8.1 million Conservative voters? Not anymore
Federal Projection Update for May 12, 2026.
Speaking to the Canada Strong and Free Network conference last week, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre dismissed calls that he needs to change, saying that his critics want him to “just join the club, accept the status quo, blend in” but that doing so would mean “leaving behind the 8.3 million [sic] Canadians, the record-smashing 8.3 million Canadians who voted for us. They voted for us to fight for them.”
Poilievre often references the number of votes his party received in the last election as a proof-point of the strength of his leadership and the importance of his Conservative opposition.
With the caveat that the Conservatives did not, in fact, receive 8.3 million votes in the last election (they received 8,113,484, which would normally be rounded off to 8.1 million, or maybe 8.2 million if one is being very generous, but not 8.3 million, a mistake that Poilievre has made before) Poilievre is not wrong that his opposition mandate comes from the millions of Canadians who voted for him in 2025.
But the rhetorical strength of that mandate is somewhat diminished when, today, the Conservatives no longer seem to have the support of 8.1 million Canadians (or, for that matter, 8.3 million).
According to The Writ’s latest update to the Vote and Seat Projection, the Conservatives currently sit at 34% support, a drop of 7.3 percentage points since the last election. That would suggest that, if an election were held today and if turnout was a constant, the Conservatives would receive roughly 6.7 million votes, a drop of just over 1.4 million in little more than a year.
We’ll delve into where these losses have occurred in a moment, but first here is where the projection stands this week:
There’s been little change since last week, with the Liberals up marginally to 46.3% and leading in 224 ridings. The projection awards them 215.5 seats on average (which takes into account potential polling and modelling errors), an increase of 4.1 seats since last week. The average Conservative seat haul has dropped 3.6 seats to 99.8. The New Democrats have ticked up a small amount to 9.1% of the vote and win an average of 8.3 seats, while the Bloc is largely unchanged.
For fully interactive charts, tables and maps, head to The Writ’s website:
But let’s take a deeper look at the Conservatives, where their losses have been steepest and why it’s a bit of a stretch to lean on the party’s results from more than a year ago.