Polls: Remember What Hope Felt Like?

Plus: Bonus Carney Launch Takes!

There are a lot of reasons to be sceptical of the idea that there has been some sizable movement towards the Liberals. Mainstreet has been remarkably high on the Tories, so some of this could just be them coming down from a very high base. People have the opinions they do about Frank Graves, and EKOS has shown smaller leads at times even under Trudeau. I find it hard to believe Ontario is really a tie. And some pollsters aren’t seeing the movement. But, I will say, it’s not impossible to see the path.

Nick Kouvalis released some Federal vote intention data from Ontario (feel free to speculate about why Nick Kouvalis is in the field in Ontario now - it’s exactly why you think) as well, showing a 17% CPC lead there. Now, he was continuing to name Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader, a defensible position given he is the interim leader of the party and would fight an election if it was tomorrow. EKOS didn’t name a Liberal leader, which is also defensible. It’s a thorny spot. But splitting the difference here is actually reasonable - if you’re down 10 in Ontario, which is roughly what Mainstreet has them at too, you’re in a place where wipeout is off the table, and a more solid base is there.

The reasons to be sceptical are real - some amorphous Liberal Party with a New Leader polls better than one with Trudeau, and somewhere between maybe and probably polls better than one with named choices, even once Carney becomes more well known. (I’m not really sure I can pretend Freeland can win this leadership race for 7 weeks.) It’s only some pollsters. I get it all. But it’s also true that the case for big movement has always made logical sense.

The individual measures in the budget were pretty popular, but the general drag of leadership meant the polls got worse. The summer didn’t help, in part because the PM didnt do any fucking media, and then they wasted the fall in the throes of a privilege debate that couldn’t be ended because the government decided to be morons. The idea that this revival is for sure happening is nonsensical - I have too much respect for Coletto and Leger and even Bricker to not notice and care that they’re not seeing this. But this isn’t random.

Justin Trudeau leaves office fucking hated, at a visceral level that even most people who reluctantly accepted the state of play couldn’t internalize. Plenty of people were of the mind he needed to go, but even many of them were not visceral Trudeau haters like I was and am. And I think it’s true to say that as someone whose relationship to Trudeau was always softer than many of my readers - I last voted Liberal in 2015, after all - it has been easier to imagine that a new leader could do better. It’s also been easier to see that the Trudeau of 2019 or 2021 wasn’t the Trudeau of 2024, and that he could no longer be what the party needed.

The implications of this polling - even if just directionally correct - would be wild. Mainstreet’s Seat estimate of their poll would be 72 Liberal seats even as they bleed in Quebec to both the Bloc and Conservatives. If the Liberals can fix their Quebec problems, which are remaining true even in the better polls for them, then there’s a clear path to a result that lets the party downgrade the massacre to a mere killing. And that’s always been the point of this.

I have no interest in a victory lap, because the point of this wasn’t to be right. It was to give our party a chance. I wanted Trudeau gone to give us a chance at survival, a chance at reclamation, a chance at stopping some of the worst possibilities. A fucking chance. Mainstreet and EKOS are suggesting that we have this chance now. I’ll take it.

Bonus Carney Launch Section

Mark Carney launched, and I don’t have enough polling thoughts to justify a full column, so let’s do a Good, Bad, and Ugly of his speech. (I’m not touching Logogate.)

Good - there’s clearly a decent instinct for going off script from Carney. The dig at Danielle Smith in his speech - saying there’s “one more politician I wouldn’t send” to negotiate with Trump that came to him “in the last 24 hours” - was the kind of thing that you can build on. It’s the most important thing, in a sense - because people can get better at delivering prepared text, but you can’t teach that sort of timing and instinct. I also quite liked the messaging - using the dumbest parts of the left as a punching bag, reframing the economic question as one around growth and not solely how to divide the spoils, and it has the potential to help the party chip away at Poilievre’s lead.

Bad - it was not well delivered at all. He is stiff, he has a choppy cadence, and he’s not particularly good at knowing when to change the various things you can change in the delivery to keep it interesting. Whether it’s in the writing or delivery he needs to change the tone, change the pace, and keep the audience engaged.

Ugly - I’m gonna defer to the French on this but what I’ll say is that I mostly could understand him in French, and that’s a bad sign! Hopefully it is just rust that gets better with some more constant use.

I think some of what Carney needs is just reps - he’s used to talking to rooms of people in suits, not at political rallies, and they’re very different atmospheres. The big stuff - the broad message, and his instincts - are there. The other stuff needs to be cleaned up, but it’s a lot easier to fix stiffness than it is to fix having been DPM for 5 years to the guy who is about as popular as drinking your own piss.