New poll puts Liberals ahead of the Conservatives for the first time since 2021

The resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats are believed to be the cause of a huge turnaround for the federal Liberal Party.

According to Ipsos, if Canadians cast their ballots today, 38 per cent would support the Liberals, while 36 per cent would back the Conservatives.

That’s a major shift from just six weeks ago, when the Tories enjoyed a 26-point lead.

Darrell Bricker, the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, tells NewsRadio’s “Now You Know with Rob Snow” that Conservative support hasn’t seen a collapse like this since the days of then-Prime Minister Kim Campbell in 1993.

“The difference there was that it wasn’t that the Progressive Conservatives, under Campbell, started to lose to the Liberals. It was that they really started to lose the reform in the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals came on at the end. This time around, it’s pretty much losing to the Liberals. They’re not losing votes to the NDP. They’re not losing votes to the Bloc Quebecois. They’re losing them specifically to the Liberals,” said Bricker.

Bricker says two factors are at play currently. First, he says that a leadership race commonly “attracts attention.”

“Then there’s the other part, which is what’s been happening with Donald Trump and Canada-U.S. relations. And what that’s done is it’s created a situation in which Canadians are not focused on what happened over the last 10 years. They’re focused on what’s happening right now. So the biggest vulnerabilities that the Liberal Party had, which were their record and the prime minister, are both not really getting a lot of consideration from Canadians at the moment. They’re just looking at the leaders of the two parties. They’re maybe looking at the way that the parties have branded themselves over the years, or whatever, and their ability to deal with this current situation.”

Bricker says the Liberals are likely taking points from the NDP, who have seen “collapse” in favourability, according to Ipsos polls, in the space of two months.

A federal election campaign could begin in a matter of weeks after the Liberal Party elects its replacement for Trudeau.

The candidates in the running for leadership are Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould, and Frank Baylis.

A separate poll, published by Léger Marketing Tuesday, said with Carney as leader, Liberal support would rise to 40 per cent while the Conservatives would be at 38 per cent.