Liberals lead Tories in some polls after copying their election platform

A new poll indicates the Liberals are increasing their lead in two key provinces ahead of the next federal election. Their surging support follows the piggybacking of Conservative policies.

A Leger-Postmedia poll puts the Liberals at 44% and the Conservatives at 38% nationwide. Months ago, the Tories enjoyed a commanding lead in the double digits.

Pierre Poilievre pledged to remove capital gains taxes on investments in Canada, as well as to scrap the carbon tax, which Carney recently copied.

Despite increased support in B.C. and Ontario, Poilievre's Conservatives trail Carney's Liberals by 10 points in those provinces following a Liberal resurgence.

“Certainly, for the Conservatives, B.C. and Ontario are critical, critical battlegrounds for them, and being 10 points behind the Liberals is not good news,” said Leger executive vice-president Andrew Enns.

Liberals are polling at 48% in B.C., compared to Ontario at 49%. This is significantly higher than their 2015 majority win results of 35.2% and 44.8%, respectively. 

The Liberals were roughly 20 points behind the Conservatives in Ontario shortly before Justin Trudeau resigned.

With collapsing New Democrat support, largely to the benefit of the Liberals, the Conservatives are not polling strong enough since Justin Trudeau’s resignation.

Poilievre accused Carney of stealing his policies of late, yesterday arguing that the difference is he actually believes in Conservative policies.

“Mr. Carney opposed all of these policies for 10 years as part of a Liberal government. I mean, look, he advised Trudeau to print money and run up huge deficits that drove inflation,” he said. 

Poilievre noted Carney's opposition to Canadian pipelines and energy production, and that his housing policy mirrors Trudeau's by creating large, ineffective bureaucracies.

Enns says that to form government, the Conservatives must win in the GTA and B.C.’s lower mainland, but they are currently trailing the Liberals in both areas, by five and 15 points.

“Those are really crucial areas for Conservatives to make inroads if they’re going to get that majority. And you know, at this stage of the game, I’m sure they’re happy people aren’t voting today,” he noted.

It’s not the Conservative vote that is collapsing in those areas, Enns says, though it has certainly decreased since the party’s polling high at the peak of Trudeau’s unpopularity in December 2024.

Enns says the Conservative vote has decreased in those areas since December 2024, but it's not collapsing. NDP support sits somewhere between five and eight percent in each battleground province.

“The Conservatives need to be somewhere in the high 30s or low 40s. That’s a good number for them and they can win a lot of seats,” Enns said.

“However, … going back to 2011 when Stephen Harper swept the (Great Toronto Area), the other factor that contributed to that really good night for the Conservatives was an NDP vote in Ontario [that was] up around 20 per cent to 22 per cent.”

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh risks losing his riding of Burnaby Central in B.C. due to low poll numbers.

Alex Dhaliwal

Journalist and Writer

Alex Dhaliwal is a Political Science graduate from the University of Calgary. He has actively written on relevant Canadian issues with several prominent interviews under his belt.

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