Liberals Open 17-Point Poll Lead as Conservatives Fall Below 30% in New Federal Tracker

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Canada’s federal polling landscape has opened another striking gap. Liaison Strategies’ September 28 Weekly Federal Tracker places the Liberals at 46% among decided and leaning voters, compared with 29% for the Conservatives — a 17-point difference. The NDP stands at 15%, while the Bloc Québécois, Greens and People’s Party remain considerably smaller nationally. The result comes after several September polls from other firms also showed the Liberals ahead, although the size of that advantage varies considerably by pollster. Liaison’s survey was conducted from September 13 to 26 among 1,526 Canadians, making the result a two-week rolling measurement rather than a single-day snapshot. That distinction matters when interpreting both the headline gap and the smaller week-to-week changes underneath it.

The Headline Number Is 46% to 29%

The clearest finding is also the simplest: among respondents who had chosen a party or indicated which party they leaned toward, Liaison measured Liberal support at 46% and Conservative support at 29%. That produces the 17-percentage-point difference in the headline. The NDP registered 15%, the Bloc Québécois 6%, the Greens 2%, the People’s Party 2% and other parties 1%. These figures describe national voting intention rather than how seats would be distributed in the House of Commons.

The result is notable partly because the gap has changed during September. Liaison measured a 12-point Liberal advantage on September 14, a 14-point advantage on September 21 and now 17 points. Still, those releases are not completely separate polls: the tracker replaces roughly half of its interviews each week. Liaison itself cautions that modest weekly movements should not automatically be interpreted as durable political shifts. The more defensible conclusion is that its tracker continues to show a sizeable Liberal national advantage while the exact margin has moved from week to week.

Conservatives Slide Back Under 30%

The Conservative figure attracts particular attention because the party is back at 29% in Liaison’s tracker after reaching 31% one week earlier and 32% in the September 14 release. That means the party lost two percentage points in the newest release while the national gap expanded by three points. It is also a return to a level Liaison recorded on August 31, when the Conservatives likewise stood at 29%.

That movement should not be confused with a two-point change across an entirely new sample. Liaison’s tracker incorporates approximately two weeks of interviewing and replaces the oldest week with a new week of responses. Because half of the previous survey remains in the new release, the consecutive measurements overlap. A household watching the numbers move from 32% to 31% to 29%, therefore, is seeing a gradually refreshed trend rather than three wholly independent national polls. The sub-30 figure is politically relevant as a measurement of current opinion, but its durability will depend on whether later waves and other pollsters continue recording similar Conservative support.

Liberals Add a Point Rather Than Surge

The widening gap was not created by a dramatic one-week Liberal increase. Liaison puts the Liberals at 46%, just one percentage point higher than their 45% reading a week earlier. On September 14 they had been at 44%. The larger numerical change in the newest release came from the Conservative side, where support moved from 31% to 29%. That distinction helps explain why a three-point expansion in the gap should not automatically be described as a new Liberal surge.

There is nevertheless evidence beyond Liaison that Liberal support is currently sitting in the mid-to-upper 40s nationally. Abacus Data’s survey released September 27 put the Liberals at 46% among committed voters. Nanos reported 48.1% in its September 22 tracking release, while Léger’s September poll placed Liberal support at 49% among decided voters. Different questionnaires, field dates, samples and methods prevent those figures from being treated as interchangeable, but collectively they provide useful context: Liaison’s 46% Liberal reading is not an isolated high number produced by a single polling organization.

NDP Holds at 15%

The NDP sits at 15% in the latest Liaison tracker, unchanged from the previous week. That is considerably higher than the party’s 6.3% share of valid votes in the April 2025 federal election, according to official Elections Canada results. It is also higher than the NDP readings from several other contemporary federal polls, showing one of the more significant differences between polling firms in the current landscape.

Abacus, for example, measured the NDP at 9% in its September 18–23 field period, while Nanos reported 11.2% in the tracking results released September 22. Léger’s September 5–7 survey put the party at 6%. Liaison’s comparatively higher NDP figure therefore deserves to be presented as one firm’s measurement rather than an uncontested estimate of the party’s support. The difference is a useful reminder of why polling averages and multiple independent surveys can provide more context than one topline. Even so, Liaison has measured an NDP increase within its own consistent methodology: the party was at 13% on September 7, 14% on September 14 and 15% in the two most recent releases.

