Justin Trudeau’s net approval down 24% from last September

The latest National Campaign Research Poll conducted among 1486 Canadian voters revealed that the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) maintained its slim lead over the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) among decided voters. The CPC garnered the support of 38% of decided voters compared to 36% for the LPC. However, both the CPC and LPC made marginal gains from June at the expense of the NDP (15%) who continued their decline relative to the larger parties. Unsurprisingly the CPC enjoyed very strong support in Alberta (62%), but also held a substantial 5% lead in vote rich Ontario (42%).

Most surprising though was the strong CPC showing in the GTA outside of The City of Toronto (57%) and even managed a 2% lead (39%) in the traditional Liberal stronghold of the City of Toronto proper. This strong showing by the Conservatives in Ontario could be driven by Doug Ford’s PC Party’s decisive electoral victory in June, as well as the Liberal Party of Ontario’s coming in a distant third place and losing official party status.

Justin Trudeau’s popularity continued its slow decline with his approval rating falling 2% (39%) since June (41%). His disapproval rating also continued its gradual increase and changed 2% (47%) from June (45%). This placed his net approval rating (approval – disapproval) at -8% which is down a full 24% from September of last year (16%). In the wake of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, Trudeau suffered from especially low net approval ratings in Western Canada including a net -34% approval rating in Alberta, -14% in British Columbia and -11% in the Prairie provinces. This decrease comes after a difficult year in which the Prime Minister’s government faced a number of controversies including his trip to India, the nationalization of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and the more recent allegations that he groped a female reporter 18 years ago.

The controversy surrounding Maxime Bernier’s departure from the CPC seemed to have had little impact on CPC leader Andrew Scheer, who maintained his relative anonymity with 43% of Canadian’s stating that they had no opinion of him and he received neutral net approval rating of -1%. Andrew Scheer enjoyed positive net approval ratings in the Conservative strongholds of Alberta (7%), the Prairies (6%) and even received a positive net approval rating in Ontario (3%).

A similar proportion of Canadian’s had no opinion of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh (45%), those who did were very negative and gave him a net approval rating of -17%. In particular Alberta gave him an extremely negative net approval rating of -41%, with Ontario giving him -21%, the Atlantic provinces -20% and the Prairies -19% also expressing strong disapproval. While no region of Canada gave him a positive net approval rating Quebec came the closest at -1%.

Despite his declining net approval rating, Justin Trudeau was still seen as the best candidate for Prime Minister by a third of Canadian’s (32%). It should be noted that both Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh were less well known by the electorate. Only 57% of Canadian’s expressed an opinion of Andrew Scheer, as did only 55% for Jagmeet Singh. In comparison 86% of Canadian’s expressed an opinion of Justin Trudeau.

“It appears that Justin Trudeau’s and his party are facing a tough road to reelection next year with steady declines in both voter intent and net approval rating over the past year. Despite this, Justin Trudeau enjoys much higher name recognition then either of his rivals, both of who have failed to capture much public attention. This election, may very well be decided by Canadian’s feelings towards Justin Trudeau personally rather then their support or opposition to either the Liberal or Conservative party.” said Eli Yufest, CEO of Campaign Research Inc.

METHODOLOGY

This online study was conducted by Campaign Research as part of its monthly omnibus study between September 13 and September 14 through an online survey of 1,486 randomly selected Canadian adults who are members of Maru/Blue’s online panel Maru Voice Canada and were provided with various incentives to respond. The panelists were selected to reflect Canada’s age, gender and regional distributions in line with 2016 Statistics Canada census data. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size has an estimated margin of error (which measures sampling variability) of +/- 2.5%, 19 times out of 20.

The results have been weighted by age, gender, and region to match the population according to 2016 Census data. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.

The following screening question was asked in order to determine eligibility for participation in the study "Are you 18 years of age or older and eligible to vote in federal elections?"