The State of the Writ, Year 5

How things are going with The Writ after five years. Five!

When I launched The Writ five years ago, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.

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.

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.