More than three -quarters of Canadians believe that disinformation has had an impact on the outcome of the federal elections, suggests a new poll.
The LEGER survey, which sampled more than 1,500 Canadian adults from April 29 to May 1, suggests that 19% of people think that false information or disinformation have had a major impact on the election.
Almost a third (32%) said they had a moderate impact, while 26% said they had a minor impact on election results.
Only nine percent of Canadians said the disinformation had had no impact on the election.
The survey, which has been conducted online and cannot be given a margin of error, suggests that people in Alberta were most likely to think that disinformation affected the election, 86%.
Seventy-nine percent of residents of Quebec, 76% of people in Ontario and 73% of people in British Columbia said that disinformation has had an impact.
While 80% of men said that disinformation played a role, 74% of women said the same thing.
Voters aged 18 to 34 were the most likely to think that disinformation affected the election, at 81%, against 77% of people aged 35 to 54 and 74% of people aged 55 and over.
Liberal supporters were the least likely to think that disinformation played a role in the elections, with 74%, against 83% of conservative voters and 87% of NPD voters.
Andrew Enns, executive vice-president of Leger for Center de Canada, said there had been a lot of discussions in recent years of foreign interference in Canadian politics and that the question could be in the minds of voters.
During the electoral campaign, Canadian security officials said they had identified a foreign online operation targeting a federal conservative candidate for Chinese government policies. Security and intelligence threats to the election working group also said that they have spotted an online information operation linked to the Chinese government which focused on Prime Minister Mark Carney.
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Laurie-Anne Kempton, assistant secretary of the firm for communications, said in late April that Canadians could go to the polls with confidence in the integrity and security of the system.
Federal officials have also said that voters should be looking for online disinformation linked to electoral debates.
Enns said that “disinformation” is a great umbrella term and that the respondents of the survey may have cited things like rumors and claims on candidates while fulfilling the LEGER investigation.
“I think it could be a kind of catch-all,” he said. “Canadians tend to do not love negative campaigns and negative campaign advertisements, for example, and therefore sometimes I wonder … Is this in a way in this disinformation?”
The survey also suggests that a little less than two -thirds of Canadians (65%) trust that the election results were accurate.
Thirty-six percent declared to trust the results “a lot”, while 29% said they trusted them “a lot”.
However, 16% said they only trusted the results “a little” and 13% said they did not trust them “at all”.
Residents of Quebec were the most likely to trust the results, 77%, compared to 70% in British Columbia, 62% in Ontario and 53% in Alberta.
More people aged 55 and over declared that they had confidence in the results, at 72%, against 61% of people aged 18 to 34 and 59% of 35 to 54 years.
Liberals were most likely to trust the results, 96%, compared to 74% of NPD voters and only 44% of the Conservatives.
Enns said that the results indicate an unfortunate but “very real” deterioration in people’s faith in institutions.
“There is a party break in the trust where conservative supporters are less confident, unfortunately,” he said, adding that distrust could be due to people hearing interference or conspiracy theories.
Enns said that LEGER did not question the Canadians of disinformation or confidence in the results after the 2021 elections.
The Canada Elections website indicates that around half (52%) of people who responded to a study by national voters thought that the propagation of false online information was a problem in the 2021 – 50% elections said the same thing about the 2019 elections.
The study revealed that a quarter of respondents thought that foreign countries or groups trying to interfere with the elections or political opinions of Canadians had been a problem in the 2021 elections, against 31% in 2019.
Elections Canada says that almost one in 10 respondents thought that false information had a major impact on the outcome of the 2021 elections, and 20% thought it had a moderate impact. Eighteen percent of respondents said he had only a minor impact on the result, while only two percent said he had had no impact. The agency claims that these results were similar to those obtained after the 2019 elections.
Elections Canada says four percent thought that problems of foreign interference had a major impact on the 2021 elections, nine percent thought of having had a moderate impact, 10% thought that it had a minor impact and a percent said that it had no impact.
The professional survey industry, the Canadian Research Research Council, says online surveys cannot be given a margin of error because they do not sample the population.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press