Weekly Writ 6/4: What to make of Liberal, NDP divergences in the polls
The Liberals and NDP both scored their best and worst recent numbers in newly published polls.
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — depending on which poll you might be looking at.
It’s been awhile since we had a good old-fashioned polling discrepancy. But it happened this week when the two tracking polls from Nanos Research and Liaison Strategies showed some low numbers for the Liberals and high numbers for the NDP, numbers that suggested the two parties might be on the move.
Nanos had the Liberals slipping again this week to just 40% support, the lowest the party has been in any poll since mid-February (which was also a Nanos poll). Meanwhile, the survey had the NDP at 13%, one of the higher scores for that party that we’ve recently seen.
But it was the poll by Liaison that might have captured more attention. While it had the Liberals down to a nine-point lead over the Conservatives (41% to 32%), it remarkably had the New Democrats at 16% — a five point jump in a week and the highest level of support recorded for the NDP in any poll since before the 2025 election campaign began.
Then came Léger.
The poll from Léger for Postmedia pegged Liberal support at 50%, the highest support recorded for the Liberals in a Léger poll in a decade. The Conservatives trailed by 16 points and the New Democrats scored only 6%, on par with where they were in the last election and, with the exception of a handful of polls that put the NDP at 4% or 5% earlier this year, about as low as the party has managed since that disastrous campaign.
Any hopes from New Democrats that they are on the upswing might have to be dampened. One of the most respected polling firms in the country — and one that over-estimated the NDP by two points in the 2025 election — shows the party is nowhere near 16%.
That doesn’t mean that either Liaison or Léger is the outlier here. Before Liaison’s numbers were added to The Writ’s Vote and Seat Projection on Tuesday, the party was projected to have 9.3% support. Léger is on the lower side of that average. Liaison is clearly on the much higher side, but considering we have seen a few polls with 11%, 12% and 13% for the NDP in recent weeks, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they might register a 16% (or a 6%) from time to time.
But not only are the numbers diverging, the trends are heading in different directions as well. Léger had the Liberals up two points since the end of April. Nanos has the Liberals down five points since its survey ending on May 1, while Liaison also has them trending downward. Both Liaison and Nanos have the NDP on the upswing, but Léger has them flatlining.
The Liberal drop in the Nanos poll and the NDP gain in the Liaison poll were statistically significant. But that doesn’t mean they can’t still be noise.
The thing to remember with both the Nanos and Liaison polls is that they are tracking surveys. Liaison runs its polls over two weeks, replacing the older week of polling with the newer week with each new iteration of the poll. Nanos, meanwhile, polls over four weeks. There are good reasons to poll like this — for example, it’s cheaper to have two or four smaller weekly samples combined into one poll rather than having one big sample every week — but it does mean that these polls are lagging indicators, especially compared to polls conducted over a shorter time period.
Léger was in the field from May 29 to June 1. Liaison was out of the field on May 30 but its polling started on May 17, 18 days ago. Nanos was out of the field on May 29, but entered the field on May 2, now over a month ago.
To put this into perspective, I’ve plotted out the three new polls, as well as recent polls by Pallas Data, Research Co. and Abacus Data that were in the field on at least some of the same dates as the Liaison and/or Nanos polls. It shows that polls that were in the field at the exact same time came up with some very different results.
You can see that the two trackers (the dotted line is Nanos, the dashed line is Liaison) were not far from one another for both the Liberals and the NDP. But the other polls all showed worse NDP numbers and better Liberal numbers. Mode of contact is one factor, as Nanos uses live-callers and Liaison uses IVR, while Abacus, Léger and Research are done online. But Pallas, which also uses IVR, was closer to the online polls than the trackers.
Considering the margins of error of probabilistic samples (which, admittedly, the online polls technically aren’t), it isn’t impossible, or even that unlikely, that polls can go into the field on the very same days and come out with results between 40% and 47% for the Liberals and between 6% and 13% for the NDP. It’s more unlikely, however, that polls would come out with results of 40% and 50% for the Liberals and 6% and 16% for the NDP when polling the very same universe.
