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 Monday, with first past the post used to elect the 343 MPs; 172 seats are required for a majority. Polls close on Tuesday AEST, with polls in the 32 Atlantic Canada seats closed by 9:30am AEST Tuesday. At 11:30am AEST, the large majority of polls close simultaneously owing to staggered polling hours across three time zones. At 12pm AEST, the final polls close in British Columbia (43 seats).
Vote counting will initially be fast, but will slow down as election-day booths are exhausted, with the final booths being early voting centres, like in Australia. Elections Canada said 7.3 million had voted during the advance voting period from April 18-21, an increase of 25% from 2021. This represents about 25% of all eligible voters.
The CBC Poll Tracker was updated Friday, and it gives the governing centre-left Liberals 42.3% of the vote (down 1.7 since my previous Canadian article last Saturday), the Conservatives 38.6% (up 1.5), the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) 8.6% (up 0.1), the separatist left-wing Quebec Bloc (BQ) 6.0% (up 0.6) (25.6% in Quebec), the Greens 2.3% (down 0.1) and the far-right People’s 1.4% (down 0.3).
Seat point estimates are 190 Liberals (down 11 since last Saturday), 125 Conservatives (up nine), 22 BQ (up two), five NDP (steady) and one Green (steady). The Tracker now gives the Liberals a 73% chance of a majority, down from 87% previously. They have a 17% chance to win the most seats but not a majority. A Canadian YouGov MRP poll has a Liberal majority, with 185 seats as its central prediction.
Atlantic Canada has four low-population provinces, and the Liberals hold a 20-point lead over the Conservatives in this region in the Tracker. The early results from Atlantic Canada could give clues about how accurate the polls are.
The Liberal vote is more efficiently distributed than the Conservative vote owing to Conservative vote wastage in safe rural seats. At the 2021 election, the Liberals won 160 of the then 338 seats on 32.6%, with the Conservatives winning 119 seats on 33.7%.
However, there would have been many seats in 2021 where the Liberal’s margin was relatively low owing to a high NDP or BQ vote. With support for the NDP halved from 17.8% in 2021, the Liberal margin in these seats will increase, leading to more Liberal vote wastage and a less efficiently distributed vote.
I covered the Canadian election and Donald Trump’s sliding US ratings for The Conversation on Wednesday. Since this article, Trump’s net approval has slid a further 2.4 points to -7.8 in Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls (52.2% disapprove, 44.4% approve).
Poland, Romania and Ecuador
The Polish presidential election will be held on May 18 with a runoff on June 1. Incumbent Andrzej Duda of the socially right but economically left PiS can’t run again. There had been a surge for the far-right KON’s candidate, but that surge has abated, and the final two will likely be the economically conservative but socially liberal PO’s candidate against PiS. The PO is likely to win, and thus gain control of government after winning the October 2023 parliamentary election.
In December the Romanian courts annulled the presidential election results shortly before the runoff, and there will be a re-run on May 4 (first round) and May 18 (runoff). The courts rejected the nomination of the far-right candidate who had won the original first round. Another far-right candidate is very likely to win the first round, with the polls disagreeing on which of three candidates will also qualify for the runoff.
At the April 13 Ecuadorian presidential runoff election, the incumbent economic conservative defeated the left’s candidate by 55.6-44.4. However, the left will control parliament, which was elected on February 9 by proportional representation, with 67 of the 151 seats for the main left-wing coalition and nine for an indigenous left-wing party, to 70 seats for conservative parties.
Yesterday’s published daily trackers for 22-24 April:
MAINSTREET 43-41-7-6 (43-40-9-5)
NANOS 43-38-8-6 (43-39-7-6)
LIAISON 44-39-8-6 (43-38-8-6)
Adrian
For some reason this thread isn’t showing my post re YouGov poll which I simply copied and pasted from what I put on the old thread a few minutes ago.
When I try again it keeps telling me it’s a duplicate and I’ve already said that, but it’s not showing – or in a minute there will be about 4 of them!
Whichever way you cut it, the turnaround by the Canadian Liberals has been remarkable. Will be watching the results with great interest.
In the last election, about 62% of those eligible voted, which is just over 17 million. The headlines from about three days ago stated that 7.3 million had pre-poll voted. I assume quite a few more have voted since then. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if the percentage of those who have already voted now is significantly above 50% of the total expected to vote.
Entropy
“I assume quite a few more have voted since then.”
No, the advance voting period was last Friday to Monday only. 7.3 million is the total advance votes.
Pollara 22-24 April (changes from 5 days earlier)
41-38-10-6 (44-36-8-7)
BTSayssays:
Saturday, April 26, 2025 at 4:37 pm
Entropy
“I assume quite a few more have voted since then.”
