Live Commentary
4:36pm Crawford wins by 55.1-44.9 in the Wisconsin state supreme court election with nearly all votes counted. That’s an 11-point swing to the left from the Trump margin in Wisconsin in 2024. The left retains its 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin state supreme court.
12:29pm With 13% reporting in Wisconsin, the left-wing Crawford leads the right-wing Schimel by 51-49 for the supreme court election. I’ll be going out shortly.
11:52am Near-final results are 56.7-42.7 to the Rep in Fl-6, a 14.0-pt margin, and 57.0-42.2 to the Rep in Fl-1, a 14.8-pt margin.
11:28am With 89% counted in Fl-1, the Rep leads by 55.4-43.8. The Reps will win both Fl-1 and Fl-6 by about 13 points, down from Trump’s 37-point margin in 2024 in Fl-1 and 30 points in Fl-6. So big swings to the Dems, but not enough to seriously threaten the Rep holds of these seats. Reps extend their House seat lead to 220-213.
11:13am With all counties in Fl-1 reporting their early votes, the Rep leads by 49.8-49.4, and this lead will grow when election day votes come in.
11:07am The Dem takes a likely very brief 51-48 lead after a populous county’s early vote reported.
11:03am In Florida’s first, the Rep starts out with a 53-46 lead with 10% in. These are early votes, and the Reps did much better on election day.
10:47am Trump will announce new tariffs at 7am AEDT Thursday, so they won’t be imposed today.
10:30am With 72% counted including votes from all counties in this district, the Rep leads by 53.7-45.6, and will win by at least a double digit margin.
10:14am With 49% counted, the Rep takes the lead by 50.6-48.6, and is very likely to win once all votes are counted.
10:03am With 24% reporting in Fl 6, the Dem leads by 53-45. But these are just early votes, and don’t yet account for the Rep election day surge.
9:53am New York Times results are here. While Reps performed weaker than expected in early voting, they’ve had a massive surge on election day in the Florida specials that should get their candidates home easily. This is just party registration data, not votes for candidates.
9:45am Wednesday The addition of polls released Monday has pushed the Liberals up to a 43.2-37.4 vote lead over the Conservatives in the CBC Poll Tracker and a 203-116 seat lead.
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.
The Canadian federal election will be held on April 28, with first past the post used to elect the 343 MPs; 172 seats are required for a majority. The CBC Poll Tracker was updated Monday, and it gives the governing centre-left Liberals 42.0% of the vote (up 4.5 since my previous Canadian article on March 24), the Conservatives 37.5% (up 0.4), the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) 9.1% (down 2.5), the separatist left-wing Quebec Bloc (BQ) 5.5% (down 0.9) (24.6% in Quebec), the Greens 2.8% (down 1.0) and the far-right People’s 2.2% (steady).
Seat point estimates are 197 Liberals (up 23 since my March 24 article), 123 Conservatives (down 11), 19 BQ (down seven), three NDP (down four) and one Green (down one). The Tracker now gives the Liberals an 80% chance of a majority if the election were held now, up from 50% previously. The consolidation of the left-wing vote behind the Liberals is hurting the smaller left-wing parties. The NDP won 25 of the then 338 seats at the 2021 election, but could be wiped out at this election.
This has been a stunning comeback for the Liberals, who were 24 points behind the Conservatives in the Tracker in early January, with the Conservatives winning well over 200 seats. Mark Carney’s replacement of Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and PM has lifted the Liberals, but I believe Donald Trump is most responsible for the Liberals’ revival. There are still four weeks until the election, so the polls could still turn back in the Conservatives’ favour. But the Liberals are currently ahead.
Trump is set to impose more tariffs at 3pm AEDT Wednesday, and these tariffs could further assist the Liberals in Canada and Labor in Australia. In Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Trump’s net approval is -2.5, slightly down from -2.1 in my previous article.
US federal special elections
Polls close for US federal House special elections (by-elections in Australia) at 10am AEDT Wednesday in Florida’s sixth and 11am in Florida’s first. Florida counts its votes fast. Both seats are safe Republican, with Trump beating Kamala Harris by 30 points in the sixth and 37 in the first according to this spreadsheet of 2024 presidential results by Congressional District. Two polls in the sixth average out to a near-tie between the Democratic and Republican candidates; these polls are difficult to believe.
Republicans hold a 218-213 House majority, so winning these two seats will make it 220-213. Two Democratic members have died recently; they held Arizona’s seventh (Harris by 22) and Texas’ 18th (Harris by 40). The special in Arizona won’t occur until September, while the Texan special has not yet been scheduled. Trump had nominated Elise Stefanik, Republican member for New York’s 21st (Trump by 21), to be his UN ambassador, but he withdrew this nomination on Thursday as Republicans were worried about this seat.
G. Elliott Morris, who used to run FiveThirtyEight before it was axed, said that 14 state special elections have been held so far this year. On average, Democrats are performing ten points better than the Trump vs Harris presidential margin in those same districts.
The swing to Democrats in in line with what occurred in state special elections in 2017, the first year of Trump’s first term. Morris said this does not necessarily reflect a swing in the general electorate towards Democrats, but just that Democrats do well with high-engagement voters, who are most likely to vote in low-turnout specials.
As well as the specials, there will be a Wisconsin state supreme court election, with polls closing at 12pm AEDT Wednesday. While court elections in Wisconsin are officially nonpartisan, Schimel is the right-wing candidate, and is being heavily backed by Elon Musk. Crawford is the left-wing candidate, and the left currently has a 4-3 court majority, with this seat a left defence. Republican-aligned polls have Crawford ahead. Wisconsin voted for Trump by 0.9 points. I will be out on Wednesday afternoon.
It will be very interesting to see the results tomorrow. Might as well make a prediction (as safe as that is)
Crawford wins the Wisconsin election.
Republicans win the two districts by a margin of 4 (FL-06) and 8 (FL-01) points.
Lets see how that holds up.
Latest polls from Ekos, Angus Reid and Pollara (I’m not going over the “rolling polls” since they’re updated daily).
EKOS:
https://www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2025/03/liberals-hold-15-point-lead/
Liberal: 47.5% (-2.1)
Conservative: 35.6% (+1.0)
NDP: 6.3% (-0.9)
BQ: 5.3% (+1.4)
Green: 2.4% (+0.8)
PP: 1.9% (+0.4)
Other: 0.2% (-1.4)
Angus Reid:
https://angusreid.org/canada-election-carney-poilievre-singh-trump-liberals-conservatives-ndp-vote/
Liberal: 46% (0)
Conservative: 38% (0)
NDP: 7% (0)
BQ: 7% (+1)
Green: 1% (0)
Other: 2% (+1)
Pollara: (last poll from 24 February)
https://www.pollara.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Pollara-FedMandate2025-Xtabs_VoteMar31.pdf
Liberal: 44% (+12)
Conservative: 35% (-7)
NDP: 10% (-1)
BQ: 5% (-3)
Green: 3% (-1)
PP: 2% (0)
Other: 1% (+1)
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, and almost 12 points (47-35) in another.
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.
The candidate in question (Paul Chiang) has now resigned.
The Liberals have announced a big public housing policy, with a promise of nearly doubling the current rate of home building to 500k. I expect this will be very helpful in keeping their gains among young voters and NDP voters.
It really is remarkable – if Trump had not won the US election Trudeau would probably still have resigned, but Carney would have just been trying to stop a landslide, which he may have done. And yet now the Liberals could possibly win a majority – improving their position from minority government following the 2021 election.
Also I just realised there are now 343 ‘ridings’ (seats) after so many years of 338 (which was always easy to remember with the USA having 538 Electoral College votes).
“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.
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.
At the moment Libs are projected to get a clear majority of 190+ seats. If I was a gambling man, I’d be betting right now on them taking a minimum of 200/343 ridings.
Their last 2 elections were minority wins (with a smaller share of the vote than Cons). Cons may keep about the same seat count even with a big Lib win, due to everyone else being squeezed – for that to happen with Libs on 200+ would need BQ to fall somewhere <20 seats as well as NDP to virtually disappear as many polls are projecting.
“Trump had nominated Elise Stefanik, Republican member for New York’s 21st (Trump by 21), to be his UN ambassador, but he withdrew this nomination on Thursday as Republicans were worried about this seat.”
I thought it was more about Trump needing her vote NOW in the H of R during tight votes between her (now aborted) appointment and said election of her replacement taking place (which does make sense, even the current GOP does have a few rebels who don’t always vote the party way), but perhaps that was just the public stance.
BTSays @ #9 Tuesday, April 1st, 2025 – 7:46 pm
I think it’s more like it would look really, really bad for Trump if Stefanik vacated her seat and NY Governor Kathy Hochul set the scene for a special election that would put the advantage to the Democratic candidate, (or otherwise make it a Fair Election).
It’s a different story for Florida’s special elections since they have a Republican Governor.
