Should Trudeau stay or go? Canadians already weighed in before his recent historic loss

On June 24th, the Liberal Party suffered a historic loss in a downtown Toronto riding the party has held for more than three decades—but more importantly—it has put the future of Justin Trudeau as the party’s leader in trouble. 

"This is not a normal defeat," Phillipe Fournier of 338Canada, a website that publishes a model of statistical electoral projections based on a variety of factors, explained to CTV News about the Liberal’s loss in the Toronto-St. Paul's riding. 

Fournier went on to say Trudeau and the Liberals were heading for a “historic defeat” in the next general election, a sentiment that is being brought up in news reports all across the country after the Conservative Party flipped Toronto-St. Paul's. 

Trudeau was already facing increasingly bad omens before the byelection in Toronto-St. Paul's. Polling released before the election showed that a majority of Canadians thought it was time for the Prime Minister to step down from power. 

According to a poll by Ipsos carried out exclusively for Global News, the vast majority of Canadians are ready for a change of leadership. The poll found most Canadians want Trudeau to step down as Prime Minister.

Ipsos discovered that 68% of the 1,001 Canadians it surveyed between June 12th and 14th want Trudeau to step down as leader of the country according to the news organization. 

“This is as bad as we’ve seen it for Trudeau. It’s close to rock bottom,” explained Ipsos Chief Executive Officer Darrell Bricker about the situation the Prime Minister is facing at the moment.

The desire to see Trudeau step down was highest in Alberta (79%) and Atlantic Canada (76%). 75% of respondents also reported they wanted another party to take over power. 

Ipsos found that if the election were held on the days it administered its survey, 42% of respondents would choose to vote for the Conservative Party over the other parties. 

The Liberal Party would have received 24% of the vote while the New Democratic Party would have snatched 18%, matching the Conservative Party when combined together. 

Bicker explained that the Liberals “have thrown everything they can think of at changing this dynamic,” but the Ipsos CEO added nothing has worked so far. “It’s frozen in solid.”

The polling from Ipsos showed Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has pulled far ahead of Trudeau with a big 19-point lead regarding leadership perceptions with voters. 

Only 25% of respondents thought Trudeau would make the best Prime Minister whereas 44% thought Poilievre was the best option. 43% thought the same of Jagmeet Singh. 

Ipsos made a similar discovery when it came to leadership performance approval, 50% approved of Poilievre while 37% approved of Trudeau and 47% approved of Singh. 

The June 24th byelection in Toronto-St. Paul's proved to be an excellent real-world assessment and verification of the current unhappiness with Liberal leadership in the country.  

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By awmcphee, Own work, CC0

CBC News reported before the byelection that some voters in the country saw the byelection in Toronto St. Paul's as a referendum on Trudeau.  

“St Paul’s will show how polling translates into votes. If the Liberals lose what should be an easy win, it shows how far they have fallen in voter esteem,” Bricker explained. 

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