This week on The Numbers, we discuss the potential impact of another tariff fight on Mark Carney’s poll numbers. We also break down the results of a provincial byelection in Manitoba that has more good news for Premier Wab Kinew, and chat about some new polls on the popularity of premiers David Eby and Danielle Smith. We then answer some member questions from the mailbag, with the full segment being available to Patreon members here.

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

Looking to add The Numbers to your favourite podcasting app? You can find it on:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Overcast

• Pocket Casts

• Podcast Addict

• RSS Feed

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

Like a bolt from the blue, Canada was slapped with another round of tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump this week.

The tariffs will only come into effect later in August and are on a limited number of goods (including hockey equipment, just to make the pettiness of it crystal clear). But it’s yet another reminder — if we really needed one — that there is little rhyme or reason or predictability when it comes to what Trump will do.

And, in a way, that seems to have numbed Canadians somewhat to his actions.

Prime Minister Mark Carney won the 2025 election in large part on the threats that Trump posed to Canada and the Canadian economy. In the face of that uncertainty, a serious, managerial and experienced figure like Carney appealed to voters more than did Pierre Poilievre, whose style of politics and messaging was extremely well-attuned to the throw-the-bums-out mood that prevailed in the last months of Justin Trudeau’s time in office, but was out of place when Canadians were looking for security and a steady hand.

Polling by the Environics Institute gives one indication of how the mood has shifted.

In early 2025, 43% of Canadians said they were “very worried” and 40% said they were “somewhat worried” about the impact of U.S. tariffs on the Canadian economy. In April 2026, Environics found that those who said they were “very worried” had dropped nine points to 34%, while those who said they were “not very worried” or “not at all worried” had increased from 14% to 19%.

It’s still a concern — but the intensity of that concern has lessened after a year of living under Trump’s tariff shadow. Why that is the case is up for interpretation. It could be that the impact hasn’t felt as bad as people feared, or it could be that Trump’s tendency to reverse himself has taken some of the bite out of his bark.

But it does mean that there is a little more leeway for Carney’s government on this file as Canadians get a little more numb to it.

That numbness, though, doesn’t mean complacency. Canadians are still hopping mad at the United States. They’re still taking their travel dollars elsewhere. They’re telling pollsters like Pew Research that they have more favourable views of China (44%) than they do the United States (33%). And that’s a new thing — Pew found that 57% of Canadians had a favourable view of the United States in 2023, with just 14% holding a favourable view of China. I’m not sure China has done very much over the last three years to deserve this increase in Canadians’ affection. Perhaps the Chinese just look better by comparison.

A new poll from Abacus Data shows that Canadians don’t want to back down, even if they increasingly roll their eyes at Trump’s sabre-rattling. In negotiating a new CUSMA deal, Abacus found that, given a choice between two options, 69% chose “Canada should hold firm on its positions, even if that means the uncertainty lasts longer”. Only 20% opted for “Canada should be willing to make compromises to reach an agreement sooner”. Canadians prefer a little more pain than to give in to Trump.

This gives Carney some leverage — if he chooses to use it. Canadians are still willing to be patient and give him the benefit of the doubt on his handling of Trump. Abacus recently found that, among the 31% of Canadians who list “Donald Trump and his administration” as one of their top three issues, the Liberals hold a whopping 48-point lead over the Conservatives on being the party who would do best on the issue (63% to 15%).

This also gives Carney and the Liberals a winning issue to carry them through the summer. The Liberals are still leading by a wide margin in the polls but their lead has been shrinking over the last few weeks. Another tangle with Trump could be what Carney needs to widen that gap again.

Of course, Canadians’ patience will not hold out forever. And, sooner or later, the Carney government will be judged on the longer term impact of its negotiating strategy. But, for the time being, Trump is the problem for Canadians and Carney remains the choice to handle him.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News of another byelection win for Wab Kinew, plus the Ontario PCs face a major controversy, a recall petition fails, a new leader steps up to take over a minor party and we get clarity on where Naheed Nenshi will run in the next Alberta election.

• An update on the federal polls, plus Canadians’ views on Iran, pipelines, climate change, wildfires and submarines and new poll numbers on Alberta independence and the Ottawa mayoral race.

• #EveryElectionProject: Prince Edward Islanders opted not to “be in the swim” in the 1919 provincial election.

• Upcoming milestone for Danielle Smith.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Kinew’s NDP wins landslide in byelection

The Manitoba New Democrats easily held the seat of The Pas—Kameesak in Tuesday’s byelection, scoring another big win with increased vote share and sending another signal to the opposition Progressive Conservatives that next year’s scheduled provincial election could go very badly.

Read more

The Liberals are at 44.2% in the vote projection, largely unchanged from last week. But the Conservatives are up 0.5 points to 35.5%, marking their third consecutive week of growth (they are up 0.9 points over that time). The party is also up two points since the June 2 update. This movement has dropped the Liberals to a lead in 203 ridings across the country, down 10 seats over the last three weeks, while the Conservatives are up seven seats over that period to 99.

Taking into account polling error and toss-ups, the Liberals win an average of 196 seats in the projection, down 2.3 seats from last week, while the Conservatives are up two seats to 113.6. That still puts the Liberals comfortably in majority territory (where they wind up in 89% of simulations), but they were as high as 215.5 seats little more than two months ago.

The New Democrats are down 0.6 points this week to 10.3% as both the Liaison and Nanos trackers, which have been the best pollsters for the NDP of late, have the party down. But the NDP is still leading in 16 seats and wins an average of 12.1 seats in the projection.

For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:

The Bloc Québécois is at 27.2% in Quebec, enough to deliver them an average of 20.2 seats in the projection, while the Greens are holding at around 2%. They are leading in both Saanich—Gulf Islands and Kitchener Centre in the projection, but because of the Greens’ tendency to under-perform the polls, and the fact that neither of these seats are entirely safe for the party, the Greens only win an average of 1.2 seats. This means that in most simulations they win one or the other, but often not both.

Where are the other parties poised to make their seat gains — or suffer their losses? Let’s take a quick look.

Read more

Updated July 21, 2026

The Liberals would very likely win a big majority government if an election were held today, with gains coming primarily from the Conservatives. Mark Carney’s Liberals have dipped in the projection but continue to hold a wide lead over the Conservatives, while the Bloc has about as much support as it did in the 2025 election. The New Democrats have ticked up and are in a position to potentially win enough seats for recognized party status in the House of Commons.

Note to Readers: These projections are presented using Datawrapper’s interactive charts. They are best viewed on a desktop. In most cases, you can click, tap or hover over the charts to interact with them.

Full regional breakdowns and tracking charts are available for subscribers below, as are complete riding-level projections. A full methodological explanation of how the vote and seat projection model works can be found here.

The Vote Projection is based primarily on a weighted average of all publicly-available national and regional polls. The weighted average is then used to project the outcome in all 343 ridings across the country, taking into account local candidates. Those individual riding-level projections are then weighted by the number of eligible voters in each riding and past turnout to determine the national vote projection for each party.

The Seat Projection shows the number of seats in which each party is projected to be ahead. Parties are assigned a range of likely vote share in each riding based on past polling and modelling errors and 10,000 simulations are run to assign to each party a number of ridings in which they are in contention. The High and Low ranges take into account 95% of all likely outcomes, while the Avg. Projection shows the average number of seats each party wins in these simulations, which takes into account the tendency for parties to under- or out-perform their polls.

Wondering how to interpret the Seat Projection and the Avg. Projection? While the Seat Projection is The Writ’s “official call”, the Avg. Projection is an important guide to understanding the projections, in conjunction with the high and low ranges. Seat projections are rarely right on target, so the Avg. Projection should set expectations. In other words, if the Seat Projection for a party is 25 seats but the Avg. Projection is 21.2, your expectation should be that the party will win around 25 seats, with a greater likelihood that the party under-performs that target rather than beats it.

The percentage of simulations in which each party wins a majority or a plurality of seats is shown below.

Complete riding and sub-regional projections are available for subscribers of The Writ:

A full breakdown of the methodology behind the vote and seat projection model can be found here:

The table below includes all recent federal voting intentions polls that are publicly available. You can click or tap on the name of the polling firm in the left-most column to go directly to that polling firm’s original poll release. Rows containing polls conducted in a single region are highlighted in different colours.

Vote and seat projections broken down by region and tracking charts going back to the 2025 election are available for subscribers of The Writ below 👇

Read more

Detailed projections for all 343 ridings across the country, as well as vote projections for smaller regions within each province, are available for subscribers below 👇

Read more

Updated July 17, 2026

A strong majority of Albertans support the province staying in Canada, with two-thirds saying they would vote to remain in the country. That increases to nearly three-quarters after the removal of undecideds.

Note to Readers: These projections are presented using Datawrapper’s interactive charts. They are best viewed on a desktop. In most cases, you can click, tap or hover over the charts to interact with them.

On October 19, Albertans will be voting on 10 referendum questions, including several on immigration and constitutional issues. But there will also be a question related to Alberta independence, though asked in a roundabout way. The wording of the question is:

“Should Alberta remain a province of Canada or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”

With many polls likely to be published in the coming months on this issue, The Writ has launched the Alberta Referendum Poll Tracker, which will aggregate all of the polls published during this campaign. The chart below shows the current polling average, encompassing all polls, regardless of question wording, that include results on Alberta separation in general or the referendum question in particular. The chart on the left shows the current average with undecideds shown, while the chart on the right is after the removal of undecideds.

The table below includes all publicly available polls on Alberta independence conducted since the beginning of 2026. Note that the question wording is not always consistent between pollsters (Léger, for example, has included an option of Alberta joining the United States in its questionnaire, which has been grouped into the “Independence” column below). When both a generic independence question and the exact wording of the referendum question is included in a poll, the latter result is shown in this table.

You can click or tap on the name of the polling firm in the left-most column to go directly to that polling firm’s original poll release.

The method used to calculate the polling average is similar to the methodology described here for The Writ’s Vote and Seat Projections. No adjustments are made to the polls, however, to take into account any potential turnout effects.

The polling averages broken down by region, demographics and voting intentions, as well as tracking charts going back to the beginning of this year, are available for subscribers of The Writ below 👇

Regional, demographic and partisan polling averages

Read more

In addition, on this week’s episode of The Numbers we breakdown the latest federal poll numbers, as well as a new survey on how Canadians feel about the construction of new pipelines. We also try to make sense of yet another poll out of Nova Scotia that paints yet another different portrait of the province’s political landscape. Then, we close with a Green-hued Quiz.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE ON APPLE PODCASTS

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

Looking to add The Numbers to your favourite podcasting app? You can find it on:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Overcast

• Pocket Casts

• Podcast Addict

• RSS Feed

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

Atlantic Canada’s party system is probably the most staid in the country.

Social Credit has governed in British Columbia and Alberta. The CCF held sway in Saskatchewan, the only province in which the forerunner to the NDP formed government under that brand. Manitoba has been run by Progressives and Alberta had some United Farmers in office once, as did Ontario. Quebec has been governed by federalists and sovereignists and those in between.

Each of these provinces have been governed by at least four distinct party brands and as many as six. But in Atlantic Canada, only once has a government that was neither Liberal red nor Tory blue has taken office, and that was when Darrell Dexter’s NDP won the 2009 Nova Scotia election. They were turfed (by the Liberals) in 2013.

Newfoundland and Labrador has only ever been Liberal or PC. The same goes for New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, with the transition from the Conservative to the PC brand in the 1940s was the only political innovation. It seems unlikely that the Liberal-Tory tradition will change anytime soon in three of the four Atlantic provinces, but Prince Edward Island could buck the trend — and do something that has never happened anywhere else in Canada before.

The Greens won a provincial byelection on Monday (more on that below). It’s not an earth-shattering event — they’ve won byelections before — but the victory came just days after a new poll was released that put the Greens in the lead in Prince Edward Island. The poll, which looked a little funny last week, doesn’t look so strange now.

This isn’t the first time that the Greens have been in this position. Heading into the 2019 provincial election, the Greens were leading some late-campaign polls. Those polls proved too enthusiastic for the Greens, who lost to the PCs but nevertheless formed the official opposition. At the time, there were a few Islanders who expressed some exasperation at the mainland’s over-excited attention to PEI’s politics. They knew better that the old ways would win out.

Maybe those old ways will still win the day — and maybe more Islanders will be peeved at yet another Central Canadian speculating about Canada’s first Green government (even though, out here in the Gaspé, I’m about as far east as some Islanders are!).

But it’s still an interesting development. And as the Greens implant themselves in more places and for longer periods of time on Prince Edward Island, perhaps the notion of breaking those old ways won’t seem so outlandish.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on that Green victory in Cornwall—Meadowbank, which has ended the career of the Liberal leader. Plus, the CAQ is rebranding, a familiar face enters the Mississauga mayoral race and the New Brunswick Greens settle on a leadership date.

