The Smallest Glimmers of Hope

It’s September and Parliament is back in session! Welcome back! Or if you’re a Liberal in Ottawa, ehhh let’s get this over with. 

I had a lovely summer, much spent with my (mostly) Conservative family in Saskatchewan. Since they’ve read my work on the very… tough… opinion environment facing Trudeau, they’ve felt satisfied that I’m One. Of. Them. So to dissuade that notion, I’m back with an even deeper dive into opinions of Pierre Poilievre, and how Liberals and other haters can begin to chip away at his brand. 

If you read my last piece on this topic, you’ll know I floated some potential anti-Poilievre narrative statements, which have been tested in this poll. I’ve also dug into: What do voters think they’ll get with a Poilievre government? What policy outcomes do they think are plausible? Are there a couple of driving issues? Or, as much of Canadian politics seems to be right now, is support for him mainly a response to Trudeau’s unpopularity? 

The State of Play 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t first point out where we stand in a hypothetical match-up, even though the horse race has been pretty much locked in for months. If an election was held today: 

• 42.5% would vote Conservative 

• 22.5% Liberal

• 17.8% NDP 

• 7.8% Bloc Québécois 

• 5.5% Green Party 

• 3.9% People’s Party 

With the Liberals so far behind, where should they focus their efforts? My analysis focuses on three segments: 

• The Base (those who would vote Liberal today), 

• Lapsed Liberals (those who don’t plan to vote Liberal but voted Liberal in 2021 or are still considering the party), and 

• Potential Strategic Voters (those who are certain not to vote for Poilievre and instead plan to vote for either the NDP, Bloc, Greens, or are undecided). 

Lapsed Liberals have migrated equally to the Conservatives (30%) and the NDP (30%), while 9% have gone to the Bloc, 11% to the Greens, 5% to the PPC, and 15% are currently undecided. Of the three groups, Lapsed Liberals are most open to changing their vote. 53% say “I need more information before I decide how to vote”. 

Potential Strategic Voters are most likely to plan to vote NDP (46%), although many intend to vote for the Bloc (25%). 10% plan to vote Green and 19% are undecided. It’s important to point out that this group doesn’t like either Justin Trudeau or Pierre Poilievre, but they are less negative about the Liberal Party compared to the Conservatives. It’s also certainly not a given that, if it comes down to a strategic vote, the Liberals would be this group’s choice. The Liberals and NDP are only divided by 5-pts currently and one could imagine (ahem Ontario 2018) the NDP becoming perceived as the alternative to the Conservatives. But we have to start somewhere. 

Leadership 

When thinking about their ideal politician, three attributes stand out as most important to voters: honesty (67% chosen as a top 3 attribute), competence (55%), and respect (42%). These track ahead of strong (33%), principled (32%), decisive (29%), empathetic (25%), collaborative (22%) and innovative (22%). I assume all of these traits are at least somewhat important to voters, but this gives some sense of the non-negotiables. 

Aside from competence, Poilievre’s greatest strengths are some of the leadership traits voters value least – being decisive and strong – while he performs worst on high-valued traits, including honesty and respect. Basically, his strength is that he's a strong, decisive leader, and his weakness is that he doesn’t work well with others. But in the end, the good outweighs the bad. Voters are more likely to say positive traits apply to Poilievre than they don’t. But there are lots of people in the middle - those who believe that each trait only “somewhat applies,” “doesn’t really apply,” or they are simply uncertain. 

Policy

It should come as no surprise that the top three issues are improving healthcare, fighting inflation, and making housing more affordable. Secondary priorities include creating jobs, building housing, fighting homelessness, and reducing government spending. 

There are some important cleavages when looking at our target voters. Notably, fighting climate change is a much greater priority among these three audiences, while making the criminal justice system stronger, punishing drug offenders, and scrapping the carbon tax are more priorities for Conservative voters. 

I presented respondents with a suite of policy outcomes and asked which they thought would be most likely under a Poilievre government. For every single policy issue, a plurality of voters expect nothing. This is one of the most important findings from this poll. It’s easy to assume that because Poilievre is so dominant in the polls, voters must have high hopes for what he’ll do. This isn’t the case. It’s always good to remember that most voters are cynical about politics. They don’t think government will change things. In this case, aside from true believers, most voters are just expecting Poilievre to be less bad than the current government. 

In terms of actual outcomes, voters are most likely to expect that under Poilievre: 

• Canada will become tougher on crime 

• Spending on social programs will decline

• Canada will do less to fight climate change 

• Canadian politics will become meaner 

Voters are nearly evenly divided in their expectations of Poilievre on the cost of living, healthcare, and housing affordability. 

Approximately half of Potential Strategic Voters expect spending on social programs to decline, the cost of living to increase, politics to become meaner, healthcare less efficient and, and Canada will do less to fight climate change. Lapsed Liberals are less likely to assume negative outcomes overall, but they see the same possible downsides as Potential Strategic Voters. 

Approximately half of voters think big business and the wealthy will be better off under a Poilievre government. It’s non-Conservative voters who disproportionately feel this way. My guess is that this is more of a Conservative Party trait, as opposed to being related to Poilievre specifically, but there’s some opportunity here. 

Just 13% of voters expect the middle class to be “much better off” under Poilievre. An almost equal portion (10%) thinks the middle class will be “much worse off”, but most voters fall somewhere in the middle and have moderate expectations. 

How can opinion be moved? 

