Political analysts say the federal Conservatives and leader Pierre Poilievre have momentum coming off a unifying convention in Calgary but the party still has a hill to climb in Parliament to one-up Prime Minster Mark Carney and the Liberals.
The Conservatives wrapped up their three-day national convention on Saturday touting party unity. Poilievre easily passed his mandatory leadership review with 87.4 per cent support from delegates.
Pollster Nik Nanos said Poilievre's result was "quite striking."
He said the test should put an end to talk that the Conservative leader doesn't have a firm grasp of the party after a tough 2025 that saw the party raise its vote share but lose the spring election.
A pair of MPs -- Chris d'Entremont and Michael Ma -- also crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals late last year, which Nanos said suggested there could be more discontent within Poilievre's caucus.
That didn't show up at the convention, he said.
"The convention shows that not only is he in control of the party, the Conservatives -- at least today -- are united behind him as the leader of the party going into the next election," Nanos said.
Amanda Galbraith, a former adviser to Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper and now partner at public affairs firm Oyster Group, said a well-managed Calgary convention gives the party momentum in the nascent winter session of Parliament.
Poilievre could have survived with delegate support in the mid-70s, but it would have been problematic, she said.
"But to have such, I think, a resounding endorsement from the party was very good for him and shows the unity there," Galbraith said.
The Conservatives trailed the Liberals by four points in Nanos polling from the week before the convention but the firm also finds Carney now leads Poilievre by 28 points as Canadians' preferred prime minister.
Nanos said Poilievre's flagging support compared to the prime minister is less a comment on the Conservative leader and more a reflection of Carney's own surging popularity in recent weeks, capped off by a high-profile speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Canadians might be playing closer attention to internal party conventions than in previous years, Nanos said. Canadians worried over U.S. President Donald Trump's trade aggression and the future of Canada might plug into these forums to get a sense of the leaders' visions for Canada.
In his speech Friday night, Poilievre's main message was one of hope in the face of the rising cost of living. He repeated recent pledges to work with the Liberals to get U.S. tariffs removed and build out new markets, promising to put "country ahead of party."
Galbraith said she believes the affordability angle is a "weak spot" for Carney that Poilievre can continue to exploit, even as the Liberals crowd out the Conservatives on core policy issues like defence spending and energy production.
Carney last week proposed a top-up the existing GST credit aimed to help Canadians struggling with the cost of groceries. The Conservatives accused Carney of recycling policies from his predecessor Justin Trudeau but Poilievre signalled the party would let the measure pass.
Galbraith said the Conservatives will have to pick their spots where they want to obstruct the Liberal agenda in the coming months, which could lead the minority government to fold early and trigger a spring election.
The Official Opposition can be productive in Parliament by proposing amendments to crime legislation and others areas that can advance the Conservatives' agenda without fully endorsing the Liberal approach, she argued.
Nanos agreed that co-operating with the Liberals is a sound short-term strategy, but in the long run, the party will need to differentiate itself from the incumbent.
"If there's no difference between the Carney Liberals and the Poilievre Conservatives, that will favour Mark Carney because he's so far ahead when it comes to his personal brand compared to Pierre Poilievre," Nanos said.
With the Conservatives sitting at 35.2 per cent support to the Liberals' 39.2 per cent in his firm's latest polling, Nanos said the level of support for the Tories is at a point where the party could win an electoral victory.
The problem is not the magnitude of support, he said, it's the vote distribution.
With the NDP polling at 11.6 per cent, Nanos said there's not enough interest in the struggling party to draw progressive-leaning voters away from the Liberals -- restricting the Conservatives' path to forming government.
"This isn't about people switching from the Liberals to the Conservatives. This is about people more likely to switch from the Liberals back to the New Democrats," he said.
After an historically weak finish in the 2025 election, the NDP lost official party status in the House of Commons, which limits their representation on Parliamentary committees and the ability to hold the government to account in question period.
Nanos said it could be in the Conservatives' best interest to find a way to co-operate with the NDP in Parliament by sharing questions or other efforts that would boost the party's standing in the eyes of voters.
Monday is the start of the second week MPs are back in Ottawa for the winter session of Parliament. The week will also feature a series of events in the nation's capital to mark the 20-year anniversary of Harper's first federal electoral victory in 2006, including the unveiling of his official portrait on Tuesday.
Before he would go on to lead the country for nearly a decade, Harper also survived a Conservative leadership review in 2005, securing 84 per cent of the vote.
Galbraith, who worked in Harper's office from his time as Opposition leader to the early days as prime minister, said Harper's experience offers hope to Poilievre coming out of his own successful convention.
Harper was rarely, if ever, the "preferred prime minister" in polling when she was his adviser, Galbraith recalled.
"And he still won government. So I think it's possible," she said.
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Larry MacDougal
