You’re still construing said line of questioning out of thin air. There’s nothing concrete in the relevant comment to imply that you need to question whether they would prefer Poilievre over any other candidate, rhetorically or otherwise. (Besides, what is the functional difference between like and dislike vs. personal preference in this case? That’s a pedantic point at best and at worst a completely useless one.)

Additionally, why are you presuming that Liberals and Conservatives are the only viable options? Isn’t the whole point of having a wide variety of candidates like we do so you never feel pressured into only one or two options? Sure, you can say there would never be enough votes for, say, the NDP or Green Party for them to win a majority; but there’s still no inherent responsibility of any one voter for those parties to choose another because of that, and much more a societally ubiquitous/systemic issue. If one is forced, by circumstance or otherwise, into picking one or the other candidate out of many, then there are much bigger and more “salient” (as you put it) problems at hand than just which of those choices one prefers.