These young people are voting Conservative and it speaks to a larger trend, says political science professor
Canada, N.L., have been under Liberal leadership for a decade
One Memorial University student is working to revive the MUN Conservatives club for the first time since 2021.
Ahsan Kaleem moved to Newfoundland and Labrador from Pakistan in 2016. He is in the process of getting his Canadian citizenship approved, and if all goes well, 2025 will mark his first time participating in a Canadian election.
The federal Conservatives will have his vote.
"I learned more about Canadian culture, politics, and economics since 2016. It's just cost of living is going up, and everything and the quality of life is going down," Kaleem said.
With a federal election looming, Kaleem saw a gap in Conservative representation on campus.
"There are already NDP and Liberal clubs, but there wasn't anything for Conservatives, and that's where I believe that we should start having those conversations now," he said.
Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is campaigning, in part, on what he's calling "common sense" Conservatism — branding that resonates with Kaleem.
Kaleem believes young people have been sold political ideals for too long.
"There has sort of been a little more cancel culture toward if you say you're Conservative, you're not considered cool," Kaleem said. "I'll come up with my own slogan saying 'it's cool to be Conservative.'"
Focus on housing, affordability
Kaleem isn't alone in his political stance.
Young people's political priorities are becoming more focused on their immediate needs — housing and the cost of living — compared to a decade ago, says a political science professor.
"Justin Trudeau, of course, won 10 years ago with a great deal of youth support. But that was 10 years ago, and so, today's young people aged 18 to 25 weren't part of that wave," said Jonathan Malloy, who studies parliamentary government at Carleton University in Ottawa.
"The young people that supported him 10 years ago are now 10 years older."
The 2015 federal election saw a huge increase in turnout among young Canadians — particularly young Canadian women — who helped Trudeau win.
Roughly 58 per cent of newly eligible voters turned out to vote in that election.
This year, nationally, Malloy expects those in the 18 to 30 age bracket will swing more toward the Conservative Party of Canada than in past elections.
He says some young people are putting their concerns about the environment and social justice on the back burner.
"Young people are more concerned about what I'll call bread and butter issues than in the past," he said. "Young people today are concerned about themselves, their ability to get good jobs, their ability to be able to afford a home or to pay rent."
Young men for Poilievre
With both a provincial and federal election on the horizon, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians will eventually have to cast ballots twice this year, and that could lead to a change in both levels of government for the first time in 10 years.
Trudeau's Liberals have been trailing Poilievre's Conservatives by more than 20 points in the polls for over a year.
Malloy said young men are among Poilievre's strongest supporters.
"Young men, there's definitely a gender divide there, and in fact, they're among the core of the federal Conservative support for Pierre Poilievre," he said.
With an emphasis on blue-collar labour and hard work, Malloy said Poilievre's values resonate for some young men who feel left out of the Trudeau government.
Federal Conservative candidate for Terra Nova-The Peninsulas, Jonathan Rowe, is an example of one of these young men.
From Clarenville, N.L., Rowe is 27. If elected, he could be one of the province's youngest Conservative MPs.
CBC News asked Rowe for an interview, but he declined, saying he was directed to by the Conservative Party of Canada.
The CPC did not respond to the CBC's request for comment.
Blue wave in N.L.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, six of seven Members of Parliament are Liberal — and five of them aren't seeking re-election.
Éric Grenier, a poll analyst with The Writ, is also running the CBC's poll tracker for the federal campaign. He anticipates that on election day Newfoundland and Labrador will follow what looks to be the trend across the country and end up mostly blue, with one or two red or orange dots around St. John's.
Grenier believes the sole Newfoundland and Labrador Conservative MP Clifford Small will win again in his Coast of Bays-Central-Notre Dame riding.
Grenier says he thinks Conservatives are likely to pick up the Newfoundland and Labrador seats of Bonavista-Burin-Trinity, Avalon, Long Range Mountains and Labrador.
"Those look pretty likely to swing over to the Conservatives. The Liberals won them by relatively small margins last time," he said.
Ready for change
Meanwhile, Kristina Ennis, president of Newfoundland and Labrador's PC Women's Association, said she doesn't know an adult life under a PC premier or Conservative prime minister.
Voting for the opposition, she said, is a vote for change.
WATCH | Meet the young student who says it's cool to be Conservative:
"I think people are ready to see a change, and whether that change will be effective, who knows? Nobody really knows, but if we don't try something else, we will never know if that other option was better," she said.
Ennis was the PC candidate for St. John's West in the 2021 provincial election. On the campaign trail, she said she noticed some people's voting habits date back to Newfoundland's confederation — when Liberal premier Joey Smallwood was at the helm.
"It's not uncommon to knock on a door in N.L., and someone references Joey Smallwood," Ennis said. "I find a lot of folks really just gravitate towards the party that maybe their parents or their grandparents supported for a really long time."
She says the issues concerning young people are political.
"Things that are political are things that our government is in control over, and they're the responsible organization to run it," Ennis said.
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