• Last week, polls disagreed on where things stood in Nova Scotia. This week, they disagree again. Plus, an update on the federal numbers.

• #EveryElectionProject: When Manitobans elected a premier “decidedly picturesque in his expressions.”

• Upcoming milestone for Mark Carney that he can probably ignore.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Greens pull off upset win in PEI

Are the Greens set to cover Prince Edward Island like the morning dew?

The results of Monday’s byelection suggest the PEI Greens might be the chief opposition to the governing Progressive Conservatives ahead of next year’s scheduled provincial election — and if they could repeat the results of that byelection across the province, the party would form its first government in Canada.

Read more

That dearth of data from a broad array of pollsters — since mid-June, the only other pollster to put out any new numbers was Abacus Data — should lead us to exercise caution when analyzing any new trends. With that caveat having been said, this week’s update to The Writ’s Federal Vote and Seat Projection has some numbers that we haven’t seen for months.

The Liberals lead with 44.1%, a drop of 0.5 points since last week and 0.9 points over two weeks. That’s the lowest level of support the model has awarded the Liberals since the February 17 update. The Liberal tally of 205 seats in which they lead is also the lowest since February 24, while the average projection of 198.3 seats marks the first time the Liberals have been sub-200 on this measure (which takes into account potential polling error and the number of tight races) since March 3.

Not surprisingly, when the Liberals are down (relatively speaking) the Conservatives and New Democrats tend to be up. The Conservatives’ 35% support and 98 seats are their best numbers since March 3, while the NDP registering 10.9% in the vote projection is their best score since before the 2025 election. The NDP is leading in 16 seats in the model and, on average, wins 12.8 seats. That puts them over the threshold of recognized party status with a little more confidence than we’ve seen over the last few weeks.

For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:

Is there much to make of this? That’s hard to say. We’ve seen the two tracking polls oscillate up and down for every party, with each new developing trend seemingly reversing itself after a few weeks. But let’s take a bit of a closer look to determine if there’s anything to these numbers.

Read more

For many Canadians, the answer is “no” when it comes to some of our political leaders. A new poll from Pollara suggests that very few Canadians can name the leader of the NDP (Avi Lewis) or any cabinet ministers, while Pierre Poilievre’s recognition hasn’t shifted much over the last three years. Plus, many people still struggle to spell his name correctly.

This week on The Numbers, we discuss these recognition numbers as well as the latest polls on federal voting intentions nationwide and provincial voting intentions across Atlantic Canada, where the results leave us a little lost for words. We also breakdown Conservative MP Richard Martel’s appointment to the Senate and what it means for the upcoming byelection in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord.

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

Looking to add The Numbers to your favourite podcasting app? You can find it on:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Overcast

• Pocket Casts

• Podcast Addict

• RSS Feed

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

If you can’t get an MP to cross the floor, getting them to leave the floor entirely isn’t a bad consolation prize.

It came as a bit of a surprise on Tuesday when Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a list of his new Senate appointees that included Conservative MP Richard Martel. Partisan Senate appointees went (largely) out of style during Justin Trudeau’s years in office as he set up an independent nomination panel. But plucking an MP out of the House is a throw-back — the last Senate appointee to come directly from the House of Commons was Mac Harb, who Jean Chrétien appointed to the Senate in 2003.

But that was from his own caucus. Martel is the first sitting MP to be named to the Senate by a prime minister from a different party since Brian Mulroney appointed Liberal MP Marcel Prud’homme to the Senate in May 1993, just a few weeks before Mulroney was out of the prime minister’s office. This will be the first byelection caused by the appointment of an MP to the Senate by a prime minister from a different party since Claude Wagner was named to the Senate by Pierre Trudeau in 1978.

So, in short, this doesn’t happen very often.

It’s a little tricky to interpret this departure. If Martel was simply leaving politics, it would be a rather normal resignation. But he’s not leaving politics — he’s a Conservative moving to the Senate at the request (or the acquiescence) of the Liberal prime minister. He’s going to sit as an Independent in the Senate, at least for the time being, but this is somewhere between a floor-crossing and a simple resignation. It isn’t a huge blow to Pierre Poilievre’s leadership, but it’s also not an endorsement. Martel has decided that he’s done with being a Conservative MP, but not with politics entirely. He likes his future better as a Senator than as a member of Poilievre’s caucus.

For the Liberals, this is one fewer vote on the opposition benches. Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith also made his resignation official yesterday, so there are four vacancies in the House. The government has 171 votes (172 with the Liberal Speaker) against 167 opposition votes. When Steven Guilbeault, Cathay Wagantall and Alexandre Boulerice make their resignations official, the Liberals will be down to 170 votes (171 with the Speaker) against 165 opposition. That’s a decent cushion for their majority, so there isn’t necessarily a rush for the Liberals to fill those vacancies.

Unless, of course, they want to pad their majority even more. The Liberals are expected to win the byelections in North Vancouver—Capilano (Jonathan Wilkinson’s former seat), Beaches—East York (Erskine-Smith), and Laurier—Sainte-Marie (Guilbeault), which would bump them back up to 173 votes (174 with the Speaker). The Conservatives should hold Yorkton—Melville (Wagantall) and the Bloc Québécois should hold Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton (Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay), putting the opposition back up to 167.

But the Liberals have a decent shot in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie (Boulerice) and, perhaps, an even better chance in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, the riding helpfully vacated by Martel. If the Liberals flip both of these, they will have 175 votes (176 with the Speaker) to just 167 for the opposition. That kind of majority is looking pretty solid.

As I pointed out on Tuesday, the model thinks the Liberals are the very narrow favourites in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. But it looks like it could be a true toss-up. It was a three-way race in the April 2025 election, with Martel taking 34.1% of the vote to the Bloc’s 31.2% and the Liberals’ 31.1%. It will not take a big swing in support for either the Liberals or the Bloc to take this seat.

Martel was a draw for the Conservatives, at least when he first arrived. This part of Quebec in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region has been surprisingly swing-y, despite its nationalist reputation. The Bloc won Chicoutimi in its first election in 1993. But it went to the PCs’ André Harvey in 1997 and went to the Liberals when Harvey ran under that party’s banner in 2000. The Bloc won it back in 2004, but only managed between 39% and 45% of the vote in the 2004, 2006 and 2008 elections.

Like most of Quebec, the riding went to the New Democrats in 2011 as part of the Orange Wave as support for the Bloc (and Conservatives, and Liberals) dropped. But the Liberals were able to take the seat back in the 2015 election, beating out the NDP by a narrow 31.1% to 29.7% margin. The Liberals’ Denis Lemieux did not finish his term, however, and that set the stage for a byelection in 2018.

Richard Martel was a star candidate for the Conservatives. He coached the Chicoutimi Saguenéens of the QMJHL for most of the 2000s, winning coach of the year in 2005. He took 52.8% of the vote in the 2018 byelection, with most of his support coming from the Bloc when they were at a particularly low point shortly after Martine Ouellet’s ouster as leader. Martel held off the Bloc, now under Yves-François Blanchet, by small margins in 2019 and 2021.

His vote dropped in the 2025 election as the Liberals surged from just 18% in 2021 to 31% in 2025 in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. Without Martel, the Conservatives might lose more of the vote. But that’s not a given, since Martel under-performed fellow Conservative candidates in neighbouring ridings. Regardless, the Conservatives could be hard-pressed to hold this seat as their support in the province has slipped since the last election — certainly enough to put a three-point margin of victory into doubt.

Much will depend on who the three contending parties can recruit as their candidates, as this is the type of riding that can swing more based on who is on the ballot. There is also the timing of the byelection to take into consideration. The Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean is expected to move pretty strongly to the Parti Québécois in October’s provincial election, but the results of provincial votes in Quebec do not seem to have much relation to federal results of late. The PQ easily won the provincial byelection in Terrebonne in March 2025 just a month before Mark Carney’s Liberals won the seat by a single vote, an outcome that was improved upon in the Terrebonne federal byelection held earlier this year.

We now have seven byelections slated to take place within the next six months or so (we’re still waiting on the resignations of Boulerice, Wagantall and Guilbeault, but all are expected to occur before the end of August). Chicoutimi—Le Fjord was decided by the smallest margin in the last election out of those seven seats and so it should be the most hotly-contested. Rarely do we see a true three-way race, with so much at stake for all three parties.

Can the Liberals pad their majority and demonstrate that Quebec is still a key part of their electoral coalition? Can the Bloc take advantage of the Conservatives’ slippage in the polls and win back a nationalist region of the province? And do the Conservatives still have what it takes to win a close race in Quebec? Whenever these byelections take place, this’ll be the one to watch.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News on which parties ended 2025 with money in the bank, as well as a glimpse at the fundraising of minor parties. Plus, we have news of comings and goings in the Ontario Liberal leadership race, the slate of candidates in Quebec, the B.C. Legislative Assembly and the right-side of the political spectrum in Manitoba.

• Polls raise more questions than they answer in Atlantic Canada, plus we have new federal polls, views of British Columbians on the southern vs. northern pipeline routes and the state of the race in Toronto. Also, how many people can name the leader of the NDP?

• #EveryElectionProject: The Manitoba provincial election of 1914.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Which parties still have election debts to pay off?

The 2025 annual returns have begun to be filed and uploaded by Elections Canada, giving us a look at where each of the parties ended what was a rollicking election year.

We already know how much money each of the major parties raised last year through their quarterly filings — $48 million by the Conservatives, $29 million by the Liberals, $6 million by the New Democrats and $2 million by the Bloc Québécois — but the filings go into more detail about how much money the parties still had in the bank at year’s end.

They also show how much of their election loans remain on the books.

According to the filings, the Conservatives took out a $30 million loan last year, of which $17.7 million was paid off by the end of 2025. That left just over $12 million to pay back at the beginning of 2026.

The Liberals took out $27 million in loans and have already paid off all but $4 million of them. The Greens, too, took out a loan worth $750,000 and have paid most of it off.

As the Greens did not obtain 2% of the vote in the last election, they haven’t had to file quarterly since Q2 2025. This means that their annual filings represent our first look at the Greens’ fundraising in a year. They show that the party raised $3,341,000 last year from 11,725 contributors.

The Greens reported fundraising of $1.9 million in their quarterly filings in the first half of last year, so this suggests the Greens raised another $1.4 million in the last half of the year. That matches their fundraising in the back half of 2024, so it isn’t a bad number. For the year as a whole, this was the most the Greens have raised since the last election year in 2021, when the party took in $3.5 million.

The Greens ended the year with $309,000 still in the bank. Their filings show they maintained salaries and benefits worth $1.2 million, so the poor election showing does not seem to have entirely gutted their offices.

Their offices, of course, pale in comparison to those of the other parties. The Conservatives spent $10.9 million on salaries and benefit last year, while the Liberals spent $9.1 million. The Conservatives had more expenses than revenues in 2025, but nevertheless ended the year with $8.2 million in cash on the balance sheet. The Liberals were also in the black at $2.2 million.

As of writing, the annual returns for the New Democrats had not yet been filed. (They are routinely tardy.)

The Greens weren’t the only smaller party that had their fundraising totals revealed in these annual filings. Last year was the first year that the Greens did not have to file quarterly, as they had always previously crossed the 2% threshold since the filing requirements were adopted over 20 years ago. But other small (smaller?) parties have long only had to file annually. These filings are our only glimpse at the finances of these minor parties.

Here is where fundraising stood for those that have had their returns posted:

• Christian Heritage Party

  • $469,368 raised from 1,032 donors

    • The CHP spent about $234,000 on salaries and benefits, indicating that the party, unlike some of the other small parties, has employees (and perhaps a salary for the party’s leader).

• Reforge Party (formerly the United Party)

  • $255,276 raised from 594 donors

    • Membership revenue suggests the party has between 400 and 500 members.

• Marxist-Leninist Party

  • $110,579 raised from 225 donors

    • The party’s biggest expense was $46,407 spent on office rent and equipment.

• Centrist Party

  • $16,095 raised from 53 donors

    • The party spent $400 on “polling and research” in 2025, the same amount as in 2024. I wonder what that bought.

• Marijuana Party

  • $0 raised

    • The Marijuana Party had $88.87 in the party’s bank account when it was deregistered in October.

ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS

CERJANEC OUT - The Ontario Liberal leadership field has decreased to four candidates after the withdrawal of Ajax MPP Rob Cerjanec. Fundraising data suggested that Cerjanec was not keeping pace with his rivals. As of earlier this week, Navdeep Bains was leading the way with $310,000 from donors who gave at least $200 to his campaign (Elections Ontario doesn’t post aggregate donations of less than $200 in its real-time disclosures). Lee Fairclough raised $210,000, Dylan Marando had raised $130,000 and Eric Lombardi had raised $120,000. Cerjanec had raised just $90,000, still putting him well below the $150,000 entry fee. Prospective candidates have until July 31 to get into the running, so it is possible that some other contestants could throw their hats into the ring. There has been chatter that Don Valley West MPP Stephanie Bowman, who had endorsed Cerjanec, could try to take his place.

