That’s a pretty devastating Angus Reid Institute poll that came out on Friday. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals 13 points behind Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives. Liberals in third place in every province west of Ontario, and across Atlantic Canada. (The perception in Alberta is that Trudeau is designing his energy policy to shore up support in British Columbia. If so, it’s not working.) Liberals 32 points behind the Conservatives among men 35 to 54, and only tied with them among women of the same age. Only 49 per cent of self-declared 2015 Liberal voters planning to vote Liberal this year. Net approval for Justin Trudeau (approve minus disapprove) at -39. Trudeau’s approval lower than Chrétien’s, Mulroney’s or Harper’s this far into their term as Prime Minister.
I have no particular sense that Angus is a particularly anti-Liberal firm, but if you want to see this poll as an outlier, other sources offer only moderately more comfort. Nanos has the Liberals only three points back, but the Liberals have been behind the Conservatives for two months now. The 338 Canada poll aggregator has the Liberals 2.7 points back, the CBC’s aggregator 7.3 points back.
The Liberals have been telling themselves (and Jody Wilson-Raybould) that they can’t do this or that, or that they must do this or that, because “it’s an election year” since last September, when it wasn’t yet an election year. It’s starting to get close to election month and, if the Liberal leader has a rabbit in that hat, it’s getting time to start pulling.
One other element of context: In provincial elections in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Prince Edward Island over the last year, the provincial Liberal parties didn’t just have a bad night: in each case, the Liberal party won its lowest share of the popular vote than in any election they’ve contested seriously since Confederation. (The Alberta Liberals did worse in the elections of 1940 and 1944 only because they ran only two and zero candidates in those elections, respectively.) It’s fashionable to note that voters often go one way federally and another provincially. Sure, sometimes, but they didn’t in 2014-15, when they elected Liberals in Ontario and Quebec, and Rachel Notley’s New Democrats in Alberta, before electing Trudeau’s federal Liberals.
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See Also:
(1) Public prosecutor takes aim at SNC-Lavalin’s court bid for remediation deal
(2) Saskatchewan premier plans to appeal carbon tax decision to Supreme Court
(3) China-Canada tensions are no passing storm
(4) The decline of the celebrity Prime Minister
(5) The case for a wealth tax in Canada
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