For decades, the Liberal Party of Canada has been described as Canada’s “natural governing party.” It’s a centrist party in a country that’s rarely, if ever, been governed from the extremes. But over the past year, the Liberal vote share has fallen off a cliff. Our latest Abacus Data survey, released yesterday, has the Liberals 22 points behind the Conservatives nationally and even trailing the NDP by three points outside of Quebec. This has left many asking: where’s the bottom?

Centrism in global politics is a rarity, and it’s even rarer for a centrist party to dominate as long as the Liberal Party of Canada has. Duverger’s Law, a staple in political science theory, posits that electoral systems with single-member districts (like Canada’s) tend to support two-party systems because voters coalesce around two dominant options. Most democracies with majoritarian systems, such as the United States or the United Kingdom, follow this rule. In Canada, however, the political landscape defies this expectation. The Liberal Party has managed to hold the centre of the political spectrum for much of its history, and this dominance—often bolstered by its control of Quebec—has contributed to its success.

While other democracies have experienced sharp ideological cleavages, particularly along class lines, Canada’s political divisions have been shaped by linguistic, religious, and cultural questions, particularly between Quebec and the rest of the country. The Liberal Party found itself occupying a federalist, pro-Quebec stance in the province while presenting itself as a moderate, centrist party to the rest of Canada. This dual positioning has allowed the Liberals to avoid the traditional Left-Right polarization, but it’s created volatility in its voter base. Quebec’s support, while essential, has often been fluid, and when the province has swung away from the Liberals, the party has found itself vulnerable, as seen in elections like 1984 and 2011.

In my latest polling for Abacus Data, we see numbers that suggest the Liberal Party’s accessible voter pool is shrinking. Soon after the party won in 2015, 70 percent of Canadians said they would consider voting Liberal. By November 2019, that was down to 51 percent. Following the 2021 election, it fell to 48 percent. Today, just 37 percent of Canadians say they are open to voting Liberal.

This is the smallest the party’s accessible voter pool has been since before Justin Trudeau became Liberal leader in 2013. What was once a broad tent of voters from various demographics and regions now appears increasingly concentrated and fragile, with the party struggling to hold onto even many Canadians who continue to self-identify as Liberal.

To understand what the “bottom” looks like, we have to understand the Liberal base. The core group of Canadians who vote Liberal no matter what.

How big is the Liberal Party’s base? 

Let’s start with some basic stats from our last two national surveys conducted in September 2024 with 4,700 Canadian adults.

Today, 24 percent of Canadians identify as Liberal. In comparison, 37 percent identify as Conservative and 14 percent identify as New Democrat. But just because someone is a Liberal “identifier” doesn’t mean they will always be a Liberal voter. Case in point: about one in three Liberal identifiers in Canada today are not committed to voting Liberal right now. This is a similar phenomenon to what we saw during the 2011 federal election.

When we distill this further, the core base—the people who say they identify as Liberal and would only consider voting Liberal—represents just 7 percent of the electorate. For context, the Conservative base is nearly three times that size, at 20 percent, while the NDP base is under half the size at 3 percent.

And this is an important insight: the Liberal base in 2024 is no larger than it was in 2015. This is despite nine years of governance and three election victories. Over that period, the base of the party has stayed static. In contrast, the Conservative base grew from 13 percent in 2015 (arguably a low point for the party) to 20 percent today.

Who makes up the Liberal base?

So, who are these 7 percent?

Today, the Liberal base is predominantly older—47 percent are over the age of 60, with only 13 percent under 30. This is surprising given the energy among young people the party created in 2015, where we saw a surge in young Liberal voters. A newly sworn-in Prime Minister Trudeau even appointed himself minister of youth. The party has since failed to establish a long-term, deep relationship with Canadian millennials and generation Z.

There’s a fairly even gender split, and the base is as racially diverse as the Canadian population, with 21 percent identifying as racialized.

Ideologically, the Liberal base leans Left with 43 percent self-identifying to the left of the spectrum, 44 percent to the centre, and only 13 percent leaning Right. This centrist alignment reflects the historical position of the Liberal Party but also the predominance of the centre in the Canadian electorate overall. But the base pulls the party Left, in the same way, the Conservative base pulls that party to the Right (60 percent of the Conservative base self-identifies as Right or centre-Right).

Geographically, the Liberal base is heavily concentrated in Ontario and Quebec. Forty-five percent of the base resides in Ontario and 34 percent in Quebec, meaning that almost 80 percent of Liberal supporters are in these two provinces—despite the fact that those provinces have just 60 percent of the population. The Liberals’ presence in Western Canada, particularly in Alberta and Saskatchewan, is virtually non-existent.

