Trudeau and the Liberal’s Approval Takes a Bellyflop

The first of what seems to be the start of opinion polls that have been affected by the pipeline protests and Teck Frontier mine have started to come in, and it isn’t looking good for Trudeau and the Liberal Party.

Angus Reid’s survey of 5000 Canadians has shown that the Trudeau and the Liberal Party’s popularity recovery after the Iranian attack on Ukrainian flight killed 57 Canadians has completely evaporated. 

All of this has added up an absolute cratering of Liberals in the polls against the Conservatives. The Liberal Party in this poll sits at only 26% a drop of 4 points with the Conservatives surging by 7 points to 34%. 

The New Democratic Party has even gained 2 points, which now puts them at 21% in this poll making the NDP close in the polls to the Liberals than the Liberals are to the Conservatives.

Trudeau’s popularity used to be as high as 43% in January, which isn’t too bad for a Prime Minister sitting in a minority government, but by the end of February, his approval now sits at 33% collapse of 10 points in just a single month.

Along with the lack of popularity, his disapproval rating has predictably gone up as well. It was at 51% during January but shot up to 64%, which is a 13 point increase in part due to half of those who used to have no opinion on Trudeau all siding against him.

It seems that the recent actions and inaction on energy issues satisfy very few people. Whether you are more concerned about energy development or environmental protection Trudeau has not come across as decisively in favour of either.

The opinion polling on how Canadian’s think the economy is doing is also quite grim for the Liberals with the vast majority thinking it will remain as it is or get worse in some way. 

It is unclear how the Liberal minority government should stabilize its popularity and or whether or not this will fuel an effort to trigger another election by their political opponents. Although it has been a while since the Bloc Québécois has had so much power, Trudeau and the Liberals have also infrequently been this unpopular.

Anything could happen.