Carney Approval Slips Slightly to 64%

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s approval rating remains considerably higher than the Liberal ballot number in Liaison’s latest data. The tracker records 64% approving of his performance, 29% disapproving and 7% unsure. Approval has slipped gradually from 66% two weeks earlier and 65% last week. The widening party gap therefore occurred while Carney’s approval moved slightly downward rather than upward.

That separation between leader approval and voting intention is important. Someone can approve of how a prime minister is performing without intending to vote for that leader’s party, and the two questions measure different attitudes. Abacus provides another illustration. Its September 27 release measured Liberal voting intention at 46% while reporting that 56% of Canadians had a positive impression of Carney and 25% had a negative one. Different firms ask their leadership questions differently, so their percentages should not be directly substituted for one another. Still, both datasets demonstrate that attitudes toward a leader and federal ballot choice are related measures rather than identical ones.

Poilievre’s Rating Moves Differently From Conservative Support

Pierre Poilievre’s latest Liaison numbers present an unusual contrast with the Conservative ballot result. His favourable rating increased from 35% to 36%, while 51% viewed him unfavourably. Conservative voting intention, meanwhile, declined from 31% to 29%. In other words, the latest movement in perceptions of the Conservative leader did not move in the same direction as the party’s measured national support.

The longer September sequence also shows why a single movement should be interpreted cautiously. Liaison recorded Poilievre at 36% favourable and 51% unfavourable on September 14, followed by 35% and 51% on September 21 before favourability returned to 36% in the newest release. Those are relatively small changes compared with the larger movement in party voting intention. The tracker also reports significant regional differences in views of Poilievre, making the national figure an average of quite different provincial patterns. None of these personal ratings establishes why an individual respondent chooses a particular party; they show only that leader perception and ballot preference can move separately over short periods.

Quebec Remains a Difficult Region for Conservatives in This Tracker

Quebec produces one of the widest regional separations in Liaison’s September 28 release. Among decided and leaning respondents in the province, the Liberals register 46%, the Bloc Québécois 26% and the Conservatives 15%. Liaison also reports that 17% of Quebec respondents view Poilievre favourably, compared with 64% who view him unfavourably. As with every regional result, those numbers carry more uncertainty than the national sample.

Other September polls nevertheless point in the same general direction while differing on the precise numbers. Abacus measured the Liberals at 44%, the Bloc at 31% and Conservatives at 20% in Quebec. Léger earlier in September recorded 47% Liberal, 29% Bloc and 16% Conservative. For historical context, Elections Canada says Quebec voters cast 42.6% of valid ballots for the Liberals, 27.7% for the Bloc and 23.3% for the Conservatives in the 2025 federal election. Taken together, the contemporary polls indicate lower Conservative support in Quebec than the party received there in 2025, although the estimated size of that decline varies by firm.

Ontario Shows a Wide Liberal–Conservative Gap

Liaison’s Ontario subsample puts the Liberals at 49% and Conservatives at 31%, an 18-point difference. Ontario matters heavily to any national federal picture because of its population and large number of constituencies, but a regional subsample in a national poll remains less precise than the full Canadian sample. Liaison explicitly cautions readers that its regional numbers carry greater variability.

The comparison with the last election is striking but should not be treated as a prediction. Elections Canada reports that in Ontario’s 2025 federal vote, the Liberals received 49.2% of valid ballots and Conservatives 43.8%. The Liberal percentage in Liaison’s current Ontario measurement is therefore close to its 2025 result, while the Conservative figure is substantially lower. Abacus also finds a sizeable gap but with different numbers, placing Ontario at 51% Liberal and 34% Conservative in its September 18–23 survey. Two separate firms consequently identify a Liberal advantage in Ontario, while differing on the Conservative level and exact margin — precisely the sort of variation expected across independent polls.

British Columbia Shows a More Complicated Three-Party Picture

In British Columbia, Liaison’s federal tracker records 45% for the Liberals, 28% for the Conservatives and 22% for the NDP. That makes B.C. notable not simply because of the Liberal advantage measured there, but because the NDP is substantially more competitive than it is nationally. Liaison’s national NDP figure is 15%, seven points below its B.C. estimate.

