Carney’s Liberals Open 13-Point Lead as Conservatives Slide to 31% in New Poll

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Canada’s federal political landscape has opened up again, and this time the movement is working sharply in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s favour. New national tracking puts the Liberals at 44% among decided and leaning voters, compared with 31% for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives—a 13-point gap and the largest Liberal advantage recorded by Liaison Strategies since March.

The headline number is striking, but the details tell a more revealing story. Liberal support has edged higher rather than exploded, while Conservative support has fallen and more Canadians have moved into the undecided column. Meanwhile, Carney retains comparatively strong personal ratings, the Liberals continue to lead across several seat-rich provinces, and other recent polling also places them ahead. The question now is whether the Conservative decline represents a temporary summer dip or something more difficult for Poilievre to reverse.

The 13-Point Lead Comes With an Important Methodological Detail

Liaison Strategies’ August 10 federal tracker puts the Liberals at 44%, Conservatives at 31%, NDP at 13%, Bloc Québécois at 6%, Greens at 3%, People’s Party at 2% and other parties at 1% among decided and leaning voters. The company interviewed 1,526 Canadians between July 26 and August 8 using interactive voice response technology and random-digit dialing across both cellular and landline networks. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

That makes the Liberal advantage substantial within this particular tracker, but it should not be interpreted as a prediction of an election result. Regional and demographic samples carry larger margins of error, while Liaison’s tracker uses a rolling sample in which older interviews are replaced by newer ones. The company specifically cautioned that a relatively strong Conservative portion of the previous sample rolled out as a stronger Liberal portion entered.

The Biggest Movement Is the Conservative Drop

The most important number may not actually be the Liberals’ 44%. One week earlier, Liaison had Carney’s party at 43%, meaning Liberal support rose only one percentage point. The Conservatives, however, fell from 34% to 31%. The NDP climbed from 12% to 13%. In other words, the four-point expansion of the Liberal lead was driven primarily by Conservative weakness rather than a sudden Liberal surge.

The all-voter numbers reinforce that point. Once undecided Canadians are included, Liberal support is unchanged at 39%, while Conservative support falls from 30% to 27%. Undecided voters rise from 11% to 13%. That distinction matters politically. Some people moving away from the Conservatives are apparently not switching directly to Carney’s Liberals; they are stepping away from making a firm choice altogether. For Poilievre, recovering those voters could therefore be easier than converting committed Liberals—but only if the party can identify what caused their confidence to weaken.

The Race Has Moved Considerably Since Mid-July

Only a few weeks ago, the same Liaison tracker presented a far more competitive contest. On July 13, Liberals stood at 41% and Conservatives at 35%, producing a six-point Liberal lead. By July 27, Liberal support had reached 44% against 35% for the Conservatives, expanding the advantage to nine points. On August 3, the gap remained nine points, with the parties at 43% and 34%.

The August 10 result moves the race to 44% versus 31%, putting another four percentage points between the major parties. That progression—six points, nine points and now 13—will attract attention inside both caucuses. Still, political strategists know that summer polling can move rapidly, especially with rolling samples. The more consequential question is whether Conservatives remain near 31% through several future releases. A single weak result creates concern; several consecutive readings at roughly the same level begin to look more like a structural problem.

The 2025 Election Shows How Much the Conservative Position Has Changed

The contrast with Canada’s April 2025 federal election is particularly revealing. Elections Canada’s official results show that the Liberals received 43.8% of valid votes nationally, while the Conservatives captured 41.3%. The NDP received 6.3%. Those numbers produced 169 Liberal seats, 144 Conservative seats, 22 Bloc seats and just seven New Democrats when Canadians elected the 343-member House of Commons.

Against that benchmark, the latest Liaison result does not show Liberal support dramatically exceeding Carney’s election-day performance. At 44%, it is almost identical. The much larger change appears on the Conservative and NDP sides: Conservatives are roughly 10 percentage points below their 2025 national vote share in the new tracker, while the NDP’s 13% is more than twice its election result. That makes the current 13-point Liberal advantage less a story of extraordinary Liberal expansion than one of the intensely polarized 2025 Conservative vote coalition becoming less consolidated.