MUSICAL CHAIRS IN QUEBEC - Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette has announced that she will be running in the riding of Trois-Rivières in the next election rather than in Sanguinet, where she was elected in 2022. Fréchette was born in Trois-Rivières and said she wanted to highlight the importance of Quebec’s regions with her candidacy. It’s debatable whether or not Trois-Rivières is more winnable for the CAQ than Sanguinet, which is located in the Montreal suburbs to the south of the island. Meanwhile, Pierre Dufour, first elected with the CAQ in Abitibi-Est in 2018, will be running for the Quebec Liberals. He was booted from the CAQ caucus after demanding he remain within François Legault’s cabinet in order to adequately represent the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region in northwestern Quebec. If the Liberals win the election, one suspects Dufour is banking on being in Charles Milliard’s cabinet if he holds the seat.

BOULTBEE BOLTS TO NDP - Amelia Boultbee, who was elected as a B.C. Conservative in the 2024 provincial election, has joined the governing B.C. New Democrats. Boultbee left the Conservative caucus, then under John Rustad’s leadership, over the expulsion of fellow-MLA Elenore Sturko in October 2025. With Boultbee, the New Democrats now have 48 MLAs in the 93-seat legislature, which gives the party a majority without making the Speaker (who is also a New Democrat) break ties.

DAUDRICH TO KEYSTONE - Wally Daudrich, who finished a close runner-up to Obby Khan in the Manitoba PC leadership race last year, has left the PCs entirely after he was disqualified from the nomination contest for the riding of Turtle Mountain, where the PC incumbent is not running for re-election. Daudrich has switched over to the right-wing Keystone Party and will be the party’s candidate in the upcoming byelection in The Pas—Kameesak.

POLLING HIGHLIGHTS

Some eyebrow-raising polls out of Atlantic Canada

We don’t often get polls out of Atlantic Canada. And maybe that’s a good thing, because when we do they can be a little odd.

This past week, we were treated to the return of voting intentions polling from Narrative Research, which last put out these kinds of numbers in 2024. We also got a new poll out of Nova Scotia from Abacus Data, which has been in the field more regularly.

We’ll start with the Nova Scotia numbers, since we have two sets of data. But there aren’t many similarities between them.

Narrative put the Nova Scotia NDP in the lead with 45% among decided voters (Narrative released numbers without the undecideds removed, so I’ve done it myself for comparison purposes for all of the Atlantic results). The governing PCs trailed with just 29%, while the Liberals were at 23%.

Those are some striking results, considering the NDP had half that support in the 2024 election. They were even more striking when Abacus came out with the PCs at 40%, the NDP at just 31% and the Liberals at 22%. These numbers were virtually unchanged from when Abacus was last in the field in May.

It’s hard to reconcile these two sets of numbers, even if the field dates were different (but not that different). That Abacus has found previous stability in the province suggests that Narrative might be the outlier. The results of the recent byelection in Chéticamp—Margarees—Pleasant Bay, in which the PC vote dropped a little but so did the NDP’s, would suggest that Abacus is probably closer to where things actually stand.

The two polls do agree that the NDP’s Claudia Chender is in good shape. Narrative gave her a 14-point lead over Tim Houston on preferred premier, which might be a bit exaggerated. But Abacus found that Chender’s personal rating was a net +17 (34% positive, 17% negative) while Houston’s was a net -8 (31% positive to 39% negative). Not quite as dramatic, but it does suggest that the Nova Scotia NDP has an asset in its leader. At the very least, it seems fair to say that the New Democrats have made up some ground since the last election. But an outright lead of double-digits? Maybe not.

Some of these question marks extended to the rest of Narrative’s polling in Atlantic Canada.

In New Brunswick, where we recently saw a poll from Porter O’Brien which gave the Liberals a four-point lead over the PCs, Narrative puts the Liberals ahead by 11 points, 41% to 30%, with the Greens at 13%. This isn’t as much of discrepancy, but you have to wonder how Narrative managed to get 9% support for the Libertarian Party, including 19% (after the removal of undecideds) in northern New Brunswick.

Are the Libertarians surging in the province, perhaps replacing the defunct People’s Alliance? It’s a nice theory, except that the PA did extremely poorly in northern New Brunswick. More likely is that there might have been some sort of confusion between the Liberal Party and the Libertarian Party by people taking the poll.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the governing PCs were two points up on the opposition Liberals, 38% to 36%, with the New Democrats in a strong third with 25%. While that’s a high number for the NDP (it got 8% of the vote in the last election), it’s not unusual for the party to poll better between elections.

Then we get to Prince Edward Island. The last Narrative poll in PEI was not publicly released but was reported by the media in March. It showed the Greens leading with 41%, followed by the Liberals and PCs at 26% and 25%, respectively. The newest poll follows the same trend line but in more dramatic fashion. The poll has the PEI Greens leading with 54% support, with the Liberals at 26% and the PCs at a woeful 18%.

The sample size (147) is small, and Narrative is conducting its polls online now. It used to use live-callers. An online panel in a small geography, like PEI’s, has to be well-calibrated. It’s rare to see online polling for municipalities, for instance, and the Angus Reid Institute never reports its PEI results because its panel is too small there.

We’ll get a test of Narrative’s PEI numbers on Monday when Islanders vote in the Cornwall—Meadowbank byelection. In the 2023 provincial election, the PCs won this seat outside of Charlottetown with 55% of the vote, followed by the Greens at 24% and the Liberals at 19%. Those results were actually quite close to the provincewide results (56% PC, 22% Green and 17% Liberal), so if this poll is picking up something real we should expect to see a big spike in Green support, the Liberals up a little and the PCs down a lot — and I mean a lot.

The next election in Prince Edward Island is scheduled for October 2027, so that isn’t a huge amount of time for Rob Lantz and the PCs to turn things around if their support has actually tanked this much. We can’t expect much other polling out of PEI (and not from anyone else but Narrative), so this byelection might serve as a useful barometer of what is actually happening in the province.

New federal polls show not much new

Just a quick update on the new federal polls published in the last week from Liaison Strategies, Nanos Research and Abacus Data. There’s not much new to report in them, with the Liberals scoring between 41% and 44%, the Conservatives between 32% and 36% and the New Democrats continuing to be a little puzzling with a low of 8%, according to Abacus, and a high of 15%, according to Nanos.

To give you an indication of the lack of movement in these polls, let’s calculate how things have shifted since they were all last in the field. The Liberals averaged 43%, the Conservatives 33% and the NDP 12% in these three polls last time. This time? The average is 43%, 34% and 12%, respectively. Steady as she goes, then.

POLLING NEWS BRIEFS

NEW LEADER, WHO DIS? - Pollara has returned with one of my all-time favourite polling exercises. Pollsters often test how well politicians are known by simply asking respondents if they’ve heard of X politician. Pollara took another approach, asking people to actually fill in the X. When asked who was the leader of the federal NDP, only 12% of Canadians polled could accurately (or semi-accurately) spell out the name “Avi Lewis”. (Pollara was generous, marking responses like “Davis Lewis” and “the husband of Naomi Klein” as correct.) Wrong answers included “Marit Singh” and “Jagneet?”.

The poll also found that only 57% of Canadians could identify Pierre Poilievre (or a close approximation of that name) as the leader of the Conservative Party. Interestingly, that 57% is the same score Poilievre managed in 2023. Marked as correct by Pollara included “Pierre Polisher”, “Poliver (if he’s still in charge?)” and, my favourite attempt at spelling, “Pierre Poulleveviere”. Incorrect responses included “Ford”, “Daniel Smith” and “I know his face”.

These polls are a good reminder that the general population does not pay as much attention to politics as, say, readers of The Writ. When we see polls on the personal ratings of party leaders, it is good to keep in mind that a chunk of respondents, if not most of them, may sometimes be expressing an opinion about a person they do not know much about at all.

B.C. PREFERS SOUTHERN PIPELINE ROUTE - The announcement by Prime Minister Mark Carney (in conjunction with B.C. Premier David Eby and given the thumbs up by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith) that an agreement has been reached that would have a new pipeline head to the west coast via a southern route with its terminus in Vancouver, rather than on the northern coast of B.C., is likely to be well-received by British Columbians according to polling by Pollara Strategic Insights. The survey found that 60% of British Columbians have a positive feeling about the southern pipeline route along the Trans Mountain corridor, with only 23% having negative views. By comparison, the divide was 52% positive to 30% negative for a northern route that would require lifting the tanker ban.

CHOW LEADS IN TORONTO - New polling by Liaison Strategies gives Olivia Chow the lead in Toronto’s mayor race. The incumbent had 49% support in the poll, with councilor Brad Bradford behind at 40% after the removal of undecideds (who numbered 20% of respondents). Since mid-May, Chow’s lead has dropped from 13 points to nine points.

12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR

• July 13: Cornwall–Meadowbank provincial byelection (Prince Edward Island)

• July 21: The Pas—Kameesak provincial byelection (Manitoba)

• October 5: Quebec provincial election

• October 17: New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leadership

  • Candidates: Daniel Allain, Don Monahan

• October 17: Municipal elections in British Columbia

• October 19: Alberta referendum

• October 26: Municipal elections in Ontario

• October 28: Municipal elections in Manitoba

• November 2: Municipal elections in Prince Edward Island

• November 9: Municipal elections in Saskatchewan

• November 14: Federal Green leadership

• November 21: Ontario Liberal leadership

  • Candidates: Navdeep Bains, Lee Fairclough, Eric Lombardi, Dylan Marando

• November 28: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership

  • Candidates: Amanda Mombourquette

• Byelections yet to be scheduled

  • ON - Scarborough Southwest (to be called by August)

  • AB - Calgary Shaw (to be called by November)

  • CA - North Vancouver—Capilano and Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton (to be called by December)

  • ON - York—Simcoe (to be called by December)

  • CA - Beaches—East York and Chicoutimi—Le Fjord (to be called by January)

  • CA - Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie (resignation pending)

  • CA - Laurier—Sainte-Marie (resignation pending)

  • CA - Yorkton—Melville (resignation pending)

• Party leadership dates yet to be set

  • New Brunswick Greens (David Coon announced on June 4, 2026)

(ALMOST) ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject

Rodmond Roblin’s last ride

July 10, 1914

This was originally published on July 10, 2025.

Manitoba grew tremendously under the leadership of premier Rodmond Roblin. He took up the post in 1900 and, a year later, the census pegged Manitoba’s population at just over 255,000. After Roblin’s Conservatives had been re-elected a third time in 1910, the population of the province had nearly doubled to 461,000.

By 1914, however, Roblin’s grip on the province was growing weaker and the tolerance for the old ways of doing things was waning. Few governments of the day were squeaky clean and Roblin’s government was no exception. His Conservatives weren’t afraid to use public money and public servants for partisan purposes. And, of course, there was an expectation that hefty donations to party coffers would be made by those getting government contracts. Inflating invoices to cover those donations was common practice.

Increasingly, however, voters were tiring of this normalized corruption. They weren’t quite ready to back new parties — it would take the trauma of the First World War to shake voters out of their old habits for good — but they were starting to expect more from their leaders.

The opposition Liberals, reinvigorated under Tobias Norris, vigorously attacked the government’s corruption. A former auctioneer and compelling speaker, Norris had successfully gathered around him opposition elements in the 1910 election — prohibitionists, suffragettes and farmers — and, at a well-attended convention in early 1914, former leader Edward Brown predicted that a Liberal victory was just around the corner and that “the death-throes of the Roblin régime will be spectacular in the extreme”.

In June (in what would prove to be less than two weeks prior to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event that would spark the outbreak of war in Europe), Roblin dropped the writ on the next provincial election, setting election day for July 10, 1914, nearly four years to the day since his last victory.

According to the Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs, “this contest, which had been going on in some degree for months, was not a satisfactory or pleasant one; as in the case of all Canadian Governments, when in power for many years, there were varied charges of corruption and bitter personalities. Sir Rodmond Roblin, who for 14 years had been Prime Minister was not, at the best, a conciliatory opponent or a courteous fighter; his party enemies accepted the guage [sic] with true Western heartiness and the conflict was almost picturesque in the vehemence displayed.”

The Liberals took aim at the Roblin government’s corruption and presented a few platform priorities of their own: “direct legislation” (referendums) to get the support of the influential Grain Growers’ Association, prohibition, English-language compulsory public schooling and a vote on giving women the vote.

“To me it seems that the most serious problem which our people must face and must decide on July 10th,” Norris wrote in his party’s manifesto, “is whether or not domination of public affairs by machine rule shall continue. The Roblin Government, by reason of its long term in office, has become surrounded by an organized gang of political workers who have grown bold in their manipulation of matters pertaining to elections and patronage. As electors I ask you the plain question. How long do you propose to stand for rule by this machine?”

