As Trudeau’s era ends, his Liberal party is surging
Last updated on March 4th 2025
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HIS YEAR has already been a dramatic one in Canadian politics. In January, Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as prime minister after almost a decade in office. That month, Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of Canada’s overbearing southern neighbour, the United States. He appears determined to damage relations between the two countries; on March 4th his administration applied levies of 25% on most imports from Canada. These leadership changes have given a shot in the arm to the Liberal Party, whose next leader will be announced on March 9th. Its surge adds excitement to a federal election that must be held before October 20th, but is likely to be called as soon as this spring. On this page
The Economist is monitoring nationwide polls to assess the state of the race. This tracker will be updated daily.
The centre-left Liberal Party has been in power since 2015. Sometimes referred to as Canada’s “natural governing party”, the Liberals are hoping to resist the anti-incumbent backlash felt by governments around the world in recent years. However, they have come under criticism for their handling of the cost-of-living, inflation and immigration.
Since 2019 the party has governed with a minority of seats in parliament, often relying on the votes of the left-wing New Democratic Party (
NDP) to pass legislation. Last year the
NDP withdrew its support for the government, but stopped short of voting to trigger an election. In December, Chrystia Freeland, the Liberal deputy prime minister and minister of finance, resigned over disagreements with Mr Trudeau. Significantly weakened, the prime minister announced his own resignation on January 6th. He also dismissed parliament until March 24th, to allow a new prime minister to be elected.
Mark Carney, the former governor of both the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, is widely expected to succeed Mr Trudeau. He has not ruled out calling a snap election as soon as he assumes the premiership on March 9th—meaning an election could take place as soon as April 21st. If he does not call an early election, his hand may be forced by opposition parties, who may well call for a no-confidence vote when parliament returns. That would trigger an election as soon as May 5th.
The candidates
Leader not yet selected
Liberal Party
Registered Liberals are already voting to choose the next leader of the Liberal Party, who will be announced on March 9th. If Mr Carney is elected, he will be the first Canadian prime minister to have never served in elected office. During the leadership campaign Mr Carney repudiated some of Mr Trudeau’s economic policies—blaming profligate spending for Canada’s vulnerability to American tariffs. His main opponent, Ms Freeland, is more closely associated with the incumbent government, having served as deputy prime minister and minister of finance until last year. In opinion polls Mr Carney has much stronger ratings with Canadians than Ms Freeland and, unsurprisingly, Mr Trudeau.
Pierre Poilievre
Conservative Party
Pierre Poilievre has led Canada’s main centre-right opposition party since 2022. Until recently he seemed to be on course for a landslide victory, having convinced voters that Mr Trudeau’s response to inflation and immigration was inadequate. The lifelong political activist has walked a fine line: adopting “common sense” populist talking points while avoiding the type of right-wing immigrant-bashing that might spook moderate voters. Mr Trump’s election makes this balancing act harder to maintain, as Liberals attempt to cast Mr Poilievre as a Canadian knock-off of the populist
US president.
Jagmeet Singh
New Democratic Party (
NDP)
Vying for the attention of progressive voters is the left-wing
NDP, led by Jagmeet Singh. In exchange for supporting the Liberals in confidence votes, Mr Singh extracted some policy concessions in the latest parliamentary session, expanding workers’ rights and access to health care. However Mr Singh withdrew from the agreement in September, saying the Liberals were “too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests”. So far this attempt to distance his party from the unpopular government has not paid dividends.
Yves-François Blanchet
Bloc Québécois (
BQ)
Quebec is home to the majority of Canada’s French-speaking population. Polls suggest the contest there is not between the Liberals and Conservatives, but a three-way tussle with the separatist Bloc Québécois. The Bloc’s policy preferences at the federal level are broadly centre-left, and the party has supported Liberal legislation in the past. Yves-François Blanchet, who has led the party since 2019, says he will push for an early election.
Although nationwide opinion polls give a good sense of Canada’s political climate, the election will not be decided by nationwide vote share. Under the country’s first-past-the-post voting system, parties must win individual constituencies (known as ridings). For the past two elections the Conservatives—whose votes are inefficiently concentrated in the west of the country—have won more votes than the Liberals, but fewer seats. If, compared to the last election, each party were to increase or decrease their vote share by a uniform amount across all ridings, the Conservatives would need a six-point advantage nationwide to become the largest party.
Partisanship is lower in Canada than in some other Western democracies. Many voters switch between parties based on their perceived competence, leading to substantial swings in polls—as evidenced already by the Liberals’ recent surge. With a new prime minister, plus ongoing negotiations with the United States and a federal election which could be called at any time, Canadian politics is set for some twists and turns this year.
Methodology
To build our poll tracker, we adapted the work of three political scientists: Simon Jackman and Luke Mansillo at the University of Sydney, and Jack Bailey at the University of Manchester. Their approach treats each poll as an imperfect estimate of some “true” support for each candidate. A statistical model is used to estimate the “true” voting intention, given recent polls. The model takes into account each survey’s fieldwork dates, as well as the partisan tilt of polling firms’ output.
Sources:
National polls; CBC News; Jack Bailey;
The Economist