This should give us pause before drawing any sweeping conclusions about where things stand at the moment. Are the Liberals more popular than ever? Probably not — but they probably aren’t also in free-fall. Similarly, is the NDP making a dramatic comeback? Probably not — but they probably have made at least some progress since the last election.
The Léger poll, for instance, had Mark Carney’s approval ratings slipping, as were satisfaction levels with his government. Léger had support for the Liberals up two points since the end of April, but had Carney’s approval and government satisfaction down three points. Both were robust at 56% and 54%, respectively, but it does suggest some underlying softness in the Liberal numbers that make the 50% support for the party look like it could be on the higher end of where the party actually stands.
The NDP, too, has reasons to curb its enthusiasm. While Liaison showed a five-point gain for the party, it actually had Avi Lewis’s favourable ratings down two points over the last two weeks. It suggests the NDP’s bump might be more of a fluke than a real thing.
The softer Carney and government satisfaction numbers in Léger, a poll in which the Liberals hit a new high, and the softer Lewis favourability numbers in Liaison, a poll in which the NDP hit a new high, suggest we should probably expect a reversion to the mean when these pollsters next put out some new numbers. So, don’t be shocked if the Liberals drop in the next Léger poll and the NDP comes back to earth in the new Liaison poll.
We might not be at a turning point in public opinion just yet, but there is good reason to keep an eye on the numbers in the coming weeks to see if something is really going on.
There’s little to say about the Conservatives, though. These three new polls had the Conservatives between 32% and 34%, well within the range of numbers we’ve seen from these pollsters and others over the last few weeks. The silver lining for Pierre Poilievre is that things aren’t getting any worse for him or his party, but it’s a thin lining indeed when these were the scores that weren’t good enough for Andrew Scheer in 2019 or Erin O’Toole in 2021.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
News on another upcoming vacancy that’ll force yet another federal byelection, plus the numbers behind Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s B.C. Conservative leadership win. Also, a new entrant joins the fray in the OLP leadership contest.
#EveryElectionProject: The 1993 Manitoba Liberal leadership.
Upcoming milestone for PEI Green leader Matt MacFarlane.
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NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Savard-Tremblay resignation ups byelection tally to five
Last week, Bloc MP Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay announced he would resign his seat in the House of Commons over the summer and run for the Parti Québécois in this fall’s provincial election. It increases the number of anticipated vacancies and future federal byelections to five — and this one could be among the more interesting of the bunch.
The PQ and BQ are not the bosom-buddies they might have once been. There’s a degree of tension between the two, in part due to the tension between the two leaders, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon and Yves-François Blanchet. The two parties share many of the same volunteers and donors, as well as the same sovereignist position, but they aren’t always glad to be associated with one another. And there is a rivalry for candidates and resources — the loss of Savard-Tremblay to the Bloc might be a gain for the PQ, but that doesn’t make it easier for Blanchet to swallow. The two leaders made a point to put on a show of unity at an event announcing Savard-Tremblay’s move, with the two of them literally hugging for the cameras.
This resignation will take some pressure off of Mark Carney and the Liberals when it comes to their majority in the House. The government currently has 174 MPs on its benches (including the Speaker) while the opposition musters 169 MPs. Three Liberals are supposed to resign over the summer (Jonathan Wilkinson, Steven Guilbeault and Nate Erskine-Smith), which would reduce the Liberals to only 171 seats, giving them a shaky one-seat majority on votes (the Speaker only votes to break ties).
But two opposition MPs (Savard-Tremblay and Alexandre Boulerice) will also be resigning, reducing the opposition to 167 MPs. The net effect is a reduction in Carney’s majority from five seats to four. Not huge by any stretch, but certainly workable.
That means the Liberals might not feel the urgency to fill these vacancies before the House returns in September. They could choose to wait until after the Quebec election (as well as the municipal elections in B.C. and Ontario) to call these byelections.
