With two weeks to go until Canada’s 45th general election, the Liberals under new leader Mark Carney are now the favorites to win. It’s been a staggering turnaround: The party looked all but cooked a few months ago, but Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats, along with Justin Trudeau’s timely resignation, gave the party wings.
What the polls say: 338Canada, a poll aggregator, shows an average Liberal lead of 6 points. Ipsos has them up by twice that. So, yeah, call it a trend.
Next week, party leaders will face off in two final debates, both in Montreal. The French-language debate is set for Wednesday night, followed by an English-language showdown on Thursday.
This will be one of Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre’s last chances to gain ground on Carney and the Liberals. To do so, he’ll need to go hard against Trump and convince Canadians that, as a conservative, he’s better equipped to deal with the US president than Carney. So far, he trails the Liberal leader on that measure.
Poilievre must also continue to court and mobilize voters on the country’s affordability crisis, an area where his recent advantages are slipping.
In short, time is running out for the Conservative leader to stop what will go down as one of the most remarkable political resurrections in Canada’s history.
