A Tale of Two Ridings: Why Carney, Poilievre’s Neighbouring Regions Are the Only Safe Leaders’ Seats

Liberal Leader Mark Carney (L) and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. The Canadian Press

OTTAWA—With the federal election shaping up to be a two-way race between the Conservatives and Liberals, front-runners Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney are also the only party leaders whose seats are considered safe at this point in the campaign.

The ridings of the two leaders are also right next to each other, but with different characteristics that, together with the political dynamics, make up for the stark difference in candidate choice.

Leaders’ Seats

According to the latest projections of polling aggregator 338 Canada, as of April 9, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s B.C. riding of Burnaby Central sees the Liberals leading with 41 percent of the popular support, followed by the Conservatives at 31 percent and the NDP at 25 percent. Singh has been the MP for the riding—formerly Burnaby South before the 2022 electoral boundaries redistribution—since 2019. The riding is a longtime NDP stronghold. The polling aggregator puts the odds of Singh winning the seat currently at less than 1 percent.

In Beloeil—Chambly, the riding of Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, although 338 Canada puts the odds of Blanchet winning his seat at 81 percent, it is a close race between the Bloc and the Liberals. Currently the Bloc is polling at 42 percent of voter support in the riding, while the Liberals are at 37 percent. Blanchet was re-elected in the riding in 2021 with 53 percent of the vote, while the Liberal candidate came in second with 24 percent. The riding, created as part of the 2012 redistribution, encompasses a portion of Quebec formerly part of the Chambly—Borduas riding, which had been held by the Bloc since 1993 except for the 2011 “Orange Wave” election that saw an NDP surge, and 2015, when the NDP won in the riding.

In Green Party Leader Elizabeth May’s B.C. riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands, currently the Conservatives are leading with 33 percent and the Greens and the Liberals are at 30 percent. May has been the MP in the riding since 2011. Before that, the riding had been represented by the Conservatives since 2004.

In Beauce, Quebec, where People’s Party of Canada (PPC) Leader Maxime Bernier is seeking to regain the seat he once held, his party has 7 percent of the popular support. The Conservatives are leading with 64 percent of the popular support in that riding, putting the odds of a Conservative win there at more than 99 percent.

Meanwhile, in Poilievre’s Ottawa-area riding of Carleton, the Conservatives are leading with 50 percent versus the Liberals at 40 percent, with Poilievre having a 93 percent chance of winning. The area has been represented by Poilievre since 2004 and was held by the Liberals before that.

In Carney’s riding, the neighbouring riding of Nepean, the Liberals are leading with 57 percent against the Conservatives at 34 percent, with the seat considered greater than 99 percent safe for the Liberals. The riding has been represented by incumbent Liberal MP Chandra Arya since 2015, but the party announced in March 2025 that it had revoked Arya’s candidacy in the upcoming election based on “a thorough review” of his eligibility.

Carney and Poilievre

Peter Graefe, a political science professor at McMaster University, says it is expected that Poilievre and Carney will keep their seats given the current popularity of their parties.

He also said both ridings have “strong bases” for the two parties, since Carleton is a more rural riding that the Tories traditionally do well in, while Nepean is a suburban riding that has “historically had a fairly strong presence of the Liberal Party.”

Similar to other countries, Canada has a rural-urban voter divide where voters for left-leaning parties like the Liberals and NDP are over-represented in cities, while rural areas that are more reliant on industries like farming, mining, oil production, and logging are more likely to vote for the Conservatives.

Graefe notes that the suburbs of Nepean are likely to have more public service workers who are “not as dependent on paying the absolute lowest tax possible to get by,” leading them to vote for the Liberals. Government workers are overwhelmingly concentrated in Ottawa, with over 155,500 of the nearly 368,000 federal public service members located in the National Capital Region, according to Treasury Board 2024 figures.

Other Parties

Graefe says a polling aggregator like 338 Canada doesn’t give accurate polling for each individual riding but only projections based on differences in federal polling averages when compared to the previous election.

“In a situation where the NDP support has kind of gone down by half, and the Liberals are up by about 10 points, and the Conservatives are up by six, … it will tend to show a lot of incumbents losing their seats,” he said.

Graefe said polling projections for ridings don’t account for the enthusiasm people in a specific riding might have for the party leader. He said swing models can miss “very specific local dynamics” such as differences in wealth, urbanization, and whether the party leader is “loved locally” and has “their own kind of coattails that allow them to buck the trend.”

Because Singh won his riding by just 10 percent in 2021 and 6 percent in 2019, Graefe said the NDP’s overall decline in popularity doesn’t bode well for his re-election chances. But Blanchet, who won re-election by nearly 30 points in 2021 and 27 points in 2019, is in a “more comfortable position,” he said.

May is also facing a more difficult situation in her riding. She won re-election by nearly 30 points in 2019, but in 2021 that lead shrank to 15 points, with the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP making gains. Graefe said that May has been sharing the party spotlight with deputy leader turned co-leader Jonathan Pedneault, and that many voters in May’s riding may be voting “strategically” for the Liberals in order to prevent a Conservative from winning.

In the case of the PPC’s Bernier, after leaving the Conservatives in 2018, he hasn’t again won the riding he had held since 2006.