The result also looks very different from the province’s 2025 federal election. Elections Canada recorded 41.8% of valid B.C. votes for the Liberals, 41.2% for the Conservatives and 13.0% for the NDP. Abacus’ latest numbers offer another variation: 45% Liberal, 37% Conservative and 12% NDP in British Columbia. Liaison therefore measures a much stronger B.C. NDP performance and weaker Conservative performance than either the 2025 result or current Abacus data. Those differences are a good example of why provincial subsamples should not be read with the same confidence as national toplines. They are useful evidence of regional structure, particularly when patterns repeat, but exact percentages can move substantially between polls.

Alberta Continues to Buck the National Pattern

Alberta remains the clearest regional reversal of the national Liaison numbers. The Conservatives lead there with 49%, compared with 31% for the Liberals. While that produces a substantial Conservative provincial advantage, it is much narrower than the result Alberta delivered in the April 2025 federal election. Elections Canada recorded 63.6% Conservative support and 27.9% Liberal support among valid Alberta ballots.

Again, individual pollsters disagree about the precise scale. Abacus’ newest national survey puts Conservatives at 54% and Liberals at 34% in Alberta, while Léger’s early-September release reported Conservative support at 64% in the province. All three measurements show Alberta behaving very differently from Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, even though their exact estimates vary widely. That regional concentration is an important feature of Canadian federal polling because a national percentage can conceal sharply contrasting provincial coalitions. It does not, by itself, reveal how many constituencies a party would win: federal MPs are chosen riding by riding, rather than through a nationwide proportional allocation of votes.

Young Voters Produce the Most Uncertain Picture

Liaison’s youngest age group looks much more competitive than its national headline. Among decided and leaning respondents aged 18 to 34, the Liberals stand at 36%, Conservatives at 26% and NDP at 25%. Instead of the 17-point Liberal–Conservative national difference, the gap within this age bracket is 10 points, with the NDP only one point behind the Conservatives.

But another major poll illustrates how volatile demographic subsamples can be. Abacus divides younger Canadians differently and found Conservatives ahead among 18- to 29-year-olds, with 42% Conservative, 32% Liberal and 15% NDP. Among its 30-to-44 group, Conservatives led 39% to 36%, with the NDP at 14%. The age categories are not identical, the survey methods differ and each subgroup is smaller than the national sample, so those figures cannot be treated as direct contradictions. Instead, they demonstrate the uncertainty surrounding conclusions about younger voters. The safest factual observation is that age patterns vary significantly by pollster and that younger-voter estimates currently show considerably more disagreement than the national Liberal–Conservative ordering.

Older Voters Lean Much More Heavily Liberal

At the other end of the age distribution, the two major trackers show considerably more consistency. Liaison has the Liberals at 58% among decided and leaning voters aged 65 and older, compared with 25% for the Conservatives and 8% for the NDP. That produces a much wider Liberal advantage than Liaison measures among respondents aged 18 to 34.

Abacus uses a slightly different age bracket but finds a remarkably similar pattern. Among respondents aged 60 and over, its September 27 release reports 59% Liberal and 26% Conservative support. Earlier Liaison waves also showed a sizeable Liberal advantage among seniors, including a 56%–28% split on September 14. Because two independent pollsters using different methodologies are identifying a similar older-voter pattern, the finding has more external support than some of the much more divergent youth estimates. Still, neither set of figures means older Canadians vote as a single bloc. These percentages describe aggregate responses within an age category and contain individuals with many different political priorities, economic circumstances and regional backgrounds.

Other Pollsters Show a Liberal Lead, but Not One Exact Margin

The 17-point headline should be understood as Liaison’s estimate rather than a universal polling number. Abacus Data’s September 18–23 study, released September 27, found the Liberals at 46% and Conservatives at 34% among committed voters — a 12-point difference. Its sample included 2,744 Canadian adults. Among respondents who said they were certain to vote, Abacus reported 49% Liberal and 33% Conservative.

