26% of 2021 Liberal Voters Will Switch To Another Party in 2025

It’s old news these days that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal is trailing in the polls to Pierre Poilievre Conservative Party, but what new polling has revealed is the extent to which Trudeau’s personal unpopularity and his government scandals are gutting internal party confidence.

In Trudeau’s last two elections, no doubt the prime minister and the Liberal party underperformed their stunner 2015 result. But this was more due to Liberal voters not showing up in the numbers they previously had and some defecting Conservatives and NDP voters who had gone Liberal in 2015 mostly heading back to where they were used to parking their vote.

As of 2023, the Liberal Party could be losing a massive chunk of their 2021 turnout, which already was not that great, to other parties, and what should be most worrying to Trudeau, he’s losing a significant chunk of his vote to the Conservatives.

According to Angus Reid, in a poll of 1,073 2021 Liberal Party voters 5 percent have decided to vote Conservative next election, 6 percent have decided to vote for another party but don’t yet know which one, a massive 15 percent will vote NDP, and 7 percent still doesn’t know if it will vote Liberal again or another party. 

This leaves only 67 percent of 2021 Liberal voters polled who said they will still be supporting the Liberal Party come the next election.

Although the biggest route of voters is going towards the NDP, the 5 percent loss to the Conservatives and the potential increase of that loss in the undecided 6 percent looking for a new party to support could flip a large number of seats blue in battleground provinces like Ontario, BC, and some of the Maritime provinces. 

15 percent extra for the NDP could also result in them picking up some extra seats, but really this only represents the political left-savaging itself and likely splitting some seats in favour of the Conservatives. 

In contrast to this, the Conservative Party is retaining 84 percent of its 2021 voters. Oddly enough the NDP despite seemingly stealing a bunch of 2021 Liberal supporters is only retaining 70 percent of its 2021 support and is losing 8 percent to the Conservatives and 10 percent to the Liberals. This kills any gains the NDP made from the Liberals. 

All this vote shifting and struggle to retain voters for the left-wing parties has led to a situation where the Conservatives are polling at 37 percent, leading the Liberals down at 29 percent by around 8 points. The NDP is around 20 percent and the Bloc Quebecois is at 8 percent, which is high enough for the Bloc to hold onto all their Quebec seats and potentially snap up a couple more Liberal seats. 

And to be clear as good as this Angus Reid poll is for the Conservatives, it is by no means an outlier. The outlier polls these days are the ones that show the Liberals somehow tied with the Conservatives or polls that show the Conservatives only 1 to 3 percent ahead. It would be hard to envision these polls being correct due to the state of the economy, ongoing Liberal scandals, and Justin Trudeau’s low job approval rating. 

If the Conservatives stick to the principles that got them to this position and don’t antagonize their own base the way Erin O’Toole had done as leader they can expect to sail to either a minority or majority government after the next election, likely in 2025.