Most Canadians believe Carney will be next prime minister: poll

OTTAWA – With the debates done and the federal election campaign in the final stretch, a new poll suggests most Canadians think the Liberals under Mark Carney are poised to win.

Leger’s online survey — which was conducted online and can’t be assigned a margin of error — polled 1,603 people from April 17 to 21, a period that began with the English language debate and overlapped with both the advance polls and the release of the Liberal and NDP platforms.

It suggests that 55 per cent of all respondents — regardless of their party loyalties — believe Carney will stay on as prime minister after the election, while 25 per cent say they think Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will prevail.

Sixty-four per cent of NDP voters, 75 per cent of Bloc voters and 45 per cent of Green supporters told Leger they think the Liberals will win.

“It’s an extraordinary election in the sense that we have, literally, a two-party race,” said Andrew Enns, Leger’s executive vice-president for Central Canada.

“The Conservatives are running a good campaign, albeit they’re trailing the Liberals. Mr. Carney has performed well his first campaign and his first election. And both parties have issues that are captivating.”

Carney’s Liberals still lead in voting intentions: 43 per cent of respondents said they would vote Liberal if the election were held today, while 39 per cent said they’d vote Conservative.

This poll was conducted while advance polls were open; 11 per cent of respondents told Leger they’d already cast their ballots in advance polls. Twelve per cent of Liberal supporters, 10 per cent of Bloc Québécois and NDP supporters and nine per cent of Conservative supporters said they’d voted in advance polls.

Enns said the poll may reflect mainstream media coverage that has been dominated by the Liberals’ sharp rise in the polls after Carney took on the party leadership.

“There’s very little commentary that really talks much about the Conservatives winning this election,” Enns said, noting most polls project a Liberal majority government.

“Even Conservatives will say they anticipate a Liberal victory,” he said, citing the 27 per cent of Conservative supporters polled who picked Carney’s Liberal party as the likely winner. Another 60 per cent of Conservatives supporters said they believe the Conservatives will win.

Enns said the polling points to some intriguing demographic splits. Leger suggests voters 55 and older are breaking for the Liberals over the Conservatives by 49 per cent to 35 per cent. Among voters aged 18 to 34, meanwhile, 44 per cent back the Conservatives and 38 per cent support the Liberals.

“The Liberals have an advantage there in the sense that they have tapped into support of older voters … and they vote at a higher rate,” Enns said. Leger’s poll suggests 14 per cent of voters 55 and older voted in advance, while just 9 per cent of those under 35 reported doing so.

“But the Conservatives, we’ve seen in some previous polling, have a very motivated voter base,” Enns added. “There’s still room for a few surprises.”

Liberal vote intention is highest in Atlantic Canada (53 per cent), followed closely by Ontario (48 per cent) and Quebec (42 per cent) — key regions for the Liberals that could offer them a pathway to a majority government.

Enns said it’s been decades since Liberals outpolled the Bloc in Quebec. He said the Bloc may struggle to hold the seats it has and probably will lose a few to the Liberals if these numbers hold.

The Conservatives are leading in Alberta (59 per cent) and in Manitoba and Saskatchewan (49 per cent).

Enns said the most intriguing region is British Columbia — where the apparent collapse of NDP support is setting up a lot of two-horse races between Conservatives and Liberals.

At 10 per cent support, the NDP has “dropped off … the electoral polling map” in B.C., Enns said, while the Liberals are polling at 43 per cent and the Conservatives at 41 per cent in the province.

“It will make for some unpredictable riding races,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade aggression remains the top issue motivating voters: Leger reports 35 per cent cited Trump and the U.S. as the factors influencing their choice the most, followed by inflation and health care, both at 22 per cent.

Enns said with election day less than a week away, he doesn’t expect to see any more significant shifts in the polls.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

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Poll aggregator 338 Canada currently has the Liberals projected to win 184 seats, the Conservatives 126, the Bloc Québécois 23 and the NDP nine.

But Enns said polls can only go so far in painting a picture of what to expect on April 28.

“Voter turnout has a big bearing on this,” he said.

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 April 22, 2025.