Moving from Me vs You to Us vs Them

An interview with pollster David Coletto where we discuss the precarity mindset of Canadian voters and the upcoming 2025 federal election

Meredith Martin

Mike Moffatt

, and

Sabrina Maddeaux

Mar 19, 2025

In this conversation, Sabrina Maddeaux and Mike Moffatt discuss the evolving landscape of Canadian political polling with David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data. They explore the significant shifts in voter sentiment influenced by key events such as Justin Trudeau's exit, Mark Carney's rise, and the impact of Donald Trump. The discussion delves into demographic changes, the emergence of a precarity mindset among voters, and the implications for the Liberal Party and the NDP. The conversation also touches on regional dynamics, particularly in Quebec, and the challenges of predicting voter turnout in the upcoming federal election.

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Below is an AI-generated transcript of the Missing Middle podcast, which has been lightly edited.

Sabrina Maddeaux: So for well over a year now, the outcome of the next federal election has been all but guaranteed according to the polls. Conservatives were supposed to win and very likely with the majority. But since January, polls have shown a huge shift, well to varying degrees, but with the headline being the same. Liberals actually appear to have a shot at this.

Three major events have occurred in this time. Of course, we have Justin Trudeau's exit, Mark Carney's rise and Trump's threats. Is one of these in particular driving the change or is it more of a perfect storm? And is all of this a fleeting moment or a real lasting trend?

David Coletto: Yeah, well, lots there.

Let me start by saying I think that Trudeau resigning, Trump doing what he's done, and then the Liberal leadership race - I think the Liberal leadership race probably isn't the one that was required. But I do think the other two were.

I think Trudeau stepping away allowed a lot of Canadians to get past their dislike of him. He was basically this barrier that was preventing a lot of people from even being open to voting Liberal. And then Donald Trump and what he has done since he not only won the election, but since his inauguration…has reset or redefined the environment and the choice that a lot of Canadians are thinking about.

So I think both those first two had to happen and then having a leadership race happening at the same time in which you had a new individual emerge as both Liberal leader and Prime Minister created an environment where people were looking more closely at the Liberals and Mr. Carney in particular, than they would have otherwise done. So the three together, I think, help create the environment and the situation we have. But you really needed Trudeau to step out of the way and for Trump to create the disruption that he has in order to see the speed at which change has happened.

And Sabrina, to your point, Abacus polls have been a little bit more bullish for the conservatives than some of the others, but we have still seen a rapid and substantial shift in that public mindset where the Liberals were at 20 points at the end of December. Today, we had them at 34. So a 14-point change in the horse race outside of an election. You can point to the lead-up to the ‘93 election with Kim Campbell or John Turner, all those sort of historic examples, but beyond those, it's really a remarkable thing to see.

Sabrina Maddeaux: So you mentioned Kim Campbell, and a lot of conservatives are wanting to point to that example right now. Is this just some sort of dead cat bounce, or is this here to stay?

David Coletto: I think it's hard to say. I think there's evidence to say, looking at the past, that this could be a fleeting moment for the Liberals - this new shiny thing. I'm going to look at that, and I'm going to tell people like me, pollsters, that I'm gonna vote the way I might have under normal circumstances if the world was a vacuum and I just typically vote the way I have.

On the other hand, I think in ‘93, even in John Turner's case in ‘84, you didn't have this existential threat that was sort of looming over domestic politics in Canada, being Trump. And so I think it's hard to say exactly whether we should expect the Liberals and Carney to come back to earth or whether it's because of that that he's got a new place in order to, despite his perhaps faults, still be in a place to win a fourth mandate for the Liberals.

Mike Moffatt: So what demographics are shifting over more? Is it kind of across the board? Is it more younger people, older people? What do we know about the Liberals' rise from the high teens into the mid-30s?

David Coletto: I mean, we've seen an across the board increase for the liberals, but I think the early movement that I saw was really much more concentrated among older Canadians, particularly baby boomers. I think, you dig into below the horse race and there's a, there's a good reason why that was happening that, you know, boomers, particularly those, would say over 50, which includes gen-X we're paying more attention to the Trump, chaos. I'm going to call it. They were far more likely to say they were angry, feeling betrayed, even signaling that they were going to boycott everything American. And so that I think created the condition for the Liberals to engage, maybe without even trying, a demographic that has been hardest for them to engage over the last 10 years, which are those older voters. So I do think the, and I wrote a piece that I basically said, know, okay, boomer, you're now the saviors to the Liberal party, which is a complete 180 from what we understood. Canadian politics to have been over the last decade.

