Today is Canada’s day to vote for Prime Minister of the country. If the Liberals win, they dodge the global trend of losses for incumbent parties. If the Conservatives win, Canada succumbs to the other global trend — right-wing populism. Both of these trends are documented by Pew Research.

Let me explain why neither result would automatically instill confidence in me.

The CBCNews polling suggests that the center-left Liberal Party is generally favored to win. I am cautiously optimistic about this idea.

Mark Carney — who is the leader of the Liberals — has run a strong campaign about being tough on Trump and bullish against the tariff threat.

Although he is very new to politics, his campaign seems to have done a miraculous job at recovering the Liberal’s favorability rating. It was only a few months ago that the Conservatives were on track to topple everything, as seen here from Reuters.

Since the selection of Mark Carney to run in place of Justin Trudeau — the nation’s now unpopular former Prime Minister — the Liberals seem to have a chance to maintain power.

As much as I want to believe they can overcome, it makes me nervous to emotionally invest so heavily into polling.

I’m reminded of the US election, when Kamala Harris didn’t do as well as people expected she would. There were vibe shifts in voting that the polling didn’t really capture. Left-wing voters staying home, more conservative votes from young people, etc.

Canadian coverage from CBCNN has suggested multiple times this concept of the “shy tory effect”, where conservative voters may be uncomfortable sharing who they are voting for. In this case, polling may appear skewed toward the left… Sounds familiar.

To me, it seems two things could happen:

One. The Liberal’s receive their first defeat in a decade, with the diminishing confidence of the public. (Not likely, but not out of the question.)

Two. Mark Carney pulls through, but must now reckon with the problems he’s inherited. He must now make meaningful change, or else simply push a potential victory for Conservatives down the timeline.

According to Reuter’s, Canada has a dire housing affordability crisis and rising cost-of-living. Polling indicates that these are the top issues right now, just behind Trump tariffs.

My problem is that, for Mark Carney, it’s not good enough to just be the guy sticking it to Trump. He’ll also need to deliver positive meaningful change to people’s lives. Yes, tariffs are a threat, but before Trump took office the people of Canada were ready to vote the Liberals out because of affordability.

What will Mark Carney do to help people struggling to make ends meet? How will he help disenfranchised communities? Is there anything that can be done for Canada’s daunting housing crisis?

I worry that if Canada’s center-left Liberal Party cannot meet these challenges with solutions, then they are only feeding a fire of disillusionment that benefits the right. And the Conservatives, if they were to get into power, would do no better.

With any hope, our potential American left-wing leadership are watching events like this closely.

Now if only AOC could run in a party like Canada’s NDP, that would be an interesting race!