Little enthusiasm for Trump in Canada
A recent poll shows an increasing number of Canadians are pessimistic about the Trump presidency.
Nationally, 77 per cent of Canadians feel “pessimistic and worried” about the next three years with Donald Trump as the U.S. president, according to Angus Reid Institute data released Thursday.
That’s a nine-point increase since last February, when 68 per cent were pessimistic.
The data was collected in December in an online survey of 1,516 Canadian adults, carrying a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20. The survey was self-commissioned and paid for by Angus Reid.
Alberta remains the Canadian stronghold of Trump support, where 29 per cent of respondents indicated a positive impression of the Trump administration’s performance since inauguration day. Still, 49 per cent had a negative impression, in that province.
However, apart from Alberta, numbers from the rest of the country are fairly similar. The lowest percentage of positivity was nine per cent in Atlantic Canada.
Saskatchewan and Manitoba combined represented the region with the second highest percentage of positivity, registering 14 per cent.
Combined regions, such as Saskatchewan and Manitoba, are represented that way because the sample sizes for individual provinces are too small to have them stand alone. As such, approval numbers could be far off. In Saskatchewan, the sample size was 52. In Manitoba, there were 67 respondents. The small sample in Saskatchewan on its own would carry a margin of error in the 15-point range.
Sample sizes are limited by survey method and funding, according to Ian Holliday, an Angus Reid research associate. However, in some Angus Reid surveys, sample sizes for less populous provinces are boosted so they can be represented individually, he said. He also noted that the institute tries to have its samples mimic census data to glean results representative of a cross section of each province.
“Is roughly 100 people across the two provinces, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, an ideal sample? No. Certainly not,” he said. “But it is the sample that is available to us and most representative of the national population.”