Sabrina Maddeaux: So we've talked about a couple events driving voting intent, but let's talk about changes in mindset. So you published some very interesting data recently suggesting that Canadian scarcity mindset, which was primarily focused on being able to afford things like groceries and housing, of course, is shifting to what you called a precarity mindset. And that could actually change how people vote. Can you explain what exactly you mean by precarity mindset and also how it could upend the next election?

David Coletto: For over two years, we were seeing … where the scarcity of a lot of things, whether it's housing, whether it's healthcare, whether it's just the general cost of living was, was causing people to not only feel that the incumbent government, wherever that government is, is in part to blame for that scarcity. But also it drives people to some kind of zero-sum thinking. It's me versus others. It's very individualist.

I think what we've seen emerge because of Trump is this shift in mindset where, and I describe it and my colleague Eddie Sheppard on our team came up with the terms, I'm gonna give him credit for it, called precarity and that it's bigger than just my ability to take care of my material needs. It's a deep anxiety really about the future, about whether Canada is gonna exist or not, whether an issue like climate change is going to make life impossible or where I live is going to be in constant threat or that technological change and the way the economy is changing as a result is making me uncertain about my own job security. So that sense of precarity is much more about uncertainty. It's a much more deeper, I think, concern that requires and creates a demand for different type of leadership, right?

A scarcity mindset is all about solving for scarcity. So I think, for example, pure poly of build more homes, you know, get rid of the carbon tax, deal with crime. Those are all things that I think speak directly to that mindset. In this environment, precarity is solved by a sense of security, right? Who's going to help guide me, my family, the country through it. And I think it moves more people away from that zero-sum thinking. Where it's me versus you to us versus them. And so that collective experience becomes more important. And I think, frankly, liberals generally are better placed there. And Mark Carney and his resume, at least for now, may be more appealing to people who have that kind of mindset.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Now, just to drill down a bit on that, what specifically is it about the liberals and Carney that make them better placed to succeed in this new mindset? And where are the conservatives lacking in that area?

David Coletto: Well, I think we released some research over the weekend that tried to delve into it, right? And there's is a sense, even if people don't really know Mark Carney well, you know, close to 70 percent of Canadians believe that he knows how to run an economy, that he has, you know, navigated maybe not an entire country, but a large part of it through previous crises.

If I was Mark Carney, I would say I have spent my entire life preparing for this moment. And that is in sharp contrast, I think, to Pierre Poilievre, who, while he has a lot of experience in politics, may never have been in a leadership role to have done this kind of thing.

And so it went from basically being that most people pointed the finger at Liberals, and in particular, Justin Trudeau, and said, “I am feeling that the things in my life are more scarce because of choices you made and your government made over the last 10 years” to one now where people are willing to look past that and say, “Well, maybe you're the one who's going to provide the security and the calm and the stability that I'm actually looking for.”

So in a very short order, we went from almost everybody wanting change and significant change away from the Liberals to strangely more and more people now saying, “Well, maybe I don't love all the policies…” and that's why I think you've seen Carney move on day-one to get rid of the carbon price and we'll see what he does on capital gains. But some of those unpopular things he's trying to shed while still keeping that air of stability and calmness that I think he projects so easily, because he isn't exciting and dynamic. I think, in a weird way, that it’s a perfect moment for him to display those kinds of characteristics.

Sabrina Maddeaux: It may be a little boring, but boring is stable.

David Coletto: Exactly, right?

And I think every time that a commentator says, “That speech was a snooze fest,” I think there's an audience out there that says, “Thank you. I'm looking for boring now. Enough of this constant perma-crisis-events that get my anxiety levels up every time I hear something about it.”

Mike Moffatt: Yeah, you know, the old Bill Davis, bland works. I definitely think there's an appetite for that.

So far, the three of us have all been talking about this kind of red/blue race, this Liberal/Conservative race. Looking into your polling, there's another big phenomenon going on, and that's the collapse of the NDP. Your polling shows them in deep trouble. They've gone from about 18-20 down to the mid-low teens.

So first of all, what's going on there? And secondly, do they have a potential to get back up to 18-20 or are we looking at election night with them somewhere in the 10-14 range?

