Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.
I covered the February 23 German federal election in late December. To qualify for a proportional allocation of the 630 seats, parties must either win at least 5% of the national “party” vote, or win at least three single-member electorates, which are elected by first past the post,
At the previous German election in September 2021, the centre-left SPD won 25.7% of the vote, the conservative CDU/CSU 24.1%, the Greens 14.7%, the pro-business FDP 11.4%, the far-right AfD 10.4% and the Left 4.9% (keeping a proportional entitlement by winning three single-member electorates). After 16 years of CDU/CSU-led coalition governments, the SPD, Greens and FDP formed a coalition government.
In November, this government broke down and this election will occur seven months early. Current polls give the CDU/CSU about 30%, the AfD 20%, the SPD 17%, the Greens 14%, the new economically left but socially conservative BSW 5%, the FDP 4% and the Left 4%. The CDU/CSU will likely need support from the SPD to avoid governing with the AfD.
Conservatives have large lead in Canadian polls
On January 6, Justin Trudeau announced he would resign as Canadian Liberal leader and PM once a new Liberal leader had been elected. As the Liberals don’t have a majority in parliament, it has been prorogued until March 24 to allow the Liberal leadership to be resolved.
The leadership election will occur on March 9 among registered Liberals using preferential voting. Each of Canada’s seats gets 100 points that are allocated proportionally according to votes in that seat. A majority of all points is needed to win. This system will skew results in favour of seats where there are relatively few Liberals.
In the lead-up to Trudeau’s resignation announcement, the Conservatives had gained three seats from the Liberals at by-elections on big swings, and Chrystia Freeland, deputy PM and minister for finance, had resigned. The leadership election is likely to be a contest between Freeland and Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England.
The Canadian federal election is due by October, but it will be held early if the Liberals are defeated when parliament resumes on March 24. There are 343 seats elected by FPTP, so it takes 172 for a majority. At the September 2021 election, the centre-left Liberals won 160 of the then 338 seats on 32.6% of the national vote, the Conservatives 119 on 33.7%, the separatist left-wing Quebec Bloc (BQ) 32 on 7.6% (32.1% in Quebec), the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) 25 on 17.8% and the far-right People’s zero on 4.9%.
The CBC Poll Tracker has the Conservatives at 44.8%, the Liberals at 21.9%, the NDP at 17.6%, the BQ at 8.2% (35.3% in Quebec), the Greens at 3.8% and the People’s at 2.6%. The Conservatives are estimated as winning 225 seats to 53 Liberals, 41 BQ and 22 NDP. However, this tracker was last updated on Monday, and an EKOS poll that was completed Thursday had the Conservatives just 3.8 points ahead of the Liberals, though EKOS has had better results for the Liberals than other pollsters.
Trudeau promised to reform Canada’s electoral system before he won the October 2015 election, but did nothing. FPTP assists the Conservatives in Canada, who are the only significant right-wing party.
US and Croatia
On Monday, Donald Trump began his four-year term as US president, replacing Joe Biden after the November election. Biden’s final ratings as president in the FiveThirtyEight tracker was a net approval of -20.0 (57.0% disapprove, 37.0% approve). FiveThirtyEight has presidential approval charts since Harry Truman (president from 1945-53). Biden’s final ratings are worse than for any other president who served four years or more at this stage of their presidency except Jimmy Carter.
FiveThirtyEight doesn’t yet have an aggregate for Trump’s approval, but most early Trump polls have him at net positive double digits. Trump’s favourable ratings have improved since the election, and he’s now at net -1.6 in FiveThirtyEight (48.2% unfavourable, 46.5% favourable).
The centre-left incumbent easily won the January 12 Croatian presidential runoff election, defeating his conservative opponent by a 74.7-25.3 margin. However, the conservatives won the April 2024 Croatian parliamentary election.
WB: [‘…before he won the October “2915” election, but did nothing.’]
Sorry, bad typo and it was my fault not WB’s. Fixed now.
Cheers. I wonder if Trump’s proposed annexure of Canada will stem the political tide against the Liberals.
Let’s check back in on Jan 25 2026, with a mid term election 9 months away, and see where Trump’s Approval ratings are.
I’d also be a bit worried if I was a Republican in a swing House district. After the pardons of all the J6 violet offenders, I can see the Democratic election ads now….
I had meant to give an update on the Canadian Liberal leadership race because it’s been a busy week for me offline.
Anyway, the deadline for nominations has passed and there are seven candidates. I won’t bother listing them all (you can look them up) but most of them are just random MPs – basically minnows. The only notable nominee, aside from the two I will talk about shortly is Karina Gould, the current leader in the House and former frontbencher. It’s possible for a dark horse, after a good campaign, to get a strong enough third place and enough second preferences to maybe be a surprise win but I think that’s doubtful. It’s possible a candidate or two might drop out early, especially once it becomes time to pay non-refundable payments to the party (right now, candidates have just paid one C$50,000 fee which is refundable. Come 30 January, a non-refundable extra C$50,000 payment will be required, with a total of C$250K (all non-refundable) required after that.)
While, I won’t go into the weeds over their policies as a lot of it is technocratic and Canada-focused, two notable things to come out of candidate platforms and rhetoric so far: The shadow of the Trump administration south of the border is very much having a strong influence on this race, and it looks like the days of the carbon tax are limited, as all candidates are vowing to essentially remove it.
Really, the race will be between two candidates: Former Finance Minister and Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, whose resignation from the front bench triggered the leadership crisis and Mark Carney, former head of the Bank of Canada and then Bank of England. Carney is not currently a minister or MP but Canadian constitutional law doesn’t require a party leader or PM to be an MP – it’s a convention that they are an MP in the lower house. Considering that it’s likely that an election will be called not long after this contest is over, there’s no reason he can’t serve outside of the House of Commons before the election, then find a seat to represent later.
