Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.
On March 9, Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, was elected Liberal leader with 86% of points and 87% of the popular vote. On March 14, Carney replaced Justin Trudeau as Canadian PM. On Sunday (Canadian time), Carney called the Canadian federal election for April 28, about six months early.
Parliament had been due to resume on Monday after it was prorogued for the Liberal leadership election. The governing centre-left Liberals won 160 of the then 338 seats at the September 2021 election, ten short of a majority, and have been reduced to 152 through by-election losses and defections. Carney is not an MP, so he could not address parliament (he will contest Nepean at the election). Perhaps owing to these difficulties, Carney called the election early.
There will be 343 seats elected by first past the post at this election, up from 338 in 2021, so 172 seats will be needed for a majority. The CBC Poll Tracker was updated Sunday, and it gives the Liberals 37.5%, the Conservatives 37.1%, the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) 11.6%, the separatist left-wing Quebec Bloc (BQ) 6.4% (28.4% in Quebec), the Greens 3.8% and the far-right People’s 2.2%. Seat predictions are 174 Liberals, just over a majority, 134 Conservatives, 26 BQ, seven NDP and two Greens.
In early January, just before Trudeau announced he would resign once a new Liberal leader had been elected, vote shares in the Tracker were 44% Conservative, 20% Liberal and 19% NDP. At this point, the Conservatives looked headed for a massive landslide with well over 200 seats, while the Liberals could have fallen into third behind the BQ.
Donald Trump is probably most responsible for the Liberal revival, with his tariffs and his talk of making Canada the 51st US state pushing Canadians back to supporting the Liberals. Trump is expected to impose more tariffs on April 2, possibly assisting the Liberals further. I believe Trump’s tariffs and associated stock market falls have also helped Labor in Australia.
However, I don’t believe in momentum in elections: just because one party is gaining ground in the polls doesn’t mean that party will continue to gain ground. The massive surge for the Liberals could reverse during the election campaign, perhaps as voters refocus on stuff they don’t like about the Liberals after nearly ten years of Liberal government since Trudeau was first elected in October 2015.
US and Portugal
In Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Trump has a net approval of -2.1 (49.6% disapprove, 47.5% approve). His net approval turned negative on March 11. Trump has fallen from +12 net approval at the start of his term.
A Portuguese parliamentary election will be held on May 18, only 14 months after the March 2024 election. The early election came after the conservative AD, which governed in minority with support from the far-right Chega, lost a confidence vote. Polls indicate another AD-led minority government is likely. Portugal uses proportional representation by region to elect its 230 MPs.
ChrisC
But what you describe is the OPPOSITE of what is happening in Canada – the UK 2024 election is a very bad comparison.
As noted in posts higher up, Conservatives are – still – polling at very respectable numbers, that was never the case in the UK in 2024. There is no insurgent 3rd party equivalent to Reform. As for the NDP, nobody from anywhere is going to them in a hurry! – they are now down at historical lows, having lost more of their vote share in polls the last 2 months than even the Conservatives (if you’re generous, you could say ‘about the same’ – but even that would be proportionately a much bigger loss, i.e. 2/3 of their voters).
The federal NDP are also very left-wing, more so than the current Liberal government, so there’s not even a logic for Conservative voters to switch to NDP. Plus, why now suddenly after 2 years of Poilievre leadership?
The BQ has also been squeezed in Quebec – not to the Conservatives’ benefit, although there may be an odd seat or two where they fall below Conservatives and Libs don’t rise quite enough to come through the middle. But mainly, their votes have gone straight to Liberals who look likely to win a big majority of Quebecan seats.
What you are overlooking is that the combined vote shares of Lib and Con is at its highest for nearly 70 years -if you want to compare with the UK, better comparisons would be 2017 and 2019, esp 2017 although the polarising of votes around the 2 big parties is about the only similarity really – except that Theresa May also gave away a huge poll lead in the run-up to the 2017 election and Labour very nearly won as a result – another week and we might have had PM Corbyn.
The big difference was that the vaporising of the Conservatives’ poll lead in UK in 2017 was entirely self-inflicted, whereas Poilievre and the Canadian Tories in 2025 are almost entirely victims of “events, dear boy, events”. Plus in Canada it’s happened prior to the campaign proper, so the dynamics playing out are quite different.
I just can’t even see the obvious strategies Poilievre needs to have in order to regain a poll lead, everything seems stacked against this happening. Maybe he just has to keep turning up, fighting and thinking on his feet, and simply hope that Carney slips up badly somewhere – he’s pretty untested but wisely hasn’t given himself long to mess things up (or get people bored of him) before an election!
beguiledagain
That’s interesting re Carney’s missus.
You can’t think that Conservatives don’t know that – quite a bit of ammo in there to back up their elitist claims about Carney, plus how much more left-wing the Carneys are than Mark Carney is trying to make out. The narrative is that he has moved the Liberals sharply to the right, and even Trudeau for all his social liberalism was economically more centre-left than hard-left as it was.
Carney clearly appeals to a lot of older conservatives who are both enraged and fearful about the ‘attack’ from the USA, and see him as sensible and capable and are prepared to sideline some of their other conservative views at this time of national rallying round the flag. The kind of more ‘progressive’ stuff you refer to would surely give some of them pause for thought in giving Liberals another 4 years after all.
Adda
We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Looks like I didn’t miss anything worth reading while I was preoccupied with something for a couple days, apart from someone triggered that I pointed out the meaningful, historically proven, non-volatile, facts.
Alright, looks like it’s bait all along. Moving on then.