Ontario Is Doing Heavy Lifting for the Liberals

Ontario remains one of the most consequential numbers in the entire poll. Liaison has the Liberals at 48% in the province compared with 34% for the Conservatives, a 14-point advantage. With 122 federal constituencies, Ontario contains more seats than any other province, so even modest shifts there can have an outsized effect on the national electoral map.

The finding is not isolated to Liaison. Abacus Data’s July 23-to-29 polling also had the Liberals ahead in Ontario, although by a smaller nine-point margin of 47% to 38%. The exact advantage therefore varies by pollster, but the common direction creates a clear challenge for Conservatives. Their national path becomes considerably narrower when they cannot keep Ontario close. A Conservative campaign can accumulate huge margins in parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan, but votes won by 30 or 40 points in already-safe ridings do not compensate efficiently for losing clusters of suburban and urban Ontario seats by smaller margins.

Quebec Is an Even More Difficult Conservative Puzzle

Quebec presents another major obstacle. Liaison’s August 10 tracker places the Liberals at 45% in the province, followed by the Bloc Québécois at 26% and Conservatives at only 18%. That gives the Liberals a 19-point advantage over the Bloc and a 27-point advantage over the Conservatives. Quebec sends 78 MPs to Ottawa, making weakness there difficult for any national party to ignore.

Other recent research points in the same general direction. Abacus Data had Liberals at 48% in Quebec in late July, with the Bloc at 28% and Conservatives at 20%. Leger’s latest national release likewise describes Liberal strength as remaining particularly pronounced outside Conservative western strongholds. For Poilievre, the mathematics are uncomfortable. A party already relying heavily on Alberta, Saskatchewan and parts of rural Canada needs competitive numbers in Ontario and Quebec to build a broad national victory. Running around 20% in Quebec leaves very little margin for losses elsewhere.

British Columbia Has Also Tilted Toward Carney

British Columbia has often been one of Canada’s most complicated three-party battlegrounds, but the latest Liaison figures give the Liberals a relatively comfortable provincial advantage. Carney’s party sits at 43%, compared with 30% for the Conservatives. The NDP has historically had greater strength in British Columbia than it does nationally, adding another competitive element to races that can shift sharply from one neighbourhood to another.

Recent polls differ on the size of the Liberal lead but not its direction. Abacus Data’s late-July numbers had the Liberals at 43%, Conservatives at 37% and New Democrats at 13% in British Columbia. Liaison therefore shows a significantly weaker Conservative number, while the Liberal figure is identical. With 43 federal ridings in the province, that difference matters. For Conservatives, returning to competitiveness in B.C. could help offset difficulties in Ontario and Quebec. For Liberals, holding approximately the low-to-mid 40s would give the party another major region in which it can compete for a broad collection of seats.

Conservatives Still Have a Western Fortress

The national numbers should not be mistaken for Conservative collapse everywhere. Liaison still places Poilievre’s party comfortably ahead in Alberta, where Conservatives have 48% compared with 33% for the Liberals. Across Saskatchewan and Manitoba combined, Conservatives lead 43% to 32%. Those numbers preserve a substantial western base even during an otherwise difficult national polling week.

The pattern is visible across other polling as well. Abacus measured Conservatives at 60% in Alberta in its late-July release and 47% across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, again ahead of the Liberals. The problem is electoral efficiency. Winning deeply Conservative ridings by enormous margins can boost national vote totals without producing additional seats once those constituencies are already secure. The Liberal coalition, by contrast, is currently spread across Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia as well as Atlantic Canada. That geographic distribution helps explain why a national Conservative recovery would likely require more than simply maximizing turnout in the party’s strongest western territory.

Women and Older Canadians Remain Central to the Liberal Coalition

Liaison says the Liberal advantage continues to be built disproportionately on women and older voters. In the newest tracker, Liberals lead Conservatives among women by 23 percentage points, while the contest among men is considerably tighter. Previous Liaison tracking also showed especially large Liberal advantages among seniors. That matters because older Canadians tend to participate in federal elections at higher rates than younger adults.