Abbott Delays Calling a Special House Election. Democrats Cry Foul.
March 31, 2025
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic House leader, on Monday accused Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas of deliberately delaying a special election in a solidly Democratic district in Houston in order to cushion the House Republicans’ slim majority.
Mr. Jeffries said in an interview that Mr. Abbott had been “feverishly working to deny representation to the people of Houston” and to help Republicans in the House pass a budget favored by President Trump that is expected to include cuts to Medicaid and other services.
“House Republicans are running scared legislatively and politically, which is why Gov. Greg Abbott is slow-walking the special election to replace Sylvester Turner,” Mr. Jeffries said. “They are rigging the system.”
Republicans hold a slim 218-to-213 majority over Democrats, but two open House seats in Florida are likely to be filled by Republicans after a special election on Tuesday. Mr. Trump also pulled his nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik to the United Nations, fearing that a vacant seat in her New York district could be won by a Democrat.
Two House Democrats, Representatives Sylvester Turner of Texas and Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona, died in the early months of this Congress.
The Texas governor had until the end of last week to call a special election in time for the vote in Mr. Turner’s 18th Congressional District to be held on May 3, the next regularly scheduled Election Day in the state.
Instead, Mr. Abbott, a Republican, did not act, and has not said when he will call the election to replace Mr. Turner, who died on March 5 after two months in office.
By doing so, Mr. Abbott has helped House Republicans. Democrats in New York, with Mr. Jeffries’s encouragement, had threatened a similar gambit for Ms. Stefanik’s seat before Mr. Trump left her in it. Meanwhile, Arizona’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, has decided to leave a heavily Democratic House seat in Tucson, Ariz., vacant until after a special election in September.
Mr. Abbott is not explicitly required to call a special election by law, though he has usually done so within days or weeks after similar congressional vacancies. He has the power to schedule an emergency special election, or he could wait and call it for the next regularly scheduled election, in November.
Or he could try not to call it at all and hold the seat open until 2026.
At a news conference in Houston on Monday, one of the Democratic candidates for the open seat, Christian Menefee, stood near a poster highlighting how swiftly Mr. Abbott had called for other special elections. He called on the governor to schedule an election for June.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/us/texas-house-seat.html
By their actions, so shall you know them.
They’re running scared.
I think it’s very likely the Liberals will return to govt in Canada now, probably in majority, which would have sounded insane a few months ago but we obviously don’t live in normal times. Canada faces an existential threat from the USA and the perception now is Mark Carney is a PM with a calm and astute demeanour with connections to the UK and Europe that they need to capitalise on now more than ever.
The Conservative vote in particular tends to rack up in Alberta and Saskatchewan so they need to be at least a couple of points ahead nationally to have a good chance to form govt and there is nothing atm pointing to that being likely.
The NDP are looking like they’ll struggle to hold more than a handful of seats as voters move to rally around the flag.
No sympathy for NDP from me.
“The NDP are looking like they’ll struggle to hold more than a handful of seats”
It would be more appropriate to drop the words “more than” from this sentence. It’s early days in the campaign but entirely possible the NDP end up with zero seats.
“No sympathy for NDP from me.”
Wouldn’t be anything to do with the religion of NDP’s leader of course, would it now Ven?
P.S. Ven – did you see my reply to you on the open thread yesterday re my ‘roots’ etc?
@BTSays
“I thought it was more about Trump needing her vote NOW in the H of R during tight votes between her (now aborted) appointment and said election of her replacement taking place (which does make sense, even the current GOP does have a few rebels who don’t always vote the party way), but perhaps that was just the public stance.”
The GOP are worried about her seat.
The GOP lost a rules vote on Monday in the House that wiped out all their floor votes and business for the rest of this week. At least 10 republicans voted with the democrats to defeat a rather complex motion that included preventing a GOP rep from bringing back resolutions re proxy voting for new mothers in the House.
The GOP rep is a new mother so it’s also a bad look for the GOP.
And, of course, the election of her replacement can’t take place until she actually resigns and then the timing then depends on NY state law and so could be months away.
Poor Slotkin. Instead of having to deal with rogue nations at the UN she still has to deal with rogue republicans in the House like Greene, Bobart and Biggs.
”
BTSayssays:
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 at 2:23 am
“The NDP are looking like they’ll struggle to hold more than a handful of seats”
It would be more appropriate to drop the words “more than” from this sentence. It’s early days in the campaign but entirely possible the NDP end up with zero seats.
“No sympathy for NDP from me.”
