Carney’s Liberals would have more support than Poilievre’s Conservatives: poll

If Mark Carney is chosen as the next Liberal leader, more Canadians would vote for his party than Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, a new Léger Marketing poll is suggesting.

The poll says with Carney as leader, Liberal support would rise to 40 per cent while the Conservatives would be at 38 per cent.

In comparison, if a federal election were held today, the Léger poll suggests 38 per cent of Canadians would vote for Poilievre while 35 per cent would vote for the Liberals.

That’s already a much closer gap than just a few weeks ago, when the Conservatives appeared destined for an overwhelming victory, according to multiple pollsters.

A December Léger poll, for instance, put the Conservatives at 43 per cent support compared to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals at 21 per cent support. That’s all changed since Trudeau announced he would step down as party leader and prime minister once the Liberals elected a new leader.

Tuesday’s Léger poll also found a Carney-led Liberal party would result in 11 per cent support for the New Democratic Party of Canada; five per cent for the Bloc Québécois; three per cent for the Green Party; and two per cent for the PPC.

The Liberals will elect a new leader on March 9 with the second of two debates taking place Tuesday evening in Montreal.

The poll surveyed 1,534 adult Canadians between Feb. 21-23. Results were weighted according to age, gender, mother tongue, region, education and presence of children in the household. Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size yields a margin of error no greater than ±2.50 per cent.