Conservative campaign manager shrugs off polls showing Liberals have significant lead

The federal Conservative Party's campaign manager is shrugging off polls showing the Liberals hold a double-digit lead over the Tories — while Pierre Poilievre says he's broadening his image but won't change who he is.

"Polls are polls, and they do what polls do," Steve Outhouse said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live that aired Sunday morning. "What you need to do, if you're talking about the long game, is to not worry about them on a day-to-day basis."

Over the last month, several national pollsters — including Leger, Abacus Data and Nanos Research — have found the Liberals leading the Conservatives by at least 10 points.

Outhouse told guest host David Common that the Conservatives are determined to speak to the issues Canadians care about most, notably the cost of living.

"Yes, there are distractions that come up on the daily that people will talk about, but if they're not able to feed their families or not able to find housing, those are things that are going to matter," he said.

The Tory campaign manager also drew upon his experiences running provincial campaigns in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, where he helped the UCP's Danielle Smith and the Progressive Conservatives' Tony Wakeham, respectively, come from behind and win.

"Going into that led our opponents there actually to get quite complacent, and so we just have to keep charting our course and talking to Canadians every day — talking about issues that matter to them, and that's the long game," Outhouse said.

In January 2025, the federal Liberals were trailing the Conservatives by 20 points in the polls until they staged a massive comeback with Mark Carney at the helm — an example of how political fortunes can rapidly change.

On Wednesday, Abacus Data CEO David Coletto said on CBC's Power & Politics that Carney and his Liberal government have "created an environment where people are generally happy" and feel assured they are being guided through a litany of issues, namely the U.S. trade war.

But Coletto said he's not seeing evidence in his polling that Canadians' openness to voting Conservative is dropping — nor are more people souring on their opinion of Poilievre.

"To make it simple, it feels like [Carney's] got game and Canadians are responding positively to him, as opposed to being pushed to him because they don't like the alternatives," he said.

Like Outhouse, Poilievre says he's not straying from his key focus on the cost of living for Canadians.

"I'm going to continue to be absolutely monomaniacally obsessed with affordability, no matter what," Poilierve said in an interview on Bloomberg This Weekend that aired Saturday.

"We got a record number of votes in Canada's big cities, but we have to get even more," he told host David Gura, adding that the plan to get there involves tackling affordability issues and concerns over safety and housing.