Michael Taube: The polls are in — Carney’s honeymoon is coming to an end

Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals have been enjoying a political honeymoon for a while. Virtually every party, leader and government experiences this for a few months, and sometimes up to a year. The polls mostly work in their favour. Policies and ideas are usually viewed favourably. They can seemingly do no wrong in people’s eyes.

The one constant about political honeymoons? They always come to an end. There’s an early sign that Carney’s honeymoon period is about to come to a close, too.

Last Sunday, Abacus Data released a poll conducted between Aug. 15 and 19 showing that Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have “pulled slightly ahead in national vote intention for the first time in months.” The Conservatives sat at 41 per cent, just slightly ahead of the Liberals’ 39 per cent. The other parties were well back. The NDP and Bloc Québécois were tied at seven per cent, while the Greens and People’s Party of Canada were both at two per cent.

What led to this “modest but meaningful” shift, as Abacus Data CEO David Coletto described it? Several potential reasons were identified.

A drop in U.S. President Donald Trump’s “influence as a political issue” (38 per cent, down from 44 per cent earlier this summer) was one possibility. If you believe that Trump and tariffs were the main reasons why Carney and the Liberals won the April 28 election, it’s a clear sign the PM can no longer use this crutch to his political advantage.

Another was a growing negative sentiment about the direction of the country. While 35 per cent of respondents believed Canada is headed in the right direction, which is “essentially unchanged from early August,” the number of Canadians saying their country is on the “wrong track” rose to 47 per cent. The Liberal government’s approval rating was at 49 per cent, “down a point from two weeks ago and below the 50 per cent threshold for the first time since March.” This led Coletto to suggest that “while these figures are still relatively strong, they point to gradual softening,” likely caused by the “cost of living crunch and continued frustrations around housing.”

It’s also worth noting several changes in trends related to issue ownership.

The Poilievre Conservatives have moved ahead of the Carney Liberals in being the best equipped to handle the cost of living (39 to 27 per cent), the economy (45 to 34 per cent) and immigration (56 to 15 per cent). The Liberals still lead when it comes to left-leaning concepts like climate change (37 to nine per cent), but that’s to be expected. The Liberals are also ahead when it comes to dealing with Trump and his administration (56 to 21 per cent), but as noted earlier in the poll, “fewer people list it as a top issue now.”

Other opinion polls, some may be thinking, haven’t suggested a trend related to increased Conservative popularity on a national level — or Poilievre’s.

They may point to an Angus Reid Institute online poll conducted from Aug. 15 to 18, where Poilievre had a low approval rating among some respondents. He didn’t do well with Canadians who were asked whether “Poilievre shares their views” (35 per cent), “understands the issues that are important to them” (37 per cent) and “genuinely cares about women” (35 per cent). Fifty per cent agreed with this statement: “Pierre Poilievre is someone I’d be ashamed to call Prime Minister,” which is up from 40 per cent in 2023. The same questions were not asked of Carney.

However, that survey didn’t show a particular trend or provide sufficient information about the political temperature in Canada. Modern Conservative leaders have rarely performed well on questions of emotion. Conservative men and women have both struggled to make gains and connections with non-Conservative female voters during elections. The inclusion of pointed words like “genuine,” a common tactic used by polling companies as a tugboat (of sorts) to help shift findings in a specific direction, can change percentages in a heartbeat.

As for some respondents being “ashamed” of Poilievre, this means nothing. Why? It’s no secret that a growing number of Canadians are tired of politics, less likely to participate in elections and are either disenchanted, frustrated or, yes, ashamed of their political leaders. It would be interesting to see how Carney and other party leaders would fare with a similar question, or in a larger context, with Poilievre being one of the responses rather than the only one.

The Abacus Data poll, on the other hand, shows that more Canadians are beginning to realize that Carney isn’t the great political saviour they foolishly supported. He won this year’s election largely due to Trump’s unexpected intervention. His “elbows up” campaign went belly up this month. His state-centric ideas will sink the Canadian economy. He’s a greenhorn politician who has barely proposed anything original as PM and swipes ideas from the Conservatives and NDP.

Carney’s political honeymoon is unsurprisingly coming to an end. My guess is that more polls will begin to tighten by the time Parliament reconvenes in the fall. We’re obviously not heading into an election, but things are gradually shifting in a different direction.