Polls show youth now hate Trudeau more than ever

Results signal next election could be ruinous for Liberals

In the wake of a federal budget tailored toward salvaging plummeting youth support for the Liberals, a series of Angus Reid Institute polls show that young people now hate the Trudeau government more than ever.

In a poll published Thursday, Canadians under the age of 24 were asked if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was “working in the best interests of their generation.” Seventy-one per cent responded “no.”

To be fair to Trudeau, huge majorities of every generation didn't see him as working in their best interest — but the dissatisfaction was deepest among voters who came of age after the Liberals' 2015 election win.

Seniors, by contrast, remained the most supportive. Among respondents aged 65 and older, a massive 69 per cent disagreed with Trudeau government policy, but 28 per cent still saw the Liberals representing their “best interests.”

The comparable figure among under-24s was just 15 per cent — the lowest of any other age cohort.

Under-24s were also least likely to see Trudeau as the best option for prime minister. While a slim plurality favoured Conservative Pierre Poilievre in the PMO (25 per cent as compared to 23 per cent for NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh), just 10 per cent wanted to stick with Trudeau.

“There appears to be much work to do for Trudeau to win over Gen Z and Millennial voters even in the wake of a budget designed to address their concerns,” reads an Angus Reid Institute analysis of the numbers.

The survey was conducted after the Liberals tabled a federal budget under the title “Fairness for Every Generation.” The word “fairness” was mentioned 50 times in the budget and all of its main provisions — from affordable-housing pledges to an increase in the capital gains tax — were pitched as totems of “generational fairness.”

“Taxing capital gains is not an inherently partisan idea. It is an idea that everyone who cares about fairness should support,” said Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in her April 16 budget speech.

Thursday's poll numbers on generational fairness add to another Angus Reid poll released this week finding that Liberal support among under-24 voters has dropped to all-time lows.

In a survey published Wednesday, support for the Liberal Party of Canada stood at just 12 per cent among Canadians aged 18 to 34. That's not only the lowest of any age demographic, but it's the lowest of almost any other voter segment that Angus Reid pollsters could imagine.

The only other voter cohort that was more anti-Trudeau than young voters were respondents who listed their address as Edmonton, Alta.; a mere nine per cent of Edmontonians intended to vote Liberal. (Edmonton's sole Liberal is Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault.)

Even Calgary wound up being slightly more pro-Liberal than an average Canadian in their early 20s. There, the Liberals polled one point higher at 13 per cent. (George Chahal is the sole Calgary Liberal MP.)

The Conservatives have been scoring outsized support among younger Canadians for more than a year. It was in September that an Abacus Data poll first returned the unexpected result that Poilievre was more popular among Canadian youth than among Canadian seniors — a situation virtually unprecedented for a Conservative leader.

In recent months, as projections keep showing the Tories on track for a supermajority in the next election, it's due largely to under-34 voters defecting from the Liberals to the Conservatives.

But the new Angus Reid Institute numbers show that after seeing millions of their supporters go blue, the Liberals are also starting to lose voters to the NDP.

At the beginning of 2024, under-34s were split pretty evenly between the NDP and the Liberals (a Jan. 22 poll had them at 22 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively).

Wednesday's Angus Reid poll now shows 36 per cent of under34s endorsing the NDP at — three times higher than the Liberals' 12 per cent.

It's why projections are now starting to show the possibility that the Liberals may not just lose the next election but their defeat could be so ruinous they won't even form the Official Opposition.

The latest riding-by-riding projections from the website 338Canada show the Liberal caucus shrinking to as few as 51 seats. With the NDP caucus projected as high as 33 seats and the Bloc Québécois as high as 45, it would only take five to 10 flipped ridings in either Ontario or Quebec to relegate the Liberals to third-party status.

LIBERAL SUPPORT AMONG UNDER-24 VOTERS HAS DROPPED TO ALL-TIME LOWS.

HEYWOOD YU / THE CANADIAN PRESS In a poll published Thursday, Canadians under the age of 24 were asked if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was “working in the best interests of their generation.” Seventy-one per cent responded “no.”