If the Liberal leadership race is causing a stampede of voters to give up on Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, it’s not showing up in the polls.
The latest Leger poll for Postmedia shows Poilievre’s Conservatives well ahead with 43% voter support compared to 25% for the Liberals and 16% for the NDP.
Now, diehard Liberals will likely grasp at paper straws in pointing out that this poll has their party up by four points while the Conservatives are down four points compared to the last Leger survey two weeks ago.
That’s true but this is all within the margin of error and puts both parties back where they had been in previous Leger polls over the past several months. It’s still an 18-point lead for Poilievre and his team and if we had an election today, the Conservatives would still win a massive majority.
Liberals have been hopeful that their leadership race, especially the entrance of Crown Prince Mark Carney, would boost their fortunes. While that may happen one day, it’s not happening now, according to the numbers.
Leger did ask voters whether they supported Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould or someone else to become the next Liberal leader, which by extension will also make them prime minister. Among Liberal voters, Carney was picked by 57%, Freeland by 17%, and Gould by 4%.
When a new leader is chosen, the race between the Liberals and the Conservatives will likely tighten. But with the Conservatives still leading in every region from Ontario to the West Coast and in every demographic group, the Liberals will have their work cut out for them.
While many pundits have said that Poilievre and the Conservatives need to move on from talking about the carbon tax in light of Trump’s tariff threats, the carbon tax has become the central issue in the Liberal leadership race. While Freeland and Gould have said they would scrap the carbon tax, neither has been clear on whether they would replace it with something similar.
Carney, meanwhile, has been anything but clear on what he will do with the carbon tax, though he is on the record from before the leadership race as believing the Trudeau government didn’t set the tax rate high enough.
Asked about the carbon tax, 51% of respondents told Leger they are not confident the Liberal candidates will actually axe the tax if they become PM. A total of 29% said they were not very confident they would get rid of the tax while 22% said not at all confident.
That compares to just 8% saying they are very confident the tax will go, 28% saying they are somewhat confident and 13% saying they did not know.
The carbon tax has been a central policy of the Trudeau government for years, they have boasted about the tax, defended the tax and mostly pretended it wasn’t a tax and saved you money. The public has seen through all of that and the vast majority in Canada want the tax to go.
There is no doubt that the carbon tax will be a top issue whenever the next election is.
Of course, events south of the border, the threat of tariffs and the impact of Donald Trump on our economy are all factors that have grown in importance. How those events play out could fundamentally alter the course of our government, including who Canadians choose to elect.
Last week, in an interview with CTV Atlantic, Poilievre laid out a detailed plan on how he would deal with tariffs if they came. He called for a surgical response that would put retaliatory tariffs on goods we can make here or buy elsewhere but not on goods we can’t replace like so many fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter.
Trump’s White House said again on Tuesday that tariffs for Canada would be coming Feb. 1. Once those tariffs hit, we shall see what impact if any they have on polling and voting intentions.
Stay tuned.