So-called feminist PM is losing the female vote

New poll suggests Trudeau’s antics are pushing women to the Tories’ side

Unlike our prime minister, I’ve always figured women are generally a bit smarter than us men.

Certainly, when it comes to the actual doing of dumb things in life, the focus group containing all men usually wins hands down.

Not being in the habit of patronizing people, I’ve never felt the need to do so with half the population, unlike Justin Trudeau and his endless, cringeworthy blather about how he’s a feminist prime minister and how the word “mankind” should suffer the same sad oblivion as our Canadian NHL teams.

Well, not surprisingly, this constant guff has backfired. Yes, despite those tears and protestations, the good looks, the flashy socks and the endless so-sorry-for-something moments, the latest poll shows Trudeau losing the female vote.

In fact, according to a new Ipsos poll of Canadians, it is the Conservative party that’s doing best with female voters, with 35 per cent of current support, compared to the Grits at 30 per cent and the NDP at 26 per cent.

The poll also shows that if an election were held tomorrow, the Tories would win. Ouch. That’s quite a fall from grace for a prime minister the entire world was going gaga about a mere 12 months ago.

But of course an election won’t be held tomorrow, and such midterm polling numbers are a mere snapshot in time. So many things can change in the next couple of years that Trudeau need not send out those “former drama teacher” resumes quite yet – and don’t forget the federal Liberals remain among the western world’s most effective vote-grabbing political machines.

Still, the drop in women’s support in particular is illuminating. After all, we’ve a federal cabinet with a muchpublicized equal gender split, a recent budget supposedly aimed squarely at Canadian women — along with its 358 references to gender — and a steady stream of verbiage on women’s rights, equal pay and so forth.

So how come that isn’t grabbing more support among females, but instead is causing Trudeau’s popularity to fall?

Again, I think women in general are better at spotting a fake. Biology and evolution make it inevitable that the female of our species gets propositioned by the male a heck of a lot more in life than the other way around. Such experience breeds a certain watchfulness and wariness.

Also, I’ve a sneaky feeling the last thing most women want to see is a man breaking into tears every time he apologizes for some ancient misdeed — a tactic Trudeau has stage-managed to a fine art. After a while, it becomes self-defeating. The recent poll would suggest that point has been reached.

Meanwhile, Darrell Bricker, the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, suggests it was Trudeau’s recent jaunt to India that was the catalyst for this drop in support.

“Outside of an election campaign, you tend not to see numbers move as quickly as these numbers have moved, and the trigger point seems to have been that trip to India. What it seems to have done is created a bit of a bursting of the dam,” said Bricker.

All that posing with his wife and kids in ceremonial garb while, on the same tour, a Canadian once convicted of a terrorist attack wandered into an official diplomatic gathering unopposed — that is the ultimate in political style over substance. It was a national embarrassment that has caused many folk to re-evaluate their previous acceptance of Canada’s selfie loving leader.

So what’s in store during the second half of this primetime political soap opera?

Well, Liberal party grandees can read polls better than most, so they’ll be having a stern word with their mannequin-in-chief.

Expect the tears to dry up, the apologies to end, while the colourful socks and outlandish traditional clothing are replaced by shades of blue, black and brown.

Chris Nelson is a Calgary writer.