David Coletto: Yeah. Well, there's some polls just out in the last few days that has them in like single digits. So, you know, there's a little bit of noise out there on how tough it is for the NDP, but it is bad. And I think what's fundamentally happening, and we've seen this in other jurisdictions, is at a moment of a kind of crisis there can be a tendency for people to kind of gravitate towards one choice. And if there's two primary choices, then they can often consolidate. And we saw that in the UK, in the 27th general election, the UK after Brexit, right? It was the first time in a really long time that the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, got a larger share of the combined vote than they had seen previously. And since then, it's kind of disaggregated but at that moment, you saw that consolidation.

It really shows up in one question we asked, though, in our survey - well, two questions. We first ask: Here's a long list, what are the top three issues that you think are most important? And we have, for the past three months, started offering Donald Trump and his administration as an option. And it has spiked right up to number two. So 50 % of Canadians in our last survey

said that would be one of their top three issues. It's up 24 points, I think, in a month. Cost of living is still number one, but it's now only an 11 point gap between those two issues.

But we follow up and we ask those 50%, okay: Which party do you think is best able to handle it? And the Liberals are ahead of the Conservatives by about 12 points on that, but the NDP only gets 8% of those who say Trump is the top issue - thinking that they are the best party to deal with it. And so I think for the New Democrats it's relevance. It's: Why am I in this conversation? Why would people choose us and Jagmeet Singh in particular over the other two when that dynamic has become very clear?

So I think the NDP if this next federal election, if it comes in the next few weeks, is about Trump, fundamentally, I think they're in deep, deep trouble. They need this election to be about something else, about affordability, about corporate greed, about those usual kinds of issues that Social Democrats and New Democrats often can play into.

And Mark Carney actually gives them a space for that. I saw their new ad and I thought it was kind of effective at making the case that decisions he's made as a board chair, for example, weren't in the best interest of people, they were in the best interest of billionaires. We can argue that was his fiduciary responsibility, but the point is, perception of that is powerful. So in an environment where that is not on people's minds, I think it's very easy for both the New Democrats, even the Bloc, to get completely squeezed out of the conversation and it just become a binary choice for people.

Mike Moffatt: That's wild that only 8% of Canadians see the NDP best positioned to deal with Trump because, I'm not a betting man but if I were, I don't think this Trump issue is going to go away or diminish anytime soon.

If we look at the NDP, let's go back to the Ontario election of a few weeks ago that the polls largely got the NDP's vote share right, including your polls, but seat projection models dramatically underestimated the number of seats they'd win. What happened was the party lost most of their votes in areas where they weren't competitive, places like rural Southwestern Ontario. But their incumbents did quite well.

My understanding, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, but The Power of Incumbency was your doctoral thesis. As someone with a PhD as well, I always like to ask people about their doctoral thesis…

Can you explain broadly, how these projection models work - that take polling data and turn them into seat level predictions. And do you think there's a chance that we might see something similar from the NDP this election where they finish at say 12 or 13, but they manage to hang on to all of their seats because the places where they see the road collapse or places like the 905 which they are probably not winning anyway?

David Coletto: So, you know, first on the seat models…the ones that we're probably most familiar with, like Grenier’s and 338 Canada, my understanding is they try to take into account some local factors, but they're mostly, you know, looking at the average change or swing between one party to the next, and they apply it on a regional basis. And so they aren't super well designed to capture that effect that you just described, Mike - that idea that like an incumbent can bring something unique to that particular election that buffets or changes the trajectory we would otherwise see. In the research I did - and it was a while ago now, I looked at the 2004, 2006, and 2008 federal elections when I wrote my doctoral thesis - it basically concluded that an incumbent on average in those elections could hold about eight to nine points more than if that incumbent wasn't there. So incumbency - that's a significant effect if it's a close race, right?

And so for the New Democrats, federally, having incumbents reoffering is actually really important at a time when their vote seems to be headed in the opposite direction. And so, yeah, you could say there's absolutely a hypothesis to say that they should be able to do better than they would otherwise do. And there's evidence even in the by-election held in Manitoba last year that the NDP held, despite what some thought - the swing would have suggested - the Conservatives should have taken that seat up in Elmwood, Transcona, a riding just in the vicinity of Winnipeg.

Now, I think, and I don't know the exact number, but there are several New Democrat MPs not re-offering. I think of Charlie Angus as a perfect example in a riding in Northwest or Northern Ontario around Timmins. That is, at least in normal circumstances, prior to the Trump effect - the Conservatives had that on their target list and they probably would have won it and they probably still could win it without Charlie Angus, a long time incumbent, I think he's been an MP there for over 20 years - they automatically lose that 10 points. So that personal vote that an MP, if they're a good MP, if they've done the work, if they've built the relationships can build.

