Tories still lagging behind Liberals, but many voters say their minds could change

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OTTAWA — As the federal election campaign enters its second week, the Conservatives still lag behind the Mark Carney Liberals — but roughly one-third of Liberal supporters say their minds aren’t quite made up.

New polling conducted this week for Postmedia by Leger have the Pierre Poilievre Conservatives sitting at 38% — six percentage points behind the Liberals, unchanged from last week.

“After what many would describe as a fairly remarkable period of movement in the polling world, from week to week, we seem to have settled into a bit of a pattern of some stability,” said Leger’s Andrew Enns.

“We haven’t shifted at all — the Liberals are still 44% and the Tories 38% and the NDP have popped up a point.”

With the Liberals’ fortunes rising since Justin Trudeau’s departure, NDP support has plummeted — sitting at seven per cent.

However, one-third of Liberal voters say their minds could still be changed between now and election day — a number that increases to 57% for declared NDP voters, 41% for BQ supporters, 55% for Greens, and 56% for the PPC.

“The Conservative ballot is pretty solid, and that doesn’t surprise me much,” Enns said.

“That vote seems to be locking in, which I think the Conservatives will take as a bit of a silver lining in terms of where they’re currently sitting.”

Most say Carney would make the better prime minister, a two per cent drop from last week.

That’s compared to 28% who say Poilievre’s the better choice, while NDP leader Jagmeet Singh only managed to pull six per cent support — four per cent more than Elizabeth May, Maxime Bernier and other candidates.

Carney’s largest support comes from those aged 55 and up and who live in the suburbs, with Albertans least likely to consider him the best choice.

For Poilievre, Albertans are more likely to say he’s best for PM, while his support across all demographics remain largely homogenous, hovering between 27% and 30%.

As for who’s running the better campaign, 36% say Carney while 28% say Poilievre.

Most significant in those numbers, however, are the 27% who were undecided.

Again, suburbanite baby boomers are most likely to say Carney’s running the better campaign.

Interestingly, only 27% of NDP voters think Singh’s running the better campaigner — compared to 31% of NDP supporters who favour Carney — which was the same number of NDP supporters who were unsure.

As for Carney’s assets, a plurality of supporters across all parties want Carney to come clean on his business interests — a key plank in the Tory election campaign.

Fifty-four per cent of Liberal voters, 87% of Conservatives, 68% of NDP and 80% of BQ supporters want Carney to voluntarily reveal his business interests before the election.

The poll was conducted among 3,002 Canadians of voting age between March 26 to March 31 via Leger’s online panel.

As margins of error cannot be applied to online panels, an equivalent MOE of a comparable sample size would be no greater than ±1.79%.

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
X: @bryanpassifiume

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