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Support for Liberals remains strong nearly one year after election: poll

[Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a barbecue in Sudbury, Ont. after the Liberal’s recent two-day cabinet retreat. / The Canadian Press]

As the one-year anniversary of their decisive federal election win approaches, the Liberals are still enjoying broad national support that is growing in the west and is particularly strong among women, a new poll finds.

“The more, it seems, that Canadians see Mr. Trudeau and his government in action, the more they like it,” David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, tells Yahoo Canada News. “That is obviously going to be disconcerting to the opposition because it seems that nothing is sticking to Mr. Trudeau.”

Compared to relatively equal voter pools for the Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP at the beginning of 2015, an Abacus poll found that the Liberals have jumped nationally to a 20-point advantage over the NDP and a 22-point advantage over the Conservatives.

Sixty-seven per cent of respondents say they’d consider voting Liberal now, versus 47 per cent for the NDP and 45 per cent for the Conservatives, Abacus says.

“If I’m looking at these numbers, the vote intention doesn’t really matter until the election,” Coletto says of what those numbers tell the political parties. “What matters is whether Canadians are open to voting for you, whether they’d even consider it.” For the Conservatives and the NDP, who will both choose new national leaders before the next election, the focus should be on finding a leader who will make voters consider their party as an option in the next election, he says.

“Both of those parties have to find somebody who expands the tent and keeps their party on people’s menu of choices,” Coletto says.

The Abacus poll, released Monday, surveyed 2,010 Canadians aged 18 and over between August 22 and 25, about a variety of political topics. Its findings shows that the Liberal party has held on to the advantage with voters that it had at the end of the most recent federal election campaign in October 2015.

That advantage is particularly strong with female voters, the poll finds. Liberals lead nationally by 22 point among women, Abacus finds, compared to 15 per cent for men. Among rural Canadians the Liberals are only four points ahead of the Conservatives for approval, but the gap is 17 points among rural women. And though the Liberals led in all the age groups Abacus looked at the Conservative Party’s biggest challenge appears to be women under 45, who prefer the Liberals by 29 points.

“It’s almost as if the Conservative brand is something that is not appealing at all to them,” Coletto says of younger female voters.

The Conservative Party is also losing some support thanks to a broadening of the Liberal voting base, even into traditional Conservative strongholds, the poll finds. Conservatives still lead in rural voters west of Ontario, Abacus finds, but the Liberals are gaining ground in western suburbs and cities. And heading east the Conservatives were behind the Liberals in all areas: rural, urban, and suburban.

“What’s also quite unique about the Liberals right now, and it comes out of their win in October, is that they’ve managed to put together a fairly national coalition of voters,” Coletto says. “While there are pockets of support for the other parties in different regions it looks like the approval of the government is not contained to one or two regions of the country, other than Alberta [where Conservatives lead significantly].”

As for how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is faring along with his Liberal party, his support remains strong nearly a year into his first term. The Abacus survey finds that 57 per cent of respondents approve of the federal government. That’s the highest number Abacus has found in polling since the Liberals took power, and 25 points higher than former Conservative PM Stephen Harper stood when the most recent federal election began.

“That’s why these kinds of polls in between elections matter, because it gives the government the political capital it needs to continue to drive through its agenda,” Coletto says.

What remains to be seen in future polling, Coletto says, is whether the Liberals can hold on to their broad support and high approval rating as the party continues to govern, and whether the opposition parties will pick new leaders that may win back some of the voters the Liberals seem to have absorbed from the progressive left and the centre-right.