So I think there's a chance the NDP can hold some of those seats. But there's also evidence that no matter what… I think back to another NDP example, the 2011 federal election in which in Quebec, you had candidates who have almost no, what I termed in an academic sense, quality. It had people from McGill…students from McGill being placed in random ridings, and they're winning and beating incumbent block MPs and Conservative MPs like Lawrence Cannon for example, the Foreign Minister in a riding just outside Gatineau, Quebec, was swept away by the orange wave.

So it can work and it can be a buffer to the wave, but sometimes that wave is just too big. It breaks through even the incumbency - what I'll call the incumbency barrier.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Now you mentioned Quebec and I want to talk about that a little bit because there's interesting things happening there right now where there's real tussle between the Liberals, Conservatives and the Block that could actually decide the election. How do you handle regional nuances like that? And how do you ultimately see that battle playing it out in our current polls? Are we underestimating the Block’s resilience?

David Coletto: I don't know. I think some interesting data points to chew on, right after Donald Trump put in his first version of his terror threats...tariff threats - it's terrorizing, but it's tariff threats. It's almost, I guess, a type of terrorism. Anyways, that’s for another conversation- Leger came out with a poll that showed, within a few days, support for independence dropped by like 12 points in Quebec. Particularly among Francophone Quebecers, which is usually where you see the strongest support for independence and that sort of Quebec nationalism. I think what this moment has done is it even erased some of those historic grievances, or orientations of some Quebecers to say, “Well, right now maybe a united Canada and a strong Canada is needed to face the Trump factor.”

In our most recent survey, we have the Liberals now ahead by seven points in Quebec at 37 with the block at 30. And so there are indications that the Liberal vote, again, has reconstituted itself.

The Bloc is still holding substantial support and the Conservatives have fallen back to some of the highs we saw in Quebec. But, to understand the Conservative vote in Quebec is also to recognize its highly concentrated around Quebec City. And so, you know, it is almost impossible, under any circumstance, for the Conservatives to win a seat in Montreal or around Montreal. But they're going to likely hold a lot of those seats that they have now and maybe pick up one or two. So the real fight is in that north and south shore of Montreal, where you've got lots of Francophone voters who have swung from the Bloc to the New Democrats, but have never really played with the Liberals.

It's going to be a fascinating election, but Sabrina, you raise a really good point about a region where we should be watching carefully. Because I think, again,the conventional wisdom would say that Mark Carney - someone who doesn't speak particularly good French, who is not from anywhere near Quebec - should not play in that province. The Bloc, being the only party that has a leader from Quebec who would be able to articulate a distinctly Quebec-focused narrative, should be able to. But again, it's not a normal environment in that way.

So Trump has created a space where Liberals can speak to Quebecers in parts of the province they probably wouldn't have been able to, and shouldn't be normally able to, with Mark Carney as their leader.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Strange times indeed. Now, one of the big question marks when it comes to polling and elections are always undecided voters and turnout. So how do you adjust for these?

And we've seen some really dismal turnout in recent elections like Ontario's. Do you see any indications that we'll see similar trends for a federal election and how much impact could that have?

David Coletto: Yeah, so turnout is always the hardest thing for pollsters to try to gauge because everyone over-reports not only did they vote in the past, but also their intent to vote. Nobody really wants to admit, look, I'm not interested.

I think turnout will…could matter. One of the things I'm watching for though is whether this election, because it could be a mix of both the change election and the Trump effect. I suspect we're gonna see more interest in it than we would have seen in the last two federal elections.

It's gonna probably be more like 2015 than 2021. And that means turnout models matter less if we do get close to maybe 65-70% of Canadians eligible to vote actually turning out.

But yeah, it's a constant challenge for pollsters like me to sort of say which version of our numbers is going to best reflect the electorate that we think is actually gonna show up on election day.

Mike Moffatt: So we're recording this, it's about 10.30 in the morning on Monday, March 17th, and that's relevant, because this is changing so often. So how do you see the next few weeks playing out? You know, when do you think there might be an election call? Any idea what the election date will be? And then, any predictions on how all of this is going to play out?

David Coletto: So it does appear already that what Mark Carney is trying to do is demonstrate he can be Prime Minister. He's in Europe right now meeting with allies and then he's going to, I think, go to Nunavut and meet the Premier of that territory and signal a priority of the North and security and those kinds of things.

