In 2003, when Stephen Harper and others like Peter MacKay opted to put aside their differences and consolidate Canadian conservative voters, broadly defined, into a new big-tent Conservative Party, there was hope that it would reshape Canadian politics.
The Liberal Party dominated the 20th century, holding office two and a half times more than the Conservatives. Many predicted the same for the 21st century. Paul Martin was described as a political juggernaut, poised to win the biggest majority in Canadian history.
The essential premise of the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party was that an end to vote splitting and intra-movement conflict would enable Conservatives (and conservatives) to prove these pundits wrong. The near-decade-long Harper government that followed seemed to validate it. Maybe the Liberals were no longer Canada’s “natural governing party.”
Yet the subsequent decade has brought this conservative optimism into doubt. By the next scheduled election, Harper’s years in power will have been overwhelmed by the tenure and substance of the Trudeau and now Carney governments.
A fundamental shift
Conservative Party spokespeople have argued that last month’s disappointing election result only requires some adjustments on the margins. But we’d argue that it may signal something more fundamental about Canada’s changing political landscape and the fecundity of Conservative politics—so much so that Conservatives (and conservatives) should reconsider their aversion to electoral reform in general and proportional representation in particular.
Graphic credit: Paige Saunders.
In 2003, the case for consolidating Canada’s political Right seemed self-evident. Vote splitting between the Reform Party (and later the Canadian Alliance) and Progressive Conservative Party distorted the country’s conservative vote and benefited the Liberal Party. In dozens of ridings across the country, the combined vote of the right-wing parties exceeded the Liberals’, but the latter still won.
Take the Ontario riding of Victoria—Haliburton in the 1997 general election. The Liberal candidate won just 34 percent of the vote but secured the seat because the Reform and Progressive Conservative candidates split the right with 32 and 27 percent, respectively.
Graphic credit: Paige Saunders.
In overall terms, the combined Reform and PC share of the popular vote matched the Liberals’ 38 percent, yet they won only 80 seats compared to the Liberals’ 155-seat majority. The 2000 election followed the same pattern.
The 2003 merger aimed to fix this imbalance. Although the new party didn’t map perfectly onto its predecessors, the subsequent elections validated the basic logic of political consolidation. Harper’s prime ministership—the sixth-longest in Canadian history—seemed to affirm the strategy.
The rise of the two-party system
But in hindsight, his electoral success may have owed as much to Harper’s own political talents and the failings of his opponents as it did the Conservative Party itself. The 2011 election, when the Conservatives won their only majority, is instructive. They did so in large part because of Liberal-NDP vote splitting. One analysis estimated that the combined NDP and Liberal vote could have won as many as 186 ridings.
The Liberals internalized this lesson. Since 2015, for both ideological and electoral reasons, they have expanded leftward, successfully consolidating much of the progressive vote. That shift—more than anything else—explains the Conservative defeat in 2015 and, even more so, the outcome in last month’s election where the NDP was reduced to just 6 percent of the vote and 7 parliamentary seats.
As a result, the Liberals and Conservatives combined for one of the largest vote shares between two parties in decades. One way to think about last month’s election is Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives consolidated the Right and Mark Carney and the Liberals consolidated the Left and the problem for the Conservatives is that the latter is bigger than the former. Another way is that election is part of a gradual yet steady trend towards a two-party system, at least in English Canada.
Graphic credit: Paige Saunders.
Trying and failing
In response, the Conservative Party has cycled through leaders who’ve each represented a different theory of how to grow the party in this new political landscape. In 2019, Andrew Scheer sought to recreate the Harper formula. The party won the popular vote, but not a majority of seats.
In 2021, Erin O’Toole tried to move the party to the centre—even adopting a carbon tax—in hopes of broadening its appeal. Again, the Conservatives won the popular vote, but the People’s Party drew away a share of the base, and the party finished behind the Liberals in seats.
Pierre Poilievre then pursued a strategy aimed at reuniting the political Right by reclaiming PPC voters. That part of the strategy worked. The PPC’s share of the vote collapsed to below 1 percent, and the Conservatives secured nearly 42 percent of the vote—the party’s best showing since 1988. Yet they still lost.
Graphic credit: Paige Saunders.
These outcomes reveal two hard truths: (1) the progressive side of the political spectrum is likely to remain consolidated for the foreseeable future (particularly if the NDP becomes more of a fringe party); and (2) the Conservative Party, no matter its leader or strategy, seems to be stuck within a narrow corridor of popular support with a ceiling that’s too low to win in a two-party system.
Rather than the 2025 election results representing an electoral foundation for the party to build upon, there’s an alternative case that it may actually represents its peak. There may not be much room for further optimization. That can be seen through the distinct experiences of O’Toole and Poilievre.
The two offered opposing theories of the case—moderation versus reconsolidation—and yet both ran into the same fundamental constraint. The party can trade base enthusiasm for centrist appeal, or vice versa, but there’s an extent to which it must be understood as a zero-sum exercise. The message, ideas, and tone to reach one set of voters necessarily impose limits on reaching others. The Conservative Party may be stuck in a virtual one-for-one tradeoff between its base voters and non-base voters that cannot be further optimized. If that’s right, then the answer isn’t mere adjustments. It’s foundational rethinking.
It may seem counterintuitive, but if Conservatives accept this premise—as former Harper-era chief of staff Guy Giorno notably has—then it can be liberating. It can enable a more fundamental re-evaluation of how Canadian conservatives approach electoral politics. That includes rethinking the electoral system itself.
We recognize that this will sound radical to a lot of Conservatives—particularly those who’ve contributed to the origins and evolution of the Conservative Party itself. But the current system has left conservatives in a recurring bind: even when they consolidate the Right, push their vote share to historic levels, or even win the most votes, they still lose. That’s not just a short-term frustration. It’s starting to look structural.
What if the problem isn’t the messenger or the message, but the model?
The case for proportional representation
This is where proportional representation comes in. Yes, it might fragment the current Conservative coalition. But it could also permit new and different possibilities.
In a proportional system, conservatives would no longer need to house libertarians, social conservatives, Western populists, Quebec nationalists, and others under a single partisan tent. Each group or tendency could organize around its own priorities, campaign for support, and—if successful—participate in building coalitions and influencing government policy.
There’s no guarantee that any one conservative party would govern under PR. But there’s also no guarantee they will under first past the post. In fact, the current system has produced increasingly “all or nothing” outcomes: Conservatives either form government or are completely locked out for a decade or more.
PR would offer something else: a chance to influence public policy more consistently. A dynamic, multi-party system would allow parts of the conservative worldview to shape governing arrangements even when the Conservative Party isn’t in power. That might not be a full victory, but it’s far better than a progressive monopoly over our federal politics.
It would also demand different habits: coalition-building, negotiation, compromise. These are not foreign to conservatism. They are, in fact, consistent with its ethos—its suspicion of grand theories and preference for incrementalism.
This shift would also reorient conservative politics away from partisan loyalty and toward policy influence. The question would no longer be: can the Conservative Party win a majority? It would be: how can conservatives ensure their ideas are regularly reflected in the country’s governing arrangements?
Conservatives may not win all the time under proportional representation. But they’re not winning now. At least PR would offer a pathway to shaping government on a more regularized basis.
If Canadian conservatism is to have a future of influence, it may require a break from its institutional past. That break may begin with a renewed openness to electoral reform—not as surrender, but as strategy.
