The federal Liberals are turning their attention to a leadership race following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to resign, and new polling reveals who could be among the contenders likely to resonate with Canadians if they run.
Whoever becomes Liberal leader will become prime minister as the Liberals remain in power even with a prorogued Parliament. New polling conducted by Ipsos exclusively for Global News looked at some of the names speculated to be weighing a potential run: two backbenchers, four cabinet ministers and two people currently not a part of the government.
The polling asked a sample of 1,000 Canadians aged 18 and older their impression of potential replacements for Trudeau, and how likely they would be to vote for the Liberals if that person was leader.
At the top of the list is former deputy prime minister and finance minister Chrystia Freeland, whose surprise resignation last month added to the growing calls for him to step down, with 29 per cent having a positive impression of her. The poll also suggested if she were to become leader, 24 per cent said they were very or fairly likely to vote Liberal.
The name following Freeland is former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor Mark Carney, whose name has been floated for months as a potential replacement to Trudeau.
Global News reported on Sunday that he had been seeking advice and support from Liberal MPs in the past few weeks.
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According to Ipsos, 17 per cent of Canadians reported a positive impression of Carney, with the same number saying they’d vote for the party if he was leader.
Capping off the top five are Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, who has a positive impression with 15 per cent of respondents, 12 per cent for former B.C. premier Christy Clark and 11 per cent for Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc.
However, LeBlanc announced on Wednesday he would not run for the leadership.
Transport Minister Anita Anand, Innovation Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne and former housing minister Sean Fraser all had positive impressions levels of less than 10 per cent each in the polling.
Current Liberal voters were also asked about their level of positive impressions about the potential candidates. Freeland again took top spot with 67 per cent reporting positive impressions, followed by Carney with 53 per cent and Joly with 48 per cent.
However, regardless of who could take on leadership, a large majority of Canadians — 86 per cent — say even with Trudeau no longer in the top spot, the party would struggle to win the next election.
Another 77 per cent say his resignation is too little, too late for the Liberals.
Those results are in line with what the Ipsos polling showed for the overall party support levels among decided voters. The Conservatives are up two points to 46 per cent support if an election were held tomorrow, while the Liberals are steady compared to last month at 20 per cent and the NDP are down four points to 17 per cent.
With Trudeau stepping down once a leader has been chosen, the Liberal caucus met Wednesday to discuss next steps ahead of its planned leadership race with party brass gathering behind closed doors this week.
The national party board has to assemble a leadership vote committee to organize and set rules for the coming race. Those rules could take days to produce once the committee is struck.
— with files from Global News’ Uday Rana, Saba Aziz and Sean Boynton
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between Jan. 6 and 7, 2025, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,000 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed online. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.
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