Their elevator pitches are as follows:
Freeland: Experienced politician who wants to be a thorn in the side of Trump when it comes to tariffs or anything else that hurts Canada’s interests.
Carney: Outsider who wants to come in and push through dry, meaningful financial reform and fix some of Canada’s issues, as well as prepare Canada for the economic future that is influenced by US policies going forward.
(Note: Even though Carney can accurately be described as a political outsider, don’t mistake him for some sort of Bernie Sanders-style figure. He’s a banker and well-connected in government and his politics are definitely hard centre.)
While I had previously said Freeland was the favourite, the very scant polling we have shows that Carney has been growing in support among party members and he’s also picking up a lot of key endorsements, including a few government ministers.
Also, Freeland hasn’t had the best start, her launch was full of troubles, and she’s being targeted heavily from the left. She also has the problem that, regardless of her resignation, she was the #2 in the Trudeau Government for years, so she does still carry the baggage. And her resignation may also leave a bad taste in some loyal party members’ mouths, being seen as disloyal to their leader, especially as it triggered this crisis. She could essentially have all the political baggage of being a loyal minister for years, without any of the benefit of doing so. On a slightly different note, unfavourable comparisons between her and Hillary Clinton/Kamala Harris have also been made, and unfortunately, we do live in a world now where there’s extra motivation to vote against female leaders, especially when seen as flawed – especially with the belief that they only advanced because of “woke DEI” being a more popular sentiment.
Carney, himself, hasn’t been without controversy. While the Liberal Party is hardly a left wing party, it does have its progressives in its ranks and a neoliberal, centrist banker might not be to their tastes. And there’s been some mockery at his expense already about how wealthy and elite he is. Also, I think some are concerned Carney won’t push back against Trump hard enough.
Voting is done entirely by party membership. However, it is divided by regions who are proportionally appointed points, totalling 100. Each candidate gets the amount of points for that region proportional to their % of the vote there. Voting is preferential and the first candidate to get over 50 points is the winner.
I honestly don’t know how party members will vote. Polling has recently given Carney the edge but there are a lot of “don’t knows” and smaller candidates’ preference flows can be unpredictable. Also, this process has only occurred once before under the current system, so it’s hard to deduce anything from past patterns. If I had to lock in a prediction, I would say Carney will win but I don’t have much confidence in that and would not be surprised to see Freeland triumph.
I don’t know what betting markets are saying. I tried looking at Sportsbet but they only have general election outcome bets. Perhaps others do have leadership bets, I don’t know. I don’t know where to begin with betting culture (I’m a total non-gambler.)
And finally, in the end, regardless of who wins the leadership race, they are most certainly going to go down to the Conservative Party at the next election. While they can’t say it and have to maintain the pretence of still trying to win, really this contest is about who can save the most furniture and hopefully keep the Liberals in a healthy position in opposition (and still be ahead of NDP and BQ in terms of number of seats.)
Apologies for the extremely long post.
@Wat Tyler
Thanks for that post, it was very informative.
Thanks Wat. And Adrian. And William.
This is what I pay my subscription for.
We are all fugged! It’ll take 20-25 years to sort this shite.
There’s only one political conversation in Canada at the moment, and that’s the state of the economy. There’s a very strong feeling that the US has dramatically outperformed Canada over the last decade or so.
I’m surprised there’s not more apprehension about Trump, but you get the feeling most Canadians (and Americans) just don’t take him seriously.
This is surprising, according to polling outfit EKOS, there’s been a large jump in the polls for the Canadian Liberals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2025_Canadian_federal_election#Pre-campaign_period
They’re still behind, only narrowly rather than the blowouts from earlier.
According to Ekos and Mainstreet polls, Liberals are AHEAD of Conservative in Ontario, the most populous state.
Not replicated yet by Abacus who still show Conservative a long way in front, though all pollsters are now coming to the party in terms of their being a narrowing of the polls in Canada since Trudeau resigned.
Ekos have even shown them only 4 points behind Conservative. Given they were already >1% behind Conservatives at the 2021 election and still won vastly more seats than them, and given that their new leader -most likely Carney – will be new and competent, perhaps Liberals can complete a stunning turnaround and win a majority – something not done since Trudeau’s first stunning turnaround win in 2015 (in very different circumstances, no suggestion here that the causes would be similar).
Germany
Unless AfD behave VERY badly during the election campaign, this time I see them outperforming the polls if anything – unlike previous elections.
There’s been something of a tipping point against the establishment in the Western world the last few years. People are angry, cynical, godless, poorer and ready to try something new and put aside past apprehensions to do so.
Coupla things on Canada:
Ontario is having a provincial election next months, a year early – I guess they want to surf the anti-Trudeau tide. Polling seems to show little change from 2022 – a Conservative vote around 40%, and vote-splitting between Liberal and NDP converting that to a landslide win.
In Quebec, even more complicated vote-splitting happened in 2022 – CAQ (centre-right) got 40% and another four parties scored in the teens, so a big win for them. The main shift in polling since then has been from CAQ to PQ (centre-left, separatist) – gradually at first, then a sudden shift of about 10% in late 2023 / early 2024, so now PQ are in front. That makes the next election an interesting mess – PQ would pick up seats directly from CAQ, but also from Lib and QS, while CAQ could also lose seats to the Conservatives. Seems funny talking about a party that currently has 4 seats out of 125 potentially forming the next government, but Quebec politics is pretty loose and funny things can happen under FPTP.