With calls for Trudeau's resignation, Poilievre's Conservatives hold 26-point advantage over Liberals: Nanos

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Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives are closing out 2024 hitting a new long-term high in ballot support, with a 26 point advantage over the Liberals amid calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resign.

According to Nanos Research's latest weekly ballot tracking, the federal Conservatives currently hold 47 per cent of support, over the Liberals' 21 per cent. Jagmeet Singh's NDP are not far behind, sitting at 17 per cent support.

"What it means is, going into 2025, the biggest winner is Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, and the biggest losers are both Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, because both the numbers for them and their parties are down in the close of 2024," said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist at Nanos Research.

This comes as the country waits to learn how Trudeau will respond to calls for him to step down or call an election in early 2025.

After a rocky fall sitting ended in chaos with the surprise resignation of Chrystia Freeland, Singh said his party was ready to pull its support for the Liberal minority government in the new year. Poilievre is pushing for that non-confidence vote to happen as soon as Parliament resumes.

Over the holidays, calls came from the Ontario and Atlantic caucuses for Trudeau to resign, and now it appears the Quebec caucus has reached that consensus as well. Nanos said the turmoil within the Liberal party is "definitely" having an impact on Canadians.

Nanos tracking also has Poilievre has the preferred choice for prime minister among 40 per cent of Canadians surveyed, followed by Trudeau at 17.4 per cent and Singh at 13.9 per cent. Another 18 per cent of voters said they were unsure who they preferred.

Asked if he thinks there's still room for the Liberals to turn things around in the upcoming election year, Nanos said the party could improve its standings, but "to beat the Conservatives is a completely different game."

"They would realistically need to have Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives make some sort of massive mistake, because right now the election is for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives to lose," Nanos said. "The Liberals are battling not just internally, they're battling time for a change, which is a massive force right now being led by Pierre Poilievre."

Nanos' latest numbers indicate jobs and the economy will be a key area for all parties to focus in on in 2025. He's says the proportion of Canadians worried about those topics has "dramatically increased," in the last month, hitting a four-year high.

"Canadians want to hear from all the federal party leaders what their position is on prosperity, on where jobs are going to come from, and this in the context of Donald Trump, president-elect Trump, coming into office on January the 20th and the tariffs that may or may not come into effect," Nanos said.

"Canadians basically want to have answers on not just how we're going to manage Donald Trump and deal with that relationship, but also what our strategy is as a country to create jobs and to make our economy stronger."

Methodology

1,014 random interviews recruited by RDD (land- and cell-lines) random telephone survey of 1,014 Canadians age 18 years and over, ending December 27, 2024. This data is based on a four-week rolling average where each week the oldest group of 250 interviews is dropped and a new group of 250 is added. A random telephone survey of 1,014 Canadians is accurate 3.1 percentage points, plus or minus, 19 times out of 20.