No, the advance voting period was last Friday to Monday only. 7.3 million is the total advance votes.
================================================
Thanks, they do it very different to here in Australia then.
The fact that Canadian Liberals vote is declining is a bit concerning for their prospects for retaining government. If it continues the closer we get to election day there might be a chance Pollievre could win a minority government. I still think it might be a Liberal Minority government but my confidence in this prediction is wavering
On an off note, ik these 2 elections are different but for some reason I keep seeing so many parallels btw Canada and the 2024 QLD election:
– Incumbent Government and it’s head are so unpopular it looks like they will lose in a landslide and lose opposition status
– Incumbent Government removing their unpopular leader with a more appealing candidate (Miles and Carney)
– Incumbent Government receiving a surge in the polls relatively close to polling day, making the election (seem) close.
However the nature of the surge in polls was different, QLD Labor skyrocketed due to abortion being introduced as an issue by Katter. However, the fact that it was 2 weeks out from the election meant that whilst they couldn’t win, Labor retained a respectable opposition.
On the other hand, Mike Carney replaced an incredibly unpopular Trudeau in a climate where Trump’s threats to Canada’s economy and sovereignty alarmed many Canadians. This allowed for the Canadian Liberals to regain their dominance in polling a month before the election.
What makes me curious is that given that the Canadian Liberals have had more time to be able to utilise their newfound support and optimism, would they be able to retain government or become a respectable opposition?
https://www.pollbludger.net/2025/04/19/canadian-election-minus-nine-days/comment-page-2/#comment-4510889
Above is the post on the MRP poll that I can’t seem to paste here, even without the link to the poll included.
Advance voting finished last Monday, but postals are still allowed. Voters need to return postal ballots by election day.
Bludgeoned Westie
Well, if the poll averages are correct then Liberals will win their first MAJORITY since 2015, giving them a 4th consecutive term and maybe setting them up for a 5th if the global economy rebounds well for a couple of years as I suspect it will.
Bludgeoned Westiesays:
Saturday, April 26, 2025 at 4:46 pm
The fact that Canadian Liberals vote is declining is a bit concerning for their prospects for retaining government. If it continues the closer we get to election day there might be a chance Pollievre could win a minority government.
========================================================
As BTSays pointed out about 40% of voters already voted last weekend period. So those votes i assume are locked in at what ever the parties opinion poll numbers were at that time. So any swing to conservatives has to override these locked in votes too.
Also i’m not sure what other minority parties would actually be willing to form a coalition with the Tories?
Entropy_says:
Saturday, April 26, 2025 at 4:53 pm
…..
“Also i’m not sure what other minority parties would actually be willing to form a coalition with the Tories?”
The NDP and BQ are (generally) to the left of the centrist Liberals so I can’t see them doing that. Also, the likely sole green is leftist…
From what I know of them, if the Liberals or Conservatives get the most seats but fail to form a majority, the NDP and BQ in practice usually just let the party with the most seats get on with it on an ad hoc basis, and they’d only support no confidence motions about serious things.
The 2004-06 Liberal government and the 2006-2011 Conservative government operated in minority (until the Conservatives got a majority in 2011), and Trudeau’s Liberals have been in minority since 2019.
BQ are a mixture across the left-right spectrum, though all quite ‘eco’, so they would definitely talk to Conservatives as well as Liberals.
The federal NDP, and Jagmeet Singh in particular, have a visceral hatred of the Conservatives as well as being very left-wing so I agree they would only make things difficult for the Tories (unless leadership changed) and would preference Liberals if they have any MPs left.
I doubt either would go into coalition, especially BQ, but ‘confidence and supply’ as it’s called in the UK would be a likely way forward and get budgets passed etc. with a minority government.
I say this again – with great respect – anyone who think the Conservatives even have a chance to form government doesn’t really understand what they’re talking about.
I predict a Conservative popular vote victory.
Not sure how that will translate into seats.
BTSays, the NDP formed a confidence and supply aggreement with the Liberals during the term now finished. It was already extremely unusual and has been often misnamed as a coalition because Canadians are just totally unused to the idea that you might sign a blank cheque for the government (even if it’s in exchange for something). The Canadian system for deciding government has basically just been FPTP (effectively, in Australian terms, you ask the crossbenchers to sit it out, rather than vote on confidence matters, and the biggest party wins).
Whether that’s how it will work in the future is anyone’s guess. During one of Harper’s terms, the Liberals, NDP and Bloc had made an agreement, but Harper suspended parliament before they could do anything, the Liberals changed leader, and the deal was off. Of course, a deal to support a minority Liberal government right after the election would happen while the Liberals hold the reins of power, so it couldn’t be stopped. But my guess is that tempers would be too hot to let the Liberals continue in office with NDP support, and I doubt that’s even a possible configuration anyway.
