OTTAWA – The federal Liberals and the Conservatives are running neck-and-neck in voter support, a new Leger online poll suggests.
The poll of Canadians’ voting intentions has both parties sitting at 37 per cent.
It shows a drop of six points for the Conservatives and a seven per cent jump for Liberals since Feb. 24, while the NDP is down two per cent to 11 per cent.
Leger surveyed 1,548 Canadians between March 7 and March 10 — which means the poll wrapped up just after Liberals picked Mark Carney as the new party leader and prime minister-designate.
Because the poll was conducted online, it can’t be assigned a margin of error.
The Liberals have rebounded in the polls after lagging behind the Conservatives for nearly two years.
But Canadians are still hungry for change — the poll suggests more than half of all Canadians, 53 per cent, want a change of government in the next election.
Andrew Enns, Leger executive vice-president for central Canada, said the movement in voting intentions and the “cross-current of issues that Canadians are grappling with” are unprecedented.
He said U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats to make Canada the 51 state have captured the attention of Canadians.
“It’s triggered a lot of emotions, anger, frustration, disappointment, shock, and so that, I believe, is having an impact on changing perceptions because of this change in U.S. relations,” he said. “It’s changed a bit in terms of what we’re asking of our political leadership now in the country.”
The emergence of Carney, a former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, has given Canadians a new political option to evaluate.
“Obviously, given the economic situation, he’s an interesting character,” Enns said.
At the same time, he said, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s departure has “also loosened up some voting tendencies that we had seen locked in for quite a period of time.”
The Conservatives also have been thrown off their message track, Enns said. Carney’s promise to scrap consumer carbon pricing has made Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s “axe the tax” mantra seem less relevant to many.
Enns predicted that as Canada heads into an election, which could be called within days, there will be more swings in voting tendencies.
The polling industry’s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 11, 2024.
