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Unlike Trump, Conservatives鈥� standing with women is largely within their control. Yet for all their focus on deficits, they stubbornly chose to ignore their deficit among female voters, despite having ample resources and time, as well as favourable issues to play with.

It鈥檚 a bad Conservative habit that persists across leaders and elections: ignore the issues and demographics you鈥檙e losing on and double down on base support. While this may work sometimes, you can鈥檛 simply opt out of appealing to women and expect to win an election, let alone majority government.

When Poilievre enjoyed a 25-point lead and victory seemed assured, perhaps the Conservatives figured they didn鈥檛 need to reach out to women. Instead of expanding the big blue tent, they focused on internal battles over which type of conservative deserved to be in it. As they slid in the polls, it became abundantly clear that they should鈥檝e spent less energy on conducting purity tests and more on fixing their women problem.

The Conservative platform release was the party鈥檚 last chance to move the needle before election day. Yet the platform all but ignored women as a unique voting demographic. Outside of promising tougher penalties for intimate-partner violence, it made no apparent effort to sway female voters 鈥� another in a long history of missed opportunities concerning Conservatives and women.

Rather than focus almost exclusively on a leader who, at best, struggled to click with half the population, it would鈥檝e been better for the Conservative campaign to have shared the spotlight with the broader team, including female candidates with a range of communication styles. That it chose not to is how we ended up with the hooplah over Poilievre鈥檚 remark about standing up for the 鈥�36-year-old couple whose biological clock is running out faster than they can afford to buy a home and have kids.鈥�

Poilievre鈥檚 decision to appeal to younger women wasn鈥檛 wrong, nor was his focus on the issues of fertility and delayed family formation. As a 36-year-old woman (and former candidate for the Conservative nomination in Aurora鈥揙ak Ridges鈥揜ichmond Hill), I can confirm that they鈥檙e regular topics of conversation among friends. It was the language used and the person using it that were off: it should鈥檝e been a female candidate. That misstep, combined with the Conservatives鈥� lacklustre track record on these issues, made skepticism among female voters inevitable.

After the blowback, Poilievre never so much as mentioned the subject again. This was exactly the wrong instinct. The Conservatives acted like a child who falls off their bike once and never goes within three feet of it again. They should instead have gotten back on the bike, taking the conversation to female voters and matching it with meaningful policy. Like millennials and Gen Z, who were once thought to have been permanently lost to the Liberals and NDP, women can be won over if the Tories make a sustained effort.

They could start by leaning into the Conservative focus on family values and community. Next time around, they should create their own version of Justin Trudeau鈥檚 plan for 鈥渉elping the middle class and people working hard to join it鈥� 鈥� except make it 鈥渉elping young parents and those aspiring to become parents.鈥� This could include Conservative approaches to affordable child care, modernizing parental leave, improving access to fertility treatments and axing taxes that disproportionately affect families with young children. To remain silent on these issues is not a viable option. The party must build a track record of addressing them powerfully and intelligently as soon as possible.

Now that the Liberals have won a fourth mandate, the Conservatives will have to do a lot of soul-searching to figure out how it all went so wrong. Fixing their dismal relationship with women must be part of that conversation.