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Barack Obama: he may be bad for Canada, but we still love him

He hurt the development of the oil sand industry when he nixed the Keystone Pipeline deal; he chose not to stand-up for Canada when the Senate and House were debating "buy-America" provisions; and it appears he's holding up Canada's formal inclusion into a new free-trade group of Pacific Rim countries.

Despite all this, Canadians' love affair with U.S. President Barack Obama continues.

According to a new poll by Angus Reid, 65 per cent of Canadian respondents said, that if they could, they would cast a ballot for Obama. A not-so-whopping 9 per cent would go with Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The rest were undecided.

Mario Canseco, vice-president of Angus Reid Public Opinion, says we like the fact that Obama is good looking, charismatic, and that he's the first African-American to hold the office.

But most importantly, we like the fact that he's not a Republican.

"We've always hated republican presidents," Conseco told Yahoo! Canada News. "Bush was disliked. Reagan was a controversial figure because of his relationship with Mulroney. And we all knew what Nixon thought about Trudeau."

Canseco suggests that if a Republican president supported 'buy-America' or delayed the pipeline deal, Canadians would be more irate.

Nevertheless, Canadians' antipathy towards Romney is somewhat surprising considering he'd probably buoy our economy.

"Romney understands small business and big business and, historically, he knows the heart and soul of the Canadian motor industry because he grew up in Michigan where his dad was an auto industry executive," John Kirton, a political science professor from the University of Toronto told Global News.

"Romney is the ultimate border boy and the last U.S. president to come out of Michigan was Gerald Ford who was very good to Canada's economy."

But alas, Canadians don't seem to care about how Obama adversely affects us.

We'll love him: we'll love him blindly - it appears - and we'll love him unconditionally.

(Getty Images)