"The Liberals, basically, are proposing more of the same... more boosters, you know, more PPE, more support for Canadians," said Nanos. "I think Canadians are getting a little fatigued."
This could lead to a situation where "people just get fed up with the pandemic and want to punish someone," said Nanos, who added that the Liberals could be at the "front of the line" of any potential backlash.
Fair enough, but there's little else that Trudeau can really do short of "letting it rip." New developments on the front of approved vaccines and treatments for COVID will eventually put this in the rear-view mirror. We're almost there, but not yet.
Maybe it's the economy weighing on him, the James Carville axiom driving interim parked votes to the NDP, who promise everything for cheap without any real answers for how to pay for it.
According to u/MethoxyEthane on Reddit:
There's not a lot of good news anywhere in Nanos' numbers for Liberal supporters. The Conservatives are pretty steady across the board (gender, region, age), while Nanos has momentum going the NDP's way.
To lift the curtain a bit on Nanos' numbers without breaching their paywall with exact figures:
Nationally, these are the lowest figures for the Liberals and the highest figures for the NDP since that fun three-way tie in Summer 2015.
The NDP have not been this high in Ontario since that same summer of statistical similarities.
Nanos has had the Liberals consistently falling in Ontario since mid-June 2021. Nothing has stopped that trajectory.
The NDP are also solidly in second place (behind the Liberals) among women voters.
The Conservatives hold an overwhelming lead among male voters, while the Liberals have been falling sharply - almost perfectly correlating with an NDP rise.
The NDP have also been on the upswing in the Prairies. This is also being picked up in Angus Reid's provincial polls, as the Alberta and Manitoba NDP hold their leads and the Saskatchewan NDP are rapidly narrowing the gap to the Saskatchewan Party.
The biggest swing towards the NDP recently has come from the 60+ demographic.
The Liberals are also falling fast in the 50-59 demographic, currently at lows not seen since shortly after the SNC-Lavalin issue surfaced.
"Consistently falling in Ontario" since last summer, when they were in majority territory and all other pollsters showed them with a wide lead, and an NDP rise among the elderly? This, the party of the ethically-challenged hypocrite and rocking-chair Instagram/Tik Tok influencer? I'm calling bullshit. Although, they might be scamming a few older folks, while riding the coattails of their more mature provincial cousins who they selectively pretend don't exist:
Singh said he and all NDP MPs had received pleas from seniors, including those unable to afford their rent, groceries or medication. The party leader said they were looking to the NDP “for a solution.”
Karl Bélanger, a former senior adviser to the NDP and president of consulting firm Traxxion Strategies, said the party was right to focus on living costs, including the affordability of housing.
All 25 of them. OK, Jaggy. Hope you and Chucklefuck the clown provided them with some solutions that they were looking for, instead of just anger at Justin Trudeau for things that aren't his responsibility.
("Yeah," said Chuckles the Dingus, "and maybe monkeys will fly out of the Kielburgers' butts. Or Gerald Butts. Ha ha, Beavis, I said butt.")
Update: Right on cue.
The upside of the Malaka Malarkey poll is that Trudeau still leads the preferred PM metric (because, realistically, there's nobody else). Trudeau also gets decent marks in a new EKOS poll, while Jagmeet Singh the con artist has been unable to convert his personal numbers to votes when the pedal hits the metal. If anything suffers from prolonged inflation, it's NDP support outside election periods.
The sour public mood probably explains the lack of convincing support for any federal party and this is reflected in modest approval ratings. At 29 points, Erin O’Toole has roughly the same approval rating as Doug Ford and also shares the problem of straddling the more populist right wing portion of his constituency and the more traditional status quo conservatives. This is causing considerable tension for O’Toole. Justin Trudeau has a better approval rating at 40 points, while Jagmeet Singh enjoys the approval of 51 per cent of Canadians.
Everyone is just pissed off with, or divided on their feelings about, politics and politicians altogether at the moment. They also tend to get especially moody this time of year.
Your reminder about who Nanos works for, and why he says the things he says:
As for voter intentions, Frank Graves is seeing a similar three-way Gordian knot in his polling right now, albeit not with the supposed demographic sweep for the NDP. Most likely there'll be more input from Bogus Reid (who has some really questionable metrics for the Ontario provincial race) and, I dunno, someone else. This may end up being another case of phone vs. online panel discrepancy, as u/ThornyPlebian on Reddit points out:
I think this is very much an outlier. Nothing has changed in the political landscape since the election and the last major federal poll from Abacus was not too long ago and showed no such shifts.
Into the pile it goes I guess.
Taken at face value, though, what numbers like this indicate is gridlock and general malaise. Not necessarily outrage at the incumbent, especially with really no alternatives, nothing "significant" happening (like a "controversy" of some sort), and no election on the horizon — and no clear answer yet as to when there'll be a light at the end of the tunnel. Donald Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns.
This was Frank Graves' analysis:
The country faces huge challenges beyond the pandemic. How do we deal with the massive spending and economic dislocation from the pandemic? Most think that the country should be different based on lessons learned from the pandemic. Many feel that a climate emergency will be an even bigger crisis than the pandemic. What will the future of work look like? Virtually none of these issues were seriously enjoined in the last election, nor are they having much impact on current political landscape.The public are caught in a dark mood but this might all shift quite rapidly if this current wave marks the transition to a more ‘normal’ and manageable period. The future and its impacts on the political and societal landscape has never been so uncertain.
Into the pile it goes indeed, and just like the snow and a lot of other political shit, it's probably going to be piled high and deep with a lot of other polls between now and the next election, which might end up being a long time from now — because it's been less than six months since the last one; because the opposition would look like hypocrites forcing their own "unnecessary election"; and because there's going to be a lot of other (regularly-scheduled) local elections for the foreseeable future.
He may not have won a majority but Trudeau called the election at just the right time.
u/MethoxyEthane on Reddit has the list of what else is ahead:
Assuming you want to avoid a mid-summer or mid-winter/holiday season election, the next wide-open window is Spring 2024. Between now and then, you run into scheduled elections in...
- Ontario (Spring 2022) + Municipal (Fall 2022)
- Quebec (Fall 2022)
- Alberta (Spring 2023)
- Manitoba (Fall 2023)
- Prince Edward Island (Fall 2023)
- Northwest Territories (Fall 2023)
After that, barring an early election call somewhere else, it's clear sailing until Fall 2024, when British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick are due.
Which means this could end up being the first-ever minority government that lasts the full term, or close to it.
Who knows what could happen in the time being. The Liberals' Oracle of Delphi, Gerald Butts, reminds his followers that polls are not predictive, and the punditry about them is crap for bored media outlets looking for "filler" to engineer a certain narrative. When pollsters themselves become pundits, you know you're being played.
I've said this a bajillion times on this website, but horse race numbers don't mean anything outside of a campaign period. Even then it's only the trendline that matters. It's amazing how they get played every damn time. ... They are a poor predictor of the eventual outcome. The stories about them create their own weather.
In other words, a temperature check, a rollercoaster ride that has high points and dips. And the best part is, even though this one Nanos poll looks "bad" for the Liberals, it still has them winning the most seats. In a hypothetical second round of Trudeau vs. O'Toole... Trudeau wins by, well, a hair.
Put into the 338 Canada "simulator" it registers
- LPC: 122
- CPC: 118
- NDP: 63
- GPC: 2
- BQ: 33
- PPC: 0
- 128 - Liberal
- 122 - Conservative
- 66 - NDP
- 20 - Bloc
- 1 - Green
- 0 - PPC