All the rumors and intel that I've gathered suggest we'll be in an election next week.

I just can't imagine, unless the circumstance requires it for the Liberals and Mark Carney to want the House of Commons to come back. He does not have a seat in either house.

I don't think that's ever happened where the House has been sitting and the Prime Minister has not been in either one of the chambers. And so it just, I think, would create a visual and a narrative that I don't think they want. I think, by all intents, they've got momentum right now. The polls continue to move in their favor. The public is open-minded.

If I'm advising Mark Carney, based on my numbers - and I'm not, but if I was - I would say, I think this is the time to go. I think it doesn't get much better for you in this environment.

And again, I love comparative politics. So I think back to Gordon Brown, if anyone watching or listening, you know, remembers Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister after the Tony Blair years. Now different in that he had been chancellor and been in that government for years, but he helped guide the UK and much of the world through that financial crisis and then had that opportunity to call an election and didn't. And I think most observers suggest that had he called it then, he and the Labour Party would have done better. Maybe they wouldn't have won, but they would have done better than they ultimately did by delaying until 2010 and then losing government to David Cameron.

So if Mark Carney's time in the UK has sort of given him that sense of history, he's also probably thinking this is the moment to go. And you want to control the narrative, you want to control the call and not let the opposition parties determine when that election happens.

Mike Moffatt: So assuming that happens, are we looking end of April, early May, noting that the election has to be on a Monday due to Canadian election law?

David Coletto: Yeah, and I think April 21st is Easter Monday. It's a national, it's a federal holiday. It doesn't happen in every province. So yeah, I would say late April, early May.

Again, if I was thinking about the strategy, I don't want a long campaign. I want this to be tight and clear. I want the specter of maybe tariffs in early April to be front and center as people make that choice. So I am planning my own business and my own schedule around the idea that I'm going to be really busy for the next six weeks because I think we'll be in an election.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Beyond timing, I'm also curious if you have a prediction, will there be any underappreciated or background issues that may have a larger impact than anyone thinks right now? Anything bubbling under the surface?

David Coletto: You know, I don't see anything.

I see the thing that's bubbling, it's not just bubbling, it's boiling over, is this Trump issue. And I guess the one question I'm asking is, at what point does the public just become numb to it and then can move on? But unfortunately for Canada, and I say this for Canada, Donald Trump doesn't stop.

You know, even this past weekend, he's doubling down on Canada being, would be greater under him, the arbitrariness of our border. He keeps digging into that and adding to that precarity mindset that we talked about earlier. So I just feel like that is going to be the thing.

And now that Mark Carney has, at least for now, stopped the increase to the carbon price on April 1st, that won't be a moment that reminds people of a Liberal policy that's perceived to be making their life more expensive.

Sabrina Maddeaux: It will not be a carbon tax election. Sorry Pierre.

David Coletto: I don't think so. Right. And I think it could very well be an affordability election. And the carbon tax has been used so effectively by the conservatives over the last few years as a proxy for that. But even though more people still put the cost of living high up on that list, even among those who put it as the top issue, when we look at how that group might vote, the Liberals are tied with the Conservatives. Even that issue isn't defining the choice that people are making. It's still very much about responding to this crisis.

We asked a question on our last survey, between Poilievre and Carney, who do you think is best to do a bunch of things? But it wasn't like policy related. It was like navigating a ship through a rough storm. And that to me is the metaphor of the moment. And on that question, Carney was ahead of Poilievre by, I think, one point or two points. They're basically tied. So I'm going to be watching that question because I think in this current environment, that's really what people are judging these leaders on.

And to take a line from Scott Reed, from another podcast, an election can be like a job interview. And I think in the last six weeks the job has changed that we're hiring the next Prime Minister for.

Sabrina Maddeaux: That's a perfect way of putting it. Well, I think we're all going to be very busy over the next weeks and couple months so we'll be watching closely.

Thank you so much, David, for coming on and for all your insights. And thank you to our audience for watching and listening and to our producer, Meredith Martin.

Mike Moffat: Thank you, David. That was fantastic. And to our audience, if you have any thoughts or questions about doctoral theses, please send us an email to [email protected]

David Coletto: If only five of you read it, that will double the number probably who have already.

Mike Moffat: And that includes the committee.

Sabrina Maddeaux: Every reader counts! And we'll see everyone next time.