The Decibel - Why millennials are abandoning the Liberals

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

A November Abacus Data poll found that 38 per cent of millennial voters are planning on voting for the Conservatives, compared with 22 per cent for the Liberals, in the next federal election. This is a major shift from when millennials clinched Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first majority win in 2015.Globe and Mail reporter Dave McGinn dug into the polling data and spoke with millennials who have soured on the Liberals to understand exactly what changed.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Earlier this year, the Globe and Mail asked Canadian millennials how they've been feeling over the last decade, during the beginning of their adult lives. That 10-year period that's just passed was kind of the most key developmental time to launch. If you were 20, like I was when Trudeau first came to power, more or less. And you watched, as you were trying to launch yourself, things started to decline more and more. Many of the respondents said, even though they were doing okay, they didn't feel like they were thriving. You know, I make good money, and I am sure one day I will have a family and, you know, God willing and whatever, and be able to afford something.

But I'm 32, and I can't hack it yet. So what does that mean for everybody else? I'm making choices in my day-to-day life that are really financially motivated out of a sense of, a little bit of a sense of fear and insecurity. You know, I look to my senior colleagues in a number of places, people like 60 up, and the careers that they were able to have, much less motivated by money. And these sentiments are translating to a shift in how a lot of them will vote. Millennials are obviously not all the same when it comes to politics. But Globe reporter Dave McGinn looked into what the polling says about how they expect to vote in the next federal election and what it tells us about the wider political moment we're in.

I'm Menaka Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Dave, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So we just heard from some specific millennials in the intro to the show. Tell me a bit more about them. So Rahat Hussain lives in Toronto. He is a psychiatrist. And Jacob Citron, much the same.

Lives in Toronto. Jacob is hoping to buy a house one day, but resigned to the fact that he probably never will. And these are all millennials who professionally are doing pretty well in their lives and should be a lot farther ahead than they are, or at least they feel like. And they're, they all are very worried about the economy and all of them in the past have supported the liberals, but now given the change in their circumstances, are strongly considering voting for the conservatives in the next federal election. They were very representative of everyone's concerns when we did a call out asking millennials how they were feeling about their circumstances right now and

the way they were leaning towards voting in the next federal election. We got a lot of responses and all of the same sort of tenor as these three people. So why are we talking about millennials specifically here, Dave? Like, why not focus on a different generation? Well, I think what makes millennials interesting is because of how much of a role they played in 2015 in getting Trudeau to a majority. Pollsters will tell you that the Trudeau liberals would have won that election, but because millennials surged to the polls in such huge numbers

and were so inspired by this guy and so inspired by the vision of the country that he put forward, they helped to secure him a majority. So in 2015, turnout amongst voters ages 18 to 24 increased 18.3 points to 57.1% compared with just 38.8% in 2011. And so it's interesting to look back almost 10 years ago now to how enthusiastic this generation was about not just this party, but in particular, this leader, and to now where that enthusiasm has soured. So let's linger on the 2015 election here a little bit. What was it about Trudeau at that time, I guess, that was so appealing to millennials? Well, I think for one, he was very young, right?

Trudeau was 43 when he was sworn in as prime minister. You're also coming off nine years of Stephen Harper, who I don't think was a very inspiring figure to a lot of younger voters. But Trudeau was a very inspiring figure to a lot of younger voters. He was a big champion of electoral reform. He was a big champion of the environment. He wore all those cool socks. He was very kind of hip on the world stage.

And I think for young voters who had a sense of idealism and had a sense of optimism, they saw that idealism and optimism reflected in him. Yeah. He talked about the sunny ways, right? That was so different than before. And sunny ways was what, I think, not just what younger voters wanted at that time in the country, but a lot of people in the country, too. OK. And we've talked kind of generally about why millennials like Trudeau. But the people that you spoke to, Dave, I guess I'm wondering what they said about why they originally supported the liberals. Sure. So Jacob Citron was a very big supporter of electoral reform. That was his, I believe he said that was his single issue that was so motivating for him to vote for Trudeau.

And for Rahat, he had said that, you know, back then at least, and maybe even for a few years since, the Liberal Party just felt like the natural kind of reflection of Canada. That period of like 2000, 2005, let's say, while I was really growing up, it seemed like the Liberal Party was a reflection of Canada the way it was supposed to be. That's the sense that I got socially and fiscally progressive, a blend of equality of opportunity, but also making sure that there was always a floor beneath which people could not fall. OK, so that was nine years ago. So what are millennials saying about their support for the liberals now? Now that support has has waned significantly. That cohort of voters is now in a stage of life where they're raising kids. They're trying to pay

the rent. They're trying to buy a house. And they look around the country, they see inflation, they see what the cost of housing has become, and they're not happy. There was a Leger survey conducted earlier this year that found 54% of Gen Z and millennials think that previous generations are, quote, rigging the system for their own benefit and making it harder for younger generations. And they, I don't think, are wholeheartedly adopting conservative ideology, but they're looking around and saying, this isn't what success looks like, and it's your fault. And so as a result, then it sounds like a number of them are looking to the conservatives then as a solution. Yeah, I think a lot of them will tell you, you know, it's not as if they've decided to become lifelong supporters of the conservative party.

