"The Conservative Party spent the last years of the Justin Trudeau government honing this appeal to change, affordability, and ambition. It had targeted a strange alliance of young men who listened to crypto podcasts, growing families priced out of the suburbs, anti-vaxxers who feared a one-world government, and working-class people more interested in work than collecting employment insurance. It was an incredibly useful alliance that, on paper, was enough to deliver Poilievre the election."
"Poilievre and his right-hand woman, Jenni Byrne, had designed his campaign to continue talking past Trudeau's increasingly dire warnings about the dangers of the Conservative Party. He would speak directly to affordability, frustration, and the feeling that a decade of Liberal rule had slid the country backward. But he would also throw out plenty of symbols for the various constituencies behind his movement."
By the close of the first week of the forty-fifth federal election, Pierre Poilievre's rhetoric was tightly rehearsed and frequently repeated. The campaign framed themes of change, affordability, and putting Canada first while promising a bring-it-home tax cut. The Conservatives targeted a coalition of crypto-listening young men, growing families priced out of suburbs, anti-vaxxers, and working-class voters focused on work over benefits. The strategy emphasized speaking past warnings about Conservative dangers to focus on frustration and symbolic positions such as opposing supplement regulation and vaccine mandates. The campaign prioritized fixed, targeted messaging over flexibility.
Read at The Walrus
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