A new poll shows Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre has a strong lead among Conservative supporters.
The Leger-Postmedia poll conducted between June 30 and July 3 saw 48% of Conservative supporters choose Poilievre as their top choice.
It is important to note that this poll measures the support of likely Conservative voters, not Conservative Party of Canada members, who are the only people eligible to vote in the leadership race.
Rival candidate Jean Charest received 14% support among respondents. Leslyn Lewis received 3%, while Roman Baber and Scott Aitchison both received 1%.
Twenty-six percent of those surveyed said they were undecided, while 3% said they supported none of the candidates.
The poll was conducted before the disqualification of Patrick Brown over allegations his campaign broke financing rules. Brown, who claimed to have sold over 150,000 memberships, came third in the poll, with just 4% support.
Poilievre’s support increased by four percentage points from the last Leger poll conducted in mid-June. The support level for the other candidates did not increase.
“It is interesting that the results for the candidates have been very consistent over the course of the campaign. Charest, Brown (still in it when we polled) and Lewis, have not moved since we last asked the question in June and they did not move much from May,” Leger executive vice-president Andrew Enns told the National Post.
“It would suggest that opinions among supporters formed early in this race and have been fairly locked-in since.”
Poilievre has placed first in every leadership poll conducted among Conservative Party of Canada supporters, including a straw poll by True North of active members.
True North’s survey saw Poilievre receiving 78.5% support among respondents. Lewis placed second with 11.8% and Baber placed third with 8.7%
Meanwhile, 0.7% of respondents picked Charest as their first choice, while 0.2% chose Aitchison and 0.1% picked Brown.
Polling done based on popular vote may not provide an accurate prediction of the final results, given that the winner is the one who gets the majority of riding points based on a ranked voting system that weights each riding with 100 points, irrespective how many members are in that riding.
In the 2020 Conservative leadership race, the polls hinted at a Peter MacKay victory, and while he won the first ballot, Erin O’Toole was elected leader on the third. Meanwhile, polls during the 2017 leadership race predicted Maxime Bernier had the best shot of winning. Bernier ended up being in the lead all the way to the 12th ballot, but Andrew Scheer narrowly won in the 13th round.
The Conservative Party leadership election is being conducted via mail-in ranked ballots, with a candidate needing to receive over 50% of riding points to win the race.
More information about how the election process works can be found here.
Conservative Party members have already begun getting their ballots. They must be filled out and received by the party before September 6 at 5pm ET.
The Conservative Party is set to announce the winner of the leadership race on September 10.