Whenever the vote does take place, the byelection in Savard-Tremblay’s seat of Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton will be an interesting one to watch.
This riding is located in the Montérégie region east of Montreal. It’s centred on the small city of Saint-Hyacinthe, which is surrounded by agricultural areas. It is very French (94% reported it as their mother tongue in the 2021 census) and white (only 6% reported being a visible minority) and is the kind of riding that is normally fertile ground for the Bloc Québécois.
Savard-Tremblay won with 43.9% of the vote in the last election, beating out the Liberal candidate by just over 10 points (33.6%). The Conservatives finished third with 18% and are unlikely to be a factor here — we saw how much their vote collapsed in Terrebonne when they weren’t seen as one of the contenders.
That was a fairly typical vote share for the Bloc, which took 41% in 2019 and 48% in 2021, but was a big boost for the Liberals. The party was up about 11 points from the 2021 election, a gain that was similar to what it experienced in similar ridings nearby. In the previous two elections, the Liberals were stuck at just 21% and 23%.
The Bloc remains the favourite in this riding as the Liberals will struggle to overcome a margin of 10 points. My projections show a margin of similar size between the two parties, but circumstances might be different when the vote actually takes place.
It’s probably a good thing for the Bloc that the byelection in Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton will likely be held at the same time as the byelections in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie and Laurier—Sainte-Marie. It’ll increase the spending limit for the party and also take the pressure off of them to perform well in the two Montreal seats, which might have been a challenge. If the Bloc can come out of the byelections holding their one seat that was at stake, that’ll be enough to claim victory.
The Liberals might have a hope of picking up Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie and will need to demonstrate in Laurier—Sainte-Marie that the departure of Guilbeault has not set them back. Failing to flip Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton on a night where they win one or both of the ridings on the island of Montreal would also be more than enough to claim victory.
But the outcome in this seat is not a given. It’ll be a test of the Bloc in what should be a reliable riding in a vote that takes place either just before or just after the Quebec provincial election. It’ll also be a test to see how the Liberal vote is holding up in a francophone, rural seat. It’ll even be a small test for the Conservatives who, in another time, might have had Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton on their target list.
If all of these byelections take place on the same night, it should be one heck of a spectacle.
B.C. Conservatives choose Kerry-Lynne Findlay
Even if many were expecting a surprise, nail-biter outcome in the B.C. Conservative leadership contest that ended on Saturday, I’m not sure many predicted what actually occurred.
The winner of the race to replace John Rustad as the permanent leader of the fledgling party was Kerry-Lynne Findlay, a former Conservative MP and cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s government. Findlay, who ran and lost in the 2025 federal election, is without a seat in the legislature but takes over a party that forms the official opposition in British Columbia and, at least according to a recent poll, is leading in provincial voting intentions.
The first ballot result showed that Findlay was going to be tough to beat. She started with 30.5% of the points (each riding was worth as many points as there were voting members, up to 100 points per riding), with Caroline Elliott in second at 25.8% and Iain Black in third with 20.3%. Elliott was widely expected to place first on the first ballot and struggle to gain on subsequent ballots, so her second-place showing suggested she was in for a rough night.
Yuri Fulmer finished fourth with 13%, followed by Peter Milobar with 10.5%, roughly in line with expectations.
On the second ballot, nearly half of Milobar’s support went to Black, with Elliott also picking up some. Very little went to Findlay or Fulmer, but Findlay’s lead was holding with 32.2% to 28.6% for Elliott and 25.3% for Black.
The elimination of Fulmer boosted Findlay significantly as she took nearly half of his points and kept her lead with 38.6%. Black was also a big gainer and closed on Elliott but came up just short, 31.3% to 30%.
Black was a strong consensus second choice, as he grew his vote by 9.7 points between the first and third ballots. Findlay grew hers by 8.1 points and Elliott by just 5.5 points. Fears that she would have trouble gaining after the first ballot proved accurate, but the assumption was that she’d be ahead of Findlay, not behind her.