The urban-rural divide is also stark. Fifty-five percent of the Liberal base lives in urban communities, while only the rest is split between suburban and rural communities. This urban concentration is far higher than the general population, emphasizing the party’s disconnect from especially suburban Canada.

What does the Liberal base think?

The Liberal base remains, as you’d expect, loyal to Trudeau, with 79 percent holding a positive impression of him, including 34 percent who are very positive. For comparison, only 4 percent of all other Canadians share this view.

Meanwhile, 68 percent of the base believes the Liberals deserve to be re-elected, and 74 percent think the party will win the next election (a view shared by only 12 percent of everyone else). There’s an optimism among this group that stands in stark contrast to the broader electorate’s mood about the country and the prospects for the party.

Since this is the base of the party, few have a second-choice preference. Sixty-one percent of the Liberal base say they have no alternative party they’d consider supporting, while 17 percent would back the NDP and 10 percent would consider the Conservatives. This speaks to the depth of their loyalty, but also the lack of partisan flexibility within the base.

On the issues, the Liberal base is far more likely to prioritize climate change, with 15 percent more naming it as a top concern compared to the rest of the population. They are also more optimistic about the country’s direction—58 percent think Canada is headed in the right direction, compared to just 23 percent of everyone else.

So what?

So, what does all of this mean for the Liberal Party of Canada?

First, the party’s floor is now extremely low, and so is its ceiling. With only 7 percent of the electorate forming the core base, the Liberals are vulnerable to a collapse like the one they experienced in 2011. Our most recent poll shows the Liberals and NDP statistically tied for second/third, with the NDP now three points ahead of the Liberals outside Quebec. This means that the 2025 election could mirror 2011, with the Liberals relegated to third place if they can’t broaden their appeal.

Second, the geographical concentration of the Liberal base is both an asset and a liability. While the party dominates in Ontario and Quebec, it is increasingly invisible elsewhere. The lack of support in Western Canada, combined with the suburban-urban divide, will make it difficult for the party to build a truly national coalition. This also gives the Conservatives a structural advantage, as their base is both much larger and more geographically diverse, ensuring a stable floor of support.

Third, the Liberal base lacks any strong demographic markers beyond being older than the general population. In contrast, the Conservative base is more distinctly defined: it’s more male, more rural, with a high proportion of homeowners, and includes a significant number of people working in trades, natural resources, or manufacturing sectors.

There’s a clearer cultural and socio-economic alignment within the Conservative base. On the other hand, the Liberal base is more diffuse and harder to pin down. It doesn’t exhibit the same degree of demographic or occupational coherence. Instead, its defining characteristic seems to be its connection to the party itself or the party leader, without a clear or consistent identity rooted in shared experiences or values.

Finally, the challenges facing the Liberal Party reflect broader issues facing centrist parties globally. Political science literature, such as Duverger’s Law, suggests that centrist parties often struggle to sustain themselves in electoral or party systems that favour a Left-Right divide. In the U.K., the Liberal Party was overtaken by Labour as class became the primary political cleavage and the franchise was expanded. In Canada, linguistic and federalist-separatist divides have traditionally defined politics, allowing the Liberal Party to thrive. But today, those divides are less salient, and the Liberals find themselves without a clear constituency to rely on.

Michael Ignatieff, the former Liberal leader who oversaw the party’s disastrous 2011 result (the worst in its 157-year history), recently gave an interview with Bloomberg, where he pointed out that centrist politics today struggles because it lacks a clear identity. He could have been speaking directly to his former party. Instead of rebuilding a political base on shared values or interests, the Liberal Party rebuilt itself around the personal brand of Trudeau. That brand worked in 2015, but it’s fading fast.

When Trudeau leaves the stage, the Liberals will be left with a base no bigger than when he took over. And unless the party can find a way to expand beyond its current core, its future will be as uncertain as it was in 2011. What makes this even more precarious is that the small and undefined nature of the Liberal base leaves the party vulnerable in any future leadership race.

With no strong, cohesive core to anchor it, the party could easily be taken over by special interests or factions. Without a broad foundation of support, whoever steps into Trudeau’s shoes may be shaped more by narrow appeals to niche groups than by a vision that unites the party or speaks to a wide swath of Canadians. The challenge for the Liberals won’t just be finding a new leader, but finding one who can resist the pull of special interests while rebuilding a more expansive, resilient base.