There are lots of Canadians who have a viscerally negative reaction to the name Trudeau -- father and son. Susan Delacourt writes:
Justin Trudeau has now said it twice — there are Canadians, he admits, who won’t believe him, no matter what he says.
Who are these Canadians? They are obviously not Liberal supporters, the prime minister says. “No matter what I say, people are going to wonder — if they didn’t vote for me — whether or not they can trust me,” Trudeau told reporters on Friday.
They are also disproportionally men.
What's going on?
“So 36 per cent of men in Canada, over one in three, have a very negative view of the prime minister,” says Abacus CEO David Coletto. “They really, really don’t like him.” Women who reported “very negative” views, on the other hand, numbered around 26 per cent. “Men tend to dislike the prime minister more than women,” Coletto says.
“I mean, Stephen Harper wasn’t beloved or loved at any point when he was in office, and people didn’t really like him,” Coletto says, “But it wasn’t as deeply emotional … They usually didn’t like him because they fundamentally disagreed on policy, whereas these people disagree with Trudeau on policies but it goes far deeper — they don’t like him as a person.”
It’s new for Canada too, Coletto argues, more similar to the kind of hostility shown in the United States to former president Barack Obama and former presidential contender Hillary Clinton.
When Coletto focused in on the demographic details of this 36 per cent of male voters, some of his findings were not a huge surprise. A strong current of negativity is linked to geography, demography and politics. If you’re a man who despises Trudeau, you’re more likely to be over 45 and from Alberta or Saskatchewan.
Half of this group places itself on the right of the political spectrum, 38 per cent in the centre and nine per cent on the left. About 60 per cent of them voted Conservative in the last election, 13 per cent voted for the People’s Party of Canada, seven per cent for the NDP and just three per cent for the Liberals. Again, no surprise.
Sociologically, they couldn’t be described as comfortable, either with Canada at present or their own lives. They’re less happy in their general outlook, which Coletto found interesting; on a 10-point scale, men with very negative views of Trudeau place themselves around the 5.9 mark, compared to 6.9 per cent for men with milder views. “That’s a big difference,” Coletto says.
In this poll, Abacus asked the negative voters what it was about Trudeau they disliked, and what words they would use to describe him. Some of the most common were “idiot,” “phoney,” “arrogant,” “liar” and “corrupt.”
The dislike, in other words, is intensely personal. When Coletto asked which Trudeau policies ticked off the men who have very harsh views, they cited his handling of the pandemic and budgets, corruption and wasteful spending. Coletto says it’s unlikely Trudeau could reverse these people’s views with different policies; they’re not going to view him positively, as the prime minister himself admits, “no matter what he says.”
Trudeau knows who hates him and why. And he knows there is nothing he can do about it.
Image: Western Standard