Carney has ditched an unpopular policy (carbon tax) and stylistically is very different from Trudeau, but I don’t think he has moved the Liberals very much to the right. He is outperforming Poilievre because for the last 2 years the Conservatives have been running a campaign for peacetime with an unpopular incumbent in charge, while now the electorate is treating this almost as wartime and with a popular sentiment to rally around the flag. Carney has also managed to distance himself from Trudeau on both style and substance (tax).
He’s drawing votes from both the centrist conservatives who see him as the sensible guy in charge and the NDP voters who are terrified of Trump. The problem for Poilievre is that he is tainted by association among both sets of voters now, since he spent the last 3 years courting Trump fans and copying his slogans, and now is seen as an unserious Trump fanboy who won’t be the right leader in wartime.
All it needs now is for Trump to say he supports the Conservatives.
Trump has already indicated he prefers Carney – oddly enough, that won’t hurt Carney like it would’ve hurt Poilievre if Trump said he preferred Poilievre.
Though really whatever Trump says about the persons / parties themselves, only matters according to how those persons / parties respond. If they hit the right notes in response, no harm done.
From the “how low will they go” department.
Toronto Star, March 29
Why conspiracy theorists are trying so hard to falsely link Mark Carney and Jeffrey Epstein
By Alex Boyd Staff Reporter
As an economist and central banker at the highest levels, Liberal leader Mark Carney is “almost a perfect target” for baseless conspiracy theories.
It all goes back to when Mark Carney, in purple, was photographed next to Ghislaine Maxwell, in black, at the 2013 Wilderness Music Festival. Photographer Adrian Sherrat recalls the newly minted governor of the Bank of England “looked awkward” and didn’t do much, other than walk around with his wife Diana, right….. While they’re standing next to each other, Carney seems to be reacting to the man standing on his other side.
The phenomenon is now spilling over into Carney’s real-world rallies. On Wednesday evening in Kitchener, he was interrupted by a heckler demanding to know how many kids he’d “molested” with Epstein. Carney attempted to continue his speech as the yelling intensified, before bemoaning, in French, the interaction as “the product of the politics of division, of conspiracy theories.”
If attack ads are any measure, Mark Carney is squarely in the political big leagues.
In the weeks since he entered the Liberal leadership race, ads both for and against him have sprouted across social media. While mudslinging is par for the course in politics, one particularly dark current has worked — without evidence — to tie him to Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious American financier and trafficker of underage girls who, though dead for six years, remains a very current fixation in far-right circles.
It traces back to a series of photos snapped of Carney and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend who remains in prison for her role in Epstein’s crimes, at a British music festival over a decade ago. The photos are real, though not particularly unusual. As a socialite, Maxwell pops up in a lot of photos from the era, with people with no connection to Epstein.
But, boosted by fake AI-generated images, interest in the original photos has metastasized into questions, concerns and even false claims that Carney himself is tied to child trafficking. It’s a sign, experts say, of how deeply rooted the remnants of conspiracy theories like QAnon and Pizzagate — both baselessly warned about elites and pedophilia — have become even in Canada.
“Carney is almost a perfect target for these ideas,” notes Amarnath Amarasingam, an associate professor who studies conspiracy theories and online communities at Queen’s University, in an email. “He moved in multiple elite circles, all of which have — separately — been the object of conspiracy theories, such as climate finance, the World Economic Forum, and central banking.”
beguiledagain says:
Tuesday, April 1, 2025 at 2:31 pm
Good News, Bad News for Mark Carney on Monday.
The Liberals shot up to an 8 point (46-38, 44-36) lead in the two latest polls.
But Carney was forced to get one of his Toronto suburban candidates who referred to his opponent being on a Hong Kong police “bounty” list to apologize. He said he would keep him on.
Perhaps a Canadian psephologist can let us know how this issue will play out among Chinese-Canadian voters.
Cli
“The Liberals shot up to an 8 point (46-38, 44-36) lead in the two latest polls.”
They’re certainly vg polls for Libs, but the Angus Reid 46-38% was in fact identical to their poll a week earlier (only BQ moved, up 1% nationally, or from 27% to 30% in Quebec).
Nanos, OTOH, is a further advance for Libs. Not sure if Nanos changed their methodology the last week or two – suddenly switched to much bigger combined vote share for big 2 parties and a Lib lead, in line with other pollsters.
Ekos still showing the biggest lead, albeit in slightly this week to 48-36%.
Google trends by party in 7 days up to 31/3/25 still favour Libs, although in from 55-25-19% (Lib-Con-NDP) to 49-31-20%.
For context, the figures for the 2021 election were 12-25-63% Lib-Con-NDP so not a reflection of vote shares!
The circumstances around this election are wholly different but Cons will need these indicators to keep improving for them. Not sure where to find the equivalent leader google searches.
Mainstreet latest tracker (to 31/3/25)
44-41-7-5% (L-C-NDP-BQ)
Pollara (to 30/3/25, their polls are something of a rarity, goodness knows when their last fed poll was)
44-35-10-5%
So another excellent poll for Libs, also slightly less bad for NDP than other pollsters.
Carney leads Poilievre 10-15% in preferred PM stakes, there have been outliers both sides of this.
The aforementioned latest Nanos poll shows a 35% difference in VI between men and women – I’ve never seen anything like it before, but if multiple polls start showing these kinds of differences we’d better believe it.
Carney is benefitting from a 2:1 or 3:1 media coverage due to still being the frontman in the current ‘battle’ with the USA.
Doug Ford, Con Premier of Ontario, used that to great advantage in the Ontario election a month ago.
It’s a huge handicap for Poilievre to overcome.
PP is going to need to do a helluva well in the debates – if MC decides he even needs to show up for them.