Current NDP supporters divided whether Singh or another leader would resonate better with voters
January 9, 2025 – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed earlier this week that he will step down as Liberal leader, proroguing parliament in the process while his party elects a successor.
A spring election is all but guaranteed when the House of Commons next sits, as all federal leaders – including the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh – have now committed to voting against confidence in the government. Singh’s own future, however, is far from certain when Canadians head to the polls again.
The NDP took second place in the non-profit Angus Reid Institute’s most recent vote intention survey but sits on a base of tenuous support. As was the case in the early days of ARI, which celebrated its 10th anniversary recently, left of centre support is again fluid between the Liberals and New Democrats.
Much of this small surge in vote intention appears to be contingent on Trudeau as prime minister, which will no longer be the case. In a situation where, for example, Chrystia Freeland supplants Trudeau as Liberal leader, it’s back to third place for the NDP.
That is not to say the NDP doesn’t have room to grow. According to these latest data from ARI, one-quarter of Canadians could be considered the NDP’s potential core. This is made up of one-in-five who already say they would support the party in an election (19%) and six per cent who say they would definitely consider the NDP candidate in their riding. An even larger portion (29%) say that they wouldn’t rule it out.
If the New Democrats are to capitalize on the moment and match the heights they enjoyed under Jack Layton as official opposition, the party’s leader must play a key role. His public opinion profile, however, has been diminished during the NDP’s recently ended cooperation with the Liberals through a Supply and Confidence Agreement. Singh’s favourability dropped 11 points (from 44% to 33%) in 2024. This is an 18-point reduction since January 2022, shortly before the agreement was signed. More problematically, current NDP voters are equally likely to agree (42%) and disagree (41%) that the party would be better off without him. That sentiment is felt even more strongly among those who won’t rule out the party in the future. Among this group that “might consider” the NDP candidate in their riding in a future election, 46 per cent say the NDP would be performing better under a different leader, while 21 per cent disagree.
More Key Findings:
- The NDP performs best in Manitoba and British Columbia, where one-in-three residents are either already supporting the party or would “definitely” consider it. Conversely, just 17 per cent of Quebec residents currently say that is the case.
- A group of approximately nine per cent of Canadians say they would consider supporting the Liberals and the NDP but are not currently supporting either. Views of Singh within this group are divided between favourability (33%), unfavourability (34%) and uncertainty (33%).
- Among those who voted for the NDP in 2021, one-quarter (24%) now view Singh unfavourably. He retains favour with seven-in-10 (70%)
About ARI
The Angus Reid Institute (ARI) was founded in October 2014 by pollster and sociologist, Dr. Angus Reid. ARI is a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation established to advance education by commissioning, conducting and disseminating to the public accessible and impartial statistical data, research and policy analysis on economics, political science, philanthropy, public administration, domestic and international affairs and other socio-economic issues of importance to Canada and its world.
INDEX:
Part One: The NDP vote universe
Part Two: Would a new leader take the party further?
- Younger voters and women more favourable to current NDP leader
- Singh viewed positively by NDP core, but less so among ‘might consider’ group
- What about voters available to both the Liberals and NDP?
- Would a different NDP leader help?
Part One: The NDP vote universe
The collapse of support for the Liberal party, ultimately leading to the departure of Prime Minister and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, was the political story of 2024. A key sub plot of the decline of the governing party has been who has benefited – the Conservatives – and who hasn’t – the NDP under leader Jagmeet Singh. Since Singh took over the helm of the party in 2017, vote intent for the NDP has hovered between 14 and 21 per cent. Even as support for the Liberals has fallen from 35 per cent in 2021 to 16 per cent in the most recent Angus Reid Institute data taken prior to Trudeau’s announcement that he was stepping aside, it has little improved the NDP’s electoral fortunes. While widely supported by both NDP and Liberal voters at the time, the supply and confidence agreement tied the NDP in many ways to what has become an unpopular Liberal party and its leader.
The NDP’s stagnation continues despite the party having a large pool of accessible voters. More than half (53%) of Canadians say they would at least consider supporting the party in a future election, including 19 per cent who would vote for it if there were an election today, six per cent who “definitely” would consider voting for the NDP and 29 per cent who would not rule it out:
This pool of accessible voters – also known as the NDP vote universe – is distributed unevenly across the country. The party’s potential is greatest in Atlantic Canada, B.C., Manitoba and Ontario, while having few core and likely supporters in Saskatchewan and Quebec. There is also a notable split between urban and rural Canadians – a majority of those in the rural areas of the country say they would never consider the NDP (56%), while more than half (55%) in urban centres say they have at least not rejected the thought (see detailed tables).