Arange mate I don’t even think the conservatives are going to win the popular vote the way they’re going they just screwed up and I know you’re gonna say oh I have the keys and point to the American election but you have to realize that was actually a bit touch and go for both sides
https://ricochet.media/politics/strange-bedfellows-in-quebec-trump-is-driving-sovereigntists-into-the-arms-of-the-liberals/
Strange bedfellows: In Québec, Trump’s threats driving sovereigntists into the arms of the Liberals
The separatist movement was already facing demographic challenges. Then Donald Trump was elected
April 26 2025
“Philippe J. Fournier, who runs the poll aggregator site 338canada.com, was talking to a sovereigntist friend recently, a lifelong Péquiste, who was planning to vote Liberal for the first time in the federal election.
“I’m still a sovereigntist, but Québec cannot become sovereign if Canada is not sovereign,” he said. “If the U.S. gets into this imperialistic or expansionist wave, we cannot become sovereign. If Canada is attacked, we have to be good partners.”
Even former Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée, who was a senior strategist for the Oui side in the 1995 referendum, acknowledges that Trump’s aggression has changed the calculations of sovereigntists.
“If aliens were attacking, the whole planet would join,” he said in a recent interview. “You know, I think that could make a good movie.” ”
https://scrimshawunscripted.substack.com/p/blanchets-artificial-idiocy
Blanchet’s Artificial Idiocy
On The Stupidest Quote Of The Election
Evan Scrimshaw
Apr 26, 2025
“The problem for Blanchet is he’s now facing Quebecers concerned with the issue set of Canada, as opposed to the vague controversies of the past. He’s facing a politician who is (let’s be real about this) much worse than Trudeau at handling the Quebec of it all, but who is taken more seriously than Trudeau at solving big problems. And because Quebecers care more about being able to solve the Big Problem – Trump, Tariffs, and everything that flows downstream from it – they care less than usual about the fact that Carney wouldn’t have a visceral memory of Blue Monday or remember where they were when the ‘94 Strike killed the season.”
Daily rolling trackers for 23-25 April
MAINSTREET
45-40-7-6 (43-41-7-6) notably better/poorer approval numbers for Carney/Poilievre respectively.
NANOS
42-39-9-6 (43-38-8-6) preferred PM fractionally worse still for Poilievre, however
LIAISON
44-40-7-6 (44-39-8-6)
Notably, for once Mainstreet have the best polling numbers / lead for Libs of the dailies.
Angus Reid and Leger both show Lib with a 4% lead, seems a lot of convergence of the headline numbers (still masking very different routes to get there underneath, in terms of demographics).
Angus Reid claim Libs ‘won’ early voting but election day VI is neck and neck, but I’ve not read the full report.
I think there will be a lot of surprises election night one way or another, with these differences underneath the headline numbers the the huge swings over just a few months.
Liberals looking to gain seats from Conservatives in Ontario, from the Bloc in Quebec (this gets them into majority), from the NDP in British Columbia (also helps majority hopes) – basically, where the Tories need to pick up swathes of seats from the Liberals seem to be in Ontario, especially Toronto, where Trudeau was under water but Carney is polling so far ahead that the avenue is simply not there
Conservative hopes for keeping the Liberals in a minority it seems to me depend on the Bloc and the NDP winning those cumulative 15-20 seats rather than them themselves. Thus the failure of their campaign.
Trudeau handing over to Carney followed by Trump’s election has moved the Liberals from dead in the water to competitive and now to the trusted option. Could not have gone better for them.
The NDP looking at losing party status (<12 seats) is pretty brutal, but that's how it goes
@Expat it would only lose status and the privileges of a group in the House of Commons- such as no guaranteed number of questions at question time and possibly financial help to employ staff.
It would still exist as a registered party outside of Parliament.
The two are separate and shouldn’t be conflated.
I think there will be much more tactical voting in this election than usual. Hence, I don’t believe the Bloc or NDP will do nearly as badly as opinion polls suggest. While the Conservatives will likely severely underperform what they would normally achieve in seat tally from their votes, supporters of the CLP, Bloc , and NDP will vote for the candidate on the anti-Trump imperialism side who is most likely to win in their seat, ignoring past party loyalties to ensure strong anti-Trumpers are elected to their seats.
The final polls are in for Canada, and the CBC Poll Tracker gives the Liberals a 42.8-39.2 vote lead over the Conservatives and a 189-125 seat point estimate lead (172 needed for majority). I’m doing a live blog on Canada tomorrow AEST.