Education, as ever the case in turn-of-the-century Manitoba politics, was a flashpoint in this campaign. Amendments brought in by education minister G.R. Coldwell, designed to make it easier for the government to takeover Catholic schools, were criticized as opening up the doors again to publicly-funded separate schools — a charge especially taken up by the Protestant Orange Order. The government denied this was the case, but the Liberals hammered away at the issue. Norris even claimed that Roblin had personally invited him to support a return of separate schools, which Roblin denied ever happened.

The Conservatives had to run on their record, and it wasn’t a bad one. The province’s infrastructure had been built up over the preceding years, a new Agricultural College (now part of the University of Manitoba) had been founded and Manitoba’s territory had been extended to Hudson’s Bay. The government had also begun construction on a new legislature building that “would be an honour and a credit to the Province”.

“We come with a policy,” he said, “we come with a record, we come with a faith and hope born of conviction that there is a great future for this Province.”

Roblin took his message across Manitoba and over 20 days made stops in Carman, Miami, Stonewall, Emerson, Dominion City, Transcona, Portage la Prairie, Reston, Souris, Brandon, Ste. Rose, Dauphin, Grand View, Swan River, Gladstone, Birtle, Morden and Roland. He wasn’t alone on the hustings, getting assistance from “Dominion” Conservatives, including the Manitoba caucus and future prime minister Arthur Meighen.

In Transcona, Roblin pilloried the “direct legislation” movement as counter to the British tradition and said “I am strongly opposed to the ‘Banish the Bar’ plank as well as Woman’s Suffrage as I look upon them as unworkable fads and not in accord with the best interests of the people.”

Liberal leader Norris also criss-crossed the province, with visits to Ste. Rose, Roblin, Russell, Roseburn, Minnedosa, Elkhorn, Transcona, Winnipeg, Macgregor, Carberry, St. Pierre, St. James, Oakville, Portage la Prairie, Selkirk, Brandon, Boissevain and Rivers.

These two men weren’t the only figures garnering attention on the campaign trail. Nellie McClung toured Manitoba as well, advocating for woman’s suffrage and prohibition and against the Roblin Conservatives. She closed her campaign by addressing a crowd of 5,000 in Winnipeg on the eve of election day.

“I could not sit down when there was a fight like this on in my Province,” she said at one of her events. “I could not be contented with just doing ordinary little things – punching holes in linen and then sewing them up again … Too many men have one set of virtues for private life and another for public use. That is one reason why I hope to see a rebuke administered to the Government.”

Charges of corruption and vote-buying were made by both the Conservatives and the Liberals against each other, but in the end the Roblin Machine managed one more victory.

(As voters in Winnipeg received two votes to elect two MLAs for each of the city’s three ridings, the chart above shows the ‘equalized’ vote share for each party, as calculated by Elections Manitoba, which counts each vote in Winnipeg as half of one vote.)

The Conservatives saw their majority reduced in an expanded legislature, but nevertheless won 28 seats and just under 48% of the vote. That was a drop in vote share from the previous election, but enough to hold on. The Liberals increased their holdings from 13 to 20 seats and scored 45% of the vote, while one Independent (Fred Dixon, endorsed by both the Liberals and Labour) was elected in Winnipeg.

There was a divide between Winnipeg and the rest of the province — outside of the capital, the Conservatives and Liberals nearly split the vote evenly, 50% to 48%. In Winnipeg, Independent (often Socialists) and Labour candidates managed around 21% of the vote, with the Conservatives winning the plurality with 43%.

Stung by his reduced majority, Roblin blamed the result on the Orange Order’s baseless fearmongering on separate schools. McClung, meanwhile, took a moral victory out of the result.

“We have fought a good fight and we will keep on fighting; nothing can stop us; no man, not even Sir Rodmond Roblin, can hold his foot against the door much longer,” she said. “The machine is broken, the people will rule, and when we say people we mean both men and women.”

She wouldn’t have to wait long for the end of the Roblin government (or for women’s suffrage). Evidence of corruption in the awarding of contracts for the legislative buildings led to Roblin’s resignation less than a year later. In 1915, the Conservatives would finally go down to defeat at the hands of Norris’s Liberals. But that appetite for something different, for something unlike the politics of before, would take a bite out of the Liberals before long, too.

More from the #EveryElectionProject

The list of current and pending vacancies in the House of Commons grew to seven today, when the Liberals announced that Richard Martel, the Conservative MP for the Quebec riding of Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, had been appointed to the Senate.

I’ll delve a little deeper into this riding and what this move means in the Weekly Writ on Thursday. But what does the projection say about the Conservatives’ chances of holding this seat — and the Liberals’ chances of flipping it?

Before getting to that, this week’s update to the Federal Vote and Seat Projection shows little change from last week (or the week before that).

The Liberals remain in a commanding position with 44.6% support, which nets them an average of 201 seats in the seat projection. The Conservatives sit at 34.9% and an average of 110.2 seats, followed by the New Democrats at 10.3% and 11 seats on average. The Bloc Québécois is up a little bit in Quebec and leads in 22 seats, winning 19.5 on average.

For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:

The Bloc is actually an interesting potential player in the Chicoutimi—Le Fjord byelection. The party might be distracted by its efforts to hold Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton if the two byelections occur at the same time (presumably, the Liberals will want to make that happen) but it will be the third combattant in what looks like a three-cornered fight.

Read more

The rules are simple: we draft six people onto our teams who we think will (or could) be promoted to party leader between now and next Canada Day. We have a number of provincial leadership races to choose from, but our teams have to include at least one person who we say will win a leadership race that has yet to even be called.

Who will win the first edition of the New Leaders Draft? Who has the better team of hopefuls, and who should we have added to our lists? Let us know!

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

Looking to add The Numbers to your favourite podcasting app? You can find it on:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Overcast

• Pocket Casts

• Podcast Addict

• RSS Feed

PROGRAMMING NOTE - With tomorrow being Canada Day, the Weekly Writ will be taking a break to admire the fireworks. The Weekly Writ will be back on July 9. A new episode of The Numbers will still land in your inbox on this coming Thursday. Have a safe and happy Canada Day! 🍁

As Canadians prepare to mark the 159th anniversary of Confederation, the Liberals have good reason to celebrate. They remain ahead in the polls, would win a large majority if an election were held today and appear to have shaken off some of their recent softness in support.

This week’s update to The Writ’s Vote and Seat Projections put the Liberals back up to 45%, a gain of 0.4 points since last week. The party is projected to be leading in 213 ridings, an increase of four, and win an average of 207.2 seats in the projection (also an increase of four).

While the Liberals were helped by the addition to the model of last week’s Léger poll that had the party at 48%, as we’ll see below this week’s two trackers were also showing the Liberals in a better position than they were a few weeks ago.

The Conservatives are treading water with 34.6%, a tiny decrease of 0.1 points from last week, but the uptick for the Liberals (particularly in the Prairies) pushed the Conservatives down four seats to 92, with their average haul, after taking into account potential polling error and the number of tight races, dropping 3.7 seats to 106.6.

After four weeks in double-digits, the New Democrats have dropped back below the 10% threshold and are projected to have 9.8% support, a sizeable slide of 0.8 points since last week. That hasn’t shifted the NDP from their projected lead in 15 seats, though their average projection has slipped 0.7 to 10.2 seats, pushing them further away from the 12 seats required for recognized party status in the House of Commons.

For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:

The Bloc Québécois is largely unchanged from last week at 5.9% (25.9% in Quebec) and 17.5 seats on average in the projection. The Greens are up 0.3 points to 2.3% and their average seat win is up 0.2 to 1.5 in the projection. They had a few good numbers in British Columbia in particular this past week.

Since I won’t have the opportunity to delve into this week’s polls in the Weekly Writ on Thursday, I’ll do so here. But first, a quick look at how the regional portrait looks across the country — and how things have shifted since Canada Day one year ago.

Read more

This week on The Numbers, we dissect the new federal polls that have been published over the last week. We also break down some provincial polls out of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and New Brunswick, as well as discuss the results of a provincial byelection in Nova Scotia. Then, Philippe is back with a 1979-themed Quiz.

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

Looking to add The Numbers to your favourite podcasting app? You can find it on:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Overcast

• Pocket Casts

• Podcast Addict

• RSS Feed

Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Thursday morning.

Reading this in your email inbox and having trouble viewing any of the charts? To optimize them for your device, click/tap the charts or view them on thewrit.ca.

There’s been some recent discussion — here and elsewhere — about whether we’ve seen signs of softening in support for the Liberals and Mark Carney.

It did seem like there had been a softening a few weeks ago. That softening, however, did not endure. Instead, it seemed more like the Liberals hit a new cruising altitude in the polls.

But are they now starting to bounce back as the pendulum swings again?

Over the last week, in addition to the two tracking polls from Nanos Research and Liaison Strategies, we had two new national polls from Abacus Data and Léger (for Postmedia), as well as a Manitoba-only poll from Probe Research (for the Winnipeg Free Press). The growing discrepancies in the polls we were seeing a few weeks ago don’t see so noticeable now.

The Liberals ranged between 43% and 48% in these four national surveys, a far more reasonable spread than the 40% to 50% scores we were seeing when Léger was last in the field. Léger is, again, the high Liberal score, but a five-point divergence in results is well within the margins of error of these surveys. Similarly, the Conservatives are consistently between 32% and 37%. Only the NDP remains a bit of an enigma.

Léger continues to put the NDP at just 6% support, matching the party’s result in the 2025 election. Liaison has the NDP at 14%, meaning there’s an eight-point gap between these two polls for this party. That is less explainable with simple sampling error. The other two polls, however, don’t argue for one side or the other. Abacus has the NDP three points higher than Léger does at 9%, while Nanos has the NDP three points lower than Liaison does at 11%. It’s an almost perfect spread — let’s split the difference and say the New Democrats are at 10%.

In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois managed between 24% and 26% in the Léger, Liaison and Abacus polls. (Nanos paywalls its regional results.)

What’s interesting about these polls is that we see some pretty consistent, if marginal, trends toward the mean. Léger has the Liberals coming down two points from the high of 50% in its last survey, while Liaison and Nanos have the Liberals gaining two or three points from where they put the Liberals two and four weeks ago, respectively. Abacus, which was closer to the two tracking polls last time, has the Liberals moving up one point and toward the Léger number.

What this says to me is that, in the end, perhaps not much has really changed in Liberal support when we look at the bigger picture. The tracking polls, which had the Liberals drifting to the low-40s, have the Liberals moving back toward the mid-40s. And Léger, which had the Liberals hitting the psychological threshold of 50%, has the Liberals moving back toward the mid-40s, too.

If it’s a reversion to the mean, it does appear that the mean might have shifted a little. If you look at polls in April and May, sub-45 scores for the Liberals were the rarity. Somewhere around 44-45% might be the new mean for the Liberals, when a few months ago it was more around 46-47%. But, as softening goes, that’s pretty modest.

Other indicators in the Léger, Abacus and Liaison surveys also point toward a reversion to the mean. Léger has the Liberal Party down two points since its last survey, but has government satisfaction back up three points to 57% after showing a dip last time. Abacus also shows government approval up three points to 55%.

Liaison, meanwhile, has Mark Carney’s approval rating up two points over the last two weeks to 57%, with disapproval down three points to 36%. Again, in isolation these are not significant movements, but in the context of other movements it looks like a return to “normal”, even if that normal is a little new.

If the pendulum is moving in the positive direction for the Liberals, it seems to be moving in the negative one for the New Democrats. Nanos and Liaison both have the NDP down slightly from their previous independent samples, as does Abacus. The shifts are not statistically significant, but in the broader context of the NDP having scored highs of 14% and 16% in the Nanos and Liaison polls, the party might be coming back down to earth as the Liberals move back up.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are immobile. That inertia has been steady throughout the last few months.

Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:

• News of a PC victory in Nova Scotia that might be a relief to Tim Houston, and the setting of a date for a provincial byelection in Manitoba.

• Polls galore, with new numbers on Alberta’s ties to Canada and Canadians’ trust in media, as well as polls out of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Ottawa.

• #EveryElectionProject: Booze on the ballot in P.E.I.’s 1927 provincial election.

• Upcoming milestones for Claudia Chender, Carla Beck and Doug Ford.

NEWS AND ANALYSIS

PCs take seat in Nova Scotia byelection

It’s been a challenging year for Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, as polls show support for his party slipping and his own approval ratings down to just 34% in the latest Angus Reid Institute poll, the lowest its been since he took office. But the results of a provincial byelection in the riding of Chéticamp-Margarees-Pleasant Bay should give the PCs some hope that things might not be going so poorly after all.

Read more

This and other #EveryElectionProject hubs will be updated as more historical capsules are written.

