When Donald Trump reflected on the results of Canada’s latest elections, the American president, referring to himself in third person, told reporters: “It was the one who hated Trump the least who won.” That wasn’t even close to being true.
Canada’s Liberals were, as recently as January, struggling badly against Conservatives — right up until Trump returned to the White House, took steps to shatter the relationship between the United States and its allied neighbor, announced plans to try to acquire Canada and make it America’s 51st state, and launched a damaging trade war for reasons that have never made sense.
Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was seen as overtly aligned with Trump, and not only did his party suffer as Liberals held on to power, Poilievre also managed to lose his own seat in Parliament, a seat he had held for over 20 years.
Less than a week later, an eerily similar set of circumstances unfolded nearly 9,000 miles away. Politico reported:
Incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese secured a come-from-behind win for his center-left Labor Party in Australia’s election Saturday while his right-wing challenger lost his seat. The Labor landslide came after Albanese’s government spent months trailing the opposition in polling, but gained support rapidly in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s clash with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
As was the case in the Canadian elections, the center-left Labor Party was faring poorly in national polls up until quite recently. As was the case in the Canadian elections, Labor started gaining ground as part of an anti-Trump backlash. As was the case in the Canadian elections, the candidate most closely associated with the American Republican — Peter Dutton, the hard-right candidate who “embraced MAGA-style politics” — not only fell short of his goal of becoming prime minister, he also appears to have lost his own seat.
The New York Times reported that there’s a “Trump factor … shaping global politics,” but it’s not a trend the White House will like. In major votes in Canada and Australia over the past two weeks, centrists saw their fortunes revived, while parties that had borrowed from the MAGA playbook lost out. President Trump has been back in power for only three months, but already his policies, including imposing tariffs and upending alliances, have rippled into domestic political battles around the world. While it is too soon to say that anti-Trump forces are on the rise globally, it is clear that voters have Mr. Trump somewhere on their mind as they make decisions.
The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. noted in his latest column, “The president hoped his dominance of the world stage would inspire an international swing toward the nationalist far right. Instead, Australians — angry and mystified by Trump’s tariffs — gifted their center-left prime minister, Anthony Albanese, whose Labor Party trailed in the polls only a few months ago, a landslide victory few predicted.” When this happens twice in five days, it’s a safe bet other leaders in democracies around the world took note.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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