Opinion | We spoke to voters who are ‘truly undecided.’ Here’s why Poilievre and Carney are both failing to win them over

Variously known as swing voters, “floaters,” and “persuadables,” they are doing their due diligence in working towards a vote they feel comfortable with.

Recent Nanos surveys have said Canadians believe this election to be more important than usual, and consider leadership the key issue during turbulent economic times. One in five will likely not make up their minds until 72 hours before election day.

If there were broad conclusions to be drawn from the Star panel’s sampling of undecided voters, they might be described as follows: the economy is the overwhelming issue; affection for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals had disappeared prior to his resignation; and that even former Liberal voters were considering a vote for the Conservatives — but that most have been underwhelmed by the campaign performance of leader Pierre Poilievre.

Sean Aubin, a software engineer who lives in the Toronto riding of Spadina-Harbourfront, demonstrated the sort of rigour brought by many undecided voters to making an informed, considered choice.

“I’m personally waiting for the platforms to get released and then various non-governmental organizations and think-tanks to release their analysis of those platforms,” he said.

Others have come to rely on eventually reaching a place where the information and opinions they gather distil into clarity, comfort or an intuitive feeling of which way to mark their ballot.

While the erratic, sometimes inexplicable behaviour of Washington has focused Canadian minds on safeguarding the economy and electing leadership up to taking on President Donald Trump, the general sense identified by panellists was of a decline of longer standing.

“I’m generally not a single-issue voter,” Sanjiv Purba said, an IT executive in Toronto. “But this time the economy is the number one thing for me.”

He was viewing his choice from an employment perspective, he said. “There are far fewer opportunities than there were before.”

“I want to see which party is going to seriously do something, not just lip service,” he continued. “But which party’s going to understand what caused the problems, what’s caused this kind of degradation in our economy, and what they’re going to do about it?”

Brendan Monk is a 32-year-old criminal lawyer who came of age and graduated into that inhospitable economy.

He did everything he was told he should do, working his way into the profession, but who did not have parents who could help underwrite his education.

As a result, he has about $100,000 in student debt.

“The idea of coming up with a quarter-million dollars in cash to be able to hand to a bank as a down payment, that’s just a pipe dream,” he said.

Now four years into his career, he has set up his own practice with a partner, so is now a small-business owner.

“If you had told me that 10 years ago, I would have told you, you were insane,” he said. “I was about as far left as you could go.”

“I would say I have a more nuanced view of economics now.”

For Monk’s generation, there has never been a golden age or generous economy,

From Bogota, Colombia, Blaise MacLean noted that his daughter, who is a Canadian citizen, wonders about coming north to do postgrad studies or to work but sometimes believes that “maybe we’re better off here for the moment.”

“These are the things that worry me and this is why I don’t know where to put my X.”

When Sharon O’Halloran immigrated to Canada from the U.K., she found a country full of opportunity.

“When my kids were growing up, I always said to them, ‘you have been so lucky, you have been born into a great country, and you should be so proud to be Canadian.’”

Now, with her kids holding British passports and fluent in other languages, she talks to them about the possibilities in London or elsewhere in the world.

“It kills me to say that,” she said. “We did have an amazing country. Canada couldn’t be beaten. And it just doesn’t feel the same anymore.”

Comfortingly, during these times of fractured relations between Canada and the United States, the most ringing defence of this country, warts and all, came from an immigrant from America.

Linda Tyndall, a retired dual citizen from Ohio who lives in midtown Toronto and came to Canada more than 50 years ago, said “I think it’s a wonderful country, absolutely, totally wonderful.”

“Thank God I’ve lived most of my adult life here in Canada and my kids and my grandkids are all here.”

What was perhaps telling in the Star’s discussion with the undecided panel were the dogs that didn’t bark, the people and issues scarcely mentioned.

In what appears to be a two-way race, the New Democratic Party and Leader Jagmeet Singh received scant attention, as did issues beyond the economy and the challenge of the second Trump administration.

What recurringly arose was the suggestion that there had been ground to be gained by Poilievre and his Conservatives from an undecided pool weary of Liberals and fretting about the economy — but that the CPC leader had failed to impress.

Tyndall, a retired teacher and small-business owner, said she was close to supporting the Conservatives because she found Justin Trudeau “a bit of a wuss.” But Poilievre “has nothing going for him.”

Carol Easton, a legal researcher and historian living in Guelph, agreed.

“Sometimes parties need a refresher course in humility and I was sort of there with the Liberals,” she said. But “I just keep looking at the Conservatives and saying, ‘I don’t know who these people are.’”

“I’m just kind of scared right now to not vote for Mark Carney because the other side is very much of an unknown quantity to me.”

For MacLean: “I’ve been wanting to vote Conservative in this election, but I’m not seeing any reason to.”

While Poilievre has been a prolific critic of all he sees wrong with the performance and character of rivals, “I don’t know what he stands for,” MacLean said.

“My concern is chaos — electing somebody because there’s a problem … and getting a worse government and a worse situation than we’re in right now.”

John Penturn, a Toronto headhunter who considered himself a red Tory, said Poilievre’s decision to ban media from travelling with his campaign entourage and aversion to taking questions has hindered his ability to get a message out.

He said the Conservative leader doesn’t seem to relate well to people and seems to lack emotional intelligence.

“And if you don’t have much emotional intelligence, you’re not very empathetic.”

Sharon O’Halloran, who had been well and truly fed up after three Liberal victories, said she now feels that “Poilievre is going to talk himself out of being elected. Because I think he could have done a lot more than what he’s done.”

To MacLean, this election is worth the demands of reasoning one’s way to a decision “because I think we’re at a point which is very existential.”

“It’s not about tweaking little things here or there.”

So for the undecideds, the reading, talking, deliberating, weighing, soul-searching continues.

“In the past when I voted, I’ve always been very secure in the reason why I was voting and felt that it was the right party to vote for,” said O’Halloran.

“This time, I’m just not getting that feeling from either party.”

Blaise MacLean is a Cape Bretoner, a Liberal activist in his youth, who practised law in Nova Scotia and Ontario before moving 22 years ago to teach international law at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogota, Colombia.

He is committed to the Liberals no longer, is “truly, truly, truly undecided,” will vote from afar in the riding of Oshawa in the April 28 federal election, and is worried about what he sees as Canada’s decline.

Sharon O’Halloran still carries the accent of her native Liverpool, came to Canada more than 40 years ago, lived in Oakville, and now in Oro-Medonte north of Barrie.

She’s finding it very difficult to decide who to support and is framing her choice largely through the diminished prospects she sees facing her children.

“My son, who is living with me, has a degree in economics, a degree in health sciences, and he does coding for computers and still cannot find a job,” she says.

“It is a very, very different country” than when her generation was starting their careers.

Sanjiv Purba is an IT executive with three children who lives in Mississauga, works in downtown Toronto, and has never been so fearful for the Canadian economy, which he saw deteriorating even before the tariff wars launched by U.S. President Donald Trump.

He’s voted for all parties in the past, leans Liberal but until that party’s leadership change to Mark Carney from Justin Trudeau “was going to vote Conservative, with some misgivings.

“Now, I’m truly undecided,” he said.