Wouldn’t be anything to do with the religion of NDP’s leader of course, would it now Ven?
P.S. Ven – did you see my reply to you on the open thread yesterday re my ‘roots’ etc?
”
BTsays
Yes I saw your reply.
And no it is not due to his religion. It is support they gave to Khalistani thugs. They are many good Sikhs living in Canada, who don’t support Khalistani thuggery.
I think Dems heading for a big result in Wisconsin. 54.7% with 15.4%counted. Surely this will only increase from here with the bigger population centres like Milwaukee to come. Every update has Dems increasing lead.
Dems 58.4-41.6 after 27% votes counted
Dems 57.6 after 49.5% vote – NY Times predicting easy win for Crawford.
Thank you to all those public figures who raised the interest in this race, not just across Wisconsin but also across the whole country.
Crawfords home. She is not going to caught now.
Dems 55.7 two thirds counted. Networks have called it for Crawford
Trump won Wisconsin 49.6 to 48.74 so this will represent a big swing to Democrats in what has been a very line ball state recently in all statewide contests.
Is it a bigger swing than otherwise expected tho?
And… looks like the voter ID amendment vote got up. That’s bad news but perhaps explains why conservatives turned out and held the Supreme Court vote swing to a reasonable amount.
Florida swings interesting.
Pallas Data poll out for Canada.
https://files.constantcontact.com/f737aa99901/90d3eae2-b07b-4a72-ae87-c0ede38db238.pdf
Liberal: 44.6% (+2.3)
Conservative: 35.7% (-2.1)
NDP: 8.5% (+0.1)
BQ: 5.6% (-1.4)
Green: 2.8% (+0.6)
PP: 2.2% (+0.1)
Other: 0.6% (+0.2)
Also includes questions about who between Carney and Pollievre are better equipped to handle important issues, including Trump’s Tariffs, Cost of Living, the Housing Shortage, Energy Capabilities, making Canada less reliant on the US for Defense, and building new trade partnerships with countries other than the US.
Outstanding!
For Wisconsin, that sort of margin statewide for either side must have been very rare for years. Not sure what the best margin is that Ron Johnson has won, but thought it was usually fairly close.
Sort of blowout margin in a Wisconsin context.
Ven
Fair enough, I don’t have any love for Jagmeet Singh who seems to be a sanctimonious hypocrite.
But I’m sure you are as aware as I am that there are plenty of neutral observers, including Indians, who would characterise the same thing you are referring to in very different terms – for Indians it seems to depend on what your prior perception was, probably largely underpinned by religion, and perhaps what one’s trusted news outlets are.
It’s well-known outside India’s dominant Hindu religion that Narendra Modri brooks no dissent, although it suits most of the Hindus to overlook this in favour of what he is perceived to do for the majority.
Anyway, apologies to WB for drifting off topic.
P.S. You will be pleased to note the latest daily tracker on Wiki for Liaison Strategies has Libs up 1 to 44% and NDP down 1 to 6%, matching their lowest score so far.
At this point, it’s looking like the real question is: how close do Liberals get to winning a record number of seats?
Or
Will Conservatives keep above 100 seats?
And
Will NDP have any seats?
BTSays @ #26 Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025 – 6:10 pm
There was a similar result in 2023 where Janet Protasiewicz (D) defeated Daniel Kelly (R) on a 55-45 margin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Wisconsin_Supreme_Court_election
The most remarkable thing about this result in 2025 is the turnout. 2.3 million voters turned out to vote. That’s compared to 3.3 million at the 2024 Presidential election.
Normally off-year elections like these don’t get nearly that much. In April 2020 the turnout was 1.5 million, and in 2019 the turnout was 1.2 million.
BTSays @ #28 Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025 – 6:20 pm
In recent times, the best the Liberals got in Canada was 184 seats under Trudeau in 2015, with 39.5% of the vote.
The biggest % victory was under William Mackenzie King in 1940 with 51.3% of the vote for 179/245 seats.
Kirsdarke
Interesting re turnout in Wisconsin.
Also, perhaps Supreme Court elections do attract bigger margins for one side or other than political posts – and lean more Democrat?
BTSays @ #31 Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025 – 6:42 pm
I’d say so, yeah. Lately Democratic-leaning voters have been very activated and politically aware and have been turning out in bigger numbers in Special and Off-Year elections (an exception to that would be the Virginia 2021 Governor election). Republican-leaning voters meanwhile just know to turn out to vote for God-King Trump every 4 years and that’s that.
For Wisconsin, that sort of margin statewide for either side must have been very rare for years.