Full disclosure: I had an alternate title for this article. I thought about going with, “I gave voters a bunch of reasons to vote against Poilievre and they came back with, ‘meh’” - but I figured I’d rather have people read the article. But that’s kind of what the research shows. There are certainly opportunities, but I haven’t unearthed something that creates a massive shift because 1) That’s really hard to do in a poll. People don’t like being manipulated and are bound to be skeptical. And 2) As you’ll see in the narrative testing, voters are much more likely to have been exposed to positive information about Poilievre than negative. It’s hard to undo that conditioning without any big event or repetitive messaging. How many times can one complain about a lack of LPC advertising before it becomes tedious? IDK, but here’s one more. 

Participants were presented with positive and negative information about Poilievre and asked if it made them more or less likely to support him in the next election. The most alienating piece of information is that he plans to cut healthcare funding. This is followed by: 

• He won’t commit to keeping the federal dental care, pharmacare, and child care programs

• He has repeatedly met with far-right extremist groups and refused to apologize 

• He supported the Freedom Convoy 

These are also the most damaging statements among our three target audiences. 

Poilievre’s focus on reducing the cost of living, building more houses, and removing the carbon tax are most positively impacting intent to vote for him. 

The ghost of Stephen Harper appears to have lost its effect. Being in Harper’s cabinet is viewed as a net positive, although a plurality says it makes no difference. 

Voters are most likely to report that Poilievre’s personal life - that his wife is an immigrant and he has young children - doesn’t impact their vote, although this is where I’ll squabble with respondents. I know that the use of Poilievre’s wife in his introductory ad was extremely effective. So while it might not be a reason to vote for him, it certainly softened his edges and made him look like a different type of Conservative. 

The Glow Up

While we’re talking about Poilievre’s rebrand, let’s talk about image. Poilievre has clearly been on a glow-up journey for the past year. If you’re not a millennial (or Gen Z) woman, then I mean he’s changed his appearance a lot. First went the glasses, then came the white tee. Image is often overlooked as part of political storytelling, but it’s extremely important. I asked voters what they think of four different aesthetics. The original Poilievre, with the glasses, suit, and smirk was most commonly conveying that he’s a typical politician, followed by smart, nerdy, and hardworking. The image of him in the white t-shirt has created the biggest departure from this starting point, with voters most commonly seeing him as a regular Canadian. The photo with his family conveys similar attributes but further lessens perceptions of him being arrogant, condescending, and slimy. Response to the “axe the tax” t-shirt and aviators is more of a mixed bag. Voters are nearly evenly divided on whether or not he looks like a regular Canadian or a typical politician. It’s also the image most likely to tell Canadians that he is arrogant, aggressive, and a jerk. 

Putting it all Together 

For my last Poilievre newsletter, I read through A LOT of open-ended responses discussing what voters know about Pierre Poilievre. From that, I wrote four distinctive narrative frames that I thought would be worth testing. Pollsters always want to know how the negative stacks up against the positive, so I tested two pro-Poilievre/anti-Trudeau narrative statements as well. For the positive statements, I did my best to Poilievre-speak and it felt gross. But I think the big themes are there.

I first asked respondents if they had heard a statement like this before. I was searching for novelty, assuming that some messages might have gotten stale, and therefore could be ignored by voters. That’s not the case. Voters are most likely to have heard the pro-Poilievre messages, but they’re still only familiar to about half of voters. Between 38-33% of voters have heard of the anti-Poilievre messages, although these are more likely to have been heard by the Liberal Base and Lapsed Liberals. 

There’s significant openness to the anti-Poilievre narrative statements, as much if not more than the pro-Poilievre information. Most voters don’t know if these statements are “totally true”, but a plurality believes they at least “raise some good points”. 

Among target audiences, “The Blowhard” and “The American” stand out as most effective. Lapsed Liberals agree with these statements to a similar degree as the pro-Poilievre “Right the Ship” message, and more than they agree with the “Common Sense” statement. Potential Strategic Voters agree with these two statements more than any other. 

While these two statements look like they test about the same, “The American” receives more blowback among the general population — 25% “strongly disagree” vs. 20% for “The Blowhard”. It’s not an enormous difference, but it’s something. 

I would need to do more research to know for sure, but my theory why “The Blowhard” has an edge is because it hits on several things that ring true while ending with a soft pitch. 

• “We all know that guy - the one who speaks loudly but never listens.” This paints Poilievre’s leadership style as a weakness. Instead of being strong and decisive, he’s someone who steamrolls. 

• “Pierre Poilievre may sound like he has great plans for the country, but if you pay attention, his plans don’t make any sense.” This tackles enthusiasm for Poilievre while gently pointing out that voters haven’t really been paying attention to what he’ll do as PM. 

• “How are Canadians supposed to be better off if he’s cutting the programs we rely on most?” Poilievre’s most credible policy weakness is that he’ll make cuts to social programs and healthcare (and he won’t do anything on climate). 

• “We need to take another look at this guy.” - This doesn’t ask voters to do a 180 and vote Liberal. It’s more subtle. It asks for a second look and trusts voters to think for themselves. 

Last Word

If I were running the party’s research, I’d be annoyed reading the testing of 4 narrative statements and the suggestion that THE PROBLEM HAS BEEN SOLVED! To be clear, that’s not what I’m suggesting. A LOT of research should go into establishing the anti-Poilievre positioning, but I hope this poll provides some helpful clues and maybe a new idea or two. I’ll also offer my commiserations. It’s really hard to get voters to give a shit about what’s wrong with the other guy when they’re starving for change.

Methodology 

This survey was conducted online in English and French from September 12-16, 2024. A nationally representative sample of n=1774 Canadians completed this survey. The data was weighted to census parameters for region, gender, age, and past voting behaviour. For a representative sample, the margin of error would be +/-2%.