Angus Reid finds Trudeau, Singh led parties to 50-year-low popularity

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A new data analysis from the Angus Reid Institute has combed through 50 years of political polls and uncovered some historical trends and oddities. Most recently, it found that the popularity of Canadian federal party leaders is at a five-decade-year low. And that’s not one of them — it’s all of them.

Unpopular leaders

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Data gleaned from ODESI — the Ontario Data Documentation, Extraction Service and Infrastructure Initiative — found that, going back to 1974, there has never been a time when the leaders of the three main federal parties have polled as low as this year.

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As of April 2024, the pollster determined, the most popular federal party leader, Pierre Poilievre of the opposition Conservatives, has a net rating of -12 points, calculated by combining favourability with unfavourabililty in polling numbers.

And he’s the most popular. New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh has a net rating of -14, which is his worst ever in seven years as party leader. And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of the governing Liberals has a net approval rating that is downright chilly at -38.

Trudeau trending down

The Prime Minister’s numbers become even more dire when one looks at the trending direction. In data from this decade, Liberal and NDP leaders start out with net positive numbers of around 10 in 2020, while the Conservative leader (then Erin O’Toole) has a rating of -43.

However, by the following year, Trudeau had dropped to -9 while Singh was at just 6, and O’Toole had risen to -28.

The next three years saw the conservative numbers increase in each poll (though never crossing into positive territory) while Trudeau and Singh continued to sink ever lower.

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New Democrats reach all-time low

Historically, the New Democrats have almost never strayed into negative territory, and remain relatively popular in opinion polls, even though they have never won an election.

“In 2011 Jack Layton (NDP), Michael Ignatieff (Liberal) and Stephen Harper (Conservative) were all in negative territory, but the intensity of dislike towards Layton was relatively slight,” the Angus Reid Institute notes in its analysis. “In the late 1980s both John Turner (Liberal) and Brian Mulroney (Conservative) were heavily disapproved of, but Ed Broadbent soared in public opinion polls.”

More recently, however, numbers for the NDP leader (Singh since 2017) have been heading down and staying down. After positive figures in 2020 and 2021, the NDP fell to -1 the following year, and then an even zero. In the latest numbers, Singh has the distinction of holding the worst rating ever, at -14.

Why so low? “It appears that the NDP’s supply and confidence agreement with the deeply unpopular Liberal government has increased Jagmeet Singh’s profile and influence enough that he, too, is now garnering considerable criticism,” the Institute suggests.

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Chretien leads the pack

At the other end of the popularity ladder is Liberal Jean Chretien, who in 1994, early in his 10 years as Prime Minister, scored a record-setting 42 on the scale.

In fact, throughout his time as Prime Minister, he consistently pulled in positive numbers, dipping as low as 14 and as high as 34 during his time in office. Liberal numbers wouldn’t fall below zero again until 2003, the same year Paul Martin took over as Prime Minister and party leader.

Tale of two Trudeaus

In 1974, when the data collection begins, Liberal leader Pierre Trudeau had already been Prime Minister for six years, and his first number was a respectable 14, though still lower than the NDP’s David Lewis (17) and the Conservative’s Robert Stanfield (18). But the bloom was clearly off the rose; in subsequent years his popularity would plummet.

In 1976 he scored a dismal -25 during a period of high inflation, before struggling back to numbers around zero through the rest of the decade, and then a drop in 1981 from which he never recovered. That year saw Trudeau post a -19, which sank to -34 and then -33. In 1985 the Liberal numbers rebounded to -3, but that was no longer Trudeau’s Liberals, as John Turner had taken the helm.

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A similar fate seems to be befalling Trudeau’s son, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In 2014, the first year after he took the party reins, he scored a rating of 7. Two years later, as Prime Minister, his score was 29, and it stayed positive for each of the next two years before beginning to fluctuate.

Since 2021 it has been mired in negative numbers. And just as Singh has brought the New Democrats to its lowest rating since 1974, Trudeau’s current -38 is a low-water mark for the party over the same stretch of time.

In its analysis, the Angus Reid Institute notes: “Prime Minister Trudeau scores his lowest rating in his run as Liberal leader in April, with just 28 per cent approval. What these historic data show is usually the decline of one federal leader engendering the rise in favourability for an alternative; see the elder Trudeau’s fall and the corresponding rise of Brian Mulroney. Our fractured and divisive politics, however, appear to have created an era where all leaders can remain under water at the same time. Evidently a falling tide lowers all boats.”

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