Subscribe now

1890 Prince Edward Island election

A win that wasn’t a win for long

January 30, 1890

Sometimes, even the closest of elections aren’t the most heated of contests, aren’t decided over controversial issues or don’t feature engaging, charismatic leaders.

Take the 1890 election in Prince Edward Island, for example.

Called for January 30 of that year, it came very shortly after Neil McLeod was sworn in as premier of the small province. He took over from W.W. Sullivan, who resigned from the post in late 1889.

The Conservatives, under Sullivan, had been in power since 1879. McLeod was a member of Sullivan’s cabinet and was relatively progressive for his time, promoting labour-friendly legislation while in office. Though some Conservatives didn’t appreciate this direction, McLeod was nevertheless the only real contender for the job when Sullivan stepped aside.

McLeod’s opponent during the campaign was John Yeo, the leader of the leaders. But according to Frederick Driscoll, writing in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the Liberal leader “did not announce much by way of policy and campaigned against what [he] thought to be the weak record of the government”.

As would often be the case in PEI politics, McLeod instead touted his party’s links with the government in Ottawa which, in 1890, was still run by John A. Macdonald and the Conservatives.

The 19th century (and into the first decades of the 20th century) was a time of a deeply partisan press — every party had its allied newspaper, and those newspapers often went to war with the newspapers supportive of the opposing party. The Daily Examiner, out of Charlottetown, was no exception. A Conservative-aligned newspaper, the Examiner often railed against whatever charges were being made in the Liberal-aligned Patriot.

But reporting on election day, the Examiner tried to keep things cordial — at first.

“In the city the contest was close and exciting from the beginning,” wrote its correspondent. “The candidates were, personally, very well matched. Few had a word to say against any of them. Each was respected and popular. The contest was between the parties not between the men.”

It wasn’t long before the Examiner cast some aspersions on the means by which the Liberals (or the “Oppositionists”, as they were termed) got their vote out.

“Following their usual tactics, [the Oppositionists] ‘put their best foot foremost,’ and brought early to the polls every floating voter whom they could, by any means, command.”

Of course, the Conservatives wouldn’t stoop to such tactics. And while the Liberals might round-up vagabonds and drifters with the aid of a little booze, the Conservatives got the support of the right kind of people — at least according to the Examiner:

“By two o’clock—after the intelligent voters, who man our workshops and factories, our counting-houses and stores and offices—had polled their votes, McLeod…had obtained an advantage which the Oppositionists, with all their force and ability, and their ‘human devices’, could not overcome.”

The result was incredibly close, with the Conservatives winning 16 seats and the Liberals claiming 14. The popular vote was also nearly evenly divided between the two parties, with little having changed since the previous election of 1886.

A note on sources: Researching early elections is often difficult, as sources (when they can be found) do not always agree and newspaper reports from the time are unreliable. The Wikipedia page for this election, for example, lists both the Liberals and Conservatives as winning 15 seats — perhaps why the 1890 election was often referenced as PEI’s first minority government when Dennis King’s PCs won a minority in 2019. Elections PEI also lists the breakdown as 15 seats for each party in their historical references. But the document includes pencil marks, showing that an elected member recorded as a Liberal was actually a Conservative, which would put the count as 16-14. This is the result listed in several other sources, including the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Other sources refer to the McLeod government as being re-elected in 1890, rather than ending in a tie, and James William Richard, the member corrected by pencil in the Elections PEI document, is listed in the Canadian Parliamentary Companion for 1897 as a Conservative. For that reason, I believe the 16-14 result is the correct one.

McLeod’s narrow majority was not built to last. When Macdonald called a federal election in early 1891, three members of McLeod’s provincial caucus opted to run for a seat in the House of Commons. Two of the three byelections subsequently held to fill these vacancies went to the Liberals, with the third going to an Independent Conservative.

The byelection defeats meant McLeod had lost his majority in the legislature. Losing a motion of non-confidence, he asked for a dissolution, the lieutenant-governor refused, and McLeod resigned. Frederick Peters of the Liberals was asked to form a government and his party would remain in office in Prince Edward Island for another 29 years.

1904 Prince Edward Island election

When the premier’s seat ended in a tie

December 7, 1904

At the turn of the 20th century, the Liberals were well-ensconced at the top of Prince Edward Island’s politics. By 1904, the party had been in power for 13 years and Arthur Peters, installed in 1901, was only the latest in a string of Liberal premiers.

A lawyer “born into what passed for an aristocracy in 19th-century Prince Edward Island”, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Peters also happened to be the brother of Frederick Peters, who had governed the province from 1891 to 1897.

That’s not to say that there weren’t challenges for the Liberals in Prince Edward Island. While the province’s economy had been booming in the 1880s, by the 1890s it was stagnating on the edges of a country that was increasingly looking westwards. As fortunes worsened, P.E.I.’s politics turned to how the Island could get a better deal from the federal government.

Representation in the House of Commons was one point of contention. The province’s declining population as a share of the country’s as a whole had decreased its allocation of seats from six to just four by 1903, and Peters was a vocal opponent of Prince Edward Island’s falling clout.

Peters also pushed for P.E.I. to get a bigger subsidy from the federal government. That government just happened to be run by a Liberal prime minister in Wilfrid Laurier, and when Peters called an election for December 7, 1904, he had no qualms arguing that voters would ensure a better deal for P.E.I. by electing a Liberal government in Charlottetown to match the one in Ottawa.

The Canadian Annual Review analyzed the situation facing both the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition.

“Against the Government was the increasing taxation and indebtedness, the prevailing lack of prosperity amongst the Island farmers and leadership of the Conservatives by a young and talented man. As to actual performance the Liberal party had to its credit the abolition of the Legislative Council, or rather its curious amalgamation with the Assembly; the obtaining of some important financial re-arrangements from the Dominion; and the passing of a fairly popular, though not always enforced, Prohibitory Liquor law.”

John A. Mathieson, the young man leading the Conservatives, had hopes for a breakthrough. In the federal election held in early November, the Conservatives had won three of P.E.I.’s four seats. Surely that ‘Dominion’ success would translate over to the provincial sphere, even if Robert Borden’s Conservatives were still on the opposition benches in the House of Commons.

In the words of The Globe’s correspondent in Halifax, “the election was one of the most exciting ever held in the Province, and both parties worked hard, fine weather and good roads bringing out large votes.”

The Liberals brought the most votes out.

Peters secured a result very similar to the one his predecessor had won in 1900. The Liberals were ahead in 21 seats with 54.1% of the vote, a small gain of 0.6 percentage points. The Liberals swept Prince County, gaining a seat from the Conservatives, but lost one seat in Queens County.

Kings County remained the region of strength for the Conservatives, as it was there that they won seven of their eight seats.

But the most interesting result was in 2nd Kings, where Peters faced a tough fight. When the special votes were counted — people were allowed to vote wherever they held property, even if they had also voted where their primary residence was located — Peters found himself in a tie with the Conservative candidate, Harvey David McEwen, at 515 votes apiece.

While the result kept the premier out of the legislature for a few months, he was eventually able to claim the seat in a byelection called in early 1905. By then, it was agreed that Peters would win by acclamation and McEwen, a prosperous businessman, would go back to his life outside of politics.

But Peters didn’t get to enjoy being premier for much longer — he died of Bright’s disease at the age of 53 in 1908. Mathieson, the “young and talented man”, would eventually get his turn as premier in 1911.

Still, Peters would leave at least one lasting legacy. By 1914, Prince Edward Island was at risk of losing yet another seat in the House of Commons. His campaign to maintain P.E.I.’s representation finally bore fruit when the government of the day decided it would not decrease the number of seats P.E.I. had, but instead stipulate that no province could have fewer seats in the House of Commons than it does in the Senate. That rule has survived for over a century and, today, Prince Edward Island’s seat allocation remains unchanged, and very generous, at four.

1919 Prince Edward Island election

Unrest in the midst of unquestioned prosperity

July 24, 1919

While it included some Liberals, the Unionist government of Robert Borden was primarily Conservative. It had successfully led the country through the First World War but not without leaving a few scars, and when soldiers returned from overseas they expected to be treated like heroes — and that things would change.

That desire for change swept up governments across the country. And many of them were Conservative, regardless of what moniker the Dominion government might have adopted.

The cyclical nature of Canadian elections is not a new invention, and shortly after Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberals were removed from office in 1911 following a long stint in power, Prince Edward Islanders did the same with their Liberal government, sweeping in the Conservatives under John A. Mathieson in 1912.

Mathieson and the Conservatives were returned to power in 1915 but with a much-reduced majority. Two years later, Mathieson resigned to take up a judicial appointment and his attorney general, Aubin-Edmond Arsenault, was chosen as his replacement.

Across the aisle from Arsenault sat a veteran of PEI politics. John Howatt Bell had been first elected as a Liberal in the 1886 provincial election. But he was a troublemaker, quarreling with his own premier. He left provincial politics at the end of the century to try his luck at the national level, successfully at first when he ran in a federal byelection but he was defeated in the next general contest. He stepped aside from politics for about 15 years before returning as a Liberal MLA in the 1915 provincial election.

The Liberals hoped to capitalize on Islanders’ discontent with the government. The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs said that the Conservatives had “against them the general unrest and high prices countered, however, by unquestioned prosperity.” Things were going well in Prince Edward Island, but Islanders weren’t feeling it.

The high cost of living — as it was termed even then — and the soldiers’ feeling of ill-treatment upon their return from France were key factors in this “general unrest”. Farmers were also upset with the government, but unlike elsewhere in Canada they failed to organize themselves into a party in PEI. (In 1920, provincial United Farmer candidates would be elected in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.)

Also at play was sectarian prejudice. The Annual Review said that Arsenault’s Acadian background and Roman Catholicism raised “certain Orange prejudices and grievances”. The Orangemen were also upset that Arsenault appointed an “alleged Sinn Feiner” as secretary to the superintendent of education instead of a Protestant.

Bell and the Liberals ran on providing cleaner and more efficient government, including new investments in education (to promote the “patriotic spirit of the pupils”) and co-operation with farmers’ organizations to lower the costs of goods.

The Conservatives were primarily swept-up in the desire for change. When the election was held in “glorious weather”, in the words of the Charlottetown Guardian, the voters turfed Arsenault and his Conservatives.

The Liberals won 24 seats, a jump of 11 since the previous election. Their candidates captured 51.7% of the vote, up less than two points. But, in a very evenly-divided province, that was enough to ensure a landslide victory.

The Conservatives, down four points to 45.7% of the vote, lost 12 seats, winning only five. Three were on the east coast, one in Summerside and the fifth being Arsenault’s — won in the part of PEI where the province’s francophones are still concentrated to this day.

One Independent was also elected: John Alexander Dewar, a former Conservative who failed to win his party’s nomination, and ran and won in his old district — thanks in large part to the Liberals, who didn’t put up a candidate of their own.

Observers at the time concluded that the soldier and Protestant vote went strongly against the government, while the Guardian blamed the “prevailing unrest and the unlimited promises of Liberal candidates”.

With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is clear that this election result was also part of a broader movement against the Conservatives. The party governed five provinces and in Ottawa at the outbreak of the First World War. By 1921, the Conservatives would be out of office not only in Charlottetown, but in Ottawa and in every other provincial capital across the country, too.

1959 Prince Edward Island election

PEI goes with the flow

September 1, 1959

It was 1959 and Prince Edward Island was in an awkward spot. For the first time since the 1920s, the province had been governed for an extended period of time by a party that also didn’t hold sway in Ottawa.

That had to be fixed.

First elected in 1935 a few months before Mackenzie King’s Liberals returned to federal office, by 1959 the PEI Liberals had been in power for 24 years under four different leaders. The latest was Alex Matheson, who took over in 1953 and won the 1955 election.

Louis St-Laurent was the Liberal prime minister at the time. But in the late 1950s the country had swung to the Progressive Conservatives. John Diefenbaker was elected with a minority government in 1957 and he quickly turned that into a landslide majority the year later. That landslide included a sweep of all four seats in Prince Edward Island.

Undaunted, Matheson sent the province to the polls to boast of his “forward-looking program”, which included free text books for elementary school children, pensions for unmarried women and widows starting at the age of 60 and new trading relationships abroad.

All well and good, but what about Diefenbaker?

All four of his PEI MPs actively participated in the campaign to help elect their provincial cousins, now under the leadership of Walter Shaw.

A 71-year-old farmer and retired deputy minister of agriculture, Shaw didn’t have a seat in the legislature when he took over the opposition PCs, who had just a handful of seats. Matheson obliged Shaw by giving him a bench he could sit on on the floor of the legislative assembly in order to provide some guidance to his MLAs.

Shaw’s platform included the provincial government taking over the portion of teachers’ salaries paid by cash-strapped local school boards. He also pledged support for fishermen and farmers and called the PCs the “party of the causeway”.

