Trudeau attack ads are working, poll finds
Tories successful in running down his abilities, but still room for surprises
It was tacky, expensive and seemingly ubiquitous.
But the months-long Conservative TV advertisement in which a team of office managers come to the consensus that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is “just not ready” for the job of prime minister may have done its job, according to a new Forum Research poll.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the spots have done anything to advance the re-election bid of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.
The survey asked: “Is Justin Trudeau ready to be prime minister or not?”
Nearly half of the respondents, 47 per cent, said the Liberal party leader was not ready.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the 18to 34-year-old segment looked most favourably on Trudeau, while Quebec and Alberta respondents were the most hostile regions for the Liberal leader.
The results show the Tory ads have been effective in running down Trudeau’s abilities, despite eight years as an MP and two years as party leader, said pollster Lorne Bozinoff.
But it has also minimized expectations, leaving room for Trudeau to surprise before the Oct. 19 election.
But the results weren’t all rosy for Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, either.
A majority of respondents in the poll, 68 per cent, said they felt Harper had been in the job for too long.
Harper still gets some affection from respondents in his home province of Alberta, where only half, 49 per cent, felt his nearly 10year-stint at 24 Sussex Dr. had gone on too long, the poll found.
The New Democratic Party leader has managed to position himself somewhere between the perceived inexperience of Trudeau and that of Harper’s overstayed welcome. Nearly half of the poll’s respondents, 47 per cent, said they believed Thomas Mulcair was ready to be prime minister.
In Quebec, where most of the NDP’s seats are located and where Mulcair served as a provincial environment minister before entering federal politics, it may be a case of familiarity breeding respect as 55 per cent of Quebecers felt he was ready for the country’s top job.
When it comes to the overall horse race, the battle between the NDP and the Liberals is tightening, while the Conservative party continues to trail in third place, the latest weekly Forum poll found.
Support for Mulcair’s party has dropped slightly, though it still leads with the support of 36 per cent of the 1,384 respondents.
Trudeau’s Liberals are also up slightly with the backing of 32 per cent of Canadians. But Harper’s Tories are now far behind the others, registering 24-per-cent support.
The poll, which was conducted between last Sunday and Tuesday, is considered accurate to within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.