Calgary Conservatives: Poilievre's leadership faces growing anxiety
New polling reveals Conservative voters are questioning Poilievre's le
[CALGARY, AB] — The Conservatives won the popular vote in 2025. They still hold the most seats. And yet, somehow, Mark Carney just became a majority Prime Minister. If that sequence of events feels disorienting, you're not alone - and new polling suggests a growing number of past Conservative voters are starting to point a finger at their own leader.
The Cracks Inside the Base
According to a new poll from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute, 57% of past CPC voters want Pierre Poilievre to lead the party into the next election. That's still a majority. But read the other number: 30% now want him gone. In August 2025, that figure was 18%. That's a 12-point swing inside his own coalition in under a year.
His favourability among past CPC voters has also slipped — from 88% in June 2025 down to 75% today. Thirteen points. That's not a collapse, but it's not noise either. That's a trend.
Four Defections and a Majority For The Liberals
The mechanics of how Carney got here matter. The Liberals didn't win a majority at the ballot box — they built one through three byelection victories and a string of floor crossings, four of them CPC MPs since November 2025. That's the House shifting under Canadians' feet without a general election.
And Canadians are split on what to make of it. The Angus Reid Institute data shows 44% consider Carney's majority a "good thing" for stability, while 42% call it a "bad thing" because the current House composition doesn't reflect what people actually voted for last year. That's as close to a national shrug as polling can produce.
But here's the sharper number: 45% of Canadians say Poilievre is "pushing people away from his party" as a primary driver of those defections. Nearly half the country thinks the floor crossings are, at least in part, a leadership problem.
Why This Lands Differently in Alberta
For Calgary's Conservative-leaning voters — and there are a lot of them — this isn't abstract federal drama. Alberta sent a wall of blue seats to Ottawa. The expectation was a CPC government. Instead, the opposition benches are where their MPs sit, and those benches are shrinking through defections their ridings didn't authorize.
Poilievre remains genuinely popular here. His base hasn't abandoned him. But the poll captures something real: the people most invested in a Conservative federal government are increasingly anxious about whether their leader can actually deliver one.
57% still say stay. 30% say go. And the Liberals are now running a majority government. The next election isn't here yet — but the audition for what comes after already seems to be underway.