338 Sunday Update: Liberals Edge Back Into Majority Territory
Recent polling shows rising Liberal numbers across key regions, while NDP support slips close to last spring’s disastrous levels.
Happy Sunday, dear 338Canada readers,
Today’s update will be a brief one, as I spent the last week working on the site’s code to improve navigation and mobile friendliness. The federal pages have all been uploaded and the cache emptied. Thank you, dear readers, for your patience.
Polls over the past three weeks have detected a significant surge in Liberal support, with the magnitude varying by firm. After nearly eight months of relatively stagnant numbers among the main parties, the latest federal polls clearly stand out in the chart:
This upward movement for the Liberals — and in Mark Carney’s personal numbers — has not come at the expense of the Conservatives, at least not significantly. Instead, the NDP and, to a lesser extent, the Bloc Québécois have both seen their rolling averages decline.
hile Mainstreet’s 4% figure for the NDP sits at the extreme low end, it is partly offset by Nanos Research’s 13% reading in January. Other firms have measured the NDP between 5% and 10% nationally — still no significant comeback for the orange team compared with last April.
The key question now is whether this is a short-lived surge or a more sustainable, medium-term level of support for the Liberals. Opinions will differ, but nobody truly knows yet — we will follow the data.
Regionally, the Liberals are regaining some ground, particularly in Ontario and British Columbia. As mentioned above, the Conservatives still enjoy more than respectable support in both provinces (around 40% in each), but the erosion of NDP support is not producing the kind of vote split the Conservatives would need to gain additional ground.
With an average six-point lead in Ontario, the Liberals stand at an average of 73 seats in the province, compared with 49 for the Conservatives. Naturally, the seat distributions remain wide and the projections overlap, but the Conservatives’ upper range barely reaches the Liberals’ current average (see chart below).
In British Columbia, the numbers have largely returned to their 2025 election levels.
In Quebec, the Bloc appears to have lost its pre-holiday bump.
Overall, the Liberals have slipped back — just barely — into majority territory. If the party’s wider lead observed in recent weeks is sustained, they should continue to climb in the projection.
We will leave it there for today. Much more to come this week, so stay tuned.
Visit the 338Canada federal page for details of this projection. Find your riding here. The complete list of federal polls is available here. The Alberta provincial projection has also been updated, see it here.
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