On the last ballot, Elliott needed just over 62% of Black’s vote to win. Instead, she got 59%. Findlay held on with a 51% to 49% victory, thanks in large part to her strong first-ballot showing as well as the respectable performance of Fulmer.
Fellow election-enthusiast Kyle Hutton mapped out the results of the vote on his Substack. It shows that Findlay did best in the B.C. Interior, on Vancouver Island and south of the Fraser River on the first ballot, with Elliott and Black being strongest in Metro Vancouver north of the Fraser. On the third ballot, Findlay was winning nearly every riding outside of Metro Vancouver with the exception of cities like Victoria and Kelowna. Elliott was holding on in Vancouver, while Black was ahead in Burnaby and Richmond. The last ballot produced a somewhat more mixed map as Black helped Elliott win a handful of ridings in the Interior, but generally speaking Findlay won with the more Conservative-friendly ridings, while Elliott was the choice of members living in ridings that tend to vote for the New Democrats.
This might be a signal of some of these members’ doubts about Findlay’s ability to grow the tent. She arguably ran the most right-wing campaign of the leadership contest. Amelia Boultbee and Elenore Sturko, two Conservative MLAs who were critical of John Rustad’s leadership before departing the caucus to sit as Independents, have signalled they do not intend to return to the caucus under Findlay’s style of leadership. Rather than broaden the tent to include centrist British Columbians who might be disillusioned with David Eby’s New Democrats, Findlay could potentially polarize politics in the province once again, propping up the NDP (and, perhaps, pushing progressive strategic voters away from the Greens).
The next set of polls out of the province will be worth watching to see if Findlay’s leadership victory will boost the Conservatives or not. Polls suggested that no leader was likely to give the party an immediate surge as they were relatively unknown to the broader public. We should soon get a glimpse of how British Columbians’ first impression with the new Conservative leader is going over.
ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS
CERJANEC JOINS OLP RACE - The list of contestants for the Ontario Liberal leadership has grown to four with the entry of Rob Cerjanec into the race. Cerjanec, the Liberal MPP for the GTA riding of Ajax, was first elected in the 2025 provincial election. Along with Lee Fairclough, he is the second sitting MPP to enter the contest. The Ontario Liberals haven’t had a permanent leader with a seat at Queen’s Park since Kathleen Wynne resigned following her defeat in 2018. That’s a long, long time to go without a real leader in the legislature. It’ll undoubtedly be one of the main arguments that both Fairclough and Cerjanec will make during the leadership campaign.
12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR
June 23: Chéticamp–Margarees–Pleasant Bay provincial byelection
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 21: Ontario Liberal leadership
Candidates: Navdeep Bains, Rob Cerjanec, Lee Fairclough, Dylan Marando
November 28: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership
Byelections yet to be scheduled
ON - Scarborough Southwest (to be called by August)
PE - Cornwall–Meadowbank (to be called by September)
MB - The Pas—Kameesak (to be called by September)
AB - Calgary Shaw (to be called by November)
ON - York—Simcoe (to be called by December)
CA - Beaches—East York (resignation pending)
CA - Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie (resignation pending)
CA - North Vancouver—Capilano (resignation pending)
CA - Laurier—Sainte-Marie (resignation pending)
CA - Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton (resignation pending)
Party leadership dates yet to be set
Federal Greens (Elizabeth May announced on August 19, 2025)
(ALMOST) ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject
Liberals choose Edwards, but Lamoureux endures
June 5, 1993
This was originally published on June 5, 2025.
Under Sharon Carstairs, the Manitoba Liberals achieved something they hadn’t enjoyed for decades: relevancy. In the 1981 election before her arrival, the Liberals were shutout of the Manitoba legislature entirely after being reduced to a single seat in 1977.
But Carstairs and her populist style earned the Liberals some respect. Taking advantage of the growing unpopularity of the NDP government she won a seat in 1986 and then leap-frogged the NDP entirely, winning 20 seats and 36% of the vote in 1988. The Liberals were just five seats short of the Progressive Conservatives, who formed government under Gary Filmon. For the first time in over 20 years, the Liberals won enough seats to form the official opposition.