Of course, Diefenbaker had merely promised an engineering study about a possible causeway linking Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick, but Shaw made it seem that a vote for the PCs meant a vote for a causeway that was definitely going to happen (it didn’t).

Shaw leaned hard on the notion that PEI needed a friend in the prime minister’s office, saying that Islanders “see the advantage of keeping the province in line with a generous Conservative administration in Ottawa.”

With some degree of self-interest, Matheson said that provincial and federal politics should be kept separate. But his campaign understood they were swimming against the current and instead put a “Matheson government” forward in its advertisements rather than the Liberal brand. Shaw and the PCs, meanwhile, featured Diefenbaker prominently in their advertisements.

It was an unsubtle message, but it worked.

After winning only three seats in 1955, the PCs captured 22 in 1959. The Liberals were reduced to just eight seats, six of them in the southeast corner of the island.

Despite the lop-sided seat result, the voting was actually quite close — the PCs took 50.9% of the vote, a gain of six points since 1955, while the Liberals took the remaining 49.1%.

Bagpipers and 2,500 supporters greeted Shaw for his victory speech, but the results were also greeted warmly in Ottawa. Though they had won a thumping victory only a year before, the Diefenbaker PCs needed some good news. The Liberals had successfully been re-elected on an anti-Diefenbaker message in Newfoundland the month before and new Gallup polling was showing support for the federal PCs slumping. An upset win in PEI improved the mood.

But it wouldn’t last. Diefenbaker’s government became unpopular and was reduced to a shaky minority in 1962. Similarly, Shaw experienced the loss of a few seats when he took Islanders back to the polls that same year. But he held on and in 1966 tried to secure a third mandate for his PCs.

Except by then there was a big problem for Shaw.

The Liberals were back in power in Ottawa.

1968 Prince Edward Island Progressive Conservative leadership

When the premier and opposition leader were neighbours

September 21, 1968

In the 1966 provincial election, Prince Edward Island swung narrowly from the Progressive Conservatives to the Liberals, ending the premiership of Walter Shaw. It wasn’t a decisive defeat, however, as Shaw’s PCs retained 15 seats in the 32-seat legislature.

But by 1968, Shaw had been leading the PCs for over 11 years — and he had his eye on retirement. He’d be turning 81 by year’s end (though the newspapers couldn’t quite get his age right, with three different articles pegging him to be 79, 81 and 83 years old) and he thought that was the time to go.

“I have been under no pressure to retire from the party,” he told the press when he announced his intention to step aside, “but I am at an age when one should consider retirement.”

Somewhat grimly, Shaw pointed out that “no one should hold on until other circumstances, either ill health or death, intervenes. It would be most unfair to stay on until something happens.”

So, the PEI PCs were off to find another leader. Five different candidates came forward, but by voting day only three were still in the running.

They were led by George Key. He wasn’t an MLA and was just 37 years old. But he was the mayor of Summerside, PEI’s second-largest city, and was seen as a centrist Tory.

His main competition was Cyril Sinnott, an internal medicine specialist and the MLA for Kings 5th, which he won by a single vote in the 1966 provincial election. If Key was the moderate, Sinnott was the right-winger (which he himself admitted).

Also on the ballot was Ivan Kerry, the party’s president. With his deep ties in and knowledge of the party, he was seen as a wildcard. But the Charlottetown correspondent for The Globe and Mail felt that Key and Sinnott were the front runners, as they had “launched strong campaigns for the leadership and each cites support from provincial party leaders.”

Over 1,300 voting delegates attended the convention held on September 20 and 21 at the Kennedy Coliseum in Charlottetown. Party members were treated to a speech by Robert Stanfield, who had taken over the national party the year before but was only a few months out from his crushing defeat at the hands of Pierre Trudeau in June 1968 (except in PEI, where the PCs carried all four seats).

But with just three candidates on the ballot, the only question was whether it could be settled on the first one.

It was, with Key winning 691 votes, or about 52% of all those who cast a vote. Sinnott finished second with 36%, with Kerry taking just 12% of the vote.

So, the PCs had their leader — a young man who could take on the Liberal government of Alex Campbell, himself only 34 years old. And who would know how to beat him better than his own neighbour?

Yes, Prince Edward Island is a small place. And it just so happened that George Key shared a lot with Alex Campbell.

“Premier Campbell and I are neighbours in Summerside,” he said in answer to reporters’ questions after his victory. “We attend social functions at each other’s home and we’ve even taken our vacations together. However, I’m afraid I don’t agree with his policies.”

It would’ve been even more awkward to run directly against Campbell in his own riding, so Key opted to run elsewhere. It didn’t help — he would go down to defeat by a mere eight votes as Campbell’s Liberals expanded their narrow majority to a landslide victory in 1970. The PEI PCs would be reduced to just five seats in that campaign, with both Sinnott and Kerry among the defeated, and the PEI Liberals would remain in office for the rest of the 1970s.

1976 PEI Progressive Conservative leadership

PEI PCs go for the steady hand

September 25, 1976

The Progressive Conservatives in Prince Edward Island had been going through a rough patch ever since they lost the 1966 election to Alex Campbell’s Liberals. It had been a close fight in that campaign, but the party was reduced to just five seats four years later. In 1974, the PCs only did a little better, winning six of 32.

That wasn’t good enough for PC leader Melvin McQuaid, and he quit as opposition leader two years later. A seat on P.E.I.’s Supreme Court bench was waiting for him.

The initial frontrunner to replace McQuaid was David MacDonald, the four-term PC MP for Egmont. But MacDonald was a Red Tory, and the Red Tories held sway in the federal Progressive Conservative Party after Joe Clark’s leadership victory earlier that year. Though he mulled a move to provincial politics, MacDonald decided to stay in Ottawa as one of Clark’s frontbenchers. He’d eventually be rewarded for his loyalty by being named to Clark’s (short-lived) cabinet in 1979.

When MacDonald dropped out, another veteran from federal politics took advantage of the opportunity. Angus MacLean had an even longer track record in office. The MP for Malpeque had been elected for the first time in a 1951 byelection. A farmer and WWII veteran, MacLean served as the fisheries minister in John Diefenbaker’s government.

A “Tory of the old school”, according to Martin Dorrell of The Globe and Mail, MacLean was 62 years old and hailed from rural Prince Edward Island. The decline of the Island’s agricultural sector was his main concern.

In some ways, his opponent couldn’t have been more different. James Lee was just 39 years old. Though he ran for the PCs in 1974, he didn’t get himself a seat. He had to wait until a byelection in 1975 to get into the Legislative Assembly. But that victory finally gave the PCs an MLA from Charlottetown, the city they had been shut out of in both 1970 and 1974.

The Canadian Press correspondent in Charlottetown described the different approaches of the two leadership contenders:

“The convention was a contrast to the noisy, placard-waving type of affair common in most other parts of Canada. A ‘wild’ demonstration here usually involves no more than a few placards and a choice of music, with candidates usually choosing either the skirl of bagpipes or the rasping sound of fiddles and guitars.”

MacLean opted for the bagpipes, entering the convention hall “accompanied only by his wife and a piper”, while Lee attempted more of the “big city zip”. What that “zip” was wasn’t described by the CP correspondent, but it apparently did not go over very well.

Lee put up a decent performance, but the majority opted for the experience and simplicity of the veteran MacLean. He took 57.4% of the 1,026 ballots cast.

In response to Lee’s approach, MacLean said that “high tension campaigning is not my style. It doesn’t work for me. That kind of thing tends to create party divisions. I do it quietly at the kitchen table and not with hoopla.”

He promised to keep the party united and get its organization ready for the next election. MacLean would come up just short in 1978, but would lead the PCs back to power in 1979. He’d stay on for only two years. By then, the PCs were ready to pass the baton to someone who had gained experience: James Lee.

1978 Prince Edward Island election

A squeaker, all right

April 24, 1978

The year was 1978 and Alex Campbell, the premier of Prince Edward Island, was hoping to do something no other premier had ever done before in his province: win a fourth consecutive election.

Though only 44, Campbell was already the longest-serving premier in PEI’s history (a title he still holds today). He had come into office as a younger man in 1966 and had led the PEI Liberals to more wins in 1970 and 1974. But a fourth win in 1978 was not going to be easy.

The party had already lost a couple of seats to the Progressive Conservatives in byelections and the Tories seemed geared-up for the campaign. They had a new leader in Angus MacLean, though he was hardly new to politics.

MacLean had served a quarter century as a PC MP, in the job long enough to have served as fisheries minister in John Diefenbaker’s government. “A politician without flair or a sense of style,” in the words of Martin Dorrell in the Globe and Mail, MacLean was “a reluctant speaker and a man who had never been able to dispel suspicions that he had returned to the province to retire.”

But return he did, taking over the provincial party’s leadership in 1976 and getting himself into the legislature in a byelection. The Liberals were confident they could beat MacLean (the contrast in age between the two leaders was stark) but Campbell nevertheless recognized that “no one has this in the bag.”

The Liberals presented their budget and shortly thereafter dropped the writ. Campbell wanted to continue his work diversifying the economy, largely with the help of federal funds from the Liberal government in Ottawa. New industries would bring 2,000 jobs to the province, cutting unemployment by half.

MacLean, however, emphasised the old industries that had built Prince Edward Island: the fisheries and the family farm. While Campbell might want to spend Ottawa’s money on economic diversification, MacLean wanted more self-sufficiency and autonomy for PEI — and for Islanders themselves.

Despite Campbell’s modernity, politics could still be old-fashioned in PEI. The Canadian Press reported “a predictable element of old-style politics [that emerged after the writ drop] — a stream of highway repair trucks.”

Widely considered a bitter campaign, the most competitive since Campbell had come to power, the PCs emphasised the team around MacLean, while the Liberals put the focus on the premier.

The Liberals had many promises in their platform, denounced as a “shopping list” by MacLean, while the PCs spoke broadly about values and objectives but kept their promises unspecific and a platform was never even released.

That unorthodox approach contrasted with that of the Liberals.

“The party has also taken some hard knocks over the slickness of its advertising,” Dorrell wrote. “The campaign, conducted by an out-of-province firm, features a photograph of Mr. Campbell in which the bags and worry-lines around his eyes have been air-brushed away, leaving the unfortunate impression that he has never known a hard day at the office.”

The results were extremely close. The Liberals dropped nine seats to just 17, with the PCs picking up nine to finish with 15. The Liberals took just under 51% of the vote while the PCs took just over 48%. Only 50 votes separated the Liberals’ Ralph Johnstone from Flora Bagnall of the PCs in 1st Queens. Without those votes, the two parties would have ended in a tie.

The NDP, which ran a far smaller slate of candidates than it did in 1974, took less than 1% of ballots cast.

The Liberals lost seats across the island, but primarily in and around Charlottetown. Their block of seats in Prince County at the western extremity of PEI kept them in office.

Islanders were nearly evenly split — and in some cases they literally were. At the time, Islanders elected two members to the legislature for every seat, one a “councillor” and the other an “assemblyman”. In five of PEI’s 16 districts, voters elected a Liberal for one of those titles and a Tory for the other.

“It was a squeaker, all right,” Campbell admitted on election night.

For the PCs, it looked like the Liberal government was nearly done. MacLean commented that it was “just a matter of whether it’s going in one sweep or in installments.”

After 12 years as premier and facing a divided legislature — the Liberal speaker reduced the party’s majority to one — Campbell decided to resign later that year. It put the legislature in an even more unstable situation. Bennett Campbell, his successor as premier but no relation, called an election in early 1979 to settle the impasse. Islanders indeed broke the tie, and Angus MacLean became premier.

1979 Prince Edward Island election

As PEI goes, so goes the nation

April 23, 1979

When Pierre Trudeau came to power in 1968, Liberal parties formed government in four provinces across the country: Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. For a brief period in 1970, the tally increased to six provinces with Liberal victories in Quebec and Nova Scotia.

But by 1979, Canadians were getting a tired of the Trudeau Liberals and only one provincial Liberal government was left standing — in PEI.

The Liberals had been in power there since 1966, when Alex Campbell led the party to victory over the PCs. He secured re-election in 1970 and 1974 and then eked out a slim, two-seat win in 1978.

That two-seat margin, however, became untenable later that year when Campbell decided to take a seat on the bench of the provincial court. With a Liberal in the Speaker’s chair, the legislature was tied 15 to 15 and the newly-installed Liberal premier, Bennett Campbell (no relation), had no choice but to call an election for April 23, 1979.

The provincial campaign would take place in the shadow of the federal election pitting Trudeau against Joe Clark, a vote which would be held on May 22, 1979. PCs outside of PEI hoped that it would be a little boost of momentum for the national campaign.

There was a significant difference in age between the PEI Liberal and PC leaders. Campbell was just 35. Angus MacLean, the PC leader, was 65 years old and a former minister in John Diefenbaker’s government — even then a rather distant memory.