Nanos Research reported a different but comparably wide result on September 22: 48.1% Liberal, 31.0% Conservative and 11.2% NDP in its weekly tracking. Léger’s September 5–7 survey placed the parties at 49% Liberal and 33% Conservative, a 16-point difference. These polls do not provide one perfectly consistent margin, and they should not be averaged casually without accounting for methodology and field dates. They do, however, provide independent evidence that the broad Liberal lead seen by Liaison is not unique to one polling organization. The uncertainty lies more in the size and composition of that advantage than in whether recent national polls are showing one.

The Rolling Sample Changes How Weekly Moves Should Be Read

Liaison describes its federal tracker as a rolling survey built from roughly two weeks of interviews. Each week, approximately the oldest seven days leave the dataset while a new seven days are added. With a typical national sample near 1,500, that means about half of the respondents change between weekly publications. The September 28 release contains 1,526 respondents interviewed between September 13 and 26.

This setup has an important practical consequence. The September 21 and September 28 figures are correlated because they share roughly one week of interviews; they are not two completely independent samples of 1,526 different Canadians. A one-point or two-point weekly change can therefore look more dramatic in a headline than it does statistically. Liaison itself advises treating small changes cautiously and looking for repeated movement across several releases. Rolling trackers can be valuable because they reduce dependence on an unusually noisy day of interviewing, but the trade-off is slower sample turnover. The 17-point gap deserves attention as a current measurement, while its week-to-week path requires more careful interpretation.

The Margin of Error Matters Even More for Subgroups

Liaison reports a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points for its total sample, 19 times out of 20. The poll uses interactive voice response technology and random-digit dialling across landline and cellular networks, with the resulting data weighted to Census targets. That margin applies to the overall sample; Liaison explicitly states that uncertainty is larger for smaller subsamples.

That qualification becomes especially important when examining Alberta, British Columbia, younger voters or other demographic categories. A national sample of 1,526 respondents is divided into substantially smaller groups when analysts isolate one province or age range. As those sample sizes shrink, estimates become more variable. Liaison’s own methodology guide consequently describes its regional figures as directional evidence that is most useful when the same pattern appears repeatedly. It also recommends caution around one- or two-point week-to-week changes. This does not make subgroup results unusable. It simply means a 46% national figure carries a different level of statistical precision from a percentage calculated among a much smaller segment of the same sample.

The 2025 Election Baseline Was Far Closer

The most useful real-world benchmark is Canada’s most recent general election. Elections Canada’s official results show the Liberals receiving 43.8% of valid votes on April 28, 2025, while Conservatives received 41.3%. The national popular-vote difference was therefore 2.5 percentage points — dramatically smaller than the 17-point separation measured in Liaison’s September 28, 2026 tracker. The NDP and Bloc Québécois each received 6.3% nationally in that election.

The seat result likewise reflected a much more competitive election than the current polling toplines. Elections Canada reports that the Liberals won 169 seats and Conservatives 144, while the Bloc won 22, the NDP seven and the Greens one. Those are historical results, not a formula for translating today’s vote intentions into a new seat count. Still, they provide essential perspective: the current polling environment represents a substantial shift from the national vote distribution Canadians actually produced in 2025. Whether that difference persists until another election is a separate question that polling conducted in September 2026 cannot answer.

A National Poll Is Not a Seat Projection

The most important limitation may be the easiest to overlook. Canada does not allocate House of Commons seats according to each party’s national share of the vote. Elections Canada describes the federal system as single-member plurality, commonly called first past the post. In every electoral district, the candidate receiving the greatest number of votes wins that riding, even without an absolute majority. National vote totals are therefore the sum of hundreds of local contests rather than a direct mechanism for assigning seats.

That means a 17-point national polling gap cannot simply be converted into a particular number of Liberal or Conservative MPs. Where support rises or falls matters, as do individual riding contests, candidate effects, turnout and future changes in public opinion. Liaison itself says its tracker is not a riding-projection model and recommends interpreting polling through field dates, methodology, margins of error and trends over time. The September 28 numbers provide a clear measurement of the current national environment: 46% Liberal, 29% Conservative and 15% NDP in this tracker. They do not determine what Canadians would ultimately do in a future general election.

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