A poll published this week by the firm Ipsos found Canada’s leftist Liberal Party overtaking the Conservatives in support for the first time since 2021, shortly before an expected election to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The survey, published on Wednesday in conjunction with the media outlet Global News, found the two parties within the margin of error of each other’s support. About 38 percent of respondents said they supported the Liberal Party, compared to 36 percent for the Conservatives. Support for the New Democratic Party (NDPs), a far-left rival to the Liberals, almost entirely collapsed to 12 percent. The poll’s margin of error is 3.8 percent.
It is unclear at press time if the poll is an outlier in showing a Liberal lead. Other polling recently has not seen the Liberals tally a clear chance of winning, but have documented a decrease in Conservative support in the past two months.
The results are heartening for Liberals who saw their support plummet last year as Trudeau mishandled the beginning of the administration of President Donald Trump in America, who immediately chastised Canada for not doing enough to stop human and drug trafficking across the U.S.-Canada border. Trump has threatened to impose a 25-percent tariff on Canadian goods if Ottawa does not take his concerns seriously, a threat he also levied at Mexico. China is facing a separate ten-percent tariff threat for its outsized role in the fentanyl trade.
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Prior to the Ipsos poll published this week, the Conservatives, led by Parliament member Pierre Poilievre, were polling significantly higher than both the Liberals and NDP combined. At their peak, the Conservatives were enjoying a 26-percent lead over the Liberals earlier this year.
The CBC’s monitor of polling averages still showed the Conservatives with a lead as of February 23, but a diminishing one.
“For the seventh consecutive week, the margin between the Conservatives and Liberals has shrunk,” the CBC reported on that day. “The Conservatives remain the favourites to win the most seats in an election held today, but there is a one-in-four chance that the party would fail to secure a majority government.”
The latest estimate found Conservatives attracting 41.8 percent support, the 27.4 percent support for the Liberals, and the NDP at about 15 percent.
Canada is scheduled to hold a general election this year sometime before October. Opposition parties have been clamoring for elections as soon as possible in light of Trudeau’s announcement in January that he would resign from the prime ministership, which he held for about a decade.
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Rather than resign outright and allow Canadians to choose another leader, Trudeau announced that he would give the Liberal Party until late March to choose a new leader, ample time to repair the image of the party by distancing it from the widely unpopular Trudeau. To do this, the prime minister used a procedure called “prorogation” which paralyzes the Canadian Parliament. Lawmakers have not been able to meet and address critical political issues since January and, if prorogation continues, will not be able to do so until March 21.
The Ipsos poll found widespread support for not just an end to prorogation but elections as soon as possible to install a leadership team to address the Trump tariff threat. Ipsos reported that 86 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “we need a federal election immediately so we can have a prime minister and government with a strong mandate to deal with the tariff threat.” That is up from 77 percent who said the same in January. Nearly half of Canadians said they “strongly” agreed with that sentiment.
While the poll slide is largely bad news from Conservatives, the Ipsos poll had some silver linings for Poilievre. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said Poilievre would negotiate best with Trump of all the current party leaders, including candidates to lead the Liberals. Liberal would-be leader Mark Carney garnered 23 percent support as the most competent to handle Trump. Only 11 percent said Trudeau was the most qualified to deal with Trump.
Poilievre’s conservatives have struggled to establish themselves as the most aggressive team to confront Trump’s tariff threats while also maintaining a conservative identity. Poilievre has been strongly critical of the tariff threats while simultaneously conceding that he agrees with Trump’s grim assessment of border security and crime under the Trudeau administration.
“Common Sense Conservatives condemn President Trump’s massive, unjust and unjustified tariffs which will damage both American and Canadian economies,” Poilievre proclaimed in early February. “We share the longest undefended border and fought alongside Americans in two world wars, Korea and Afghanistan, where 158 of our brave men and women died helping the U.S. avenge the 9/11 attacks. There is no justification whatsoever for these tariffs this treatment.”
Rather than propose policies to hurt the American economy or antagonize Trump directly, however, Poilievre’s signature policy proposals for addressing the tariff threat have consisted of taking action to secure the border and stop the fentanyl trade – thus responding to Trump’s demands – and sprawling reforms to Canada’s onerous inter-provincial trade laws to allow for truly free trade domestically, making Canada less dependent on America.
