ANALYSIS: How Liberal Leader Mark Carney ran his campaign

Liberal Leader Mark Carney holds a rally in Mississauga, Ont., on Saturday, April 26, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

SASKATOON — Mark Carney’s election campaign came full circle on April 26 when he returned to a weedy empty lot in Windsor, Ont., where, a month earlier, the Liberal leader experienced one of the most important moments of his rookie political year.

On March 26, just days after the federal election campaign began and with the cross-border Ambassador Bridge in the background, Carney promised to protect the auto sector and warned that United States President Donald Trump sought to break the economy so that the United States could make Canada its 51st state.

Later that day — as if conjured up by Carney’s words — Trump injected himself into the fray again by threatening to impose new auto tariffs on Canada, allowing Carney to put on his metaphorical prime minister’s hat and respond with authority as the trade crisis escalated.

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Back in Windsor on Saturday, as the election campaign was winding down, Carney again told a campaign rally that Trump is “trying to break us so America can own us.” The rally crowd started chanting: “Never 51!”

On the influential Curse of Politics podcast, Liberal insider David Herle said such moments in the campaign’s first week — when Carney was laying out the nature of the threat posed by the Trump administration — were his best. He said the Liberals have been “living off that magic ever since.”

Carney, who at age 60 is a first-time politician running to lead a G7 country, projects a deep calm when he speaks about the threats and challenges facing Canada — even when one of those threats is the prospect of being swallowed up by the U.S.

Yaroslav Baran, co-founder of the Pendulum Group consulting firm and a former communications adviser to Stephen Harper, said Carney was able to leverage his brief time as prime minister in a way that shaped and boosted his campaign.

Baran said Carney’s use of the position was a little unfair, given the air of authority it gave him during critical periods in the campaign.

“Those kinds of moments help you if you are the incumbent trying to portray yourself as a statesman,” he said. ”When you actually play the role of a statesman at an important time, that helps you.”

Baran also said Carney leaned into his muted tone and subdued manner of speaking, which helped him strike a contrast with other politicians — particularly with his unpopular predecessor Justin Trudeau.

“That was a conscious and smart move on their part,” Baran said.

“He or his advisers realize that he’s boring, he is nondescript in the way he speaks, he lifts words off a page like they’re anvils … he barely sounds like he’s interested in his own message. Rather than trying to rapidly train him out of that into a different speaking style, they decided to lean into that and turn it into an advantage. Maybe we’ve had too much drama.”

Don Guy, a previous campaign manager for former Ontario Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty, said Carney’s campaign has gone “pretty well” considering his inexperience.

“They were successful in establishing a frame around Trump in tariffs and positioning Mark’s candidacy as prime minister as the best response to that in a way that transcended other issues for a lot of voters,” he said.

It may feel like a year since Trudeau announced he would step aside as Liberal leader — it’s been just over three months. And right around that time, many people wondered whether the Liberals could even finish third.

“Just about any senior Liberal in the country has been nervous throughout — not because of anything Mark’s done, but because of just how quickly the turnaround happened,” Guy said.

“It’s felt good … but in some ways, it’s been the most nerve-racking because of the circumstances and how far behind we were for so long.”

Guy said Carney’s newness to politics prevented the Conservatives from pushing out tens of millions of dollars in negative pre-campaign advertising to crush his public image.

Baran said Carney’s hopes depend entirely on convincing a large number of Canadians that he represents a clean break from the unpopular Trudeau government.

Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre have spent much of the race talking about different things.

While Poilievre has zeroed in since the beginning on the cost of living and has argued the Liberals don’t deserve a fourth term, polls show many voters anxious about the threat posed by the Trump administration have been abandoning the NDP and Bloc Québécois for the Liberal party.

Polling aggregator 338Canada shows Carney started off in a strong position, with a two-point lead that eventually grew to a five-point gap over the campaign. Carney hit a ceiling of 44 per cent support in the middle of the race.

Poilievre closed the gap to three points just ahead of voting day, with the Liberals at 42 per cent and the Conservatives at 39 per cent.

That tightening in the polls coincided with Trump apparently choosing to make fewer public statements about Canada — statements that, to date, have helped the Liberals’ efforts to define the ballot question.

Carney faced a trial-by-fire in this campaign and had to pick up some basic skills on the fly — how to turn on the charm with complete strangers, for example, or how to look at cameras without coming across as awkward.

His rusty French was widely seen as one of his biggest liabilities going into the campaign, but he did not stumble in the televised French-language debate and a Leger poll earlier this month suggested that a third of Canadians who tuned in said he beat their expectations.

Carney had his share of gaffes during the campaign — neglecting to report that Trump tried to sell him on statehood for Canada during their first phone call, for example, or failing to immediately eject a problem candidate who joked about turning a rival over to a foreign power for a bounty. But the missteps didn’t seem to dent his image enough to seriously damage his prospects.

Some observers say they’re surprised at how a career banker made the switch to electoral politics with apparent ease.

“The thing that’s really impressed me … and really has become evident during the leadership campaign and even more so during the election campaign, is he does genuinely like people and is interested in them,” Guy said.

“That makes becoming a quick study for some of the nuances of campaigning that much easier and that much more accessible.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 27, 2025.

Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press