Elections Canada’s study of the 2025 election illustrates the turnout difference. Participation among eligible Canadians aged 18 to 24 was estimated at 55.9%, compared with 77.6% among those aged 65 to 74. Women also participated at a slightly higher rate than men overall. A coalition that performs strongly among groups with high voting propensity can therefore produce advantages beyond what raw population shares suggest. Conservatives remain competitive with many working-age Canadians, but difficulty among seniors and women can become especially expensive when those voters reliably cast ballots in competitive suburban and urban constituencies.

Carney’s Personal Numbers Are Giving Liberals Added Protection

Mark Carney’s approval rating is holding at 57% in Liaison’s newest tracker, while 33% disapprove and 9% are unsure. That leaves the prime minister with a net approval rating of plus 24 points. Liaison reports particularly strong approval in Quebec, at 75%, and British Columbia, at 62%. Those figures help explain why the Liberal brand remains competitive across several regions simultaneously.

A separate Leger release published August 10 tells a broadly compatible story. Leger found 55% approving of Carney’s performance, with 54% satisfied with the federal government and 54% saying Canada was moving in the right direction. More strikingly, its policy experiment found Carney ahead of Poilievre on every tested leadership question. Whether the issue was infrastructure, energy production, immigration, Arctic security or negotiating with the United States, respondents shown Carney’s name expressed more trust than respondents shown the identical policy proposition under Poilievre’s name. That personal credibility is becoming an important Liberal political asset.

Poilievre’s Personal Ratings Are Moving in the Opposite Direction

Pierre Poilievre faces a different picture. Liaison has his favourable rating at 34% and unfavourable rating at 53%. The favourable number is tied for the lowest recorded in the firm’s current tracker, while his unfavourable score is the highest Liaison has measured since March. That comes at the same moment Conservative ballot support has fallen to 31%.

Other polling has also shown a substantial personal gap between the two leaders, even when the Conservative party itself performs better. Abacus Data found in July that 37% had a positive impression of Poilievre and 44% a negative one, while Carney registered 50% positive and 31% negative. This creates a difficult strategic equation. Conservatives still possess a large, motivated base, and Poilievre remains strongly supported inside it. But federal elections are generally decided by voters beyond a party’s core coalition. Improving Conservative numbers may therefore require not merely sharpening policy attacks on the government, but broadening Poilievre’s appeal among voters currently reluctant to consider him.

Other Pollsters Agree on the Liberal Lead—But Not Its Exact Size

A 13-point lead should not be treated as though every polling firm has produced precisely the same result. The encouraging sign for Liberals is that several current sources agree on who is ahead. The uncertainty surrounds the size of that advantage. Leger’s August 10 release has the Liberals at 46% and Conservatives at 34%, a 12-point gap among decided voters.

Nanos Research reported an even wider margin on August 4, with Liberals at 47.1%, Conservatives at 27.9% and the NDP at 12.7%. By contrast, Abacus Data’s July 23-to-29 national research had Liberals at 44% and Conservatives at 38%, only a six-point difference. Methodology, field dates, question wording and sampling approaches all contribute to differences between firms. The responsible conclusion is therefore not that the Conservatives have definitively fallen to exactly 31% nationwide. It is that multiple recent measurements independently show Carney’s Liberals leading, with several now indicating a sizeable double-digit advantage.

The Next Test Comes Before Canadians Face Another General Election

Carney is not dependent on an immediate election to convert favourable polling into power. The House of Commons currently lists 172 Liberal MPs, 139 Conservatives, 21 Bloc MPs, five New Democrats, one Green, one independent and four vacant seats. That puts the Liberals at the 172-seat threshold needed for a majority in the 343-seat chamber, a stronger parliamentary position than the 169 seats they won in April 2025.

There are also nearer-term tests. Elections Canada has three federal by-elections scheduled for August 31 in Beaches–East York, Chicoutimi–Le Fjord and North Vancouver–Capilano. National polling cannot predict any individual riding, but those contests will offer real ballots instead of hypothetical ones. Beyond them, the political risks remain familiar. Cost of living, the economy and housing continue to command enormous attention, areas where recent Abacus research shows Conservatives retain openings. Carney’s present advantage is substantial, but maintaining it will depend on whether personal approval eventually translates into tangible economic confidence.

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