With Hunter Knifton

This week on Craft Politics, we revisit the 2025 Canadian federal election—not with hot takes, but with hard data.

Our guest is Hunter Knifton, the analyst behind the Charting Canada Substack, who’s challenging two of the most commonly accepted narratives about the election.

In this episode:

• 🗳 The myth of the “NDP-to-Conservative switcher”: why it’s not supported by the numbers

• 📉 Why the collapse of the PPC—not a working-class revolt—may explain Conservative gains in key ridings

• 👥 Who actually switched votes—and where? A closer look at new voters, older swing voters, and Carney Conservatives

• 🔄 Why the left didn’t just coalesce around the Liberals—and why the right’s coalition might be more stable than it looks

Plus:

• 🧭 Hunter breaks down his five-part typology of Carney’s voter base—from downtown professionals to rural commuters

• 🧱 What the suburban and rural wins say about the Liberals’ long-term potential

• 🔍 Are the Conservatives targeting the wrong voters with their union strategy?

And don’t miss:

• 🔮 Could Carney’s voter coalition outlast the crisis that built it?

• 🧠 What Pierre Poilievre’s team might need to rethink before the next election

• 📊 A sneak peek at Hunter’s next analysis: are we entering a permanent two-party system—or was 2025 a one-off?

🔊 Listen now if you want a clearer picture of what actually happened in the last election—and why most of us probably got it wrong.

With Bridget Howe and Sarina Rehal

It’s been six months since Mark Carney smashed through the wall of Canadian politics and declared, “This is a crisis.”

He’s been elected. He’s governing. And he’s moving fast.

But how far can a technocrat push before political gravity kicks in?

To take stock of Carney’s first chapter as Prime Minister, we’re joined by Bridget Howe and Sarina Rehal—two Liberal insiders with deep experience in government, campaigns, and caucus dynamics. They give us an unvarnished read on the Carney style, the risks ahead, and what might break first.

In this episode:

• 🧭 How Carney governs—and why it’s a sharp break from Trudeau

• ⏱ The pace of change: real momentum or just top-down theatrics?

• 🧠 Why he’s (so far) been a political novice in name only

• 🤝 Caucus management, cabinet churn, and how long his honeymoon can actually last

Plus:

• 🇺🇸 Can Carney hold the coalition together once Trump fatigue sets in?

• 💸 From scrapping the carbon tax to cutting the digital services tax—how is Carney going to pay for this?

• 🧯 Is he raising expectations faster than government can meet them?

And don’t miss:

• 📉 Why Liberals aren’t missing Pierre Poilievre—or Justin Trudeau

• ⚔️ Can Carney avoid a BC-style fracture over major projects and pipelines?

• 💬 Why Bridget and Sarina disagree on who the Liberals really want to lead the Conservatives

Also in this episode:

• 📊 What Carney needs to deliver by fall to prove this isn’t just business as usual

• 🔮 Is he in it for the long haul—or just the crisis?

With Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor, Sky News

This week, we’re joined by Sam Coates, co-host of Politics at Sam and Anne's and one of the UK’s sharpest political analysts, to make sense of a government struggling to hold the line—on foreign policy, economic discipline, and party unity.

In this episode:

• 🇮🇷 Why the UK backed the ends but not the means of Trump’s strike on Iran
• ⚖️ How Starmer’s deference to legal advice is reshaping UK foreign policy—and what it reveals about his break from Blairism
• 🇺🇸 What it means when the UK is the only country warned in advance of a US strike
• 📉 And why the transatlantic relationship may be less stable than it seems

Then we go domestic:

• 💷 Labour’s looming rebellion on welfare reform:

  • Over 100 Labour MPs openly defying the PM

  • A government with a 165-seat majority on the verge of losing a key vote

  • And no clear plan for what comes next

• 🧨 Starmer’s political gamble: alienating his base to keep markets calm—and failing to please either

• 🗳 Could this trigger a leadership challenge?

And don’t miss:

• 📈 Reform UK’s surge: is Prime Minister Farage still far-fetched—or suddenly plausible?
• 🗺 The open question: what is the relationship between Reform and the Conservatives heading into 2028?

Also on the radar:

• ⚖️ Assisted dying and abortion: the social policies no one campaigned on—but that may define this Parliament