FIRST READING: Small signs of Tory momentum as election reaches final stretch

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter that throughout the 2025 election will be a daily digest of campaign goings-on, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

With just two weeks to go until voting day, polls are beginning to show evidence of Conservative momentum as Canadians’ fear of U.S. President Donald Trump begins to dissipate.

The current numbers still heavily favour some kind of Liberal victory, but a series of new polls show a noticeable trend towards the Tories, including one of the few polls this election to put the Conservatives in the lead.

The latest survey by Mainstreet Research had the Conservatives with 43 per cent as compared to 40 per cent for the Liberals.

It’s the first of 21 Mainstreet polls conducted during the federal election campaign to show a Conservative lead.

Meanwhile, as Trump’s trade war with Canada fades into the background, there is spiking interest on affordability and the economy — the two issues on which the Liberals have traditionally polled quite poorly.

“For all those banging on about Canadian election being all about Trump, that’s not what numbers show,” wrote Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, in a series of Sunday social media posts.

Citing a new batch of Ipsos numbers, Bricker said “cost of living” is now leading the list of voters’ concerns by 14 points, while worries about Trump are now at the “mid-tier” of what Canadians think the election is about.

“If election becomes about personal prosperity, race will continue to tighten,” wrote Bricker. He added that “there’s been a wobble” in the race’s momentum.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney has enjoyed a commanding lead for the first three weeks of the election campaign, but pollsters have long warned that his advantage was more volatile. As The Hill Times put it in the election’s first days, the Liberal lead was “built on toothpicks and very dry sand.”

For one thing, Carney has only been a politician for two months prior to the election, and he remains a relatively unknown quantity as compared to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has occupied the post since 2022.

Still, despite the most recent Mainstreet poll, most of the available indicators are still showing the Liberals on course for victory.

The poll aggregator 338Canada is projecting a Liberal caucus of 190 seats, much more than the 172 needed to win a majority.

The election modeller Poliwave is much the same; they’re projecting a 193-seat Liberal majority.

Even the betting markets are in the tank for the Liberals. The website Polymarket has racked up more than $40 million in bids on the question of who will be the next prime minister of Canada.

Although Poilievre has edged up slightly in recent days, he’s still at 32 per cent likelihood, as compared to 69 per cent for Carney.

The Conservatives are ironically experiencing the most successful polling streak in their history. At no other point since the party’s 2003 founding have they so consistently polled at 40 per cent or higher.

The problem for the Tories is that the progressive vote has consolidated around the Liberals. NDP and Bloc Québécois fortunes have dropped off a cliff, while the Liberals are hitting sustained levels of support unknown since the 1960s.

It also means that only a slight uptick in NDP or Bloc fortunes would have an outsized impact on the Liberals’ election day results.

At least in the last 50 years, most Canadian federal elections have followed a relatively predictable course: Whoever is in the lead at the election’s outset ends up winning.