Despite their age difference, however, the two had some things in common. They both campaigned on provincial self-sufficiency and offered voters general principles rather than a platform. And, according to Martin Dorrell, writing in The Globe and Mail from Charlottetown, they were both rather dull. “The leadership abilities of both men,” Dorrell wrote, “neither of whom has oratorical flair, have not been a factor.”

Doreen Sark led a small slate of five NDP candidates, making her the first female leader of a provincial party in PEI, while one independent candidate ran on the legalization of draft beer, which was then illegal in the province (the only one in Canada).

Commentary on the campaign highlighted the lack of any major issue, with both leaders running on little more than platitudes. But one issue that did grab attention was the Liberal government’s decision to purchase nuclear power from Point Lepreau in New Brunswick. The PCs promised to review and potentially reverse the decision, which was a touchy subject in a campaign held only weeks after the partial meltdown at the American nuclear plant on Three Mile Island.

Voters in PEI sensed that change was in the air. In Charlottetown, one suggested to a reporter that he “come back a week after the election and you’ll see there’ll be all new faces behind the counters of the liquor stores.”

New faces did come in to the legislature, with the PCs gaining six seats from the Liberals and forming a majority government with 21 seats to the Liberals’ 11. The shift in the popular vote, however, was not as dramatic. The PCs jumped 5.2 points to 53.3% while the Liberals were down 5.4 points to 45.3%. The NDP’s five candidates combined for 1.3% of the vote.

The PCs won every seat in Charlottetown (a gain of two) and in Summerside, and also made three gains elsewhere in Queens County. The two parties also swapped seats in Kings County.

While MacLean and the PCs celebrated on the Island, PCs were celebrating in the rest of the country, too. Joe Clark, leader of the national PC Party, was speaking at an election rally in St. John’s when news of MacLean’s victory reached him.

“There is only one Liberal government left to go!” he told the cheering crowd. He’d be prime minister within weeks — though not for very long.

1993 Prince Edward Island Liberal leadership

A coronation for Catherine Callbeck

January 23, 1993

The 1980s and early 1990s were dominated by constitutional debates — Quebec’s referendum in 1980, the negotiations over the repatriation of the constitution in 1981, the Meech Lake Accord of 1987 and the Charlottetown referendum in 1992. It elevated provincial premiers to the national stage. While that might not have necessarily made them household names, even the premiers of Canada’s smallest provinces were national figures.

Joe Ghiz was one of them, having become premier of Prince Edward Island in 1986. His Liberals dominated the province, winning all but two seats in his 1989 re-election campaign and still being very popular in the polls as the next election approached. But Ghiz decided that was enough, and announced his resignation in October 1992.

A handful of provincial cabinet ministers were touted as serious contenders, but in the end there was only one: Catherine Callbeck. First elected as an MLA in 1974, after which she served in cabinet for one term before leaving politics for a time, Callbeck had been the Liberal MP for Malpeque since 1988. She was the first to enter the leadership contest and resigned her federal seat, starting the campaign with the support of half of PEI’s cabinet ministers and most of the Liberal caucus. Her show of force dissuaded others from throwing their hats into the ring, something Callbeck didn’t mind.

"If no one else chooses to throw their hat in,” she said, “it could make the transfer smoother because leadership contests can be divisive.”

As the deadline for entering the race approached, it seemed like the PEI Liberals were heading for an acclamation. But on the very last day, two men stepped up to challenge Callbeck.

One was Bill Campbell, a social activist and federal civil servant somewhat well-known in Charlottetown.

The other was a complete unknown. Larry Creed, in his late 20s, was an unemployed construction worker and called himself the “beans and bologna candidate”. He admitted he entered the race simply because it was heading for a coronation.

Neither Creed nor Campbell had any political experience and Callbeck was the heavy favourite. She ran a largely promise-free campaign (wanting to save those for the upcoming election), but there was some disagreement over the Confederation Bridge — Callbeck wanted it to go ahead as planned, while Creed wanted a plebiscite on it.

More than 1,500 delegates (a big number in a province of around 130,000 people) attended the convention in Charlottetown, but it was a “low-key convention with only token demonstrations and little sign-waving on a convention-room floor so packed with chairs that there wasn't much room for it anyway”, according to the Ottawa Citizen’s correspondent.

“While Campbell emotionally promised full employment in 10 years and Creed choked up when he mentioned his parents, Callbeck delivered a cool, straightlaced speech reflecting her meticulous personality and middle-of-the-road Liberalism.”

The result was a landslide victory — as expected.

Callbeck took 79% of the vote on the first ballot, easily beating both Creed and Campbell, who took 16% and 5% of delegates’ votes, respectively.

Callbeck had just become the premier of Prince Edward Island — and only the second woman to become premier in Canada’s history, having been beaten to the punch by British Columbia’s Rita Johnston by little more than a year.

She wasn’t intimidated at the prospect of being a woman in a male-dominated field.

"When I took my Bachelor of Commerce at Mount Allison,” she said, “I was the only woman in the class. When I taught at Saint John Institute of Technology, I was the only woman on the business administration staff. When I served in cabinet in Prince Edward Island I was the only woman. When I was in business, I dealt mainly with men."

Without a seat in the legislature, Callbeck didn’t waste any time before calling an election, setting a date for March. In the 1993 PEI election, she rode a wave of popularity (and a tide going against anything Tory blue at the time) to win 31 of 32 seats — another landslide victory, making her the first Canadian woman to lead a political party to electoral success.

1993 Prince Edward Island election

Prince Edward Island makes history

March 29, 1993

For Catherine Callbeck and the Liberals of Prince Edward Island, 1993 held little suspense.

After Joe Ghiz announced his resignation as premier, a job he had held since 1986, it quickly became apparent that Callbeck, the Liberal MP for Malpeque and former provincial cabinet minister, would be his successor. Some 1,500 delegates confirmed this in January 1993 when they overwhelmingly gave their support to Callbeck over her two little-known opponents.

A provincial election was expected shortly after Callbeck was sworn in as premier — and it set up a campaign unlike any other seen in Canada before, as two women leading parties of government faced off against each other.

The PEI Progressive Conservatives, who had been thrashed by Ghiz’s Liberals in 1989, had chosen Pat Mella as their leader a year later. A school teacher, Mella energetically critiqued the Liberal government from outside the legislature.

That’s because there weren’t many seats reserved for Tories in Charlottetown. In the last election, the Liberals had won 30 of 32. And even one of those two PC MLAs had been persuaded to resign in order to accept a government appointment from the Liberals. The other MLA, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, decided not to re-offer.

That meant Mella would be leading a cast of 32 candidates without a single incumbent among them.

“I think it’s time for a change,” Mella said, “and you might as well mean it literally.”

Politically, things looked good for the Liberals. But Callbeck had her own challenges to face as premier of a province with 18% unemployment and prospects of more job losses on the horizon.

One of those fears was that Jean Chrétien’s Liberals, widely expected to defeat the PCs in a federal election later that year, would put a stop to the building of a tax facility in Summerside to process the GST. Chrétien had pledged he would scrap the GST, which would put hundreds of jobs in Summerside in danger.

In the end, Islanders needn’t have worried.

Playing it safe, Callbeck ran a campaign of “splashy advertisements, bland speeches and personal contact with thousands of voters in muddy farmyards and chilly church basements,” according to The Globe and Mail’s Kevin Cox. Callbeck avoided controversy and detailed commitments whereover possible.

Mella, by comparison, was a lively speaker and sharp critic, and her detailed platform included many promises to Islanders, including attention-grabbing ones like ending political patronage and funding kindergarten. But she wasn’t able to move the dial much in her favour, and having to apologize for some radio ads that went after Callbeck personally — attack ads were just not how things were done in PEI — did not help matters.

In a climate of insecurity and uncertainty about the province’s economic future, Islanders opted for the status quo — and nearly awarded the Liberals a sweep.

The Liberals captured 31 seats, a gain of one from the previous election. The party captured both of the seats vacated by the PC MLAs but left one on the table: Pat Mella’s.

It was a disappointing result for the PCs, who had hoped to make a breakthrough. But Mella was able to get herself a seat in the legislature and increase her party’s share of the vote by four points to 39.5%. The Liberals dropped nearly six points to 55.1%, but it didn’t matter much. Callbeck had coupled her leadership landslide in January with an electoral landslide little more than two months later.

Her victory didn’t make her Canada’s first female provincial premier, as Rita Johnston beat her to that title in 1991 in British Columbia. But Johnston and her Social Credit Party went down to defeat later that year. Avoiding that fate made Callbeck the first woman to become premier with an electoral mandate of her own — not that Callbeck thought much about it.

“I can honestly say I don’t feel that type of pressure,” she said. “I’m the sort of person that I take on a challenge and I do the best I can, that’s what I’m going to do as premier of Prince Edward Island.”

2003 Prince Edward Island Liberal leadership

A second Ghiz for the Liberals

April 5, 2003

The 2000 provincial election in Prince Edward Island was one the PEI Liberals wanted to forget.

Against Pat Binns’s incumbent Progressive Conservative government, Wayne Carew nearly led the party to complete destruction. The Liberals were reduced to just a single seat (and that won by just 157 votes) and 34% support. At the time, that represented the worst performance for the Liberals in the party’s long history. (The party reached a new low this past Monday.)

Carew held on as leader for a few months, but by the fall of 2000 he decided it was time to step down.

"It will always be something that you wish you could have another crack at," he said. Ron MacKinley, the lone Liberal survivor from 2000, took over as interim leader.

There wasn’t much of a rush to fill that job in a province dominated by Binns and the PCs. Not until February 2003, just a few weeks before the nomination deadline, did two candidates come forward.

Alan Buchanan was the first. An MLA for 4th Queens from 1989 to 1996, Buchanan had served as a cabinet minister in the Joe Ghiz and Catherine Callbeck governments, taking on important portfolios like health and justice. Since leaving politics ahead of the 1996 campaign that brought the PCs to power, Buchanan had been working in the private sector. He launched his leadership campaign in his hometown of Belfast in front of 250 supporters.

A few days later, Robert Ghiz joined the fray.

A familiar name in Prince Edward Island as the son of Joe Ghiz, premier from 1986 to 1993 (he passed away from cancer in 1996), Robert Ghiz was just 29 years old. While the family name was well-known among Islanders, his was also a well-known face in Liberal circles, as Robert Ghiz served as Atlantic advisor to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

"We need a resurgence of energy that has been the backbone of our party,” he told the 275 or so supporters gathered for his campaign launch in Charlottetown. “We need a leader who wants to work hard, a leader who will bring about dramatic change in this organization — a change in attitude, a change in mind set."

Ghiz, however, was not banking his strategy on nostalgia for the years of his father, who led the Liberals to big victories in 1986 and 1989.

"I'm not my father,” he said. “I just hope I can learn from some of the good things he did on PEI."

The convention at the Charlottetown Civic Centre was very well-attended, as nearly 4,000 Liberal party members would cast a ballot.

"I didn't know there were this many Liberals left on P.E.I.," one delegate joked to the CBC.

While Ghiz pitched the message of renewal, Buchanan leaned into his experience. During his convention speech, he argued that "I am ready to lead this party. I have earned my stripes and my apprenticeship is over." But decisions he had made when in government, particularly a pay cut for public sector workers, were still haunting him.

With 3,979 ballots cast, Ghiz emerged as the favourite — but only just. He earned the support of 2,065 delegates, giving him 52% of the vote. Buchanan was only 161 votes behind with 1,904, or 48%.

"The Liberal Party is ready for change,” Ghiz said in his speech before the ballots were cast. “The province is ready for change, the Tory era is ending and I am here to offer this party a fresh start.”

"We need to learn from our past, live in the present and build now for the future. Today is the start of a new page in the history of our party."

He was right about that, but that new page wouldn’t be turned just yet.

In the 2003 election called a few months later, Ghiz would improve the Liberals’ standing, win himself and three other Liberals a seat in the legislature and increase the party’s vote share by eight percentage points. Unlike Carew, he would get another crack at the premiership. But he’d have to wait four more years before occupying the same office that his father once did.

2003 Prince Edward Island election

A hat trick for Pat Binns

September 29, 2003

After two consecutive majority governments for the P.E.I. Progressive Conservatives, premier Pat Binns decided to go for something no Tory had managed before in P.E.I. since the 19th century: three wins in a row.

The omens for Binns and the PCs looked good in mid-2003. The last election had only been three years earlier, but unemployment in Prince Edward Island was low (by P.E.I. standards) at 11% and the number of jobs had increased significantly since the PCs had come to office in 1996. Polls put satisfaction with the Binns government around 80% and, just to leave nothing to chance, the PCs had spent the months before the election call announcing new reductions in fees and taxes, such as the capping of auto-insurance rates. That had been a thorny issue which hurt other PC premiers in the Maritimes, and Binns wasn’t going to take the risk.

