Carney's Liberals Open 15-Point Lead Over Poilievre's Conservatives in New Leger Poll

Photo: European Commission Audiovisual Service / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

A year and a half into the job, Mark Carney keeps doing something Canadian incumbents almost never do: getting more popular.

Two new national polls released this month tell the same story from opposite ends of the polling world. Leger's October survey puts Carney's Liberals 15 points ahead of Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives — 48 per cent to 33 among decided voters. EKOS, a few days earlier, found an even wider gap: 47 to 26, a 21-point lead the pollster says would hand the Liberals a large majority government.

I'll be straight with you: I wouldn't put much stock in any single poll. But two firms, two methodologies, two weeks — and both pointing the same direction — is harder to brush off.

The Leger numbers, in plain language

Leger's survey, conducted online from October 9 to 12 among 1,539 Canadian adults, is the freshest read on the federal race. The headline: the Liberals lead the Conservatives 48% to 33%. The NDP sits at 8 per cent, up two points since September — a small recovery, but still a long way from relevance.

The personal numbers might matter more than the horse race. Fifty-eight per cent of Canadians approve of Carney's performance as prime minister, and 57 per cent say they're satisfied with the federal government. Those figures are flat from September — which, for a sitting government, is its own kind of victory. Incumbents bleed support. This one isn't.

Here's the number that jumps off the page for me: 56 per cent of Canadians believe national unity has improved since Carney took office, up nine points since last November. That number landed just as Albertans went to the polls in Monday's referendum — a vote Carney campaigned against in person, twice, in his home province.

The sore spot: affordability

The poll isn't all sunshine for the Liberals, and it's worth saying so plainly. When Leger asked Canadians to grade the government on specific issues, the scores fell apart exactly where you'd expect.

Trade diversification earned the highest rating — 6.5 out of 10, the payoff from a year of Carney preaching "elbows up" economic independence from the United States. But housing affordability scored 5.0, and the cost of living just 4.9. The Conservatives have been hammering Carney for months on exactly this: big talk about transforming the economy, no relief in the grocery line.

That disconnect is the opposition's only real play right now. And it's a serious one. When families can't feel the good economic numbers in their own budgets, 15-point leads have a way of evaporating fast.

A second pollster says the same thing — louder

EKOS Research Associates, which surveyed 2,020 Canadians between September 23 and October 2, put the Liberals at 47 per cent, the Conservatives at 26 and the NDP at 15 — a 21-point chasm. Carney's personal approval sits around two-thirds; Poilievre's at 30 per cent.

Dig into the EKOS crosstabs and a picture emerges of who's driving the Liberal lead: women, older voters, and everyone outside the Prairies, where the Liberals run statistically even with the Conservatives in Alberta. Conservative support concentrates among men and peaks with voters aged 35 to 49.

One more EKOS finding worth your attention, since it says something about the country Carney is governing: 51 per cent of Canadians say generative AI is mostly negative for society, and 68 per cent would back a moratorium on further AI development until safeguards exist. That's the electorate — cautious, protective, allergic to disruption for its own sake. It might explain why a steady central banker is polling like this in the first place.

Why it matters now

There is no federal election on the horizon. The Liberals govern with support from other parties, and Carney has shown no appetite for a trip to the polls. But polls shape power long before ballots do — they shape who crosses the floor, who challenges a leader, and which party dares to force the issue.

The immediate context is the Alberta referendum. Carney staked personal capital on the unity campaign in his home province. As the hand-counted ballots come in over the coming days, the unity number in Leger's poll — 56 per cent, rising — will be the one his team quotes back.

The caution for the Liberals is right there in the same survey: cost of living at 4.9 out of 10. A 15-point lead built on trade-war unity politics has to survive contact with kitchen-table economics. That's the test, and it's still ahead of him.

Editor's note: We could not verify an official video from a reputable outlet covering these poll releases at publication time, so no video embed is included. The full Leger and EKOS releases are linked in the sources below.

Sources

• Leger — "Federal Politics: Liberals Lead by 15 Points" (survey Oct 9–12, 2026) — leger360.com
• EKOS Research Associates, summarized by OTMedia — "Liberals Open 21-Point Lead in New EKOS Poll as Carney's Approval Nears Two-Thirds" (fieldwork Sept 23–Oct 2, 2026) — otmediatv.com
• Leger — "Alberta Referendum: Support for Staying in Canada Grows" (survey Oct 14–16, 2026) — leger360.com