338 Sunday Update: Is the Last Liberal Bastion Slipping?

Recent polls show signs of Liberals fatigue in Quebec

Last August, when the polling consensus suddenly showed the federal Conservatives ahead of the Liberals by double digits, many — including yours truly — warned readers about “wonky” summer polling. Without disputing the CPC surge, I wrote we would only know once come fall whether Conservatives were in fact ahead by such a margin over the Liberals, as no such CPC lead had been sustained since the middle of the SNC-Lavalin affair in 2019 (A lead Andrew Scheer’s CPC would squander in time for the October general election of that year).

Yet here we are in the middle of November, and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are still polling around the 40 percent mark, 12-15 points ahead of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, on average. Naturally, such sustained numbers have fuelled much speculation about 1) Trudeau taking his walk in the snow, 2) Liberal MPs looking for an alternative, and 3) the NDP being tempted to break their alliance with the Liberals.

More concerning for the Liberals however is that many polls of late seemed to suggest a softening of support in the LPC’s last remaining bastion: Quebec.

Let us first go through last week’s numbers, then present this week’s 338Canada projection update (November 12, 2023).