Oh – for the record my prediction, hasn’t changed, the Liberals win a clear majority and it will be obvious very early, and pretty much over by the time a good whack of ON is in.
But they likely won’t call it until BC has closed.
Considering the last polls and what Trump recently said about Canada in the link below:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/donald-trump-election-canada-truth-social-1.7520212
I’m going to take a risk and say it’ll be a Liberal Majority in despite Carney’s controversies over the phone call and a slight decline in polling for the Canadian Liberals. I’ll either be drunk on fine wine or choking from spoiled milk by the time I wake up tmw.
Entropy 5.19pm
Nearly every candidate from every party (maybe not PPC?) is a strong anti-Trump candidate, at least publicly, so that’s not really applicable.
I think NDP will do every bit as bad as polling suggests, but BQ are more of a wildcard for me as Quebec has its own politics even in elections based around national issues such as this one.
The plausibility for your suggestion, however, does exist in that well over 50% of voters now expect Liberals to win the election. This might cause some tactical voters to return ‘home’ to NDP/BQ/favourite local Tory in their riding, believing it can do no harm if Libs have it in the bag nationally.
Whilst I can still see a (very) narrow path for the Conservatives (without the polling being substantially wrong), I’ve also started to see the opposite possibility more clearly: that Liberals are being under-estimated in polls and win really big.
If we put aside the oddities of the big variations in polling on different demographics (masked by similar headline numbers for most polling companies), there are key indicators other than headline VI that Carney and the Libs will do very well – especially the ‘preferred PM’ question (less so overall favourability, as Poilievre now has a favourability that broadly equates to a winning % if it were VI, it’s just not as good as Carney’s).
Carney has barely ever been behind Poilievre on this question every during the campaign, and the overall story is of Carney’s PM lead being greater than his party’s VI lead – quite significantly, and hardening up in the last day or two to a greater % for him whilst Poilievre remained static.
Obviously Trump interjecting himself – AGAIN, and very intentionally / involuntarily this time – on election day itself is designed to ensure Carney & Libs win, and may well support the above further. The Canadian voting public haven’t quite twigged that they are hating Trump and at the same time reacting to him just how he wants them to! (instead of voting Conservative instead). Whether Poilievre’s fairly strong response on social media, reported by CBC, will negate this at all I don’t know. He should have pointed out again that Trump wants Carney to win, and to rebuff him by voting Conservative.
So in conclusion. . . .
A miracle might happen today, but going PURELY BY THE DATA (that means not just the polling averages of VI but the other data), I think you’d have to say that the Libs will actually win by 7-10 percentage points nationally and get a landslide win of 205+ seats (up form 160 in 2021) and Conservatives’ best outcome to not have net seat losses (won 119 ridings in 2021, though that was out of 338 total, this time it’s 343).
There’s arguments that can be made the other way with validity, but I don’t think they’re as strong as the above one. The conflicting – and, for Conservatives, sometimes encouraging – underlying data is often contradicted by other pollsters’ underlying figures for the same thing.
I would like to still do a separate post highlighting the bizarre differences between pollsters who have broadly similar headline numbers, mainly around the the gender disparity and age-specific numbers in VI, but I think I have run out of time before results come in as I have to go for now.
I mean, if you take the VI for men from one poll and the VI for women from a different pollster (using final polls), you could make a case for a colossal landslide for Libs or for a majority government for Cons, depending which ones you take. For example. And similarly for age range VI, though only a small number of pollsters differ from the main trend of older voters being by far the strongest for Libs.
Unless there is a broad polling miss, I expect these will be quietly forgotten by the industry post-election.
A snippet or two from the final Abacus Data report, just one out of many pollsters:
“If voter turnout turns out to be higher than we expect (around 70%), then that could help the Conservatives but only by a small margin. Turnout estimates by age, according to our data, are:
18 to 29: 43%
30 to 44: 64%
45 to 59: 75%
60+: 85%. . .
. . . What could shift it?
Turnout. Our model assumes participation in the high-60s to low-70s. If we’re low—say it pushes well north of 70%—that means more late deciders and infrequent voters, a pool that leans Conservative 39-37. In other words, an unexpected surge of younger and less certain voters would give Poilievre his best (and perhaps only) path to plurality territory.
So watch two things Monday night: advance-vote ridings the Liberals need to hold, and raw turnout levels. If participation tracks 2021 levels, expect a red map and a re-elected Prime Minister Carney before midnight. If the lines outside polling stations are longer than usual—especially in B.C. and the GTAs—this cliff-hanger could run even later than the broadcasters planned.”
Presumably, the conservatives won’t go into coalition with Bloc Québécois. Don’t really know much about Bloc Québécois, but my vague understanding is they are on the left and want Quebec to secede.