Trudeau’s vision remains popular with millennials
It’s usually assumed that great expectations don’t yield great results. But according to John M. Gottman, author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, this assumption is often incorrect. For evidence, Gottman points to the work of Donald Baucom, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, who discovered that, contrary to popular belief, “people with the highest expectations for their marriage usually wind up with the highest-quality marriages.”
This is excellent news for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose own marriage — not to his wife, but to the Canadian people — is burdened with expectations higher than Mount Everest. Trudeau was elected prime minister a little more than a month ago on a platform of unparalleled positivity — and, let’s face it, good hair. The night he won, many Canadians previously skeptical about the gaffe-prone leader were suddenly head over heels in love.
But that was then and this is now. The honeymoon is over.
So how’s he doing? Well, according to a new Forum Research poll, Trudeau’s doing pretty darn well.
Baucom’s theory checks out: high expectations can yield positive results. This week, Forum Research polled 909 Canadians nationwide and discovered that under Trudeau, fewer people feel the country is moving in the wrong direction.
According to the pollster: “In January (under Harper), one half of voters thought Canada was moving in the wrong direction and one third thought it was moving in the right direction.” But under Trudeau, “those proportions have reversed.”
Despite a slight dip in approval since election day (he now sits at 51 per cent), Trudeau’s vision remains relatively popular.
“The prime minister now displays approval ratings more like those of real-life politicians, not movie stars,” says Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff.
“Nevertheless, his charisma and energy appear to have had the effect of convincing Canadians they’re living in a better, happier country now than they were before the election.”
Nowhere is this effect more prevalent than among millennials (Canadians aged 18-34), the demographic most consistently supportive of the new PM.
Trudeau is popular with young people. It doesn’t sound like an especially shocking result; after all, we’re taking about a leader whose penchant for political correctness is matched only by his prowess at pummelling conservatives in the boxing ring. But millennial support for the PM is uniquely interesting in this instance, because of when the Forum Research poll was conducted — Nov. 17. That’s only four days after Islamic State militants murdered at least 130 people in Paris.
In the wake of the attacks, the PM did not reverse his decision to end Canada’s combat mission against Islamic State, nor did he attempt to halt or curb the immigration of Syrian refugees.
You might think millennials would disparage Trudeau for his softer foreign policy following an attack that heavily targeted the 18-34 demographic. Yet research indicates they don’t disparage him much at all. Why?
Perhaps younger Canadians simply don’t care for bold declarative statements and hawkish policy in times of political unrest. Perhaps what many older Canadians perceive as moral relativism in Trudeau’s softer foreign policy, younger Canadians perceive as virtue and strength.
This may be especially true where Syrian immigration to Canada is concerned. “Young Canadians realize that diversity is no longer simply a novelty,” says Zain Velji, a 27-year-old political consultant in Calgary. “It’s a reality that bears fruit personally, professionally and socially. Living in silos is no longer the way of the world.”
Tiffany Gooch, a 28-year-old Toronto public affairs professional and Trudeau supporter, doesn’t think foreign policy is a generational issue, but she does believe millennials are more likely to see themselves as “global citizens.”
“We are able to access information from anywhere in the world within seconds,” she says, “which certainly influences the depth of our understanding of issues pertaining to foreign policy.”
In other words, our elders didn’t have Facebook and Twitter as personal soapboxes every time a terrorist attack or refugee crisis broke out, which means though they saw tragedy on TV and read about it in the newspaper, they weren’t inundated with daily personal pleas online, illustrating the plight of the less fortunate; nor were their political views routinely challenged in the casual but rigorous conversation of social media.
Millennials in the West aren’t unfamiliar with terrorist attacks. When the Twin Towers went down on 9/11, most of us were kids or teens who witnessed the self-righteous bravado of Iraq war supporters and their swift fall from grace, satirized by leftist comedian pundits Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, public figures arguably more known to the 18-34 demographic than the most famous news broadcasters of the day.
It makes sense then, that in the eyes of many young people, Trudeau’s perceived weakness on matters of foreign policy isn’t proof of expectations failed, but expectations met with flying colours.
The survey of 909 randomly selected Canadian adults was conducted by interactive voice response on Nov. 17. Results are considered accurate plus or minus three percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Some data has been statistically weighted by age, region and other variables to ensure the sample reflects the actual population as reflected in census data. Poll results are housed in the data library of the University of Toronto political science department. Emma Teitel is a national columnist. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. eteitel@thestar.ca.