Political scientists, pundits, and pollsters will spend months dissecting the 2025 federal election results in search of deeper meaning on the hows and whys Canadians voted the way they did.
Why did older Canadians and women lean heavily Liberal? Why were men more likely to vote Conservative? There’s also evidence the Conservatives may have made gains among middle-aged voters and some immigrant communities—so what drove these shifts?
While voting behaviour is complex and shaped by many factors, one story emerging from this election is what it reveals about the deeper economic undercurrents in the country—specifically, the disparities in how Canadians are experiencing the economy. We live in a country of increasingly divergent economic realities, and unsurprisingly, there appears to have been a correlation between economic circumstances and voting patterns.
“It’s the economy, stupid,” is never the full story in politics, but it’s a prudent starting point.
Conveniently, Statistics Canada released its annual Income Survey a few days after the April 28 election, offering the most detailed portrait of Canadian incomes and their sources. While the latest figures are from 2023 and a bit dated, they help illustrate the point.
To start, older Canadians have been doing quite well. Families where the primary income earner is 65 or older saw after-tax real income gains of 8.4 percent between 2019 and 2023—well above the national average of 3.8 percent.
Women also saw solid gains, with income rising by 6.5 percent. By contrast, median income for men barely moved, increasing just 0.5 percent over that period—a stagnation that may help explain some of the economic discontent among male voters. (That stagnation, it’s worth noting, predates both the pandemic and the Trudeau years.)
Recent employment data also offers clues into widening disparities. The labour market has weakened over the past two years, affecting both genders, though slightly more so for men. Male unemployment now sits at 7 percent, compared to 6.4 percent for women. But the really bad outcomes in the labour market are being felt by young Canadians and immigrants. The unemployment rate for Canadians aged 15 to 24 has averaged around 14 percent over the past year—up about 4 percentage points from post-pandemic lows.
For all immigrants, unemployment is up to 7.6 percent. For recent immigrants, it’s 10.9 percent. The hardest-hit group is young male immigrants, the trifecta of economic vulnerability. Their jobless rate is near 20 percent.
Older Canadians, by contrast, face lower unemployment and have seen less labour market deterioration.
The middle-aged cohort—the group of Canadians between 35 to 55 years of age, let’s say—presents a more curious case. They’ve enjoyed decent income gains and solid job prospects. And like Baby Boomers, many have benefited from rising asset prices in recent years, whether in real estate or financial markets.
In fact, Gen X households now surpass Boomers in average asset holdings: $1.53 million versus $1.52 million, according to Statistics Canada distributional data released last month. Millennials, while still lagging, are quickly catching up.
And yet, Gen X and Millennial voters appeared to have been more likely to vote against the government. So what distinguishes these generations from Boomers?
Debt.
Gen Xers and Millennials carry much higher debt loads, which significantly reduces their net worth despite higher asset values. Together, they hold more than 80 percent of household liabilities. Many felt the pain of higher interest rates, which hit them disproportionately—and likely voted accordingly. Boomers, the generation that leaned hardest toward Carney’s Liberals, remain the wealthiest generation when measured in net worth terms.
The Boomer economic agenda
The other question is: given the decisive support from older Canadians, is it reasonable to expect that Mark Carney’s new Liberal government will prioritize policies aligned with their interests? Will we see the continuation of a Boomer economic agenda?
That’s a more complicated question. It’s not obvious what a Boomer agenda would look like, or whether Carney’s platform was designed with one in mind.
At a broad level, Canadians who are retired or nearing retirement tend to prioritize stability, which made Carney’s image as a steady-handed technocrat an appealing option amid the global tumult of a Donald Trump presidency.
But Liberal support among older Canadians predates Trump. They were one of the few demographics that still stuck with Trudeau even as his popularity collapsed elsewhere.
So the appeal likely runs deeper.
Over the past decade, Liberal policy has generally been senior-friendly: lowering the eligibility age for old age benefits, increasing payments, providing dental care coverage, embracing pro-immigration policies that buoyed housing prices (and thus wealth), and maintaining a big-government approach that protected access to public services.
The Carney campaign has largely stayed the course (with some scaling back of immigration targets) while layering in even more relief via tax cuts on capital gains, income, and carbon.
Carney’s promised growth agenda will be financed not through spending cuts, but deficits. He’s pledged to be fiscally responsible with regard to government operating expenses, not by trimming programs. All of it is broadly consistent with an economic platform that favours the interests of older Canadians.
But does that mean Carney’s agenda runs counter to the interests of younger Canadians or other groups who were less likely to vote Liberal?
Younger voters would be more aligned with tighter labour markets, lower housing prices, and perhaps a higher tolerance for inflation, given their heavy debt loads. (Inflation erodes the real value of debt.) Slower immigration supports all three of these objectives. And as the generation that will ultimately shoulder today’s deficits, younger Canadians may also have a stronger appetite for fiscal prudence.
That may be where political fault lines and the policy debate are heading next.
Theo Argitis is The Hub's Editor-at-Large for economics and business. Theo has been a journalist for the better part of three decades, spending much of his…