A bean farmer and one-term PC MP during the Brian Mulroney years, the 54-year-old Binns announced the expected election at his own nomination meeting. His was the last of the 27 PC nominations that needed to be lined up.

Against the PCs, the Liberals had a fresh face in their new leader — though not an unfamiliar name. In April 2003, the party had chosen the 29-year-old Robert Ghiz, son of former premier Joe Ghiz, who had governed from 1986 to 1992 and had passed away in 1996. Robert Ghiz won by a margin of 161 votes over former cabinet minister Alan Buchanan in a contest in which 4,000 Islanders cast a ballot.

Despite the interest, the prize at the time was not particularly glittering.

The Liberals had been out of power for seven years and had been shellacked in the last election when they had been reduced to just a single seat in the 27-seat Legislative Assembly. Only 157 votes in that one riding had prevented a clean sweep of the island by the PCs.

But P.E.I. had only ever known two parties of government — the Liberals and the Tories. If Ghiz wasn’t the favourite to win the upcoming election, he would eventually get a good shot at becoming premier.

While young, Ghiz boosted the party’s fortunes. His father had been a popular premier, though his son rarely spoke of his father on the stump as he wanted to steer his own course. He gave the moribund Liberals new energy and criticized the government for increased electricity rates, one of its few vulnerabilities. He also put the premier on the defensive during the leaders debate.

The Liberals started the campaign about 20 points behind the PCs in the polls, but by election day the race was looking closer. No one, though, doubted that Binns would prevail in what had been widely seen as a low-key, dull election without any major controversy or decisive issue.

On voting day, the damage from Hurricane Juan couldn’t keep Islanders from casting a ballot, as turnout still managed 83% despite nearly half of households losing power. Even Binns had to watch the results on a small TV powered by a generator.

Those results gave the PCs its third consecutive majority government with 23 seats, a loss of only three since the previous election. The PCs still managed to win a majority of ballots cast despite dropping nearly four points.

Ghiz and the Liberals put up a decent fight, gaining three seats (two of them in Charlottetown, including the district in which Ghiz was running) and increasing their vote share by eight percentage points, ending with just under 43%.

The New Democrats, under rookie leader Gary Robichaud, managed just 3.1% of the vote. The party had failed to run a full slate and finished no better than third in any riding, barely clearing double-digits in just one district.

For Binns and the PCs, the gamble of an early election had paid off nicely. On election night, Binns joked that “sometimes it's called P.E.I., sometimes it's P.E. Island. But tonight I want to call it P.C. Island."

I guess you had to be there.

NOTE ON SOURCES: When available, election results are sourced from Elections Prince Edward Island and J.P. Kirby’s election-atlas.ca. Historical newspapers are also an important source, and I’ve attempted to cite the newspapers quoted from.

There haven’t been many changes in this week’s update to The Writ’s Vote and Seat Projection, with the slow decline of the Liberals in the seat projection continuing this week (with a caveat). But while we’ve seen the Conservatives either stabilize or bounce back in most of the country, the party’s support seems to be stubbornly low in British Columbia.

Before we delve into that, here’s where things stand this week:

The Liberals sit at 44.6% in the vote projection (+0.2 since last week) and are leading in 209 ridings across the country, down two. However, their average projection — which takes into account potential polling error as well as the number of close races — is up 1.5 seats to 203.2. This means that while the Liberals might be leading in fewer ridings than last week, they are in a better position to win the seats where they are ahead than they were in last week’s projection.

The Conservatives are also up 0.2 points to 34.7% and are leading in 96 ridings (+2) and win an average of 110.3 seats in the projection (+0.4). The New Democrats have held steady at 10.6% and are still leading in 15 ridings, though their average projection has fallen 0.8 seats to 10.9.

The Bloc Québécois is down slightly in the average projection (from 18.3 to 17.3 seats), while the Greens have slipped 0.2 points nationally to 2%.

For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:

But let’s get back to British Columbia, which seems to be an outlier from the trends — and not only for the Conservatives, who have fallen behind the Liberals here by a greater margin than anywhere else in the country except Alberta. What gives?

Read more

Starting a polls- and election-focused newsletter at a time when Substack was just starting to get better known — particularly in Canada — was a step into the unknown. I had been independent before, but I relied on freelance work and (meagre) advertising revenue at the time. Relying instead on subscribers was a bit of a gamble, especially since it meant leaving my job (and salary and benefits) with the CBC’s Parliamentary Bureau. My expectations ranged from it being a complete flop to, just maybe, a surprising success.

Five years later, I’m proud to say the outcome (so far) has been much closer to the latter than the former.

Every anniversary since I launched The Writ in June 2021 I’ve taken a step back to reflect on how things are going with this little adventure of mine and to let you, the readers who make it possible, in on the highs and the lows of the preceding 12 months.

As I’ve said before, writing a subscribers-focused newsletter is a very different endeavour than other kinds of publications. When the focus is on getting the biggest audience in order to earn the most advertising revenue, there isn’t much of a relationship between writer and reader. The incentives are to try to appeal to the broadest audience possible. That’s not in and of itself a bad thing, but it does influence what’s produced. When I wrote for The Globe and Mail or the CBC, I actively thought about how niche, how nerdy I could get before I risked turning the broader public off.

To be fair, I could go pretty deep. I was pleasantly surprised that my wonkish enthusiasm for electoral history or polling minutiae resonated with some people. It gave me the confidence that I could probably launch something like The Writ and find enough of an audience to support my work. Turns out I did, and I’m very grateful to all of you for following along.

And that’s why I try to fill you in on this project every year.

Compared to 2024-2025, this year has been far quieter. There was a solid four or five months of non-stop political drama that began with the resignation of Chrystia Freeland from Justin Trudeau’s cabinet (remember that?) and ended with the unlikely re-election of the Liberals under new leader Mark Carney. Political drama means political interest, and The Writ’s subscriber rolls ballooned to new heights.

While there’s been some political drama since — floor-crossers, anyone? — the pace of that drama certainly slackened over the last 12 months. It was also an electorally-quiet year, with only one provincial election taking place (in Newfoundland and Labrador). The NDP held its leadership contest to replace Jagmeet Singh, but the weakened state of the party lowered the attention given the campaign (though I tried my best!).

That, combined with the inevitable post-election exodus of subscribers who signed up during the federal election campaign, has meant that the subscriber numbers have slumped in 2026. In fact, it’s the first year where the number of subscribers has actually dropped. The good news, as I’ll get to below, is that the number of subscribers is still higher than it was on any anniversary prior to last year — so, growth in the longer-term, if not in the last year.

While there haven’t been a lot of highlights when it comes to subscriber numbers, there were two highlights over the past year that really meant a lot to me.

In March, I attended the NDP’s leadership convention in Winnipeg. I did so of my own accord and paid my own way (often when I attend these kinds of things, costs are covered by the media partner I’m working with), which itself is a testament to the success of The Writ. It was really terrific to meet and speak with so many New Democrats, be they volunteers, members, officials or commentators, and catch-up with some former media colleagues.

Then, in April, I attended the Liberal convention in Montreal (to be transparent, the costs of this trip was covered by CPAC). Again, it was great to chat with so many people.

But what made these trips highlights for the year was the number of readers of The Writ (and listeners and viewers of The Numbers podcast) who introduced themselves and told me how much they appreciated my work. I know it’s a cliché when people say they are humbled (“humblebragging” exists), but it was honestly humbling. The work I do often feels very unidirectional — I write these newsletters or record podcasts but I rarely get much direct feedback. I sometimes wonder whether anyone cares much about what I’m doing. But to have real people come up and say they loved The Numbers or were long-time subscribers to The Writ put some faces to the faceless email addresses and listener/viewer stats, and reminded me that what I do does matter to some people!

If you were one of those who stopped me to say “hi” in Winnipeg or Montreal, thank you so much! It really was a motivating and inspiring boost.

Another highlight for the year was the launch of The Writ’s federal Vote and Seat Projections. I was working on the model off-and-on for months, and I was finally able to get it finished and operating this past March after a last push. While the interactive graphics the Datawrapper platform makes possible aren’t as fancy as the ones I used to have on the CBC Poll Trackers, I think they do a pretty serviceable job and are about as good as it can get on the Substack platform.

The development of that model made it relatively straight-forward to put together and launch the Alberta Referendum Poll Tracker. I’m hoping I’ll be able to adapt the federal model pretty easily in order to launch a projection for the Quebec election. My plan is to have provincial models up and running in the lead-up to other campaigns going forward but, for now at least, I don’t intend to have provincial projection models operating between elections.

Having models like these are useful for a number of reasons. I enjoy putting them together and maintaining them, and they are helpful for objectively tracking trends over a longer period of time. They are really valuable analytical aids as well. For the business purposes of The Writ, they are also good traffic drivers and, I hope, value-adds for subscribers.

Podcasting and broadcasting

There weren’t many new developments over the last year on the podcasting and broadcasting fronts. The Numbers has retained a lot of the new audience that was gained during the federal election campaign. Philippe and I are still having a lot of fun with the podcast, so it is a personal treat to record as well. We expect to increase the number of episodes of Les chiffres as we approach the Quebec election.

One small change we’ve made recently is to include poll graphics in the video versions of The Numbers that are available on YouTube. So, if you currently consume the audio version of the podcast, you might want to check out the video version, too.

Post-election growth of The Writ’s YouTube Channel has been relatively modest, but the channel has gained about 2,000 subscribers over the last year. Those subscribers currently number just over 13,000.

Episodes of The Writ Podcast have been few and far between since the last election. I’ve only had three — one on the Newfoundland and Labrador election, and two with the Pollster Panel. I’m hoping to increase the pace of new episodes this year, with new episodes every month or two. I haven’t done a new episode of The Writ Show on YouTube this past year, but I will probably put out some new ones during the Quebec election and the Alberta referendum.

But there’s a capacity limit at some point — both for me and for you! Last year, one of my survey questions for readers was the number of pieces of content you prefer to receive every week. The top response was two, with one and three being not far behind. With the Weekly Writ and new episodes of The Numbers on Thursdays and a projection update piece on Tuesdays, I appear to be hitting that saturation point. So, I want to reserve that extra content for when events warrant, such as during election campaigns and leadership contests.

On the mainstream media front, it’s certainly been quieter than it was in the run-up to the 2025 election. The cancellation of PrimeTime Politics and L’Essentiel on CPAC has also meant fewer media appearances. But you can still catch me from time to time on the CBC and some other outlets.

Audience growth

Alright, time to get into the numbers.

On June 22, 2025, the four-year anniversary of the site, I had 17,843 total subscribers (free and paid), down from the peak of 18,953 the day after the election. That number continued to slide until it hit a low of 16,749 in January. Since then, the number has been slowly inching back up. The launch of the projection model in March helped with that.

As of today, the number of subscribers is a shade over 17,000. So, the loss of total subscribers over the last year has been small (only about 5%) and the decline has stopped. But, I do seem to have hit the same sort of plateau I reached after the 2021 election.

I’ll get into the number of paid subscribers to The Writ after the paywall. But if you aren’t already a paid subscriber, I hope you’ll consider supporting this project.

Subscribe now

One of the reasons I hope you’ll do so is to help support independent and non-partisan political journalism and analysis. A lot of the more successful independent political outlets on Substack (and elsewhere) have an explicit political slant and perspective — which is fine, whatever floats your boat, but we need to keep proving that you don’t need to be outrageous, controversial or partisan to find success in this industry. Chasing favour on the algorithm does not improve the quality of content.

The other reason is that there will be a lot of good stuff coming from The Writ! That Quebec election and Alberta referendum will come sooner than you think, and I’ll be covering the ups and downs of the polls straight through to October. We have six federal byelections — at least six, probably more — that will be called within the next year. Not all of them will be nail-biters, but there is always something to learn from the results. And then there’s the federal polls to follow. Will Mark Carney’s prolonged honeymoon endure? Will Pierre Poilievre rebound, or will his polling numbers start to raise questions about his leadership? And can Avi Lewis lift the NDP back to greater relevancy?

So, I hope you’ll give some thought to backing The Writ, if you aren’t already. And if you can’t swing it right now, I totally get it. You can still expect to receive the unpaywalled portions of the Weekly Writ and the projections, as well as new podcast episodes once they’re published.

Peek behind the curtain

Okay, now to the paid subscriber numbers.

Read more

This week on The Numbers, we dissect new federal, Quebec and B.C. poll numbers. And, after last week’s debacle, Philippe comes back with another challenging Quiz. Can I get any redemption after being humbled so thoroughly?

Looking for even more of The Numbers? If you join our Patreon and support this joint project of ours, you’ll get ad-free episodes every week, bonus episodes several times per month and access to our lively Discord. Join here!

The bonus episodes are also available via an Apple Podcasts subscription.

Looking to add The Numbers to your favourite podcasting app? You can find it on:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Overcast

• Pocket Casts

• Podcast Addict

• RSS Feed