The federal Liberals are holding 43 per cent of support amongst decided Canadian voters, maintaining a lead over the Conservatives, who dropped two points last month to 36 per cent, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll.
Support for the Liberals has not changed since a Nov. 3 poll. The Bloc Québécois, meanwhile, gained two points amongst decided voters to sit at nine per cent support, and the NDP was up one point with eight per cent support, according to the survey conducted Nov. 28 to 30.
“There is no clear advantage for any party when you look at these numbers to suggest that going into an election would be a really good idea,” Andrew Enns, Leger’s executive vice-president for Central Canada, said Thursday.
“I don’t see anything positive for any of the two frontrunners to suggest that they’ve got a really clear path to victory.”
Almost half of Canadians (49 per cent) indicated they are satisfied with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government, while 40 per cent are dissatisfied.
Approval of Carney’s performance remained unchanged at 51 per cent (down from 55 per cent in July); disapproval stands at 38 per cent.
According to Enns, the numbers suggest a recent Conservative resignation and a floor crossing, the passing of the 2025 budget, and a second round of major project announcements had little impact on the way Canadians see the government and federal political parties.
Voters “are still waiting for the new government to start to move forward on some of its promises and not really kicking the tires of any of the opposition parties right now, in any meaningful way,” Enns said.
“They’re sort of parked.”
Satisfaction with federal opposition leaders remains low, with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre at 31 per cent, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May at 26 per cent, the Bloc’s Yves-François Blanchet at 19 per cent, and Don Davies, interim leader of the NDP, at 17 per cent.
Carney leads as the preferred prime minister amongst 40 per cent of those polled, followed by Poilievre at 28 per cent.
Thirty-one per cent of women polled didn’t know which leader they would support, nearly double the rate of men (16 per cent).
“If you look under the hood a little bit, there is a significant number of voters who are pretty ambivalent about all of these individuals,” Enns said.
“From a political perspective, that always presents a bit of an opportunity to go out and try to convince them – make your case — so we’ll see how that goes in the New Year.”
Seventy-eight per cent of Conservative supporters said Poilievre should stay on as the party’s leader, while the majority of those who support the other parties believe he should step down.
“That sort of gives you a temperature check on how Conservative supporters feel about Poilievre,” Enns said.
“It’s not a slam dunk ringing endorsement. But it doesn’t necessarily indicate that there’s a real groundswell of dissatisfaction either.”
The online survey polled 1,579 people across Canada and the results were weighted according to age, gender, mother tongue, region, education and presence of children in the household. A margin of error cannot be applied. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size would yield a margin of error of plus or minus 2.47 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
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