The Elephant’s Pirouette

In an election as massive and messy as a Canadian federal one, nuance rarely survives. Yet somehow, out of this unwieldy national ritual, emerged a gesture so precise and telling it bordered on poetic: Pierre Poilievre lost his seat.

That singular fact is, for me, the clearest sign of the surprising wisdom embedded in this election. It’s like watching an elephant perform a pirouette. You can’t help but ask—how is such art even possible?

Before the campaign began, my theory was simple: the towering Conservative lead wasn’t about love for Poilievre, but fatigue with Trudeau. Canadians weren’t necessarily shifting rightward—they were simply tired of the prime minister’s face on their screens, his carefully calibrated empathy, his tendency to emote rather than decide. The weariness calcified, for many, when Trudeau visited Mar-a-Lago. Predictably, trump called him “Governor”—a humiliation for all Canadians. That trip, tone-deaf in the extreme, marked the end of Trudeau’s political viability. He didn’t seem to grasp how trump would spin such a move—as submission. Trudeau had to go.

But that didn’t mean Poilievre was beloved. Quite the opposite. He had risen not on inspiration, but inertia—benefiting from the cyclical appetite for change that sets in after two terms of any government. And I suspected that the more Canadians saw and heard him, the less they would like him. On election night, that hunch proved correct—spectacularly so.

The Liberal Party, for all its flaws, remains an adroit political machine. First, it did the hard thing: removing an incumbent leader who had clearly lost the public’s trust. Then it made a strategic pivot, grasping that this election would not be about policy, but about existential leadership—about who could best defend Canada from the looming menace of a second trump presidency. They chose Mark Carney, a candidate who in almost every respect is trump’s opposite: intelligent, methodical, experienced, competent, decent. (Full disclosure: I voted for Chrystia Freeland in the leadership race. I was clearly wrong.)

Crucially, the Liberals blurred the policy lines between themselves and the Conservatives, narrowing the election to a binary choice of leadership. And it worked. What had seemed destined to be a three- or four-way vote-split realigned into a two-party race. Progressives moved away from the NDP. Singh, like Poilievre, lost his seat.

To be clear, the Conservatives still had a relatively strong night. They gained in popularity and in seats. The desire for change is real and growing. But they were ultimately undone by their leader’s deep unpopularity—especially in Quebec. And in a campaign focused on gravitas, trust, and moral steadiness, Poilievre’s gleeful combativeness wore thin.

Sometimes, democracy astonishes. Not because it always gets everything right—but because it occasionally gets the mood, the message, and the moment exactly right.

This was one of those times. An elephant just did a pirouette.