In The Weekly Wrap, Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
Perhaps the Conservative coalition is more durable than we thought
As I recently wrote for The Hub, one of the big questions after the 2025 federal election was whether the Conservative Party’s showing represented a new baseline of support or a high-water mark.
Was it something to build on or merely an aberration shaped by extraordinary circumstances? I warned that, notwithstanding what Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have said since the election, the latter was a real possibility.
After all, the party’s support leading up to and during the election campaign seemed highly contingent. The political mood was still defined by the extraordinary pandemic experience and the reckless run-up of immigration that followed it. The Liberal government’s competence came under question on multiple files, and Justin Trudeau had become one of the least popular prime ministers in Canadian history. The conditions, in other words, seemed to favour the Conservatives almost by default.
Yet new polling from Abacus Data suggests that I may have been wrong. As Abacus’s vice-president for Data Insights, Eddie Shepherd, told me this week, their findings show 93 percent of 2025 Conservative voters say they would vote the same way today. That compares with just 86 percent of Liberal voters.
If these numbers persist, they could have significant implications, including for Poilievre’s own future as Conservative leader. Not only did he manage to push Conservative support to its highest level since Brian Mulroney’s majority in 1988, but so far at least, Abacus’s polling suggests that it’s mostly holding steady. Maybe, in other words, it is a new baseline for the Conservatives.
