The polls didn’t lie—at least not the ones from Abacus Data. But while the overall results may have fallen within the expected margin, the 2025 federal election revealed deep and persistent divides in Canada’s political geography and voter demographics.
In this one-on-one interview with RealAgriculture’s Shaun Haney, David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, breaks down what the numbers really say about where political allegiances lie — and why they matter for farmers, ranchers, and rural communities.
“The urban-rural divide… it certainly didn’t weaken,” Coletto says. “When I combined our last three surveys… the Conservatives won by 20 points [in rural areas].” That division remains especially stark across Western Canada, where rural voters overwhelmingly backed the Conservative Party, even as urban centres shifted liberal.
Beyond geography, Coletto highlights a generational trend with longer-term implications.
“Young people were much more likely to be telling us… they were focused on housing, on the cost of living,” Coletto says. That concern translated into stronger Conservative support among younger demographics — particularly young men — flipping the long-standing assumption that youth equals Liberal or NDP votes.
For Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party, the results present a paradox: strong in popular vote, yet unable to translate that into seat wins in key urban areas. Still, Coletto says that the way forward for the Conservatives is not all negative.
“This may be the next step in a series of steps to get them to a place where they can win a durable majority… their coalition of voters, if it holds, are younger and therefore maybe more durable over the long term.”
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