The Liberal leader is leading in all demographic groups except for men aged 35 to 54
By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on April 7, 2025.
OTTAWA—Women are stampeding to the Liberals in this election.
The most recent Ipsos Reid poll showed that, for women over the age of 55, Prime Minister Mark Carney holds a 27-point lead over Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
The Liberal leader is leading in all demographic groups except for men aged 35 to 54.
But the startling gap between women and men is worth examining.
Poilievre didn’t help himself last week when he launched his housing strategy claiming that women’s biological clock would run out before a Liberal housing program would help.
“I don’t think any woman wants to hear Pierre Poilievre talking about their body, period!” was the immediate retort from New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh.
Critics on social media questioned why Poilievre plans to cancel national childcare if he is so interested in women having babies.
The social gains introduced by the Liberals over the last decade are particularly important for women.
Obviously, childcare is huge, and the dental care program is especially important for older women on fixed incomes who cannot afford dental work. Ditto for school lunch programs and pharmacare, including free birth control, IUDs, hormonal implants, and the morning-after pill.
Poilievre is definitely not on board with national childcare, and has been ambiguous about dental and pharmacare. He has promised that no person currently covered under those programs would be cut off, but is silent on the extension of the programs to others. He also voted against the National School Food Program, and is silent on its continuation.
These are issues of particular interest to women.
It is not lost on them that several dozen members of the Conservative caucus have pledged to support limitations on abortion through private members’ bills. Poilievre himself, in his very first speech to Parliament, spoke out in opposition to public health funding for transgender medical services.
The Trump Supreme Court nominations that resulted in an end to reproductive choice in the United States, and the United States president decision to abolish equal rights policies for women, minorities, gays, and transsexuals has frightened Canadian women, as well. If it could happen there, what about us? Poilievre doesn’t pass that smell test.
Carney leads dramatically in net-positive favourability. That sum is the number achieved when you deduct unfavourable from the favourable viewpoints to discover what people think about each candidate.
Carney is enjoying a positive favourability among men and women. With men, the net range is 18-plus while for women it is 26-plus, according to the same poll.
The difference between Carney’s favourability rating and Poilievre’s unfavourable is stunning. Three in five women—at 61 per cent—say they have an unfavourable view of Poilievre.
Carney has also managed to attract the majority of young voters, a crucial element in Justin Trudeau’s 2015 majority government victory.
Forty-five per cent of young men between the ages of 18 and 34 now support the Liberals, and 46 per cent of men over 54 years old support the Liberals.
We are almost four weeks away from the vote, and the leaders’ debates could both have an effect on the outcome.
Poilievre has been cautioned publicly by members of his own party that he needs to pivot away from the anti-Liberal message to an anti-Trump stance.
But the challenge for the Conservative leader is that a significant percentage of his base also supports Trump. So if he is too tough on the American president, he will lose supporters, as well.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who is busy courting Trumpian podcasters and running her own “Trash Canada” campaign, is stoking the flames of separation in Alberta, which is decidedly unhelpful to her federal leader.
Poilievre not only has had to pivot on message that Canada is broken, he also has to attack Trump. The “lost Liberal decade” phrase, which peppers all his public declarations, seems to reinforce the notion that Canada is broken, even while his Bring it Home/Canada First mantra sounds like a page out of the Trump playbook.
Of course, Trump’s chaotic approach to government is ensuring that his prints are all over this Canadian election.
His ill-advised Liberation Day announcement of worldwide tariffs on April 2 has certainly caught everyone’s attention. Even if the American Senate is successful in reversing the emergency resolution that allowed the president to impose tariffs, it is going to take time for this to happen.
Financial markets and ordinary citizens in the United States are already very nervous about the cost of these tariffs.
But Trump’s tenure is four years, and Poilievre only has three weeks.
Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.