The Liberals couldn’t move further ahead, however. Filmon secured a majority in 1990 and the Liberals were back to third party status with just seven seats.
Carstairs was criticized for squandering what was seen as an opportunity to finally put the Liberals back into power. By 1993, after leading the party through three back-to-back election campaigns and taking a prominent role in opposing the Charlottetown Accord, Carstairs announced her resignation in late 1992.
There wasn’t a lot of interest in the leadership contest to replace her, but the Manitoba Liberals had an opening. Filmon’s government was pushing through unpopular austerity measures and Gary Doer’s NDP still hadn’t shaken off its defeat from 1988. The Liberals, on the upswing elsewhere in the country and only months away from taking power federally, seemed to be a party heading in the right direction.
The race to decide who would take the party to the next level came down to two young MLAs from Winnipeg, both first elected in the 1988 election.
Paul Edwards, 32, was the favourite of the party establishment. He promised to keep the party in the middle of the spectrum, saying that “the genius of the Liberal Party is that it refuses to indulge in extreme positions.”
His one and only rival was Kevin Lamoureux, 31. According to the Canadian Press, the contest was between a “well-connected young Winnipeg lawyer [Edwards] or a hard-working ‘professional’ politician [Lamoureux].”
The Liberals were struggling to garner attention for the leadership race, with one debate held just a few days before voting attracting an audience of less than 50. But a little controversy helped the contest get into the headlines.
For the first time, the party was abandoning the delegated convention and instead sent out ballots to all 8,104 members eligible to vote. Members could cast their ballots by mail or at regional polling stations, with the result to be announced at the Winnipeg Convention Centre on June 5, 1993.
But there were some complaints that not everyone got their ballot in time to return it. The party responded by extending the deadline for receiving the mail-in ballots, a move that was decried not only by the Lamoureux campaign but by the leadership convention chairman, Ernie Gilroy, who said that he “no longer believe(d) that the candidates are playing on an even playing field”.
The argument was that the extension would give the lacklustre Edwards campaign more time to sign-up new members. Lamoureux’s team had managed more than twice as many new member sign-ups as the Edwards team, and it was argued the delay would let Edwards close that gap (it wasn’t explained why the Lamoureux campaign wouldn’t be able to also use the extra time to its advantage).
Following the outcry, the party reversed its decision and kept the deadlines as they were. In the end, it didn’t really make much of a difference — though it might have impacted turnout.
Just under 2,000 members of the Manitoba Liberal Party cast a ballot, a turnout of less than one-quarter. Of those who did manage to vote, Edwards received 56.1%. Lamoureux took the remaining 43.9%.
The low engagement in the party’s leadership race foreshadowed trouble ahead for the Liberals. The next provincial election was not held later that year, as some in the party had predicted, but would wait until 1995. Filmon and the PCs won that election with the NDP retaining its official opposition status. Edwards would manage to lead the party to just three seats (including Lamoureux’s, but not his own). Nevertheless, the 24% of the vote the Liberals captured in that election, though lower than what Carstairs managed in her last two outings, has yet to be bettered by the party.
While things didn’t get better for the Manitoba Liberals, Lamoureux’s political career was just getting going. He’d have a few more terms in the Manitoba legislature before making the jump to federal politics in a 2010 byelection and being one of the few federal Liberal MPs to survive the 2011 campaign. Since 2015, Lamoureux has served as the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader in Ottawa.
MILESTONE WATCH
On Sunday, Matt MacFarlane marks one year as leader of the Prince Edward Island Greens. The party holds three seats in the 27-seat Legislative Assembly. The province is slated to go back to the polls next year, but the most recent poll suggested the Greens were actually in the lead. We’ll have to wait to see more (and public) releases to get an idea of what’s actually happening in PEI.
If the Liberals really are slipping (even slightly), do you think seniors’ benefits (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-canada-debt-cut-elderly-benefits/) could put them in a tough spot since that’s one of their best demographics?