NDP supporters have historically skewed younger, which has proven to be a drawback at the ballot box in Canadian elections. This continues to be the case, particularly among young women. Men, especially those older than 34, are more likely to say they’d never consider supporting the party:
Part Two: Would a new leader take the party further?
Younger voters and women more favourable to current NDP leader
Overall, one-third (33%) of Canadians say they have a favourable view of Jagmeet Singh, while most (58%) do not. The latter represents an all-time high of negative impressions of Singh, who had enjoyed a period between the 2019 and 2021 elections of net positive views among Canadians. Since the start of 2023, Canadians have more intensely soured on Singh:
Views of the Singh mirror the party’s vote universe in many ways. Men, especially those older than 34, are much more likely to hold very unfavourable views of Singh. Younger Canadians, and especially women under 35, are the most likely to have positive impressions of the NDP leader.
Singh viewed positively by NDP core, but less so among ‘might consider’ group
At the 2023 NDP convention, 81 per cent of the delegates voted against a leadership convention, a resounding endorsement for Singh, but a decrease from the 87 per cent and 90.7 per cent support he received in 2021 and 2018 respectively. He is still very popular among current NDP supporters, and those who would give the party a serious look during an election campaign. Those more on the fence offer more mixed assessments – 35 per cent say they view Singh favourably, while a larger group of 44 per cent do not, and an important one-in-five (21%) say they don’t know:
Comparing the views of Singh of current NDP supporters to those who supported the party in 2021 offers perhaps a worrying picture for the party as it attempts to better its results from the most recent election. One-quarter of 2021 NDP voters say they have an unfavourable view of the leader:
What about voters available to both the Liberals and NDP?
There is much uncertainty in the Canadian political picture as the Liberals sort out who will lead that party into the next election. Notably, approaching four-in-five (78%) of current Liberal supporters say they would consider supporting the NDP in a future election (see detailed tables).
An interesting group of approximately nine per cent of Canadians say they would consider supporting the Liberals and the NDP but are not currently supporting either. Views of Singh within this group are anything but uniform. One-in-three view him favourably, the same number view him unfavourably, and one-third are unsure:
Would a different NDP leader help?
The next federal election will be Singh’s third as NDP leader and if the vote intent picture holds, he will only slightly improve on the results from 2019 (15.98 per cent of the popular vote) and 2021 (17.82 per cent) despite the struggles of the Liberals. A majority (56%) of Canadians believe Singh is in fact holding back the NDP, doubling those who disagree (23%).
At the centre of the NDP vote universe, those who would support the party if an election were held today are split. Equal sized groups (42%) say the NDP would perform better among voters without Singh as those don’t believe that to be true (41%). The sentiment that the party would perform better with another leader, however, is stronger among those who have not ruled out voting for the party in a future election (46%).
Could a leadership change alter the size of the vote universe? Four-in-five (78%) of those who say there is “no way” they would consider voting for the party as is, also agree the party would do better without Singh at the helm:
Those on the fringes of both the NDP and Liberal vote universes, and aren’t currently supporting either party, are more likely to believe the NDP would do better without Singh (36%) than not (20%) but also express much uncertainty (44%):
Who the Liberals choose to lead them into the next election will be a major factor in changing the current vote intention picture. The early returns suggest former Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is the most appealing candidate for those who haven’t ruled out voting Liberal in a future election.
A Liberal party led by Freeland appears to also have a detrimental effect on NDP support, which falls to 14 per cent in a scenario where Freeland wins the Liberal leadership race. Support for the NDP is closer to current levels in alternative scenarios where either former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney or current Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly are chosen to succeed Trudeau:
METHODOLOGY:
The Angus Reid Institute conducted an online survey from Dec. 27-31, 2024 among a representative randomized sample of 2,427 Canadian adults who are members of Angus Reid Forum. For comparison purposes only, a probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of +/- 1.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding. The survey was self-commissioned and paid for by ARI. Detailed tables are found at the end of this release.
For detailed results by age, gender, region, education, and other demographics, click here.
For detailed results by NDP voter universe, click here.
For full release, click here.
CONTACT:
Shachi Kurl, President: 604.908.1693 shachi.kurl@angusreid.org @shachikurl
Dave Korzinski, Research Director: 250.899.0821 dave.korzinski@angusreid.org
