Canadians think vote a power grab, poll finds
OTTAWA • Nearly seven out of 10 Canadians think that Liberal party Leader Justin Trudeau could have waited until at least next year before calling the current federal election, and a large majority believe he did it now as a “power grab” to win a majority government, according to a new Leger poll.
As the federal election enters its second week, the Liberals’ lead over the Conservative party has dwindled to barely two per cent as both the Tories and the New Democratic Party each slightly increased their support over the past few days, according to the Léger poll conducted for Postmedia.
Now, Liberal support among decided voters sits at 33 per cent (down from 35 per cent last week) whereas the Conservatives and the NDP each increased one point to hit 31 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.
“What we have at the end of the first week of the campaign is both opposition parties nibbling a bit from the Liberals,” said Leger executive vice-president Andrew Enns, adding that the race has “tightened up for sure.”
Throughout the first week of the campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has faced repeated questions from both media and opposition parties about why he decided to dissolve the minority parliament earlier this month and plunge the country into a federal election, particularly in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
It turns out that many Canadians may be wondering the same, considering that a whopping 69 per cent of respondents said they believed that the election could have waited until next year or even later before becoming necessary.
On the other hand, barely one respondent out of five (21 per cent) thought that now was a good time to have an election.
To justify his decision to send Canadians to the polls on September 20, Trudeau has argued the minority parliament had become “toxic” and “dysfunctional” and that Canadians deserved a voice in choosing the plan that would lead the economic recovery.
But opposition parties have argued that it amounted to a “power grab” by Trudeau because he wanted to turn his minority government into a majority in light of favourable polling numbers for his party.
When asked which of those two explanations they believed, a vast majority of respondents (62 per cent) said they agreed with the “power grab” argument.
“That could be some of what has dragged down the Liberal ballot fortunes,” said Enns.
When later asked to choose one of six different reasons which they believed really explained why Canadians are headed to the polls, only a combined 30 per cent of respondents chose one of Trudeau’s two arguments that parliament was toxic or that Canadians deserved a voice in the post-pandemic recovery.
That’s “not exactly a resounding endorsement,” Enns said.
But Enns said the issue is likely to wane from Canadians’ memories as the campaign continues, and most (59 per cent) of people who said they didn’t believe this election was necessary now told Leger it would not change how they decide their vote.
Yet a total of 34 per cent said it did in fact lessen the likelihood to vote Liberal in September, including among 41 per cent of NDP voters.
“Those are voters who, if their ballot support is going to move, nine times out of 10, it moves to the Liberals,” said Enns. “So the fact that over 40 per cent of NDP supporters say that this early call makes them less likely to vote Liberal might be an interesting number to keep in the back of our mind when things start to get a little hot closer to election day.
“There will be bigger moments in this campaign and people will forget, but I would say it’s probably hampered (the Liberals) a little bit more than they thought it might when they called this election a little over a week ago,” he added.
Who had the best first week of campaigning? In yet another sign that Canadians may not be paying much attention to the campaign yet, over one third of respondents (36 per cent) said they didn’t know, whereas Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives went neck and neck with 17 per cent, 16 per cent and 15 per cent of votes respectively.
The Leger poll was conducted via a web survey of 2002 Canadian adults between Aug. 20 and 22. No margin of error can be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey.