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OTTAWA – Monday’s election is a statistical tie, says a new poll that found Canadians feel the election has been divisive and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has led a cynical and angry campaign
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The Postmedia-Leger poll found a huge majority, seven out of ten Canadians, agreed the campaign had been more divisive and confrontational than previous federal elections.
Andrew Enns, Leger executive vice-president, said the company did not have historical comparisons for that number, but that feeling transcended party lines. Voters of every stripe, except Green supporters, found the campaign had been more divisive than previous elections.
“Quite frankly, Liberals and Conservatives and NDPers are pretty much in unison on this,” he said.
While 76 per cent of Conservative voters found the election divisive, Liberal voters agreed in similar numbers (74 per cent).
Enns also asked Canadians how they felt Trudeau and Erin O’Toole, the two front-runners to be prime minister, had handled the race.
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When asked who appeared angry during the campaign, 37 per cent of Canadians said Trudeau, while only 20 per cent said O’Toole.
More than a third of respondents (35 per cent) said Trudeau appeared to be more dismissive to those he disagreed with compared to 26 per cent who said that about O’Toole.
Trudeau was also found to have run a cynical campaign (35 per cent) compared to O’Toole at 30 per cent.
The survey showed almost half of people (44 per cent) thought Trudeau would say anything to appeal to voters, compared to 35 per cent who said that about O’Toole.
Conservative voters were the most likely to say Trudeau had been angry and run a cynical campaign, but Enns said it was not simply a partisan response.
“The prime minister has been using the word cynical deliberately and so we want to put that in there as a question and there’s a little bit more stickiness to him on that,” he said. ”Certainly, a smaller fraction, but even 20 per cent of current Liberal voters, would say the prime minister seems to have been a bit more on the angry side.”
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Trudeau did hold an edge over the Tory leader on having presented a clear plan for the post-pandemic world, with 32 per cent of respondents saying that with only 25 per cent saying O’Toole had done that.
Nationally, Leger has the race in a dead heat with the Conservatives polling at 33 per cent of decided voters and the Liberals at 32. The NDP is at 19 per cent, the People’s Party of Canada at six per cent and the Greens at two per cent.
“We’ve got the Tories in the lead slightly, but effectively it’s a neck-and-neck race,” said Enns. “It’s really hard to see anybody getting a majority out of these numbers.”
In Ontario, Leger has the Liberals at 38 per cent, the Conservatives at 35 and the NDP at 18. In Quebec the Liberals are at 33 per cent and the Bloc Qubcois is close behind at 32 per cent, much higher than they were earlier in the campaign. The other parties are trailing far behind.
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Enns said the winner would be determined by how effective the parties were at getting out their vote. The survey showed 22 per cent of Canadians, with slightly higher numbers for NDP and Bloc supporters, might still change their minds, but more than two thirds of Canadians have either made up their mind or already voted.
“I don’t believe it’s going to shift a great deal over the next couple of days. I say that because it hasn’t really shifted much in the last two weeks,” said Enns.
The survey showed that for the most part, the debates, protests against the prime minister, and even the crisis in Afghanistan, had little impact on voters’ minds, but 43 per cent of people said the pandemic influenced how they intend to vote.
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Enns said with so many voters concerned about COVID the situation in Alberta could become a factor.
The leaders’ debate made little impact in the rest of Canada, but a third of voters in Quebec said they were a major factor in their decision. The English-language debate featured a question on discriminatory laws in the province that drew the ire of Quebec’s premier for suggesting the province was racist.
Enns said that caused a major reversal for the Bloc Qubcois, which had dropped into the mid-to-low 20s.
“They have definitely bounced back. They bounced back to literally where they were in 2019.”
Enns also asked about the protests that have dogged the PM throughout the campaign. They have at times forced Trudeau to cancel events and he once had gravel thrown at him.
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Enns said most Canadians respect the right to protest, but 49 per cent of respondents said they did not like these protests in particular and find them unCanadian, though 63 per cent of respondents said they understand the frustration.
The survey found 50 per cent of respondents felt sorry for the prime minister, but 43 per cent believed he was somewhat responsible.
Enns said many had wondered if Trudeau would get a boost from the attacks but that did not appear to be the case.
“In terms of the hypotheses that maybe these protests were playing into the prime minister’s hands? Maybe not. If I look at the responses, I don’t know, I think people were a little bit conflicted about the whole thing.”
Leger reached out to 1,541 Canadians through an online sample between Sept. 14 and Sept. 17. As an online sample, Leger’s poll doesn’t have a traditional margin of error, but a similar sample would hold a margin of 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
• Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com | Twitter:
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