——————————————
2018 Baldwin won in her midterm by 55-45. The Supreme Court election was similar margin. Trump then went within a whisker of winning it in 2020. There may have been a 55-45 in the court election that year too.
“Republican-leaning voters meanwhile just know to turn out to vote for God-King Trump every 4 years and that’s that.”
Don’t agree with that. They turn out for other GOP politicians too, eg Senators and Reps. The Trump margin was far enough ahead to win in November, but think it was the other way round 4 years earlier or 8 years earlier (meaning that the down ticket guys outperformed Trump, whereas he outperformed the senate candidate in November 2024 – but then Tammy Baldwin wasn’t Kamala Harris either so really don’t think they turn out for Trump in significantly bigger numbers than other guys).
But Supreme Court elections appear like they may be different.
Team Katich
That’s interesting, 2018 was a poor year for Republicans but Tammy Baldwin also seems like a strong personality with some support from the other side.
Those polls for the Florida special elections showing Dems competitive or even ahead, were obviously dud.
GOP would have preferred bigger margins like they got before, but they’re pretty respectable wins in the circumstances.
Josh Weil (D) outspent Randy Fine (R) $8.2m to $0.9m as of 12 March, and had $1.2m in hand, about 11 x what Fine had in hand. Looks like a pretty poor return.
BTSays @ #34 Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025 – 7:42 pm
I recall an article saying that around 2% of voters in North Carolina turned up just to vote for Trump in 2024 and left the rest of the down-ballot blank. Can’t find it at the moment because Google Search is a tragedy and news sites are now a maze of paywalls, but that’s a significant amount for such a vital swing-state.
It would help explain why NC voted for Trump as President and Josh Stein as Governor.
Canada
On reflection, those polls since Carney announced the election have been incremental changes rather than transformative – all in the Liberals’ favour however, with underlying polling answers and indicators all backing up the polling and indicating the Libs’ ceiling is higher still.
But Conservatives have not collapsed and also have a fairly high ceiling still. You’d have to say Poilievre still has a fighting chance to bring it home for Conservatives but he may need a bit of help from Carney tripping up as well as putting up the fight of his life – which he does seem to relish and is pretty good at campaigning.
If rally sizes were indicators, Poilievre would be winning this election . . . but Biden still won from his ‘bunker’ in 2020. . .
Kirsdarke
NC had a much bigger differential than 2% (I know that’s not the data point you were quoting with your 2%), and that was everything to do with the discredited GOP candidate for governor and much less about Trump or Josh Stein – just google the guy and the allegations against him etc.
BTSays @ #38 Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025 – 7:54 pm
That is a good point. Polling numbers for the Conservatives and Liberals look like they’re nudging close to 80%. It hasn’t been that high since Brian Mulroney’s landslide election in 1984 where the Conservatives got 50% and the Liberals got 28%, for a total of 78%.
I think it will be the highest combined vote share for Libs/Cons since at least 1958.
https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/bell-pierre-poilievre-fires-back-conservative-campaign-stays-course
The above is an unashamedly biased pro-Cons piece but I thought it was a good summary of Poilievre’s position – and I happen to think that Poilievre has got this right and not the ‘nervous nellies’, or even the advisers who helped Doug Ford get elected just the other day.
Poilievre is not the incumbent and is fighting a different election to Ford. It’s absolutely the truth that any party needs to make the campaign – as far as is realistic/believable – about the issue(s) that they are STRONG on, not the ones where the opposition has an undeniable advantage.
Even if Conservatives still lose in the end, it’s Poilievre’s only hope of turning it round. And it’s not as if he’s pretending the ‘USA issue’ doesn’t exist, he’s not pivoting away immediately when he’s actually asked about it, he’s giving answers on the matter.
He can’t afford not to do that much, because he can’t afford to lose more ground on this issue even as he tries to make the campaign turn back to ‘cost of living’ and the ‘lost Liberal decade’ (with “Carney was Trudeau’s economic adviser”) that means the incumbents ‘don’t deserve’ another term.
Polls seem to be stabilising, though it’s too soon to be sure that the Conservatives have ‘staunched the bleed’ successfully.
And even if they have, they now need to perform a successful operation to ‘recover the patient’ to former health.
Currently, Liberals are in unusually big majority territory for a FPTP voting system, with that 6% or so lead nationally.
Of course, with such an efficient spread of votes in key seats it also means that their seat numbers can go down again quite significantly on relatively small poll changes – but they’ve a lot of that lead over Conservatives to lose before losing their projected majority, so Libs are sitting very comfortably mid-way through the 2nd week of the campaign.
