Trump was not a significant factor, and that matters

The other issue is the sense in which people use the word Trump. Not everyone is negative towards Trump, nor do they necessarily tie Dutton, or the Coalition to Trump.

So one moving against the LNP out of a sample of 578 does not explain a swing of 2.56%.

This lack of actual influence actually tends to be borne out by the Canadian result, despite even Trump taking the blame for it. In Canada, as per the graph below, you can see the Tory vote held up quite well while Trump was initially insulting “Governor Trudeau” and insisting Canada should be the 51^st state. The turning point was a politician with TRU as the first three letters of his surname, but this was Trudeau. When he resigned on January 6 is when the Canadian Liberal Party’s fortunes started to revive, and the Conservative Party’s to decline.

By Undermedia - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114547795

And during the election campaign the Conservative Party’s figures improved, so that they had their best result since 1988 a year when they won a record majority. The reason they didn’t win this time was tactical voting by left of centre voters.

What happened in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s riding of Carleton illustrates this point. In 2021 35,356 people, or 49.9% voted for Poilievre. In 2025 he totalled 39,585 votes, 4229 votes more, but only scored 45.8%.

That still would have been enough to win in anything resembling the previous election, where the Liberals scored 34.3% of the vote and the New Democratic Party (Canada’s socialist party) 11.5%.

However, this election the left voted tactically. The New Democratic Party dropped to 1.4%. Their total, plus that from other minor parties, along with a 20% surge in voter participation saw Poilievre off, but it would be hard to say it was Trump that did the damage.

The other piece of contrary evidence is the success of Reform in the UK elections. Party leader Nigel Farage is a pal of Trump’s, so if Trump was going to be a factor in an election this was it.

The result was a rebuke to both the major parties. Reform captured 30% of the vote, Labour 20%, the Liberal Democrats 17% and the Conservatives 15%. The Greens won 11%. This gave Reform 43% of the seats on offer.

Reform also won the traditional Labour seat of Runcorn and Helsby in a byelection.