Don’t like Justin Trudeau? You’re not alone. Here’s why Canadians say the prime minister is so unpopular

 

By now, Justin Trudeau’s unpopularity is not a bug in Canadian politics, but a feature.

It is the starting point for every conversation revolving around the Liberals’ future prospects against the Conservatives in the next election. It figures large when trying to guess the lifespan of the Liberal-NDP deal — how long will Jagmeet Singh and his New Democrats want to remain allied with an unpopular PM?

What’s less examined is the cause of that unpopularity. When voters are registering all those negative impressions with the pollsters, what exactly is it that is turning them off Trudeau?

So Abacus Data, in its latest round of polling for the Star, took on that question. It’s not the first time Abacus has probed on this issue for the Star — back in the spring of 2023, we wanted to know whether Trudeau’s unpopularity was more rampant among male voters.

“Yes,” was the answer back then. Today, that gender disparity has mostly disappeared. “Men and women now feel pretty much the same about Trudeau,” Abacus CEO David Coletto says (and he doesn’t mean this in a good way).

Abacus has been regularly tracking how all leaders, Trudeau especially, is tracking with positive and negative impressions. Negative impressions of the prime minister have been steadily escalating over the past couple of years — from 44 per cent in 2022 to 59 per cent today.

But in this poll, Abacus attempted to break down where that antipathy was rooted — particularly whether it was based on something Trudeau has done (or not done) or whether it’s just simply who he is.

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