy, who posted on X back in 2024 that he’d take down Poilievre? Yeah. He didn’t just talk—he delivered. Fanjoy pulled a clean 50.95% of the vote—43,846 ballots—and left Poilievre choking on his own talking points with just 45.70% and 39,333 votes. Margin? 4,513. Enough to flip a riding—and flip the script. But the humiliation didn’t end there for the Conservatives. Because for the first time years, the CPC didn’t even win the popular vote.

The Numbers Don’t Lie: Seats vs. Popular Support

A crowd of people are gathered at a rally in support of Mark Carney in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. Image credit: Mark Carney, X

Mark Carney, the suit from the Bank of Canada turned prime minister, clocked in at 43.7%, winning the popular vote by a jaw-dropping 480,558 ballots. The last time the Liberals pulled that off? When Justin Trudeau blew the doors off Harper’s crusty majority and erased Thomas Mulcair from relevance in 2015.

Now here’s where things get weird. On paper, the Conservatives made gains—24 seats to be exact—jumping from 119 in 2021 to 143 in 2025. That’s their best haul since Harper’s final run with 166 seats. Normally, this would be the part where pundits say “the base is growing” and pat the leader on the back for a job well done. But context is everything. Because while the CPC was stacking seats, Mark Carney was stacking 480,558 more votes than the Conservatives.

So how did Poilievre pull it off? Simple. He didn’t meaningfully expand the tent, he torched it and rebuilt a smaller, angrier one from Maxime Bernier’s scrap wood.

A Rally Worth a Thousand Tweets: What I Saw Firsthand

About a month ago, I went to a Poilievre rally just to see it for myself—spoiler alert: he didn’t win my heart. Or my brain. What I witnessed was a swirling cesspool of toxicity, racism, and open hostility that honestly rattled me. I’ve been to political events across the spectrum—nothing came close to this. Poilievre has grown the party, sure. But he did it by cribbing Maxime Bernier’s homework—parroting the People’s Party playbook, dragging fringe-right conspiracy sludge straight into the mainstream.

The CPC used to be the party of “responsible adults.” Now? It’s cosplay libertarians, rage-tweeting reactionaries, and 22-year-olds who think yelling about “wokeism” makes them policy experts. Yes, the base is younger. But let’s be real: a lot of Conservative youth aren’t just loud—they’re aggressively obnoxious, obsessed with culture war nonsense and so deep in identity politics they’ve built entire personalities around being anti-everything. And in the process, the moderates, the independents, and even the old-school Blue Tories got steamrolled and shoved out.

It’s ironic—the right loves to fearmonger about “cultural Marxism,” but they’ve created their own version: a rigid, unyielding ideology where disagreement is betrayal, and empathy is weakness. They don’t listen. They don’t question. And when confronted, as I saw with my own eyes, and heard with my own ears, they attack you. Verbally, physically, ideologically.

The Alberta By-Election: Politics at Its Worst

Damien Kurek resigns to let Pierre Poilievre run in Battle River—Crowfoot by-election, citing national interest and leadership. Image credit: Damien Kurek, X

So what’s Poilievre doing now? He’s trying to crawl back into Parliament. After getting absolutely bodied in his own riding, he’s now eyeing Battle River–Crowfoot—an Alberta riding so safe for Conservatives you could run a mailbox and still win. The catch? The actual MP—who, y’know, won his seat fair and square—just “stepped down” so Poilievre could slide in. Poilievre hasn’t even lived in Alberta for over 25 years, but hey, when desperation calls, parachutes open. I don’t know what kind of backroom wizardry Jenni Byrne pulled to make this happen, but let’s be clear: this is deeply unethical. Imagine a Liberal leader doing something like this. The Conservative outrage machine would crank into overdrive—five years of Aaron Gunn documentaries, National Post opinion columns, and hashtags about tyranny.

But when it’s Poilievre? Crickets. Let’s not sugarcoat it: if you need to flee across the country and hide in a safe seat after losing your own, you are not a popular leader. You’re a liability in a blue tie. And here’s where it gets spicy: rumors are swirling that Maxime Bernier—Mr. Fringe Politics himself—is planning to challenge Poilievre in this by-election. And honestly? I hope he does. I’ve never cheered for the PPC in my life, but for once, I might buy popcorn. Bernier’s a grifter, yes. He’s the guy who treats the People's Party like his own GoFundMe for designer suits, but he’s also part of the rot that’s infected the CPC. And if it takes his ego to teach the CPC a lesson, so be it.

Because this is the message that needs to be heard: Canadians are done with stupid Conservatives. We’re done reopening the abortion debate every time polling dips. We’re done with ten years of “Trudeau bad” being the entire policy platform. We’re done holding our noses, done compromising, and done being told we have no choice. Bernier’s not going to win. But if he runs a halfway decent campaign, assuming he even runs, he might split the vote—handing Carney a majority. And maybe, just maybe, that finally lights a fire under the establishment’s ass that electoral reform isn’t just a nice idea—it’s a necessity.

Being ‘anti-everything’ isn’t a strategy

The Conservative Party’s leadership model for the past decade has been painfully clear: just hate the Liberals louder than the last guy and hope voters don’t notice you’ve got zero real ideas. Poilievre is the worst-case scenario of that approach—a walking contradiction whose platform read like a political Mad Lib.

High deficits? Check. Empty spending promises? Check. Social issue crusades nobody asked for? Triple check. And let’s not forget the cherry on top: his ex-girlfriend, now turned political puppet-master, who somehow caused open conflict between federal and provincial Conservatives and turned the party into a punchline. That should’ve been a red flag the size of Alberta. Instead, it got swept under the rug like everything else that makes Poilievre unelectable. Without Trudeau in the picture, the alleged “Poilievre super-majority” ultimately never manifested, and all those sceptical voters went back into the Liberal tent with Carney.

And still? he’s not resigning. No humility. No accountability. Just a PR team on overtime and a base too angry to notice the train is off the rails.

Honestly, if the Conservative Party had even a shred of strategic foresight, they’d cut their losses and call a leadership race. Yes, it’ll sting short-term. Yes, it’ll look messy. But so what? It’s practical. It’s necessary. Because if they don’t, they’re guaranteeing their own collapse. Poilievre keeps setting fire to his own chances every time he opens his mouth—and they still haven’t shown him the door?

Canadians have proven that they will not not reward a party that has forgotten how to speak to them, so the longer they let this circus run, the deeper the rot sets in. And make no mistake: the damage Poilievre has done to the party’s reputation will take years to undo. Every day he stays, the clock ticks louder.