there may be a relevant historical comparison in the 1993 canadian election, which resulted in the progressive conservative party being completely wiped out due to the introduction of a tax called the gst. conservatives don't like taxes and abandoned the government over it. 

however, canada is not a two party system, so what happened was that the right fractured into a more conservative reform party and a more centrist conservative party. the reform party swept the conservative parts of bc, alberta and saskatchewan while the liberals won by huge margins everywhere else because the pcs and reform party split the vote. eventually, the eastern rump left in the conservative party merged back into the reform party and rebranded itself as a new conservative party, leading to the election of stephen harper in 2006. he then reduced the gst by two points. 

abortion was also a factor, as the mulroney government did not write an abortion law when the courts threw it out, but harper did not bring one in when he won a majority in 2011.

opposition to tariffs amongst republicans is probably not about canada and not about any specific application but probably more ideologically broad.

republicans in the modern era have tended to have a strong ideological opposition to government interference in the economy. it's not specific, it's general, and it's a core political position.

i'm imagining the liberal party of canada supporting market healthcare or the democrats opposing abortion. they would lose a lot of voters.

i don't have any quantification because trump tried to viciously silent dissent about the topic but it's easier to believe that these actual conservative voters would stay home than that they would all of a sudden embrace government intervention in the economy.

while the eisenhower coalition has generally not worked well for republicans, one might want to take note that the single largest demographic in the 2026 midterms was atheist voters, and that a lot of them are going to be more than a little annoyed by the direction the democrats are turning in.

atheists - 27%

evangelicals - 17%

further, atheists are a faster growing population than evangelicals.

it is relatively predictable that whoever controls the atheist vote is going to be in a strong position in 2028.

i'm going to suggest the obvious - conservatives in the neo-liberal era have, generally, been pretty liberal economically, and not very supportive of economic protectionism.

it's a pretty good guess that quite a few republican voters decided that trump isn't very conservative, economically, and decided to sit this one out for that reason.

besides the absence of abortion on the ballot, the economic protectionism in the trump administration might have been a major driver in suppressing the vote.

pence is a more serious candidate in 2028.

the republican party has a decades old base of evangelicals, market fundamentalists and values voters that coalesced under reagan and that pence - who scares the hell out of me - represents. it has also recently made gains in small demographics, and those gains can be attributed to trump. you can present an argument that these small gains flipped close districts, but you're pushing propaganda in doing so.

the mainstream media is trying to advance the narrative that trump lost the election because these minor gains in small demographics flipped. they're doing this because they're basically mouthpieces for the democratic party, and it allows the party operatives to retain the narrative that trump managed to steal from them in 2024, which is that close elections are about flipping racial minorities.

but if you look closely at the data in 2024, you'll see that key democratic-leaning demographics in close races were unwilling to vote for a black woman, while key republican-leaning demographics in close races were eager to vote against the black woman.

but 2024 was close and turnout was steady.

you simply can't explain these results by appealing to shifts in numerically small demographics. this election wasn't about carrying the eskimo vote.

the republican party's core base - pence voters - saw dramatic decreases in turnout. that's why you saw these large shifts.

the republican party will struggle to compete anywhere without it's core base engaged, unless it rebuilds a new one, and it's not going to find enough voters to win anywhere via joe rogan podcasts. the isolationists and male supremacists are a fringe minority. the election has to be close before you can talk about small demographics swinging it, and the republicans need to get their base engaged again, or elections are not going to be close for a while.

logically, there's two answers for the republicans:

1. run somebody like pence and double down on whiteness and christianity, hope the democrats pick a weak candidate and try to win by galvanizing the base (that's how they won in 2024). 

2. abandon the evangelical base to the democrats (which is where they came from decades ago) and try to peel democrats that won't go along with the direction the democrats are going in away from them. the republicans have run these candidates before, but not for a long time, and it often hasn't been very successful. this would look something more like an eisenhower coalition.

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/mike-pence-says-vance-was-wrong-to-say-iran-war-caused-gop-midterm-losses-273549893844

the possibility that iran might try to conquer iraq or kuwait or cross the straight and land in the arabian peninsula is not very remote. it has happened before.

you'll note that oman is not viewed well by the other arab countries and that trump has made some threats directed at them. the reason for that is that iran has historical claims to both oman and yemen. oman is an arab country that has spent a large amount of time under direct iranian rule.

so, what do you antiwar useful idiots do if something like that happens?

they're broadcasting that they're going to do it. that's not the same thing as doing it, but you need to remove your head from your ass and realize that there is a real problem here that needs to be addressed with real policies.

that's right, carney.

you're not the boss of boxcar pierre. 

you're not his mom.

Pierre, monte tout de suite ; ta poutine refroidit sur la table.

Maman ! Je joue au Premier ministre à la Francophonie !

Non. Monte ici tout de suite.

Désolé, monsieur dictateur de French Shityana, je dois monter manger maintenant.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-paul-st-pierre-plamondon-francophonie-vote-9.7422366