NDP still plumbing the depths in the polls, today Jagmeet Singh:
“. . . will announce my plan: nation-building, war-time measures to Trump-proof Canada.”
He’s also taking some potshots at Mark Carney over his investment companies being listed to small buildings in Bermuda, it will be interesting to see how publicly and frequently he makes that kind of fight that ties Carney to the ‘detached, self-serving elites’. If underneath he knows the NDP is doomed regardless, he may want to merely go through the motions so as not to make it easier for Conservatives to claw back Libs’ poll lead.
But surely Singh has more pride than that – for himself and his record, let alone for his MPs and volunteers.
Latest poll coming from the Conservative-leaning Innovative Research poll for Canada.
https://innovativeresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/CTM-2503-Wave-4-Federal-Election-Leadership-Vote-Deck-Public-Release.pdf
Liberal: 37% (-1)
Conservative: 38% (+4)
NDP: 12% (-1)
BQ: 6% (-1)
Green: 3% (-2)
PP: 2% (+2)
Other: 1% (+1)
Plenty of other data in the poll release as well.
Leadership debates are in Montreal on the 16th (French) and 17th (English), 5 parties qualify:
Lib, Con, NDP, BQ and Green
It’s the direction of travel that’s important, Conservative-leaning or not, so Conservatives will take some comfort from that Innovative Research poll.
But whilst I am not a fan of pollsters herding together for its own sake / out of fear of being the only one wrong, it is curious that even with this increase in the combined vote for the 2 big parties it’s still only at 75% compared to >80% from all other pollsters bar Abacus, who have been edging closer to 80%.
NDP may also be hoping that this poll is the ‘correct’ one, as it credits them up at 12%.
BTSays @ #46 Thursday, April 3rd, 2025 – 6:20 pm
Yeah, true, the upward trajectory for the Canadian Liberals has most likely plateaued at the moment. There’s not much higher they can go, that is unless something extreme happens, which you never know with Trump.
Kirsdarke says:
Thursday, April 3, 2025 at 6:58 pm
BTSays @ #46 Thursday, April 3rd, 2025 – 6:20 pm
It’s the direction of travel that’s important, Conservative-leaning or not, so Conservatives will take some comfort from that Innovative Research poll.
But whilst I am not a fan of pollsters herding together for its own sake / out of fear of being the only one wrong, it is curious that even with this increase in the combined vote for the 2 big parties it’s still only at 75% compared to >80% from all other pollsters bar Abacus, who have been edging closer to 80%.
NDP may also be hoping that this poll is the ‘correct’ one, as it credits them up at 12%.
Yeah, true, the upward trajectory for the Canadian Liberals has most likely plateaued at the moment. There’s not much higher they can go, that is unless something extreme happens, which you never know with Trump.
———————————–
I don’t believe the Liberals have plateaued. Their good fortune is to have the election campaign right in the middle of a national crisis.
When you look at that Innovative Research poll, you have to wonder, when most of the other polls show Liberal leads of up to 9 per cent, and that was before the Trump Liberation Day circus.
The most recent seat projection has the Liberals winning from between 169 to 226 seats. In other words their lowest projection is just below a majority. The Conservatives are projected to win between 96 to 147 seats.
The Liberals’ seat projection is well above their number in the dissolved minority Parliament when they had 160 and the Conservatives 119 seats.
Fortunately for Carney, his less-than-decisive action on the loss of that Toronto area candidate was followed by multiple Conservative candidates having to withdraw.
Bit of a delayed poll from Leger, covering 26-31 March, so before Trump’s Tariffs.
https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Leger-CAN_voting_intentions_March_31st_National.pdf
Liberal: 44% (0)
Conservative: 38% (0)
NDP: 7% (+1)
BQ: 5% (0)
Green: 3% (0)
PP: 2% (-1)
Other: 1% (0)
Preferred Prime Minister:
Carney (Lib): 37% (-2)
Pollievre (Con): 28% (0)
Singh (NDP): 6% (+1)
May (Green) 2% (-1)
Bernier (PP): 2% (0)
Other: 2% (0)
None/Don’t Know: 21% (0)
NB Remember that Canada and Mexico didn’t get subjected to any new tariffs this week like the rest of the world, FWIW.
Also FWIW the polls are telling us that the Libs have temporarily plateaued, compared to their steady rise for 2 months or so.
That’s not the same thing as saying they won’t go up some more again though during the campaign, or that they’ve hit a ceiling.