Luke Savage argues that Mark Carney’s year of near-uncontested political dominance may finally be eroding. Drawing on recent surveys from Liaison, Nanos, and Abacus, he notes that while the Liberals have not collapsed, all three show a visible uptick for the NDP, alongside fresh declines in both Carney’s personal approval and the government’s ratings — the first real shift in the political weather since April 2025.
Central to his reading is what he calls the “Avi Lewis effect.” Savage reiterates his long-held view that the NDP’s 2025 wipeout was driven primarily by its base migrating to the Liberals — not, as is often claimed, by blue-collar voters defecting to the Conservatives — citing Ipsos data showing 19 per cent of 2021 NDP voters went Liberal versus 5 per cent Conservative. He credits Lewis, since winning the leadership at the Winnipeg convention, with returning the party to public visibility and reintroducing a social-democratic critique into national debate, particularly in the wake of the government’s spring economic update.
The piece frames the underlying dynamic as one of crowded ideological space: Carney has outflanked the Conservatives on the right, leaving Poilievre to attack the government on its own chosen terrain, while the same rightward pivot opens a lane for the NDP to win back voters it lost in 2025. Savage characterizes the Carney program as a right-leaning agenda of deregulation and public-sector restraint dressed in communitarian branding (“sovereign wealth fund,” “industrial strategy”), and contends the widening gap between that substance and Carney’s sales pitch will become harder to sustain as the Trump-driven news cycle and Poilievre’s unpopularity cease to shield him.
Originally published as “Something’s got to give” by Luke Savage on Substack and reprinted by The Walrus with the author’s permission. Source: The Walrus. Reproduced for reference under fair dealing (Copyright Act, s. 29).