Few Conservatives voting for the party based on ability to manage Trump: poll

President Donald Trump arrives at Miami International Airport in Miami on April 3, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Rebecca Blackwell

OTTAWA — A new poll suggests more than one in five people planning to vote for the Liberals are being motivated by their belief that leader Mark Carney is the best option to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump.

But it suggests Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s ability to stand up to Trump is motivating the vote of only a small number of people who said they’re voting for his party.

Conservative voters appear to be more motivated by anti-Liberal sentiment and a desire for change.

The poll, conducted by Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies, surveyed 1,628 people between March 29 and 31. It asked decided voters to choose one sentence to explain why they’re casting a ballot for their preferred candidate.

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The polling industry’s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

The survey suggests 21 per cent of Liberal voters surveyed said they are voting for Carney because he is “the best option to stand up to” Trump and his tariffs, compared with three per cent of Conservative voters surveyed who said that is why they’re voting for Poilievre.

Zero per cent of NDP voters said their motivating factor to back the NDP and leader Jagmeet Singh was due to his ability to stand up to Trump.

More than one in three people surveyed who are voting Conservative said their vote is being decided by the belief the Liberals and former prime minister Justin Trudeau were in office for too long, and that “things are broken.”

Among Liberal voters surveyed, their biggest motivation was Carney himself, with 27 per cent saying their vote is motivated by a desire to support him.

Twenty per cent of Conservatives supporters are motivated to vote that way to support the party and Poilievre.

Slightly more than one in five Liberal supporters polled said their top motivating factor is a dislike of Poilievre. Among Conservative supporters, 14 per cent said they are motivated to vote Conservative by a dislike of Carney.

The top motivating factor for NDP voters is to support the NDP or the party’s leader Jagmeet Singh, at 28 per cent.

Multiple polls have suggested Trump, tariffs and sovereignty threats from the U.S. have played a major part in the federal election and have been a top issue for voters.

Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies, says he was interested by the extent to which voters feel that Carney is the best person to deal with Trump.

“That’s not a surprise based on what we’ve seen so far, but what I thought was surprising about it was the extent to which people feel that’s the case,” Jedwab said, noting that it’s a key issue.

Trump went ahead with promised 25 per cent tariffs on automobile imports on Thursday, on top of existing 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Carney said Thursday that Canada will hit back against the auto tariffs with matching levies on vehicles imported from the United States. Carney said Canada’s counter-tariffs will hit all vehicles that do not comply with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, along with any non-Canadian content in compliant vehicles.

Trump’s trade war has forced all parties campaigning in the general election to adjust their messages.

Poilievre and Singh have both promised to take the GST off all new Canadian-made cars as long as Trump’s auto tariffs stay in place.

Jedwab said Trump has “changed the political landscape.”

“(Former prime minister) Justin Trudeau is not part of the equation. Donald Trump is part of the equation, and those things combined have been very challenging for the Conservatives because their sort of initial driver was ‘we need to make a change,’ it still is for a lot of them,” Jedwab said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 4, 2025.

Catherine Morrison, The Canadian Press