{"id":42620,"date":"2018-03-11T03:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-03-11T07:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=42620"},"modified":"2018-03-10T10:30:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T15:30:41","slug":"polls-begin-to-reflect-public-disillusionment-with-trudeau-after-gaffe-filled-india-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/03\/11\/polls-begin-to-reflect-public-disillusionment-with-trudeau-after-gaffe-filled-india-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Polls begin to reflect public disillusionment with Trudeau after gaffe-filled India trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

After all the PR blunders, it’s amazing that the Liberals are still riding as high in public opinion polls<\/a> as they are:<\/p>\n

By now it is clear the federal Liberals are in some difficulty with the public. Much excitement attended that Ipsos poll earlier this week showing them trailing the Conservatives for the first time, and by a not inconsequential margin: 38 to 33. But it\u2019s not just Ipsos.<\/p>\n

Forum Research, which gives the Tories a 12-point lead, may be an outlier, but Nanos\u2019s latest four-week rolling poll shows the Liberal lead has shrunk to less than four points from eight points in December; Abacus Data, similarly, now has them just three points ahead, the narrowest margin they have found since the election.<\/p>\n

Overall, the CBC\u2019s Poll Tracker website now puts the two parties more or less level, based on a weighted average of the polls, at 36 per cent. Contrast that with the Liberals\u2019 first year in office, when they maintained a lead of as much as 20 points, or even their second, when they led by eight to 10. Something is clearly up.<\/p>\n

The reason is not hard to find, nor is it unusual: the prime minister\u2019s personal approval rating has declined markedly. To be sure, he remains the Liberals\u2019 chief asset: Nanos still shows 40 per cent of Canadians put Justin Trudeau as their preferred prime minister. Sixty per cent say he \u201chas the qualities of a good political leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The immediate explanation for the prime minister\u2019s cratering appeal is the recent official visit to India, conceded on all sides to have been a disaster. There\u2019s no doubt this has taken its toll \u2014 Ipsos finds more than twice as many Canadians of the view that the visit was \u201cnegative for Canada-India relations\u201d than the contrary.<\/p>\n

But if the India visit accelerated the decline, it is also true that the prime minister\u2019s appeal has been fading for some time. The India trip may have crystallized certain perceptions of him, but the ingredients have been evident for a while. People do not form impressions of a leader\u2019s character and abilities instantaneously, but only as the result of an accumulation of incidents and impressions.<\/p>\n

The Tories\u2019 pre-election attempts to discredit Trudeau as \u201cjust not ready\u201d failed in the light of a long campaign in which he persuaded increasing numbers of Canadians that he was. I don\u2019t imagine many would have said he was much of a deep thinker \u2014 his worst moments are almost always when he tries to pretend he is \u2014 but people gave him credit for sincerity, personal decency, idealism, and a native political ability that seemed to grow throughout the campaign.<\/p>\n

But now? Asked to name the first quality that came to mind, I suspect increasing numbers might be more inclined to mention his cynicism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After all the PR blunders, it’s amazing that the Liberals are still riding as high in public opinion polls as they are: By now it is clear the federal Liberals are in some difficulty with the public. Much excitement attended that Ipsos poll earlier this week showing them trailing the Conservatives for the first time, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,23,53],"tags":[887,908,289],"class_list":["post-42620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-india","category-politics","tag-justintrudeau","tag-liberalparty","tag-polls"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-b5q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42621,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42620\/revisions\/42621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}