Poilievre’s Numbers Slip as Leadership Review Nears
Party support remains (mostly) stable, but new polling shows a deterioration in the Conservative leader’s personal standing.
With the benefit of hindsight (and regular polling), anyone looking at the federal numbers released since late summer would likely reach the same conclusion: the federal landscape — at least as far as the main parties are concerned — has remained remarkably stable. This is not unexpected, given that Canada just went through a federal election last April.
Post-election numbers tend to crystallize for a while — until they don’t.
Voting intentions, however, are only one part of the picture. Canadian politics is increasingly leader-centric, which makes leader favourability just as important as party support when assessing the state of the race. Regular readers of this column will have noticed that the Liberals and Conservatives have been polling neck and neck in recent weeks. Yet a comparison of the leaders’ standings tells a different story, with Mark Carney holding a significant advantage over Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
Abacus Data released its latest federal numbers on Sunday morning, and almost everything it measured — party support, government approval, and leaders’ impressions — fell well within the range of its recent polling. In short, the landscape remains strikingly stable.
Except for one measure: Pierre Poilievre’s personal numbers.
