What about, uh, Quebec Solitaire, Solidaire, excuse me, and the, uh, the Conservative Party of Quebec? Are they still polling well, or are they also starting to fall a little bit?

Uh, Quebec Solidaire has been pretty steady at around ten percent.

They have lots of support in downtown Montreal, so they'll probably win some seats.

They've had an okay campaign.

They've managed to more or less keep themselves steady.

The Conservatives are actually the ones to watch right now.

Um, in the polls they had been on the rise very slowly, but in some polls they're now, um, in some they're ahead of the CAQ in third place.

Wow

Is it just affection and trust for Mark Kearney that's driving this gap, or is it something else on the other side that's a problem here?

I do think it is largely driven by Mark Carney because Pierre Poiliev's numbers, while they're not good by any means, they haven't fallen off a cliff.

We've seen more of a drop for support for the Conservatives than I think we've seen for Pierre Poiliev.

But it has been a big problem for the Conservatives.

Right now, the Liberals, with the kind of numbers we're seeing, would probably win 220, 230 seats based on where they are.

And the Conservatives could be dropped down to 80, far below even where they were when Stephen Harper lost in the 2015 election.

And it's not just in Ontario where the Liberals are now sometimes polling over 50%.

What do you make of what we're seeing in Quebec with this crazy five-party split here?

Is it just affection and trust for Mark Kearney that's driving this gap, or is it something else on the other side that's a problem here?

I do think it is largely driven by Mark Carney because Pierre Poiliev's numbers, while they're not good by any means, they haven't fallen off a cliff.

We've seen more of a drop for support for the Conservatives than I think we've seen for Pierre Poiliev.

But it has been a big problem for the Conservatives.

Right now, the Liberals with the kind of numbers we're seeing would probably win 220, 230 seats based on where they are.

And the Conservatives could be dropped down to 80, far below even where they were when Stephen Harper lost in the 2015 election.

And it's not just in Ontario where the Liberals are now sometimes polling over 50%.

What do you make of what we're seeing in Quebec with this crazy five-party split here?

What can we learn about NDP support levels?

For the Bloc, I think it was disappointing for them that they weren't able to do much better.

They only had 33%, which wouldn't have been enough to win the seat in the last election.

François Blanchet made the point after the by-election that there's only two parties in Quebec, the Liberals and the Bloc.

I mean, there's a bit of a problem with that when you're the party that's losing the by-elections.

I think that they had an expectation that they could do better.

As I said, the poll that was done earlier in the campaign had the Bloc up.

What's going on?

I wonder more broadly, firstly, how do most Quebecers feel about that and feel about the Trump administration? Like, do they agree with that, that it's Donald Trump on the ballot?

Well, they certainly don't like Donald Trump.

We've seen polling in Quebec and across Canada that has support for Donald Trump being extremely, extremely low.

And that is especially the case in Quebec.

Polling that was done after the collapse of the negotiations showed that Quebecers were among the most likely to say that it was the right decision to pull out of that.

So there isn't a lot of love for Donald Trump in Quebec.

Whether a lot of voters will say that, you know, this is primarily a campaign about Donald Trump, that I'm not so sure.

With the U.S., what are your models telling you? And I know you say the PQ is still the favorite to win, but what are your models telling you about perhaps her chances of being able to pull off an upset, kind of like Carney did in 2025?

They're pretty, well, they're a lot better than they were at the beginning of the year.

Let's just put it that way.

My latest projections would give the CQ roughly one in three chance of being able to win the election.

When if we had talked just a few months ago, it would have been zero.

There was no chance they were going to win the election.

They've now gotten close enough that they are within spitting distance of the PQ.

How is the PQ walking that tightrope of backing a federal government that public opinion at this time backs, but has also been a traditional adversary?

How did the major parties fare in these by-elections? What are some of your key takeaways, Eric?

Well, uh, the Liberals have to be happy winning, uh, three seats, gaining one, and doing it in such dramatic fashion in, uh, Chicoutimi–Le Fjord, where they gained over 20 points, took over 50% of the vote in a riding that, uh, has not voted that strongly Liberal since the days of Pierre Trudeau.

Uh, they did have a bit of a, a drop in support in Beaches-East York, but I do think that was as a result of the campaign that the NDP put up in that riding.

Uh, a strong result for the New Democrats to, uh, increase their support to the mid-20s, to 25, 26%.

Um, I think that shows that the, the NDP has been able to, um, increase its support when they can put some resources and organization behind, uh, the party.

If you look at what happened in North Vancouver-Capilano, however, for the NDP, not a strong result, so it wasn't really a broad-based trend going upwards.

Uh, but I think that for the Conservatives, it was probably the roughest night.

What's your assessment? Was it just, you know, a horrible, no good, very bad day for the Conservatives? Was it just a one-off result that doesn't tell us much? Maybe put this into context.

