FIRST READING: With Liberal popularity at near-record lows, who actually still likes them? (2024)

TOP STORY

Every week seems to yield some new rock bottom for the Liberal Party of Canada. The most recent is a May 17 poll from Abacus Data finding that the federal Liberals in B.C. are unpopular to the point of being a fringe party — with even Metro Vancouver set to flip many of its Liberal ridings blue.

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This adds to more than a year of surveys showing the Conservatives dominating in basically every category that pollsters can name.

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With the Trudeau government fast becoming the most unpopular ministry in modern Canadian history, it’s almost easier to track the voters who haven’t broken faith with them. Below, a cursory look at the ever-dwindling demographics of Canadians who still think Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is doing a fine job.

(Some) older people

If the next election was decided entirely by senior citizens, the Conservatives would still be poised to win. However, this is one of the only electoral scenarios in which the Trudeau government could still be competitive.

While Liberal support has utterly dropped off a cliff among anyone younger than 40, it’s still clinging to life among the over-65 crowd. In the immediate wake of the Liberal’s new budget promising “generational fairness,” an April 24 Angus Reid Institute survey found that its only apparent effect was to scare away youth votes faster. Canadians under 40 “do not appear to be picking up what the Liberals are throwing down,” read an analysis.

The result is that the Liberals’ strongest constituency — by far — is voters over 55. That April 24 Angus Reid Institute survey found the Liberals clinging onto 30 per cent of the 55+ vote, compared to an ignominious 12 per cent of the 18-34 cohort.

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Rich people

Tech bros certainly aren’t happy with the Liberal Party of late, giving their recent hike to the capital gains tax. But, in general, the more money you have, the more likely you are to check your ballot for the Trudeau Liberals.

In March, the Angus Reid Institute had respondents rate their level of “economic stress” and then indicate who they planned to vote for. The only category in which the Liberals captured a plurality was among the “thriving” cohort; who backed the Liberals by 30 per cent. The “struggling,” by contrast, gave the Liberals just 15 per cent to the blowout 50 per cent support for the Tories.

Canadians who own their home outright after paying off their mortgage are also disproportionately in the Liberal camp. Another Angus Reid poll segmenting voters by housing status found that the most pro-Liberal category was “owner, no mortgage”; 27 per cent of them still planned to vote Liberal, against just 18 per cent of renters.

Muslims and Jews

Earlier this month, the Angus Reid Institute broke down voter intentions based on religion. The Conservatives dominated almost all of the categories, including atheists. The religions most aligned with the Conservatives, in fact, were Hindus (53 per cent), Sikhs (54 per cent) and all-category Christians (53 per cent).

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The only exception to this trend were Muslims, where the Tories occupied a distant third place (15 per cent) behind the NDP (41 per cent) and the Liberals (31 per cent). The Liberal showing among Canadian Muslims still isn’t great, but it was leagues ahead of the lacklustre numbers they were posting among, say, Sikhs (21 per cent).

Angus Reid collected the results in the context of a poll looking at which constituencies the Trudeau government may be looking to appease in its approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Perhaps ironically, the only religion who retained a similar affinity for the Liberals were Jews, one third of whom still counted themselves as Liberal voters (although a plurality of 42 per cent backed the Tories).

Montrealers

To be sure, the next federal election is likely to be a huge boon to the Bloc Québécois. While voters in the rest of Canada appear poised to flip dozens of Liberal ridings to the Tories, in Quebec many of those Liberal ridings will be falling to the Bloc.

But Quebec continues to show outsized support for the Trudeau government, particularly in the urban Montreal ridings whose MPs include Trudeau himself and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly. A Leger poll from last month found that Quebecers and urbanites were among the two groups most likely to express satisfaction with the Trudeau government (although, even then, the satisfaction levels were at 29 per cent and 28 per cent, respectively).

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In a poll released on May 2, Abacus Data found the Liberals in a three-way race in Quebec between themselves (28 per cent), the Conservatives (also 28 per cent) and the Bloc (33 per cent). This stood in notable contrast to every other province, where the Conservatives enjoyed either a commanding majority, or at least a 20-point lead.

This disparity may be due in part to the fact that Montreal — and Quebec generally — have been disproportionately shielded from many of the most obvious failures of the Trudeau government. Crime, addiction, homelessness and housing prices aren’t in great shape in Montreal, but they’re in exponentially better shape than Southern Ontario or much of the West.

IN OTHER NEWS

Last week saw the International Criminal Court declare that both Hamas (an openly genocidal terror group) and Israel (a parliamentary democracy) were equally guilty of crimes against humanity. As such, the ICC issued arrest warrants against both Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Among all of Canada’s usual peer countries, this was a bit much. The U.S. called the decision “outrageous,” Italy deemed it “unacceptable” and the U.K. called it “unhelpful” before noting that the ICC doesn’t actually have the jurisdiction to arrest Netanyahu. But in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau avoided official comment on the decision, before saying in a press conference that while he found it “unhelpful,” he urged everyone to “respect and abide by international law.” Meanwhile, his de facto coalition partner, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, said the ICC decision was a great idea and suggested that Canada should help the ICC arrest whomever they deem fit.

In other conspicuous silence news, Trudeau and Governor General Mary Simon both failed to issue any kind of social media commemoration of Monday’s Victoria Day holiday. This wouldn’t be a huge deal if not for the fact that both figures unfailingly mark any number of obscure holidays and commemorations. Just last week, Trudeau put out an official statement to mark International Day Against hom*ophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. So it’s perhaps notable that both Simon and Trudeau go dark when it comes to a 179-year-old holiday that exists purely to celebrate the monarch.

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