Top election issues shifting from U.S. threats to affordability, health care, Vote Compass data suggests

Verity Stevenson · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 23, 2025 2:49 PM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

When the predetermination run started precocious past month, the ballot-box question connected astir voters' minds appeared to beryllium which person and governmental enactment is champion suited to look American threats to Canada's economy and sovereignty. 

But caller Vote Compass information suggests that could beryllium changing. 

Ahead of the enactment leaders' debates past week, 25.2 per cent of the 319,210 responses to this circumstantial question said Canada-U.S. relations was the astir important predetermination contented to them

Now, with an further 101,295 responses logged aft the debates, lone 19.6 per cent of respondents said this was the astir important contented — and different issues person risen successful importance.

The system and finances is present the apical issue, at 24.7 per cent — nevertheless that percent itself hasn't changed overmuch implicit time. Instead, different issues are gaining prominence. 

For example, earlier the debates, affordability and the outgo of surviving hovered astatine astir 10 per cent, but jumped to 12 per cent afterward. 

The needle moved connected wellness attraction arsenic well — which NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh brought up often successful the debates — jumping a mates percent points, from astir six per cent to 8 per cent. 

Other issues that saw a bump aft the debates see housing, societal justice, immigration, the environment, acquisition and crime. Energy resources stayed the aforesaid astatine astir 1 per cent, portion authorities operations (public services, corruption, transparency, etc.), subject and defence, societal payment and overseas relations took a dip successful value for users. 

Costed platforms are out

With the system apical of caput for voters, the Liberals, NDP and Conservatives person each released their costed platforms. 

The Liberals promised to make gross by boosting investment. The Conservatives said they would wage for important taxation cuts by slashing authorities spending and upping gross from home-building and argumentation changes, specified arsenic repealing Ottawa's Impact Assessment Act. The NDP said it would put billions successful wellness attraction and taxation the wealthy. 

The NDP, Liberal and Bloc Québécois leaders person each criticized Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's platform because it includes imaginable gross streams successful its shortage calculations, resulting successful a smaller projected shortage than the Liberals. 

"Those numbers are a joke," Carney said. "The Conservative mathematics is not mathing," Singh said. "They privation to chopped truthful overmuch that what I thought astatine archetypal is: Elon Musk, delight get away," quipped Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet.

WATCH | How the Liberal and Conservative platforms compare 

Mahmood Nanji, a argumentation chap astatine Western University's Ivey Business School, points retired that each the mathematics could change. 

"There's a large woody of uncertainty, truthful if we bash really extremity up successful a recession a batch of these projections volition not beryllium precisely the mode that they were expected to unfold," Nanji told CBC News connected Tuesday. 

He says the main quality betwixt the Conservative and Liberal platforms are Poilievre's absorption connected affordability and crime, portion Carney's absorption is connected "catalyzing backstage investment."

Other experts person raised issues with Poilievre's unorthodox attack of including imaginable gross successful his costed platform.

It's portion of what prompted Kevin Page, a erstwhile parliamentary fund officer, to springiness the Conservatives lone a passing people alternatively than a "good" one.

"It's not a bully budgeting practice," said Page, who has been crunching the parties' level numbers for the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy astatine the University of Ottawa.

The Liberals stay up successful elector intentions astatine astir 43 per cent, though the spread betwixt them and the Conservative enactment has decreased slightly, according to CBC's Poll Tracker. 

Developed by a squad of societal and statistical scientists from Vox Pop Labs, Vote Compass is simply a civic engagement exertion offered successful Canada exclusively by Radio Canada/CBC. 

Submissions to the question of which predetermination contented was astir important to users took the signifier of open-text responses which were past classified into categories utilizing a connection processing algorithm. 

Unlike online sentiment polls, respondents to Vote Compass are not pre-selected. Similar to sentiment polls, however, the information are a non-random illustration from the colonisation and person been weighted successful bid to approximate a typical sample. Vote Compass information person been weighted by gender, age, education, region, connection spoken successful the home, and partisanship to guarantee the illustration creation reflects that of the voting-eligible colonisation of Canada according to census information and electoral data.