Are the Liberals making inroads with younger Canadians?

A new Abacus Data poll suggests some positive movement with 18 to 29 year olds

Every two weeks, my polling firm conducts a national survey of at least 1,500 adult Canadians. In that poll, we usually ask the same core political tracking questions. How people would vote, how they feel about the leaders, and what the top issues are.

And every two weeks, I wait with anticipation to get the final dataset from my team.

I open it up on my computer and dig into the numbers.

This week, something surprised me. While the Conservatives continue to hold a wide 19-point lead over the Liberals, something in the crosstabs really caught my attention.

The Liberals and Conservatives are statistically tied among those aged 18 to 29 with 33% for the Conservatives and 32% for the Liberals.

Vote choice among the other age groups hasn’t really changed.

Now, as I said on X (Twitter) when I shared this result, this is one single poll, the result is quite different from what we have seen, and it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a trend. It could be an outlier. But the change from two weeks earlier is statistically significant, so we shouldn’t disregard it entirely.

We are back in the field now with our next survey, so next week I’ll be able to confirm whether this change is likely real or just a statistical anomoly.

But here’s why at this point, I’m more inclined to think something is happening then not.