Liberals Hold Statistically Insignificant Lead
[Ottawa – February 25, 2025] The federal Liberal Party has edged ahead of the Conservative Party for the first time since May 2022 – albeit by a statistically insignificant margin. At 38 and 37 poi…
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What is interesting but disappointing here is that Conservatives lead with under 35s. I thought that Conservatism here would die off with the boomers but clearly not.
Young men are very conservative right now.
There’s a lot of right wing content like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate that is popular in that age group. YouTube is a massive rabbit hole for that stuff.
It’s also not easy for them to get jobs and housing is unaffordable to them. There’s a strong anti “woke” sentiment that men are getting left behind by feminism and that masculinity is being punished in society.
I don’t think we can just brush it off as simply toxic masculinity, there’s truth to men’s issues that need to be addressed: men are pursuing post secondary education less than ever, they don’t believe they can get ahead, male suicide is higher, male loneliness is higher, there aren’t enough clear role models of men in jobs like teaching, the traditional archetype of men as providers is becoming unattainable as cost of living increases faster than wages.
We can’t treat this the way Tate and co do with their greedy take everything you can hostile approach, but Pollievre and the right wing speak directly to their anger and acknowledge them in a way nobody else is.
Anyway, that’s my rant. The men’s liberation community has some good discussions (don’t know how to link it on Mlem).
I’m an egalitarian/humanist and that includes supporting feminism. There’s room to help everyone.
YouTube is a massive rabbit hole for that stuff.
I think it's so effective in part because nobody else seems to be acknowledging the concerns of this demographic. When young men wonder why life sucks, the first ones to hear them and provide an answer - any answer - win their votes.
Yeah, and the answers they get are just like empty calorie junk food ideas instead of healthy solutions.
It feels good to get mad, it feels good to be taking what you think you deserve.
Meanwhile it's not easy to work on yourself and build up your community or step out of your comfort zone.
I hope we can get better at actually engaging these young adults and showing results on improving their problems. We are failing them today.
To be honest, it's far more than that. Those are merely symptoms of a greater problem, which is why conservatism has taken such a strong hold not just in Canada, but in probably half of the world. You keep hearing about far right nationalists gaining in the polls or even winning elections in Europe, not just with Trump down south.
When the world is changing rapidly, and the consequences of that change is making life harder, people tend to want to hold on to what little is still good rather than push for the next change to make things better. It's basic evolutionary loss aversion, which is far stronger in human psyche than hope. Of course, that only goes as far as until people start feeling that they have almost nothing left to lose, in which case they start flocking to gambling in ever greater numbers (you should see how much sports gambling has been making lately while the lotto and traditional casinos have been at it as strong as ever).
The most frustrating thing about all of this is that our leaders are have little to do with what's been going bad all over the world (well, except in a few areas like housing), while they are also the only real force that can make things better. Instead, populist politicians that say whatever feels good while making the entire situation worse due to a combination of skewed incentives and incompetence keep getting voted in.
This has been the cause of many of hour greatest historical tragedies, and we are repeating them once again. Just look at how the US is starting to resemble 1930s Germany or Italy.
I understand that conservative movements have done an effective job at aligning our culture's concept of masculinity with conservative values.
What I don't understand is that the stat is "under 35's", not "males under 35". One would think that for every man that feels progressive politics is for triggerable-purple-haired-whales and no-good-lazy-soyboys, there would be more than one woman that feels conservative politics is for abusive-crypto-fascist-dicks and no-good-vacuous-pickmes.
Men are only half the population, so what's drawing women to conservative politics?
Men are only half the population, so what's drawing women to conservative politics?
Women being allies to conservative men. Religious women (women are generally more religious than men) also tend to be more conservative.
Furthermore I think a lot of young women are disillusioned by the “having it all” lifestyle that was promised to them by feminism. Having a dream career and raising a family (without waiting until 35 to have kids) is extremely unattainable for all but the very rich.
I also think a lot of young women, like their young male counterparts, feel that housing is unattainable. Back in the time before women entered the workforce in a major way a house was genuinely affordable on one income. Now that women are nearly equal participants in the labour force it shouldn’t be a surprise that it takes two (upper middle class) incomes to be able to afford a house. What once was an option (a career for a woman) became a requirement. Through no fault of anyone, that can leave people feeling cheated by the system.
It’s a Red Queen’s race
it shouldn’t be a surprise
Yes it should. The working class is supposed to get compensated fairly for increases in productivity.
Through no fault of anyone
Billionaires are right there.
The working class is supposed to get compensated fairly for increases in productivity.
The issue is that productivity gains aren’t equally distributed across the economy. A factory worker today is probably 100x more productive than a factory worker in the early 1900s. However, a hairdresser today has exactly the same productivity as one from a hundred years ago.
So it would stand to reason that the hairdresser should see no increase in pay at all due to no increase in productivity. Yet a haircut today costs a lot more than it did a century ago. Why is this? Because no one would work as a hairdresser today at century-ago wages. They would go work in a factory instead.
And so increases in productivity — even if they’re restricted to only one sector of the economy — cause inflation across the whole economy. This is called the Baumol Effect. This inflation means that a lot of the wage gains of the factory-worker get eaten up by the increased cost of haircuts, education, healthcare, and countless other goods and services.
It should also be noted that none of the productivity gains have led to an increase in the availability of land in desirable areas. When something is limited in supply but not demand it should be no surprise that the price goes up.
To some degree its because the majority of children are born to non liberal household as liberals are usually trying to not have too many kids. We also tend to let kids be free to form their own opinions. This means that the right always has more pull with youth unless said youth are born close enough to a point of history where the horrors wrought from the wars of fascists are fresh in their minds.
Gen Z represents a generation that has forgotten said horrors.
Social medias. That's it. They are the ones consuming the dog shit right wing content that the tech oligarchy is serving them. Theybare falling for it.
I thought that Conservatism here would die off with the boomers but clearly not.
Me too, but when the culture wars started to solidify in people's minds, that was when the progressives lost the plot of the next generations.
Teenagers are mean. Specially men. And if by the time they're 18 they're knees deep on the other side of this perceived culture wars, it's a done deal for life. They'll vote for Satan himself if that will "trigger the libs". We have a generation that is partly proud of a president shitposting about turning Gaza into a Trump resort. This level of inhumanity was something the boomers themselves would not understand.
It gets worse when you cut off the millennials
Zoomers are highly conservative
Gen Z helped Trump during the last US election too
C'mon Canada I believe in y'all
That was one of the topics in the Liberal leadership debate last night. What are their plans to win back those voters? Personally, I think it's a mixture of the high cost of living and people's ignorance that leads them to believing conservatism will fix those problems. Conservatives seem to be more willing to lie/spread disinformation that feeds into that ignorance.
Do people believe conservatism will fix those problems? Or are people feeling scared and angry, and the Cons fo a good job of validating those feelings?
Because the attitude I'm seeing is far more "fuck the guys in charge" than it is "the right will fix things". It seems way more about picking a team, and feeling a sense of accomplishment and catharsis for getting a win by proxy, and getting to say "fuck you" to someone, than it does about believing things will get better.