Two Canadian polling firms have produced nearly identical national leads for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals while reaching sharply different conclusions about the party’s support among men and women.
Liaison Strategies’ federal tracker as of Monday places the Liberals at 44% against 31% for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, a 13-point advantage.
But the breakdown shows the Liberals leading by just three points among men, 40% to 37%, compared with a 23-point advantage among women, 49% to 26%.
A separate Abacus Data survey published Sunday shows a much smaller gender divide despite putting the Liberals ahead nationally by a comparable 11 points at 45% against 34% for the Conservatives.
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Abacus found Liberal support at 46% among men against 34% for the Conservatives. Among women, the figures were 44% and 33%, respectively.
The resulting Liberal leads differ by just one point between genders, compared with Liaison’s 20-point difference.
The discrepancy comes with another notable detail. Liaison’s November 9 release contains exactly the same four gender voting percentages that the firm published October 26. Both releases place male support at 40% Liberal and 37% Conservative, with female support at 49% Liberal and 26% Conservative.
The earlier poll surveyed Canadians from October 11 to October 24, while the latest covered October 25 through November 7.
Liaison also found that Carney’s personal approval was nearly identical across genders, reaching 68% among men and 66% among women.
Nationally, 65% approved of his performance, compared with 28% who disapproved. Poilievre’s favourable rating stood at 32%, with 54% viewing him unfavourably.
The findings distinguish approval of the prime minister from willingness to vote for his party. However, aggregate polling cannot establish how individual respondents answered both questions without examining respondent-level data or cross-tabulations.
Abacus separately found government approval at 57%, while just 29% approved of its handling of inflation and the cost of living.
The two firms used different methodologies. Liaison surveyed 1,000 Canadians through automated telephone interviews, reporting a national margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. Abacus surveyed 1,926 adults online from October 30 to November 4.
Both surveys also place the Liberals well ahead nationally, even as their demographic results diverge.
