Tracking polls push Liberals to lowest level since February
Federal Projection Update for July 14, 2026.
With the summer heat lulling our national pollsters into a polling siesta, the only two surveys with federal voting intentions published over the last week came from the two tracking pollsters, Liaison Strategies and Nanos Research.
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.