Toronto, ON, February 4, 2020 — If the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada was awarded based on name recognition among the general population alone, Peter Mackay would waltz to an easy victory. But Conservative Party members may have different selection criteria when they vote for their leader on June 27th in Toronto. This is what makes predicting the outcome of leadership contests notoriously difficult to do.

According to a new Ipsos poll conducted for Global News, more Canadians – both current Conservative voters and voters who would vote for other parties – would consider voting Conservative in the next election if the party were led by Peter MacKay than any of the other declared candidates.

Four in ten (40%) would be likely (15% strongly/25% somewhat) to consider voting Conservative if Peter MacKay were leader, while 29% wouldn’t be very likely and 31% would never vote for the Conservatives if led by him.

were leader, while 29% wouldn’t be very likely and 31% would never vote for the Conservatives if led by him. One in three (31%) would be likely (8% very/23% somewhat) to consider voting Conservative if Erin O’Toole were leader, while 38% wouldn’t be very likely and 31% would never vote for the Conservatives if led by him.

were leader, while 38% wouldn’t be very likely and 31% would never vote for the Conservatives if led by him. Similar proportions (31%) would be likely (8% very/23% somewhat) to consider voting Conservative if Marilyn Gladu were leader, while 36% wouldn’t be very likely and 33% would never vote for the Conservatives if led by her.

were leader, while 36% wouldn’t be very likely and 33% would never vote for the Conservatives if led by her. Three in ten (29%) would be likely (7% very/22% somewhat) to consider voting Conservative if Derek Sloan were leader, while 37% wouldn’t be very likely and 34% would never vote for the Conservatives if led by Derek Sloan.

Among current Conservative voters, Peter MacKay (84%) has the highest vote consideration in the next federal election, ahead of O’Toole (73%), Gladu (69%) and Sloan (67%). Peter MacKay also bests his rivals in consideration among current Liberal (31%), NDP (27%) and Bloc (22%) voters, with a double-digit lead in consideration over his other rivals in most cases. At this early stage in the leadership race, it appears that Peter MacKay has the greater ability to attract new voters into the Tory camp.

His present lead is largely a function of stronger name recognition than that of other leadership contestants. Moreover, Peter MacKay is the only leadership hopeful who has made a net-favourable impact on Canadians and Conservatives. The chart below demonstrates the percentage of Canadians favourable towards each candidate, unfavourable, and the percentage who don’t know enough about each candidate to have an informed opinion either way.

Impressions among all Canadians

Impressions among Conservative voters

For O’Toole, Gladu, and Sloan, they haven’t made much more of an impression among Tory voters than the general population. But for Peter MacMay, favourable to unfavourable impressions among the general population are 2:1, and 4:1 among Conservative voters.

About the Study

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between January 24th and 27th, 2020, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1000 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed online. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.

For more information on this news release, please contact:

Darrell Bricker, PhD

CEO, Ipsos Global Public Affairs

+1 416 324-2001

sean.simpson@ipsos.com

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