What voters say are their top 4 issues
Almost three weeks into the campaign for the 44th Canadian election, and Leger research shows that voters are on the move. Erin O’toole’s Conservative Party of Canada is up five points from pre- election polling to 34 per cent, Jagmeet Singh’s New Democratic Party has increased its vote share to 24 per cent, and the Liberal campaign has yet to take off — with Justin Trudeau’s party sitting at 30 per cent, down from 35 per cent.
In the past week, our polling shows that 41 per cent of Canadians say their opinion of Justin Trudeau has deteriorated, while 23 per cent say it has improved for Erin O’toole and Jagmeet Singh.
As pollsters, we wanted to understand the most important issues influencing these shifts, and what voters will be thinking about at the ballot box on Sept. 20. Are the parties’ messages connecting with voters in the right way?
To fast- forward through the barrage of election-speak, we used research to dig deep into the issues that are truly important to Canadians. Our team tested the main ideas being discussed in this election. Using an advanced analytics technique called Maxdiff we surveyed respondents and asked them to make tradeoffs on the importance of issues. This method allows us to calculate the relative importance of key issues, because respondents must make tough choices between competing priorities — what is most important to them and what is least important.
With the Maxdiff methodology, the percentage given to each option is the relative importance of that issue out of 100 per cent. For example, an issue that scores 10 per cent is twice as important to voters as an issue getting five per cent.
Out of the 13 key issues tested in an online survey of 2005 Canadians, we learned that the top four are: the cost of living ( 13.5 per cent), increasing funding for health care (11.5 per cent), post-pandemic economic recovery ( 10.9 per cent), and managing the pandemic ( 10.1 per cent). Almost without exception, these topics top the chart regardless of age, gender and region.
The second tier of issues are: taxation ( 8.5 per cent), housing affordability ( 8.4 per cent), climate ( 8.2 per cent), reducing poverty ( 7.7 per cent), and reducing government debt and deficit (6.7 per cent). In the third tier we see pharmacare ( 6.0 per cent), Indigenous reconciliation ( 3.7 per cent), childcare ( 2.7 per cent) and immigration (2.2 per cent).
This ranking of issues provides the road map to what Canadians will pay attention to and — for the higher ranked issues — what will influence how ballots are cast on election day. With this targeted knowledge, we considered how we would advise the national parties over the days and weeks to come.
Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party should continue to focus messages on management of the COVID-19 pandemic. While Canadians know the crisis isn’t yet over, this government’s focus on vaccinations and on protecting the population has built a great deal of loyalty for the Grits.
Liberal hopes for an electoral rebound may also lie in focusing on climate change. While environment is taking a less prominent role than it did in the 2015 and 2019 elections, it is not off the table as a major issue — and the Liberals have depth and breadth as leaders on the topic.
While climate change ranked as a second- tier priority overall, it does polarize Canadians and is among the top four concerns for those who support the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, whose votes the Liberals would clearly like to earn. In addition, undermining the Conservatives’ recently adopted climate change plans could blunt the Tories’ efforts to grow support in Quebec and British Columbia.
Interestingly, childcare is almost at the bottom of our issues list. The Liberals’ recent $ 30- billion commitment to a national $ 10/day childcare strategy might gain more traction if the Liberals were to reframe it as a key component of the conversation around Canadian’s top- rated topic: cost of living.
Erin O’toole and the Conservatives are off to a good start in this campaign, because they have hit the right chords of voter sentiment. Their platform speaks to post- pandemic economic recovery and several other priority issues. So far, the Conservatives have maintained a measured approach to reducing government spending and balancing the budget — by providing an alternative to the Liberal’s spending ways.
For the Tories to be successful in winning a national government, they likely need to win more seats by converting 2019 Bloc Québécois voters. And in Quebec, the environment is a critical issue. The Conservatives are currently the lowest ranked party on the issue of climate change — so they may win or lose in la belle province based on their credibility on environmental policies.
The personally popular Jagmeet Singh and the NDP own the mid- tier of issues for Canadians: addressing housing affordability, climate change and its effects on Canada, and reducing poverty and homelessness. If we were advising this war room, we would suggest tying these bread- and- butter social platforms directly into our top- rated cost- of- living issues.
We took a second look at our research around Indigenous reconciliation as an issue and concluded that for Canadians today, this is a topic that is too important to be addressed in an election campaign. Regardless of which government is elected in September, they will be held accountable by all Canadians to do the right thing for the country — and specifically for Indigenous communities.
Heading into debate week, the question is: can the parties refine their messages around their platforms to connect to what is really important to voters? As the saying goes: if everything is important, then nothing is.