It's mostly that they feel a need to rebuke the liberals. And do we have numbers for this day for how many millennials say they could support the conservatives now? We do. There is a abacus data poll from last month that showed for voters 30 to 44. So that, you know, sort of core group of millennials, 38% of them plan on voting conservative compared to just 22% who said they plan on voting liberal, while 26% of them said they plan on voting for the NDP. For Gen Z, if you look at voters 18 to 29, 34% of them said they would vote conservative, 20% of them said they would vote liberal, and 23% of them said they would vote for the NDP.

Now, if you look at every age group, the conservatives lead amongst everyone. So there's nothing hugely unique about millennials and Gen Z saying that they're going to support the conservatives. But it is interesting when you look at how much they have supported Trudeau in the past and what it means about where they are in life that they lean so strongly towards the conservative party now. Do we know how that breaks down in terms of gender or class? Is that a factor here? Gender plays a very interesting role. So the conservatives do well with both men and women, but their support amongst men 30 and under is huge. Don't we kind of expect this to happen, though? I mean, there's kind of this understanding that when you're younger, you're more left leaning, you get a little bit older, you move to the right.

Like, isn't that just the trend that we're seeing with millennials? I think that's overall probably the trend you're always going to see, right? I mean, once you start looking to buy a house, idealism and practicalities have a whole new balance for you and what you're voting for. But I do think what we're seeing mostly is a reflection of just how dissatisfied people are with the cost of living these days, the cost of housing, and the economy generally. Okay. When you were talking to Rahat and Jacob, how did they describe, I guess, how they're feeling about the Liberal Party now? I think disappointed would be a good word. I mean, especially for someone like Jacob, who in 2015 voted for the Liberals because of their promise to reform their electoral system. He feels betrayed by the failure to do that.

I was single. I'm pretty much always a single issue voter. Back then it was electoral reform and they reneged on that. And so I kind of said, I'm never voting liberals again until they follow through on that. And Rahat. There's no vision. There's no, you know, you need a captain. You need a captain who's telling you where you're going and why you're doing it. And that captain isn't just for the liberals. It's also for us. And so while they have supported them in the past and are very much open to supporting them again in the future, they feel like they have no choice but to rebuke the liberals by voting for the conservatives in the hope that the conservatives turn the economy around.

And I guess we should point out that liberals have been trying to speak to this generation, right? The last budget they had in the spring, they had a theme of what they called generational fairness, like seeming to try to speak to younger people. So is that helping their image at all with this generation? They are very much trying to speak to this generation because it is the largest block of voters in the country. Now, whether they will turn out en masse the way that boomers are expected to remains to be seen. But the liberals very much know that they need to win over millennials. So Jacob Citron brought this up when I spoke to him and had something

very interesting to say about it. The recent budget, funny, like I was pretty excited about just even the name of it because it felt like finally someone was paying attention to the plight of our young people. But that being said, a lot of the stuff in there, like it was kind of, yeah, it's generational fairness, but it didn't really, you know, it doesn't translate to anything. It may be a little bit too late for me and my peers for the time, for the pendulum to swing. I don't know how people do it. Let's even say like a couple hundred dollars a month, which is how you're supposed to start your savings, right?

You're just like, it's just a drop in the bucket. It houses a million dollars that I'd rather take this Uber because I can't even fathom what retirement is going to be like. And that's that. We'll be back after this message. I wonder, Dave, do we have a sense of when this shift started happening? Like we talked about 2015 millennials very supportive of Trudeau. Now, not so much. But was there a point in time between those two dates when, yeah, when things started to change? A lot of the millennials I spoke to pointed to the election in 2021 as the time around which their mood began to sour. Because in their opinion, they saw that as an unnecessary election

that was called for no other reason than for Trudeau to stay in power. Now, whether that's true or not is another matter, but that is how they saw it. When you look back at 2021 and that election and what's happened economically to the country, those things combined have really turned a lot of younger voters against the Liberal Party. And this is I mean, this is also around the time when inflation started creeping up, too, right? That's a huge deal for people. A huge deal for people. And another huge deal for people is watching how much the prime interest rate goes up. In March 2020, the prime interest rate is 0.25%. By 2024, that reaches 5%. And that makes a major difference in people's lives.

So, Dave, we're seeing millennial voters moving towards the conservatives federally. And we saw something, I guess, kind of similar happen in the U.S. last month with the election of Donald Trump. But is the shift in millennials supporting a conservative party, is this happening elsewhere too? There is support for conservative parties around the world, right? Like if you look at the recent EU parliamentary elections, but if you look at the last election in Britain, the Labour Party did incredibly well with younger voters, which points to the argument that it might not be so much support for conservatives as it is just a rebuke of incumbents, right? If you've been in charge for the past three, four years, and the way things are now, it doesn't matter what political stripe you are.

You are to blame for what happened. So then, Dave, how much of what's happening in Canada now has to do with the fact that, you know, the liberals have been in power for so long, almost almost a decade at this point? This is this is a very good point. So I spoke to a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario named Laura Stevenson, who studies political behavior. And she made the very good point that a certain malaise sets in amongst voters when a party has been in power for this long, especially a party that has been led by the same person for that entire time. It is extremely rare for a prime minister to stay in power for more than a decade. Only two have managed to do that in the past 100 years. The last one was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who was prime minister from 1968 to 1979. And before him, you have to go all the way back to William Lyon Mackenzie King, who was prime minister from 1935 to 1948. Okay, so makes sense. People go looking for change. But

we talked about how the polling data is showing that millennials are choosing to move to the conservatives to look for that change. So why are we seeing that shift? You know, why not choose the NDP over the liberals? This was a question that came up with the millennials I spoke to. And generally speaking, I think for them, in their minds, the NDP has been so closely aligned with the liberal party, especially through its supply and confidence agreement that was in place for so long that they don't really seem like a viable alternative. And then in addition to that, the millennials I spoke to also said that the conservatives seem like a more responsible steward of the economy than any other alternatives out there. You know, one of the millennials I spoke to said he's not really sure what Jagmeet Singh

stands for or what his vision of the country is. I mean, that would probably be the next natural home for my vote. However, just to be frank, I have no idea what Jagmeet Singh is doing. None whatsoever. I know he's pushing on the dental front and on Medicare, but maybe it's just their messaging. I have no idea what he's pushing. Okay, so what is it then specifically about the conservatives' message that I guess is resonating with the millennials that you spoke with? The millennials I spoke with all agreed that

Paulie is doing a very good job of tapping into a generational sense of anger and resentment and disappointment. Jacob Citron, for example, told me, you know, that in a way this sort of, you know, he said the common sense messaging is quote unquote cheesy, but it does resonate. Because it does feel like there's so much, and I don't know this, but it feels like there's lots of low hanging fruit that we can work on as a society um things like housing like yeah it shouldn't be so difficult why is that like why aren't we putting in anything that's gonna help us manage this why are we not building the accompanying

infrastructure and that seems to be true of amongst all the millennials I spoke to that on one hand, they kind of recognize the populist sloganeering as somewhat, let's say, cheesy, but it still strikes a chord with them. So for millennials who haven't maybe voted conservative before, I guess I wondered, did any of them talk about having reservations for supporting a party that traditionally they haven't supported? Yes, all of them have reservations. For the Conservatives, they would have my vote if Polyev starts to make his position. Well, I guess his position is clear. If he starts to change his position to more of a red Tory kind of look, you know, financially conservative, cut taxes, fair enough. I assume that for the conservatives, but socially more progressive and again, trying to bring people together. Despite those concerns, despite those reservations, they still see him as the only viable alternative to improving their their lot in life.

So before I let you go here, Dave, I guess I just I wonder kind of how how locked in this millennial support for conservatives is like, is there any way that the liberals, I guess, can can earn their vote back at this point. Well, it's interesting. When I spoke to David Coletto, who is the CEO of Abacus Data, he is of the opinion that it's too late, that if the budget that was released earlier this year that we spoke about has not moved the dial in any significant ways, then nothing really can. Now, the next election has to be held by next October at the latest. That's almost a year from now. So we'll see what happens. The millennials that I spoke to did say that there are things that could happen that might change their minds. If they were to bring in a new leader who is a stronger champion of what they see as more sound economic policies or housing policies, then they would be persuaded to vote for the liberals. So the liberals will get my vote if there is a change in leadership to somebody who is a bit more in that typical mold.

Or maybe it was atypical, but it's what I grew up with. You know, somebody with a vision for the country who will not take us more to the right or the left, but will seek to just bring everybody together and focus on both domestic and global issues, which I realize is asking for, you know, the whole package and then some, but really I'm looking for a leader who can inspire with their vision, you know, give reason to trust them and bring people together rather than splitting them apart. There's way too much of that. Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Thank you for having me. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Welms.

Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.