Less than a quarter of respondents in a new survey believe Trudeau’s claim that he won’t quit because ‘he has more policies he wants to implement’
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OTTAWA — Nearly half of Canadians think Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is staying on as Liberal leader, despite his party lagging far behind Conservatives in polls, simply because he likes being prime minister, according to a new survey.
Respondents to a new Postmedia-Leger poll were asked whether they thought Trudeau was staying because he wanted to implement new policies, because he wanted to face off against Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, because he didn’t think his party had any better options or whether he just liked his job.
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In total, 47 per cent of respondents thought the reason was: “He likes being prime minister and doesn’t want to leave.”
Less than a quarter (23 per cent) of respondents believe Trudeau’s repeated assertion that he won’t quit because “he has more policies he wants to implement,” whereas 15 per cent think it’s because he wants an electoral face-off with Poilievre.
Trudeau has repeatedly said he will lead the Liberals into the next election despite his unpopularity, saying that he still has much work to do as prime minister. He’s pointed to ongoing reconciliation work with Indigenous populations as well as additional housing and child-care policies.
The Postmedia-Leger poll, meanwhile, found that 66 per cent of Canadians are dissatisfied with Trudeau’s government, compared to 27 per cent who are satisfied, and only 16 per cent think he makes the best prime minister among current party leaders.
The prime minister’s stated reasons for staying don’t appear to ring true even among his own supporters. The Postmedia-Leger poll suggests that less than half (45 per cent) of Liberals think he’s staying on because he has more policies he wants to implement, while one third (32 per cent) believe he just likes being prime minister.
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Leger vice-president Andrew Enns says that should be setting off serious alarm bells for the party.
“When only one in four people are buying into that argument, and even among Liberals they’re not entirely convinced that (Trudeau’s) got a lot of gas left in the tank at 45 per cent… it’s tough,” Enns said.
“The impression of the prime minister… almost becomes that the prime minister is sort of being self-serving by staying there. That’s just another reason for people to not have a good impression of (Trudeau), which is a bit of a problem,” he added.
Poll analyst and 338Canada founder Phillipe J. Fournier noted that the poll showed a surprisingly high number — 26 per cent — of Liberals believe Trudeau is staying on because doesn’t feel there are any suitable replacements for him as leader of the Liberal party
“I think that’s pretty significant,” he said.
“(A) quarter of them think there’s nobody else that could do any better,” Fournier added with a chuckle.
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Despite recently tabling a federal budget focused on “intergenerational fairness” and geared towards millennials and gen-Z Canadians, the percentage of voters intending to support the Trudeau Liberals remains unchanged at 23 per cent, the same as last month. Among voters aged 18 to 34, support for the Liberals is just 14 per cent.
The poll also suggests that support for the Conservative party dipped slightly to 42 per cent (from 44 per cent) since April, but remains a sizeable 19 points ahead of the Liberals. The New Democratic Party polled at 18 per cent.
The poll shows the number of respondents who believe Poilievre would make the best prime minister dipped slightly in the past month, from 32 per cent to 28 per cent.
Support for Trudeau as the best prime ministerial option stayed the same at 16 per cent, while NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s support jumped to 16 per cent from 11 per cent.
Enns says it’s too early to read into the slight drop in both Poilievre’s and the Conservatives’ support among respondents, but that the party is likely happy to put the month of May behind it.
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“The month of May for the Conservatives probably wasn’t the greatest month. They dropped a couple points in the ballot, the impression of the leader as the guy best to be prime minister dropped a little bit,” he said.
He said the Liberals successfully bumped the Conservatives off track on their messaging after Poilievre opened the door to using the notwithstanding clause to push through changes to the criminal justice sector.
“I think if you’re the Liberals, there’s a bit of consternation in the sense that they’re thinking, ‘We had a budget, we put a lot into that budget, it was about ‘generational fairness’ … we took some hard runs at the Conservatives… and we’re still not moving the numbers here’,” Enns said.
The polling was done between May 24 and 26 with a sample of 1,620 Canadians via an online panel. While margins of error can’t be applied to online panels, a probability sample of this size would be plus or minus 2.44 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
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