Conservative Lead Falls – Carney On The Rise

From the beginning, the 2025 Liberal leadership election appeared to be Mark Carney’s to lose, and to the surprise of no one – except perhaps for Chrystia Freeland – when the Liberal Party announced the winner on March 9^th, it was Carney.

He won not by a whisker but by a country mile.

When the final vote was tallied, Carney had won 85.9% of the total. Freeland was a distant second, winning only 8%. Karina Gould got 3.2% while Frank Baylis earned 3%. Of equal, if not more importance, Carney won every single riding across the country by a substantial margin – including the home ridings of both Freeland and Gould.

Carney’s next steps will be quick. He met with Justin Trudeau and the Liberal caucus on March 10^th to coordinate his transition to Prime Minister. The formal steps are reasonably simple. Trudeau will meet with Governor General Mary Simon and submit his resignation. The Governor General will then ask Liberal leader Carney to form a government.

Mark Carney will be sworn in as Canada’s 24^th Prime Minister on Friday, March 14^th, 2025. This will be followed by the swearing in of Carney’s chosen new cabinet.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre now has every reason to be very worried. According to polling company 338 Canada, the Conservative lead has shrunk from consistently mid-20s percentage points a few months ago to mostly single digits now. A few polls are even showing the Liberals in the lead or within striking distance.

The trend began to move away from the Conservatives in early January when Trudeau announced his resignation, while Donald Trump again had assumed the US presidency. The Conservative vote level more clearly began to collapse with Carney’s entrance into the leadership race, while the NDP vote also began to trend downward. A recent EKOS poll, taken in early March, showed the Liberals 10 points ahead overall.

A worse problem for the Conservatives is the fact that their projected vote is primarily concentrated in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The ridings they win in these two provinces, they will win by a landslide. However, these votes will not be enough to win them the election. The Liberal vote, on the other hand, is spread much more evenly and efficiently. There are already indications that the Liberals remain strong in the vote-heavy provinces of Ontario and particularly Quebec.

What this means at the end of the day is that even if both parties receive the same number of votes nationwide on election day, the Liberals are likely to win more seats, even though they will win their ridings with much smaller margins than the Conservatives will have in the ridings they win.

And finally, there is the Trump factor that hangs like an anchor around the neck of Darth Poilievre. Canadians, quite correctly, perceive him as ‘Maple MAGA’. And despite recently trying to wrap himself in the Canadian flag, Poilievre’s own words show the similarity of his views to those of the U.S. President.

I’m a big fan of The Rational National channel on YouTube. Host David Doel’s political commentary is always informative and I would like to recommend two of his recent postings. The title of the first, ‘Maple MAGA’s Pierre Poilievre Attempts Trump Divorce, Fails Miserably’ — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9z8WwnRC70 — is self-explanatory.  In the second, ‘Canada’s New Prime Minister Hits Trump & Pierre Poilievre’ — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE3vHb1Zw6c&t=33s — Doel shows clearly why Canadians will more likely think that Carney will be the best choice to stand up to Trump.

Any given poll or even a poll aggregator such as 338 Canada only represents current reality. As such, with the polls beginning to move so dramatically in Carney’s favour, the overall polling trend may be more predictive. It is worth remembering that a poll is a snapshot in time and circumstances can change quickly. Just ask Darth Poilievre.

The question now is whether or not Carney will call a snap election or try to govern for a short period of time. The possibility remains that the Liberal government could be defeated by a nonconfidence vote when the House of Commons resumes sitting on March 24^th.  Carney may well choose not to wait that long.

Given all of the above, my prediction is that Carney will call the election any day now. Hang on to your hat!

 

Daily atmospheric CO₂ [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]

Latest daily total (March 11, 2025): 429.15ppm

One year ago (March 11, 2024): 424.95ppm