What is it looking like right now? Do the conservatives have any chance? Because I saw some local polling that's being reported, and it suggests they're in third there.

Yeah, it's going to be tough.

I mean, if we were just looking at the provincial polls, you'd say they'd probably not hold the riding because they won it by three points last time.

And the last few polls have had them under 20%.

So that means they've dropped at least four or five points.

in the province.

So just right there, you'd say, okay, this will be a tough riding to hold.

What are your early numbers showing? Appreciating that the election is not until October 5th, but what are you seeing so far from the data that's been made available?

How did the major parties fare in these by-elections? What are some of your key takeaways, Eric?

Well, uh, the Liberals have to be happy winning, uh, three seats, gaining one, and doing it in such dramatic fashion in, uh, Chicoutimi-- Lévis, where they gained over 20 points, took over 50% of the vote in a riding that, uh, has not voted that strongly Liberal since the days of Pierre Trudeau.

Uh, they did have a bit of a, a drop in support in Beaches-East York, but I do think that was as a result of the campaign that the NDP put up in that riding.

Uh, a strong result for the New Democrats to, uh, increase their support to the mid-20s, to 25, 26%.

Um, I think that shows that the, the NDP has been able to, um, increase its support when they can put some resources and organization behind, uh, the party.

If you look at what happened in North Vancouver-Capilano, however, for the NDP, not a strong result, so it wasn't really a broad-based trend going upwards.

Uh, but I think that for the Conservatives, it was probably the roughest night.

What do you think these results from last night mean, if anything, for those upcoming votes?

What's the story that you're seeing?

Yeah, we're seeing that the Conservative numbers have really taken a dip over the summer.

They haven't been very good for really the last year.

Mark Carney's Liberals have been leading in the polls by a significant margin, but it is just over the last few weeks that we've seen More and more polls that are showing the Conservatives quite low.

As you mentioned, there's been four polls that's been published over the last week and a half or two weeks that have had the Conservatives under 30 percent.

So we've seen some 29 percent, 28, 27 percent.

That's a very poor number.

What are you seeing in the demographic support or lack thereof from Polyev? Where is he getting hit?

Uh, what does it say about the opposition in this moment?

Well, we do see that, um, when it comes to the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, I mean, they've lost some MPs who were running provincially in Quebec.

And particularly in Quebec, provincial politics tends to be the thing that get- captures the most attention.

So I don't know if it says too much about the Bloc Québécois or the NDP.

Obviously, for Alexandre Boudrias, the, the last survivor of the 2011 Orange wave to be moving on is symbolic, but, uh, you don't necessarily blame him for wanting to try something different at this stage.

But for the Conservatives, uh, it is a number of, uh, resignations that some of them are a bit more problematic than others.

Kathy Wagantall, uh, stepping aside in Yorkton-Melville, you know, that is a super safe seat for the Conservatives.

Of all the by-elections, is that the one you find most interesting in this moment, or what one is sort of that you're watching closest?

With him out of the picture, and I guess the Conservatives dropping off a little bit, like, what, what is the landscape that allows the Liberals to become, as you say, a, a plus three on that riding?

Yeah, I think one is, as you said, the Conservatives.

They're down a little bit in the polls in Quebec to begin with, so just there, the fact that they'd won the seat by three points in the last election, with the numbers we've seen in the polls in Quebec, would put this seat on the bubble.

Uh, Richard Martel was also really well-known.

He used to be a hockey, a junior hockey coach for the Chicoutimi Saguenéens, so he was a bit of a star candidate when they recruited him for the 2018, uh, by-election.

So he had some of his own vote.

With him gone, the Conservatives are going to probably, uh, lose some support.

Do you have a sense of why that didn't come in with these ones?

That seat, while not a traditional Conservative seat, is it fair to say it's in an area where the Conservatives have the most opportunity or have traditionally had the most opportunity in Quebec?

Yeah, I think so.

So it's in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region.

So it includes part of the city of Saguenay.

And as you mentioned, well-known for anybody who's a hockey fan because of the junior team that's there.

And that was one of the reasons that Richard Martel was able to win by such a big margin when he took it in a by-election in 2018.

So there is a little bit of a question that we'll have answered with this by-election.

Some interesting news over the weekend, suggesting that former NDP leader, son michael layton he himself well known in toronto a former counselor for that area may put his hand up uh what is the play here should this be a safe liberal hold or if mike layton enters does that change the dynamic

government? And when you're looking at the numbers, could he be right with that?

He could be right.

He's right that some polling does still show the PCs in a pretty decent position.

Abakistad had a poll out about a month ago that still had the PCs more or less exactly where they were in the last election.

His pollster, who is very active on Twitter, sometimes puts out some of the numbers that he is finding and finds that the PC is still leading in the polls.

The liaison strategies poll had the Liberals ahead by three points over the PC.

So there is some disagreement on whether the PCs would win re-election.

Was there anything flawed with the way they did this polling?