Liberals ending 2016 with broad support despite cash-for-access, pipelines, and electoral reform: poll
Despite heavy negative media coverage on both electoral reform and cash-for-access fundraising, public support for Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government remains high as 2016 closes out, a new poll finds.
Party support for the federal Liberals is roughly the same as it was after the election last fall, with 59 per cent of respondents to a national opinion poll from Abacus Data saying they would still consider voting Liberal today.
“I think the overall message is that a lot of issues that people in Ottawa, or people who follow politics closely, follow or think of don’t make it down to most Canadians,” David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, told Yahoo Canada News.
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And issues that were hotly discussed in both the House of Commons and Canadian media outlets don’t appear to have done much damage to the government’s continued high standing with the population, Coletto said.
Trudeau’s presence at a cash-for-access Liberal Party fundraiser attended by Chinese billionaires was criticized by opposition parties and in media coverage, and prompted questions from the ethics commissioner, but Canadians were largely either unaware of the scandal or unaffected by it. Thirty-one per cent of Abacus respondents said they hadn’t heard about the fundraising and 32 per cent said they had but it had no impact on their views.
“It hasn’t yet become an issue that people are talking about in the way, for example, they did about the sponsorship scandal,” Coletto said. That scandal clearly tied government actions to shady transactions, he said, where there isn’t any such direct link here.
“Until they see clear evidence that the government is not acting in good faith or with the motivations that they think they should have, you’re not likely to see that kind of backlash yet,” Coletto said.
Canadians are even more disengaged on the issue of electoral reform, the poll found. Three out of four respondents weren’t aware of the government’ reaction to the Electoral Reform committee report and the mydemocracy.ca online consultation, Abacus found. Only 18 per cent of respondents said the government’s reaction to the committee report worsened their opinion of it.
And while 14 per cent of those who did have an opinion on the online consultation said it made them feel worse about the government, the same percentage said it made them feel better.
“It’s an issue that I think that people just aren’t engaged on,” Coletto said of electoral reform. That’s sobering news for the NDP, who support electoral reform, and for activists pushing the Liberal government to keep their promise on it, he said.
“Efforts they might have made to put pressure on the government [to keep their promise] may not be working,” Coletto said.
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Overall, the Liberals are in a solid position heading into 2017 and their second year in power, Coletto says.
“Vote intention hasn’t moved all that much and approval rating for the government still remains quite high,” Coletto said. “The Liberals in their first year in office can safely say they’ve held their coalition together.”
Part of that comes from the lack of a permanent leader in both opposition parties, he says, but having the broad approval of the better part of two-thirds of Canadians also indicates that the government should probably stay the course.
“In terms of the numbers right now, I don’t see anything that’s particularly challenging or difficult for the Liberals,” Coletto said. “I look at these numbers and I think they have to keep doing what they’re doing, to be honest.”
