Liberals hold slight lead over Tories in battle for Manitoba: poll NDP support up; crunch time arrives for candidates ahead of Monday’s federal election By: Chris Kitching Posted: 4:19 PM CDT Wednesday, Apr. 23, 2025

A new Probe Research poll suggests the federal NDP’s chances of retaining seats in Manitoba have improved, while the incumbent Liberals continue to lead the Conservatives by a slight margin.

The survey, released ahead of Monday’s general election, found 43 per cent of respondents (who are decided or leaning toward a party) support the Liberals and 40 per cent back the Tories, ahead of 15 per cent for the New Democrats.

Among those polled in Winnipeg, the Liberals hold a wider lead over the Conservatives (50 per cent to 32 per cent), while NDP support climbed to 16 per cent.

“The (Winnipeg) numbers kind of reflect what we’re seeing nationally — that Liberal support just starting to soften a little bit, and the Tories up just a tiny bit,” Probe Research partner Mary Agnes Welch said.

“The thing that is kind of quite interesting in our numbers is that NDP rebound — not totally, maybe not enough — but there’s a cadre of voters that are returning to the NDP in these final days of the race.”

A March survey suggested support within Manitoba for the New Democrats, led by Jagmeet Singh, dropped to nine per cent from 22 per cent in February. The poll put Mark Carney’s Liberals and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives in a tight race (at 44 per cent and 42 per cent, respectively).

Welch said some traditional NDP supporters are gravitating back to the party after an “anti-Tory vote” coalesced around Carney earlier in the campaign amid signs of strategic voting.

Some national polls, which give the Liberals a lead, suggest the NDP is in danger of dropping enough seats across Canada to lose official party status in Parliament.

“The (Winnipeg) numbers kind of reflect what we’re seeing nationally — that Liberal support just starting to soften a little bit, and the Tories up just a tiny bit.”–Probe Research Mary Agnes Welch

Singh is making a campaign stop in the Elmwood-Transcona riding on Wednesday to help rally support for incumbent Leila Dance, who was first elected in a byelection last year.

“I’m still seeing the same strong support that I saw in the byelection,” Dance said prior to Singh’s visit. “I don’t follow the polls. I’m really just focused in on every door that I knock.”

Other candidates in Elmwood-Transcona include the Conservatives’ Colin Reynolds and the Liberals’ Ian MacIntyre, who placed second and third, respectively, in the byelection.

Before the campaign officially began March 23, the Conservatives held seven of Manitoba’s 14 seats in the House of Commons. The Liberals had four and the NDP three.

Elmwood-Transcona, Winnipeg Centre, which also has an NDP incumbent, and Winnipeg West, which the Conservatives won in 2021 by less than 500 votes, are among the races Welch is watching closely.

“That rebound for the NDP means Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre) and Leila Dance (Elmwood-Transcona) aren’t in as much trouble as they might have been two weeks ago, and they might have a bit of a better shot at getting re-elected,” she said.

Welch said a “sleeper” in this election could be Kildonan-St. Paul, which is traditionally a “fairly safe” Tory riding but was won by the Liberals in 2015.

The candidates include Conservative incumbent Raquel Dancho, Thomas Naaykens (Liberal) and Emily Clark (NDP).

Dancho said she’s following national polling closely, along with data her team has collected.

“We have excellent local data analysis from the past number of elections that we’ve run, and then extrapolated to national polls currently and in the last elections,” she said. “The overall data analysis with national polling from this election, last few elections and our local polling from this election (and) last election, it puts us in a very strong position to win on election night.”

Until a few months ago, opinion polls suggested Poilievre and the Tories would soundly defeat the Liberals, under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, and the NDP in an election that had to be held on or before Oct. 20.

The party experienced a resurgence amid a leadership change and U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of tariffs and annexation.

“What I’ve been hearing at the door over the last number of months, in particular, is that my constituents in Winnipeg South Centre want an adult in the room to deal with the provocations that we’re facing from the American administration,” said Liberal incumbent Ben Carr, whose challengers include Royden Brousseau of the Conservatives and Jorge Requena Ramos of the NDP.

“My conversations with those that I am seeking to represent again suggest, overwhelmingly, that they believe that Mr. Carney’s experience, character and composure, particularly when contrasted with that of Mr. Poilievre, leaves them feeling as though he is the best choice to meet the moment.”

Support for the Greens and People’s Party of Canada appears to have evaporated in Manitoba, Welch said. Both parties garnered one per cent in Probe’s online survey of 800 adults, which was conducted between April 8 and 14.

No margin of error can be ascribed to an online panel sample. Probe said a probabilistic sample of 800 adults would have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

— with files from Malak Abas

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

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Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.