Polls Project A Poilievre Majority Government And Canadians Want to Defund The CBC

A new set of polls came out from Mainstreet Research (commissioned by iPolitics), regarding both insights into the dynamics of the next federal election, as well as Canadians’ attitudes about such things as the taxpayer funding of the CBC.

Although the Conservative Party under its new leader Pierre Poilievre has been performing well in federal polls, it should be emphasized how many pundits and commentators in the legacy media had been predicting a general fall in popularity for the CPC with Poilievre at the helm. The media would use polls during the leadership race showing the CPC performing worse under Poilievre than Jean Charest as proof Poilievre is a political liability, but it seems all those polls did was prove Poilievre used to have much lower name recognition. 

Since Pierre Poilievre has become more of a common political name for Canadians to recognize, the Conservative Party’s polling numbers have risen, and quickly outpaced Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

The Mainstreet poll has the Conservatives with a commanding lead over the Liberals, with 41 percent of the vote, compared to the Liberals 33 percent, which would put Poilievre in charge of a large majority government if those numbers bore-out in an election. 

Those numbers are very good for Poilievre, and reflect a growing trend showing an energized Conservative Party with him as the leader, and the Liberals/NDP seemingly in a state of decline or stagnation.

But what is even more telling about the political situation in Canada is Mainstreet Research’s polling results when it comes to Canadians’ trust in the legacy media, and feeling toward the movement to defund the CBC (and likely other state-subsidized broadcasters). 

Currently, only 22 percent of Canadians strongly trust the legacy media, while 24 percent strongly distrust the media. Granted 33 percent still somewhat trust the media compared to 16 percent who somewhat distrust, but these are still very poor outcomes for the media considering distrust is what the Canadian general public has been increasingly leaning towards over the last several years.

On top of that, when Canadians were asked about their support for specifically defunding the CBC, those strongly or somewhat in favour made up 46 percent of people polled, with only 37 percent being against it, and 17 percent who still have not made their minds up.

It demonstrates that Pierre Poilievre criticizing the legacy media, and campaigning on defunding the CBC are definitely winning issues. The tide of public opinion is moving in an anti-establishment direction, giving the Liberals and NDP far less political territory to fight each other over.

No doubt as Pierre Poilievre and Justin Trudeau clash more in the public eye and Poilievre keeps his focus on convincing Canadians of the superiority of his political agenda, rather than constantly compromising like the two previous Conservative leaders, he will have a fairly easy path to winning the next election, whenever Trudeau gets around to calling it.